Half the world's population lives on 1% of the Earth

Even if the world population reaches 11 billion by the end of the century, it is impossible to say that we do not have enough room for everyone.

Right now, the world population is at 7.3 billion. However, can you believe it when half of humanity lives on 1% of the Earth? That's the number compiled by Max Galka, a data analyst from NASA. Many people still worry that we will have no living space when the population hits 11 billion at the end of the century, maybe they should think again.

The map divides half the world's population.

This map was created by Max Galka based on Grid World Population Data (GPW). This is a high-resolution data set synthesized by the Socio-Economic and Application Data Center (SEDAC), one of NASA's 12 Earth Observation Centers.

Instead of dividing the distribution of geographic regions and administrative boundaries such as countries or states, NASA GPW data would divide the Earth's surface into 28 million equally spaced squares of about 23km ^2. . The map drawn by Galka from this data shows that we are dividing the world into two halves: half are confining themselves in 1% of the Earth's yellow area, the other half living in 99% of the black area .

Europe.

The yellow areas on the map are squares with a population of 8,000 or more. That means the population density here above 350 people / km ² , the lowest equivalent must be equal to that of Massachusetts, United States.

In contrast, black areas are pooled by squares with a population of less than 8,000 people. In other words, the population density here is below 350 people / km ² .

You can easily see that most of the yellow areas are located in India, Bangladesh and China.This set of regions contains 46% of the world's population.

India, Bangladesh, Vietnam and China.

Besides, it must mention the island of Java in Indonesia. With a size just equivalent to New York State, it has a population of up to 140 million people. That makes Java the world's most populous island.

In 2nd place is Japan. Despite showing only fainter yellow spots than other parts of Asia, Tokyo of Japan is still famous as the world's most populous city with about 37 million people.

Indonesia and Japan.

Even so, the square holds a record in NASA figures not in any of the above areas. It belongs to Cairo, the capital of Egypt."This 9 square mile area contains more than 1 million people," Galka said.

A dark North African area, except Cairo.

While performing visualization of NASA data, Galka also realized an interesting fact. The map shows the population distribution of the United States alone reflecting the true state of the other half of the world.

"Coincidentally, half of the US population is also living in the yellow parts, the other half in the black area of ​​the territory," Galka notes on his page.

USA.

Galka also discusses the forecast of the world population to reach 11 billion by 2100. Looking back at isolated yellow areas, 1% seems to be a surprising number. The black areas are covering 99% of the Earth, especially Africa. This continent has the largest population growth rate in the world.

Forecast of population growth rate of the United Nations.

Finally, what is the message that we can see through the map? Even if the world population reaches 11 billion by the end of the century, it cannot be said that we do not have enough room for everyone. The only difficulty is that somehow it is possible to distribute the population in a reasonable way in the future. It is difficult to say, but perhaps it is easier to bring half of humanity to Mars.