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Population growth and its impact on the environment
Alarmingly high population growth rate has become a serious global problem today
Alarmingly high population growth rate has become a serious global problem today
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Countries in the world hold different attitudes to the population policy, some of them tend to delay the increase of population while others introduce policies to encourage childbirth. After centuries of continual growth, which started at the first industrial revolution, the global population reached over 7 billion individuals in 2013. Research by Ezeh, Bongaarts and Mberu (2012) states that increasing population is a threat to individuals and societies by bring problems based on unsatisfied demand. The “increasing population” in this essay can be defined as net rising in birth rate during a period, especially in the poor developing countries. This essay will argue that the world cannot sustain an increasing population. The reasons for this are firstly, limited nature resources can hardly maintain huge population and environment may be polluted; next, economic problems, especially the gap between the rich and the poor can be caused by increasing demand; and lastly, social wellbeing pressures brought by population growth.
Initially, it is argued that increasing population may lead to environmental issues to the world by consuming nature resources and causing variable pollution at the same time. According to Hinrichsen and Robey (2000), with a rapid growth of population, the needs of most developing countries to improve living standards are urgent. To meet the demanded of developing, both developed and developing countries consume resources much faster than they can regenerate. That means humans are destroying resources needed for future to satisfy present needs. This is supported by Loucks (2005) who reports that with population tripled in the 20th century, the water withdrawals have increased by 6 times, that means water use inc...
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Loucks, D.P. (2005). Facts about Water. Retrieved from https://dspace.library.cornell.edu/bitstream/1813/2808/1/Facts%20about%20Water.pdf
National Aeronautics and Space Administration. (2013). NASA Scientists Relate Urban Population to Air Pollution http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/nasa-scientists-relate-urban-population-to-air-pollution/#.U2xNdNoaySM
Martín-Guzmán, P. (2005) Population and poverty. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org.wwwproxy0.library.unsw.edu.au/stable/29789273?seq=5&Search=yes&list=hide&searchUri=%2Fopenurl%3Fvolume%3D61%26date%3D2005%26spage%3D167%26issn%3D00166987&prevSearch=&resultsServiceName=null
Society. ( November/December 1990) Social Science and the Citizen. Retrieved from http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02695173#
The World Bank. (year unknown). Topic: Poverty & Equity http://povertydata.worldbank.org/poverty/region/SSA
As small mobile groups of hunter-gatherers adopted a sedentary lifestyle, they mastered both agriculture and animal domestication. These small settled groups quickly evolved into cities and towns that encompassed the entire globe. Today the estimated population of the world is over 6.2 million people.1 As the population has grown, it has had several deleterious effects on the Earth. These include climate changes, the spread of diseases, declining food production, deforestation, and environment pollution (particularly air pollution). As people have become more conscious of these harmful effects, they have begun to devise strategies to combat this problem. Among the suggested responses include a switch to renewable energy, a call for zero population growth, and adopting sustainable agricultural practices.
“An Essay on the Principle of Population” is written by Thomas Malthus where he outlines his theory on population growth. He thought that if population continued to grow, food production wouldn’t be able to keep up with demand and he believed that many people would die due to famine. Either people would have to use more contraception to drop the birth rate, or the death rate would increase due to wars, disease or
The world’s population is rising rapidly from seven billion to the estimated nine billion in 2050 (Ellis, Overpopulation is Not the Problem). Every human being adds stress to the Earth’s resources. Numerous places like Africa and China maintain a copious amount starvation and poverty. There are days when people go without food, water, or shelter. There is even such happening in the United States. In such places, it is difficult to find contraception, or birth control, which leads to unplanned pregnancies. These situations are rooted down to overpopulation, which is when there are too many humans. However, there is a multitude of ways to reverse such negative effects. Population control is a necessary act that will benefit the world through sparing natural resources, decreasing famine, and controlling unplanned pregnancies. A worldwide effort would have to take effect in order for a successful future.
Overpopulation drastically affects the standard of living of the people. Not only does it affect the standard of living, it affects the environment as well. The environment has a certain carrying capacity of humans that it can support. When this carrying capacity is exceeded, the environment starts to deteriorate. With a large amount of people, land that can be used as valuable farmland is wasted. Also, with a great amount of humans, there is more waste produced. This waste contaminates local water and spreads disease, eventually leading to the destruction of wildlife. Animals as well as humans have a limited use of water because of the microorganisms and fecal matter in the water. Many ideas have been debated upon to help improve these conditions for both animals and peopl...
A Child Limit Around the World RJ Kloecker Ms. Underhill H-ELA 4 April 2017 Outline Thesis: To solve the worldwide problem of overpopulation one need only look at over countries. We must create children limit, create consequences for it, then change it for the good of the people. Introduction Create laws for childbirth limit
The human population growth rate is an alarming issue that brings with it irreversible consequences, that will likely effect the way of life for future generations to come. With the serious incline in population statistics comes catastrophic processes such as global warming and deforestation that have major ‘knock on’ ramifications. It’s issues such as these that need to be considered when we think about the growth of the human population, and we must take into account why these issues are occurring. We must also explore the options available to us that may assist in limiting the problems, or eliminating them all together, to provide a better place, not only for us in existence now, but also those who will walk this earth in the future decades and centuries to come.
