World Population Day- 2022

“Make a wish on World Population Day to enjoy a future that is less crowded”
World Population Day is observed annually on July 11. The purpose of this nearly 30-year-old celebration is to draw attention to the significance of population concerns around the world. Its 1989 implementation was proposed by the Governing Council of the United Nations Development Programme. This unique day was created as a result of the excitement generated by “Five Billion Day” on July 11, 1987. The world population surpassed 5 billion people on this day. The International Conference on Human Rights took place in 1968. Family planning was confirmed to be a human right for the first time ever. The Tehran Proclamation, which was approved during the meeting, declares that the ability of parents to choose the number and spacing of their children is a fundamental right. Worldwide, millions of women continue to lack access to reliable family planning options. Because of this, it has previously been chosen as the subject of attention. The ability to access safe and efficient family planning is a fundamental human right. Additionally, it must be an active decision. It is necessary for women’s empowerment and gender equality. Additionally, it has a significant role in lowering poverty. The Day was created by the UN Development Programme’s Governing Council in 1989 as a result of the enthusiasm sparked by the Day of Five Billion, which was marked on July 11, 1987. The UN General Assembly voted to continue marking World Population Day in resolution 45/216 from December 1990 in order to raise awareness of population concerns, especially their connections to the environment and development. On July 11, 1990, the Day was first observed in more than 90 nations. The World Population Day 2022 Theme is “A world of 8 billion: Towards a resilient future for all – Harnessing opportunities and ensuring rights and choices for all” .The world population topped 7 billion people in 2011, and it will soon approach 8 billion, triggering the appropriate reactions. Health improvements have increased lifespans and decreased mother and child mortality. The focus of World Population Day in 2022 will be on building a robust future for all 8 billion people, seizing opportunities, and securing everyone’s rights and freedom of choice. On a significant scale, six of the planet’s seven continents are continuously populated. With 4.64 billion people, Asia is the continent with the highest population, making up 60% of all people on earth. Together, China and India, the two most populous nations on earth, account for nearly 36% of all people.With 1.34 billion people, or 17% of the world’s population, Africa is the second most populous continent. As of 2020, Europe’s population of 747 million people accounts for 10% of the global population, while the Latin American and Caribbean areas are home to about 653 million people (8 percent ). Around 368 million people (5%) live in Northern America, which is mostly made up of the United States and Canada, whereas 42 million people live in Oceania, which is the least populous continent (0.5 percent ). There are only around 1200 people living in Antarctica, most of whom are located in polar scientific stations.
The world’s population surpassed 7 billion people in 2011 and will reach 8 billion this year, triggering the appropriate reactions. Some people will be in awe at the advances in medicine that have increased lifespans, decreased infant and maternal mortality, and sped up the discovery of vaccines. Others will extol technology advancements that have made life easier and made us more connected than ever. Others will signal advancements in gender equality. However, not everyone has seen growth, which brings inequity into stark contrast. In delivery, women continue to pass away. Gender disparities are still present. More women and people in underdeveloped nations are offline due to the digital divide. Recently, the distribution of COVID-19 vaccinations has not improved. Additionally, the issues and problems mentioned 11 years ago are still present or have become worse: prejudice, violence, and climate change. The number of people who have been forcefully relocated globally has surpassed the dismal milestone of 100 million in May. The world is thus allegedly on the cusp of either catastrophic overcrowding or catastrophic population collapse, according to alarmists. Both parties are likely to demand actions to stop or encourage population rise. Engineering population numbers, however, has not been effective in the past. Instead, it runs counter to the International Conference of Population and Development Programme of Action and only serves to undermine human rights, including reproductive rights, when women are forced to have more or fewer children against their will or because they lack access to the information and services to assist them in making that decision. The average age of nations and population fertility rates are extremely diverse for the first time in history. While an increasing number of countries’ populations are ageing and around 60% of the world’s population resides in nations with below-replacement fertility of 2.1 children per woman, some nations have sizable young populations and continue to see rapid population growth. But individuals, not population, should be the main concern. The humanity of people is lost when they are reduced to statistics. By increasing people’s health and wellbeing, you can make systems function for the numbers rather than the other way around. “Even though the rate of global population increase will continue to slow in the next decades, the