A UN report issued last week seems to have attracted little attention - when it clearly ought to have, for what it details and spells out already has, and will have, extraordinary consequences for people around the globe.
The IHT reports:
"By next year, more than half the world's population, or about 3.3 billion people, will live in towns and cities, a number expected to swell to almost 5 billion by 2030, according to a United Nations Population Fund report released Wednesday.
The onrush of change will be particularly extraordinary in Africa and Asia, where between 2000 and 2030 "the accumulated urban growth of these two regions during the whole span of history will be duplicated in a single generation," the report says.
This surge in urban populations, fueled more by natural increase than the migration of people from the countryside, is unstoppable, said George Martine, author of the report, "State of World Population 2007: Unleashing the Potential of Urban Growth."
No less frightening is this:
"A billion people, a sixth of the world's population, already live in slums, 90 percent of them in developing countries. In sub-Saharan Africa, more than 7 in 10 urban dwellers live in a slum. The region's slum population has almost doubled in just 15 years, reaching 200 million in 2005. Its urban population is already as large as North America's."
The IHT reports:
"By next year, more than half the world's population, or about 3.3 billion people, will live in towns and cities, a number expected to swell to almost 5 billion by 2030, according to a United Nations Population Fund report released Wednesday.
The onrush of change will be particularly extraordinary in Africa and Asia, where between 2000 and 2030 "the accumulated urban growth of these two regions during the whole span of history will be duplicated in a single generation," the report says.
This surge in urban populations, fueled more by natural increase than the migration of people from the countryside, is unstoppable, said George Martine, author of the report, "State of World Population 2007: Unleashing the Potential of Urban Growth."
No less frightening is this:
"A billion people, a sixth of the world's population, already live in slums, 90 percent of them in developing countries. In sub-Saharan Africa, more than 7 in 10 urban dwellers live in a slum. The region's slum population has almost doubled in just 15 years, reaching 200 million in 2005. Its urban population is already as large as North America's."
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