The Earth produces a limited amount of fresh water and food, which is falling short of the current needs. When population growth increase, the living standards decrease because they consume resources faster than they can regenerate. Many developing countries with rapid population growth face the urgent need to improve living standards. While the populations are expanding, our demand for health care, food, fresh water and shelter have increased. According to Miller and Spoolman in Sustaining the Earth (2015), we are about 7.1 billion people on the planet and this number will increase to 9.6 billion by 2050.
Almost all the human’s daily activities negatively impact the whole globe, and as the population increases, so does the damage (Duncan). The first cause of overpopulation is the decline in the world's populations death rates. The death rates are only 55.3 million per year; while the birth rates are 131.4 million per year. One could see that the number of deaths is almost half the number of births. However, if we had balanced birth and death rates together; they would cancel out each other.
• Increased habitat loss. Because of increasing human population, we have to extend the use of land into certain areas. Humans have moved to places that was once not susceptible for living. Many rainforest is being converted into an urbanized land. • Environmental degradation and depletion of natural resources.
So a growing human population must pose some kind of a threat to the well-being of planet Earth, mustn 't it?Currently, we as a population use up most of the resources how we please, waste, and even pollute. Our plan is to feed and to breed. The fertility rate has all of a sudden gone up incredibly over the past decade. Yes, we are getting overpopulated but there is no way we can control that.We simply cannot just kill every other baby that is born. Imagine every year how many graduates there are in different universities, college school from different countries.
As the world’s resources are becoming less by the day the world’s population is continuing to grow at an unsustainable rate. With the general public becoming more health conscious, the average lifespan has increased by 30 years over the past century. With the life expectancy almost doubling, the world’s population seems to be increasing at a rate that is unrealistic to support given the limited resources available. With people living longer lives, the world’s population will inevitably use up all of the natural resources, leaving nothing behind for future generations. Consequently, this is going to force the world to reevaluate the way we think about population control.
I chose this topic because in the past few decades, a lot of natural calamities and phenomena have taken place, e.g. : untimely floods, global warming, habitat loss, etc. And many of these have been caused by urbanization and one of the biggest threats that it poses i.e. the loss of ecosystems. Both urbanization and ecosystem loss disturb the natural balance of planet Earth.
How Overpopulation affects the World Overpopulation is a growing problem across the planet, and it has many negative effects to our environment. A lot of people focus on other environmental problems, but overpopulation is something that needs more attention. It is one of the root causes for issues like global warming. We are depleting our world of the natural resources we depend on and it is just getting worse every year. Earth has a limit for how much life it can sustain, and we are getting closer to full capacity.
Overpopulation occurs when a population of a species exceeds the carrying capacity of its ecological means. Overpopulation is a function of the number of individuals compared to the relevant resources, such as the water and vital nutrients they need to survive. It can result from an increase in births, a decline in humanity rates, an increase in immigration, or an unsustainable biome and depletion of resources. The population is one of the critical current environmental problems. Population explosion is straining resources.
Because of this demand, their living space needs to be expanded in order to grow food and provide homes for people. Hence, deforestation increases. This is another effect of overpopulation that impacts the worsening of the environment [2]. For example decreased forest size increases the amount of carbon in the environment. More specifically, deforestation affects the wildlife and results in biodiversity loss and species extinction [1].
Reductions to Population Growth Humans are just animals, if very intelligent ones, and like all animals, our presence has an inherent effect on the environment we’re in. The size and spread of our numbers is just as relevant as say, deer or rabbits. However, our use of resources and spread of pollution, make our population particularly important, especially to ourselves. There’s significant health concerns, pollution, psychological problems unemployment, and a host of other issues when you pack a lot of people into a small space (Li, Romanova). Thus a huge looming problem for many countries is population growth.