Natural complexes and the world’s population

The Earth’s population has grown quickly through history: about 230 million at the start of our era, 305 million in 1000 and 440 million in 1500. A “demographic explosion” occurred in the 1960s. The textbook gives 7.4 billion for 2016; according to the UN the world passed 8 billion in November 2022 and is about 8.2–8.3 billion in 2025–2026. Countries with over 100 million people include India, China, the USA, Indonesia, Pakistan, Nigeria, Brazil, Bangladesh, Russia, Mexico and Japan (since 2023 India has overtaken China in population). People are traditionally divided into three large races — Europeoid, Mongoloid and Negroid — with many mixed groups between them; modern science stresses that all people belong to one species, Homo sapiens, and that all peoples are equal. Population is spread unevenly: most people live near seacoasts; the dense areas are South Asia, East Asia, Western Europe and eastern North America. Natural resources are grouped as mineral, climatic, water, land and biological. By the degree of human influence, landscapes are natural, natural-anthropogenic and anthropogenic; nature reserves, national parks and the “Red Book” are set up to protect nature.