The UN predicts the world’s population explosion

With the population hitting 7bn this month Spanish design house Bestiaro’s has produced this visualisation of the UN population data for us using its Impure design language. Explore the data by clicking on the countries below - all figures in thousands

Contrast the concern of this reports against the following article from The Economist:

The world’s population will reach 7 billion at the end of October. Don’t panic.

That makes the world’s population look as if it is rising as fast as ever. It took 250,000 years to reach 1 billion, around 1800; over a century more to reach 2 billion (in 1927); and 32 years more to reach 3 billion. But to rise from 5 billion (in 1987) to 6 billion took only 12 years; and now, another 12 years later, it is at 7 billion (see chart 1). By 2050, the UN thinks, there will be 9.3 billion people, requiring an island the size of Tenerife or Maui to stand on.

Odd though it seems, however, the growth in the world’s population is actually slowing. The peak of population growth was in the late 1960s, when the total was rising by almost 2% a year. Now the rate is half that. The last time it was so low was in 1950, when the death rate was much higher. The result is that the next billion people, according to the UN, will take 14 years to arrive, the first time that a billion milestone has taken longer to reach than the one before. The billion after that will take 18 years.

J N O M I C S

Guardian