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14 maltatoday | WEDNESDAY • 16 NOVEMBER 2022 WORLD NEWS ACCORDING to a projection by the United Nations, planet Earth will welcome its eight billionth inhabitant this Tuesday. While some experts worry that this is too many people, most say the bigger problem is the overcon- sumption of resources by the wealthiest. "The milestone is an occasion to celebrate diversity and ad- vancements while considering humanity's shared responsibil- ity for the planet," UN Secre- tary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement. The UN attributes the growth to human development, with people living longer thanks to improvements in public health, nutrition, personal hygiene and medicine. It is also the result of high- er fertility rates, particularly in the world's poorest countries -- most of which are in sub-Sa- haran Africa -- putting their de- velopment goals at risk. "Some express concerns that our world is overpopulated," said United Nations Population Fund chief Natalia Kanem. "I am here to say clearly that the sheer number of human lives is not a cause for fear." Environmental impacts However, it is clear that the population growth has magni- fied the environmental impacts of economic development. Joel Cohen of Rockefeller Uni- versity's Laboratory of Popula- tions told AFP the question of how many people Earth can sup- port has two sides: natural limits and human choices. Our choices result in humans consuming far more biological resources, such as forests and land, than the planet can regen- erate each year. The overconsumption of fossil fuels, for example, leads to more carbon dioxide emissions, re- sponsible for global warming. The UN climate Conference of the Parties (COP27) held in Egypt, now in its second week, has been dominated by calls from developing countries that rich polluters pay for the harm their emissions have already caused, known as "loss and dam- age". "Africa contributes less than three percent of the pollution responsible for climate change, but it's most severely impacted by the ensuing crisis," Kenya's President William Ruto said last week. Kenya is being ravaged by the worst drought in 40 years, as is the wider Horn of Africa region, threatening millions with star- vation. The UN has warned that Somalia is on the brink of a fam- ine for the second time in just over a decade. "Multiple African countries are projected to face compounding risks from: reduced food pro- duction across crops, livestock and fisheries; increasing heat-re- lated mortality; heat-related loss of labour productivity; and flooding from sea level rise," scientists with the UN's Inter- governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have warned. Emerging economies around the globe face similar challenges as they are being hammered by climate-induced floods, heat- waves or droughts. Scientists agree that as climate change worsens, threats to hu- man health and well-being will also increase. Nearly 70 percent of all deaths worldwide are from diseases that could be made worse by global warming, according to a report this year from the IPCC. "We are stupid. We lacked foresight. We are greedy. We don't use the information we have. That's where the choices and the problems lie," said Co- hen. He rejects the idea that humans are a curse on the planet, saying people should be given better choices. Decline in fertility rates The current population is more than three times higher than the 2.5 billion global headcount in 1950. However, after a peak in the early 1960s, the world's popula- tion growth rate has decelerated dramatically, Rachel Snow of the UN Population Fund told AFP. Annual growth has fallen from a high of 2.1 percent between 1962 and 1965 to below 1 per- cent in 2020. That could potentially fall fur- ther to around 0.5 percent by 2050 due to a continued decline in fertility rates, the United Na- tions projects. The UN expects the population to continue growing to about 8.5 billion in 2030, 9.7 billion in 2050, peaking around 10.4 bil- lion in the 2080s. Eight billion people and counting: can planet Earth sustain its population?