THE world’s population is now more than seven billion and continues to grow by 82 million people a year. Currently the rate of population increase is 1.2 per cent a year, which means this population will double in 58 years.

When we look forward to the next 40 years, the most significant population increases will take place in the areas of our world where natural resources and the infrastructure of modernity are already the scarcest.

Ninety-five per cent of the human population growth is occurring in countries already struggling with poverty, illiteracy and civil unrest. In fact, developing countries are in need of approximately $1 trillion per year in the new infrastructure (schoolrooms, for example) to accommodate the dramatic increases to their populations.

This figure is effectively impossible to meet, which means the continued expansion of human population will result in an increase in the number of people living in poverty, unemployment and with inadequate health care.

The median projection of population size by the UN Population Division suggests that population growth rates will decline over the coming several decades, with a possible stabilisation around the year 2050. But achieving this will take an enormous amount of hard work, creativity and financing -- it is by no means a fiat accompli.

And, even if population is stabilised between eight and nine billion, a scenario which becomes less likely with each passing day, the increase to human population will still be between 20 per cent and 30 per cent.

That magnitude of this increase, coming on top of the unprecedented growth that has occurred in the last half century, will be felt in all aspects of life. It will further stress the already strained ecological systems and worsen poverty in much of the developing world, thus aggravating threats to international security.

Population growth is not the only threat facing humanity, but it will be a major contributor to the crises that await us and the planet in the coming century.

Overpopulating the planet puts us all at risk of extreme environmental and social consequences that we are beginning to witness today.

UMARULLAH HUSSAINIKarachi