waving a memory

The United Nations estimates that on Monday 31 October (2011, читайте по ссылке — много ссылок на Щербова) the world's population will reach seven billion. But how accurate is this figure?

Not only is the world's population supposedly reaching seven billion today, the charity Plan International has anointed a girl born in India as the seven billionth.

The UN's reason for naming a symbolic date as seven-billion day is to draw attention to the speed of population growth, with less than 13 years having passed between the six-billion and seven-billion milestones.

"It's not in the end a figure that people use to make specific decisions. It may inform the context in which these decisions are made, but it's not a figure used in decision-making," he says.

The figure plays a part in the debate about the world's ability to grow enough food to feed its growing population. But if population figures are uncertain, Professor Murphy says, this is even more true of food production figures.