In 1994, the United Nations 1992 projections of the future world population was revised downwards from 10 to 9.8 billion for 2050, but that is still a huge number. On the other hand, however, against this slight easing of the increase numbers, ?UASA projected world population at 11.3 billion. ?UASA's projection is rather closer to the high variant of the 1994 UN projections of 11.9 billion. These notable differences in projections are mainly the result of differing assumptions of future fertility rates between the United Nations and ?UASA.
In any event, we need to prepare for the possibility that the global population may double from its current level of 5.8 billion to about ten billion within the next half century.
Malthus devised his depressing theory on the relationship between population and food approximately 200 years ago (1798). Fortunately,however, mankind was able to rapidly increase its food production through the industrial and agricultural revolutions, and its increase rate was much higher than the then low increase rate of the population, resulting in an abundance of food. Although the population increased rapidly after the Second World War, food productivity increased much more rapidly through modern scientific developments, and the global food consumption per person increased. The concerns in those days were about surplus agricultural production and a consequential slump in prices.
The situation began to change in the early nineties. There are several signs indicating a limit to the amount of food production that can match the population increase. The potential imbalance between population increase and food production resulting food shortage which was proposed by Malthus may soon become reality on a global scale. After the second edition of his theory on the population, Malthus also suggested the possibility of mankind's survival by controlling the fertility by themselves to cope with the food shortage. Today, 200 years later after he laid out his theory, the looming global crisis that may affect mankind's very survival may be even worse than Malthus anticipated.
