Over-Population & Environment
It is weird to see the environmental changes happening around us; many of these changes directly or indirectly affect the environment. Different changes have different effects on the environment, including over-population, environmental degradation of soil, deforestation, climate change, and forest fires. This causes too much harm to the environment and leads to the loss of lives as well. Of course, all of these are dangerous, but what concerns the most is the effects of population growth on the environment and basically the problem of over-population globally.
While China is leading the race of over-population, India is not far behind and is predicted to surpass China, becoming the most populated nation in the coming time. Despite the awareness spread in the population, the topic of concern still remains unsolved. Asking the question to nations and governments to solve the concerning problem of population and environment on a global platform.
Let us try to bring this issue to light:
Overpopulation – Crowding Population
Overpopulation directly impacts nature and is the driving factor for other environmental issues like global warming, overharvesting, and water pollution. Like every other problem with nature, overpopulation problems related to overpopulation affect our indirect life factors like health, leading to malnutrition, unemployment, migration, overcrowded living conditions, wars, and disasters. Any overpopulated country has to face these challenges and so becomes a big contributor to harming the environment.
About 81 million people are predicted to add to the world population annually. Some of the reasons that give rise to overpopulation are increased birth rate, a decline in mortality rates, lack of education about family planning, and even medical breakthroughs. As the human population keeps on exploding, natural resources like coral reefs, fossil fuels, and wilderness forests continue to reduce sharply. This also increases competition for life-sustaining resources and contributes to an incredible decline in the standard of life. Because of overpopulation, activities such as excessive agriculture, environmental pollution, and extensive land development are becoming more and more intensive.
For instance, rainforests originally covered 14% of the entire planet’s surface, but today it is only projected to cover about 6% of the earth’s surface, and scientists project to even become less in the next four decades with the current rate of vegetation removal, logging, and deforestation. Additionally, 30% of the ocean reefs have been lost due to environmental pollution, acidification, and global warming since 1980. This world population day 2022, let us be gentler and think about our actions on the planet.
More population also means a greater number of vehicles and industries as well as air travel. Besides, it increases the use of energy sources such as coal and firewood, which contributes to increased greenhouse gas emissions. This results in extreme hunger, drought, flooding, and habitat loss to the extent of even threatening the survival of human civilization. Even worse, overpopulation has only left less than 1% of the planet’s freshwater readily accessible for human use. It is also one of the leading causes of the occurrence of human diseases such as malnutrition and overcrowded living conditions.
That’s just the part where we have discussed problems; what about the solution? Here comes the solution.
It is the role of the governments of all nations to come together and acknowledge this severe concern and work towards it. The solving part comes with implementing social welfare policies, spreading awareness on family planning, proper use of contraception, empowering women, and offering subsidies. Nations should also come forward and make sterilization free for men and women and legalize abortion without restrictions or social stigma.
Conclusion
It is the steps that follow in bringing a transformation. Even overpopulation, we must first acknowledge the problem and consider our foreseeable future, environment, and ecosystem. Lastly, working together to solve the problem. Problems like these need team efforts; people have to put their personal gains aside and give future generations a proper home how it was. Let us come together this world population day 2022 on 11th July and think deeper about our day-to-day activities that might affect the environment and move towards a sustainable way of living.