This problem of population growth leads to a number of solutions that could have significant implications on the quality of life. Taking no action and allowing population to grow unchecked could possibly risk the entire human species if food or clean water were to become unavailable worldwide. Aiming for zero population growth would in theory maintain the existing quality of life since a stable population would not increase their use of resources. However not all resources are renewable, so scarcities could still occur with a fixed population size. In an extreme case permanent resource depletion under zero population growth could have the same extinction effect that unchecked growth can lead to. Despite the escalating risk of unchecked population growth, technological advances necessitated by the increase in population will at least maintain the quality of life and could possibly improve conditions.
One of the major effects of the huge population increase has been the depletion of natural resources and the destruction of ecosystems. In the 1960's, theorist Paul Ehrlich predicted that, given the skyrocketing figures of human population, the amount of food produced would not grow at a fast enough rate for human survival (Professor Carr Everbach, personal communication). He predicted mass starvation and death by the year 2000 as the result of uncontrolled population growth. Clearly, this did not occur. Ehrlich did not foresee the advancements ma...
The `Theory of Demographic Transition' embraces the observation that all countries in the world go through different stages in the growth of population. A nation's economy and level of development is directly related to that nation's birth and death rates. Population history can be divided into three main stages, which apply to third world, second world and first world nations. These stages or classifications demonstrate a transition from high birth and death rates to low birth and death rates. The `Theory of Demographic Transition' suggests that all nations begin in stage one as underdeveloped, third world nations and through time transition into first world nations. The theory discusses observations made concerning social problems and their relation to each stage of transition; then attributes them to population. Through this model we can understand the relationship, characteristics, and transition between underdeveloped and developed nations as it relates to population.
Every day the population is getting bigger and bigger and the world is just becoming overflowed with people. Many people do not understand that we have a limited supply of resources on this earth. Every time a new baby is born it means there is less resources for the future generation to use. The government has started taking actions with decreasing birth rates all over the world. Some laws have been tried out in order to stop the population from growing. During the twentieth century people wanted to control birth rates to prevent the population bomb because the population was increasing rapidly. In order to decline the birth rates, many ways different method were used. The methods imposed were to stop fertility, women were introduced to artificial birth control and were provided with better health care. With controlling population, came violating people's right over many nations.
An increase in human population can influence our economy. Some of the factors that are affected are unemployment, poverty and the restriction of economic expansion. When the population increases, the cost of health, education, and other areas of urban growth are affected. Unempl...
Since the beginning of mankind, we have reached many great achievements. We have developed many technologies and theories to solve and explain many of our questions and to improve human life. Through our years of evolution, we have severely increased our own survivability. This has been a great achievement for us, but in the recent decade, overpopulation is becoming a great issue. In the recent years, the rapid increase in population growth has troubled many in the field of political sciences. Scientists like Ehrlich have calculated and expected our population to grow even faster if we do not act upon the increasing rate of population growth. The birth rate of our planet is increasing exponentially, meaning that the birth rate has surpassed the death rate and that the rate of growth will only increase if left alone. The politics of population is a debate that involves both the fields of sciences and moral and ethical considerations. Science may provide an insight of
Overpopulation is a growing problem all over the world. This is a very important environmental issue and needs to be dealt with. This environmental problem is affecting many countries around the world, but mostly the poor and impoverished countries that don’t have the resources to help deal with these issues. It also affects the environment like plants, animal life and air quality. When the population of people expands we need more natural resources from the environment, so we consume more than we can produce.
The problem of water scarcity has increasingly spread throughout the world as of yet, The UN reports that within the next half- century up to 7 billion people in 60 countries which is more than the whole present population will face water scarcity (Sawin “Water Scarcity could Overwhelm the Next Generation”). As well the demand for freshwater has tripled over the past 50 years, and is continuing to rise as a result of population growth and economic development. 70% of this demand derives from agriculture which shows the influence of water on food supply globally as well not just drinking water (Sawin “Water Scarcity could overwhelm the Next Generation”). But increasing water use is not just a matter of the greater number of people needing it to drink and eat; it also comes from pollution and misuse of water supplies, by either dumping or runoff of bacteria or chemicals into water. This also “causes other pollutions as well such as soil and air pollution, accelerating wetland damage and human caused global warming” (Smith and Thomassey 25). According to UN report, recent estimates suggest that climate change will account for about 20 percent of the increase in global water scarcity in coming decades.
Though several people see large rapidly growing populations in developing regions as the primary culprit in environmental decline, we need to focus on the costly environmental outcomes of overconsumption among the gradually increasing populations of the developed nations. These differing emphases naturally point to fundamentally different solutions: slow population increase in less-developed nations or change destructive consumption and production patterns in the more-developed nations. This debate, however, assumes a one-step answer to the complex problems created by population pressures on the environment. Both population size and consumption ...