The 31st of October 2011 is an historic event as the day when, according to the United Nations, the world population reached the milestone of 7,000 million, a billion more than 13 years ago.
The population data continues to grow, despite the reduction in the birth rate, until the twentieth century, the population quadrupled, accompanied by an increase in the level of life expectancy, the infant mortality rates have fallen, and health care and increased life expectancy have doubled.
These changes were also accompanied by an increase in food production. There have been decades of progress in reducing hunger and the number of people living below the poverty line.
Conversely, with the onset of the global economic recession in 2008 – which seems to have no end in sight – and two successive food crises (2007-08 and 2010-11) over 150 million people now live again below the minimum subsistence level with severe food shortages, and lack of access to sanitation and drinking water. In 2015, 3 billion people will live in countries where water availability per capita is less than that required to meet all industrial and domestic food needs.
Access to potable water in pictures » (in Portuguese)