As of today, eight billion humans are living on planet Earth. A huge milestone officially projected for and being recognized today by the U.N.
It was 1974 that the world population first hit 4 billion people. It took from the beginning of life on this planet until 1974 to reach a population of four billion human beings, and just 48 years to double to eight billion people. Not only are there more lives… there is also longer life expectancy. As a whole, humans are living longer than ever, with better access to health care, food, water and sanitation.
Now, the UN is reporting a slight slow down in population growth. If it took 12 years to go from 7 to 8 billion, their current models have the population reaching 9 billion in 2037, that’s 15 years… a 20% slow down. Some projections even see world population leveling off at around 10 billion inhabitants.
I’m not terribly concerned about global population, as most studies suggest our planet can sustain far more people. What concerns me is the rapid urbanization without adequate sustainable, ecofriendly, and human scale urban planning, development, political will, and social cohesion.
It was around 2007 or 2008 that human beings became a majority urban species. For most of human existence the majority of people lived in smaller nomadic or more rural communities. These days more than 1 million people are moving into our cities every week. Our global urban infrastructure, development, and maintenance is not keeping up.
Beyond inadequate and sustainable infrastructure, a great challenge is that when people – often younger people – move from more rural areas into cities to find work, they lose their social network as they enter a new world where they have to look out for themselves. Often when a person moves into a city, no one knows them or no cares for them, they are alone and vulnerable, with little sense of belonging to/responsibility for the place to which they have moved. Thus people who relocate tend to treat their new home like a commodity at least until they develop some new roots, and a measure of personal/family stability. The diminishing of social cohesion is a growing, fear-based, threat, often providing fuel for nationalism, gangs, and terror groups. Beyond infrastructure is the reality that some of our fastest growing “cities” are actually refugee settlements.
Diminishing social cohesion presents opportunity for followers of Jesus to serve our neighbors. We have a history of drawing people together into community, to convene groups fostering belonging, welcome of stranger, care for widow and orphan, and expressing love of God through love of neighbor and neighborhood.
Eight billion opportunities to discover a way of love.
Peace, dwight
