Essay On Effects Of Overpopulation

766 Words2 Pages

Anna Nguyen
AW5
Cause and Effect Essay
Final Draft
4/18/2014
The Impact of Overpopulation on the Environment.
The world’s population reached seven billion last year and is still growing rapidly. The UN estimated the world’s population to reach 10 billion within the next few decades. Overpopulation in many regions across the world, mostly in Asia and Africa, is causing critical damage to the environment. In more developed regions like North America and Europe, efforts are made to reduce the impact on the environment; however, the overall picture across the globe is still gloomy. To be more specific, the phenomenon of overusing natural resources in local areas, pollution, and ecosystem destruction are direct consequences of overpopulation.
One of the major impacts of overpopulation on the environment is the fact that we overuse the resources in our habitat. Overpopulation leads to the exponential increase of need and consumption of natural resources to sustain the population. For example, the amount of woods chopped down for lumber increases greatly as the population in the area increase. Furthermore, exploitation of coal, minerals and metals to build factories, provide energy, and habitation for large groups of people causes the land to corrode faster, causing more landslides in mountainous areas. The lack of clean water in many parts of Africa, China, and India is also a result of overpopulation. Great consumption of water from wells, lakes, and rivers cause them to drain up much faster. On the other hand, the need for food also increases rapidly as the population grows. Another common phenomenon in many parts of the world is the quick deprivation of nutrients in soil due to an incredible amount of planted crops and harvest a...

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...arbage and wastes in the seas are also causing serious problems. Destruction of coral reefs are direct consequences of us dumping our industrial garbage into the oceans. Evidently, this phenomenon disrupts the food source of marine animals and cause the ecosystem to crash. It is obvious that our expansion has affected many other living creatures in the ecosystems of many areas around the world.
Many may have thought that a large population is difficult for governments to support. Little that we know, in the process of sustaining our growing population, we’ve devastated the environment and put many of its living creatures at risks. If we don’t change and solve the problem on overpopulation, then in a few decades, I suspect, the Earth wouldn’t be such a nice habitation like it is now and generations after us would have to suffer from the consequences that we’ve made.

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