Too many people on the planet: 2.5 billion people in more than in 2050 – TGCOM

14:56 – Experts alert to the risks of overpopulation and its impact on the planet. The pace of growth is unstoppable: there will be two and a half billion more inhabitants by 2050. A global population growth that threatens development, food availability, and environmental sustainability, with migration, social equilibria. He explained demographer Massimo Livi Bacci, during a lecture at the Academy of the Lincei.

poor countries increasingly populated – One of the main problems, highlighted Livi Bacci, is that population growth will not be uniform: “There will be stationary in rich countries, an increase of 30% in the countries” less poor “in the areas of developing and even a doubling in poor countries, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa. “

Sustainability of development at risk – But the sustainability of development, noted the professor, is put at risk by four factors: the birth rate too high in poor countries, and very low in the developed world; food production, which will be more than proportional to population growth, if you want to eliminate hunger that affects 800 million people; the consequences of population growth on the environmental balance, for the high rates of deforestation and pollution; the lack of an international governance of migration.

Livi Bacci recalled: “The demographic issue has been at the center of the international debate after World War II. In poor countries, the annual growth rate has exceeded 2% in the second half of the last century by putting at risk the schooling of children, youth work, levels of supply and food production, environmental balance. “

A problem forgotten – In the face of this situation,” the community International and the United Nations system, is committed to supporting policies that tend to moderate growth, as an obstacle to a balanced development. “

Among the” Millennium Objectives “proclaimed in 2000 by the Heads of was (and relative to 2000-2015), included in the forefront of actions related to the survival, maternal health, the spread of birth control. The problem of population growth, however, concludes Livi Bacci, “seems to have been removed from the list of problems that threaten the sustainability of growth, perhaps too trusting demographic slowdown.”

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Livi Bacci

Accademia dei Lincei