world population is anticipated to be between 20 and 30% higher in 2050 than in 2020,” according to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. For the purpose of formulating and implementing policies as well as serving as a roadmap for nations moving towards sustainable development, it is essential to have accurate estimates of population trends and trustworthy forecasts of future changes, including for the size of populations and their distributions by age, sex, and geographic location. If fertility is down, for instance, is it as a result of expectant parents worrying about how they will support a family, where they will live affordably, or how taking maternity leave would affect a mother’s career trajectory? If fertility rates are increasing, is it due to women’s decision-making or a lack of access to or awareness of contemporary contraception? Governments can more accurately assess the requirements of a changing population and map a safer course for meeting those needs for demographic resilience by making sure everyone is counted. In a perfect society, there would be 8 billion people, which would offer 8 billion chances for more enlightened communities with rights and freedoms. However, the playing field has never been even. Too many people continue to experience discrimination, harassment, and violence based on their gender, race, class, religion, sexual orientation, disability, and country of origin, among other things. By disregarding those who are left behind, we do ourselves no favours. Coronavirus disease, also known as Covid-19, is an infectious illness brought on by SARS-CoV-2. It was initially discovered in Wuhan, a city in China, in December 2019, and has since created an ongoing pandemic. More than 5.6 million people have died as a consequence of the COVID virus as of January 2022, and there were more than 356 million documented cases. The top three nations most impacted by the virus are the US, India, and Brazil. More over 7.5 billion people live on the inhabited continents of Africa, North and South America, Asia, Europe, and Australia/Oceania as of 2017. With a combined population of more than 4.5 billion people, Asia is by far the largest of the continents and includes the two most populous nations in the world, China and India. The smallest continent, Australia/Oceania, is home to over 40 million people. Australia/Oceania serves as an excellent illustration of how difficult it can be to define a continent because it is frequently, but not always, thought to contain the subregions of Polynesia, Micronesia, and Melanesia. It may also be described as the entire region between the Americas and Asia.The population falls to under 30 million if these areas are left out and just Australia and New Zealand are included in the calculation. Only Southern and Eastern Europe, out of all the continents, exhibit negative growth rates in 2017, with Southern Europe at -0.12 percent and Eastern Europe at -0.15 percent. Although Western Europe continues to have a high population density of 178.31 people per square kilometre, Europe as a whole has had a low population rise of 0.08 percent, which is the weakest growth rate among the inhabited continents. Contrarily, all of Africa’s regions exhibit noticeable rates of population growth, with rises of 2.5% to 3.0% in Central, Eastern, Western, and Sub-Saharan Africa. According to an earth map, the world’s population is predicted to reach 7.89 billion by the year 2022, with China accounting for 18.5 percent of that figure, followed by India (17.9 percent), the United States (4.3%), Indonesia (3.5%), and Brazil (2.8%). According to scientists, humans have existed for between 200,000 and 300,000 years, or from 198,000 to 298,000 B.C. Asia now has 4.4 billion people, followed by Africa with 1.2 billion, Europe with 738 million, North and South America with 1.4 billion, and other continents with 1.4 billion. The projected world population in 2021 is 7.87 billion. According to the UN, there were 962 million people in the globe who were 60 years of age or older in 2017. This is a significant increase from the 382 million older people who were in the world in 1980. Compared to established countries, the senior population in emerging regions is increasing considerably more quickly. By 2050, the population of elderly people is predicted to nearly treble once again to 2.1 billion. Africa, where the population aged 60 or over is forecast to expand, will see the fastest growth in the number of elderly people over the next decades. 68.7 million people live in Africa, 549 million in Asia, 183 million in Europe, 78 and 76 million in North and South America. Due to low birth rates, an ageing population, Tokyo’s status as the world’s most populous metropolis, and Taiwan’s low birth rates, Japan’s population is declining. Taiwan is another country with low birth rates. Canada has a population of 38 million people, the UK has 68.8 million, Germany has 83.1 million people, and Australia has 25.7 million people. Nordic nation Finland is located in Northern Europe. In brief, the purpose of celebrating world population day is to create more awareness about expanding population and celebrations are incomplete without understanding the importance of educating each person on the planet to tell him the need for controlling the population for a better tomorrow. Warm wishes to everyone on World Population Day 2022.
(While Rasy Fayaz is a Research Scholar at Kashmir University, Dr Bilal A Bhat is a Professor at S K University Of Agriculture Sciences & Technology-SKUAST Shalimar Srinagar. Views are their own)
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