World Population at 7 Billion: Challenges

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It cannot be argued that the growth rate of world population has drastically increased over the years. Whilst reaching the figure of 5 billion has been a challenge to the world, the sixth and seventh billions of people were added to global population in record 12 years time (Haub & Gribble 2011). Moreover, the population is projected to reach 9 billion people in 40 years (C.G.W 2014). Such rapid growth raises an argument of whether it affects world’s economic development, environment and resource availability (Grenham 2012). Though some people state that increases in population may be beneficial for the world’s economy and development in general, it is evident that various challenges associated with overpopulation will arise in the future and some of them can already be seen nowadays.
It is crucially important for the society to identify possible issues that arise because of the overpopulation and find the ways of dealing with these issues. In this essay I will seek to critically evaluate challenges in economic, social and environmental aspects that the world may face in upcoming years and suggest the ways of overcoming them.

Firstly, it is evident that our planet has a limited number of resources, and despite attempts of their wise allocation, there are often not enough of them for everyone; and rapid population growth may put even more pressure on the world’s already scarce water and energy supplies (Bart 2005). Therefore, overpopulation leads to various environmental issues like attrition of fresh water resources, deforestation and even ozone layer depletion due to increased greenhouse emissions from densely populated areas. The problem exacerbates because, with a few exceptions, there is no market mechanism to make polluters ...

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...r, there are still not enough policies that fight with negative impacts of overpopulation. It is hard to determine whether all policies suggested above would be successful and helpful in dealing with challenges arising, but if no actions are taken, in a couple of decades the world can face serious problems. It is better for one to start developing strategies for overcoming these problems earlier in order not to be left with a range of unresolvable issues one day in the future. However, it must not be forgotten that increase in population numbers brings not only challenges for society, but also opens vast opportunities for economic and technological development; and by taking advantage of opportunities along with implementing successful preventive strategies towards challenges, humanity may be able to reach a balanced and sustainable societal structure in the future.

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