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By , the percentage had increased to nearly half 47 percent. This trend is expected to continue well into the twenty-first century. The distribution of people around the globe has three main implications for the environment. First, as less-developed regions cope with a growing share of population, pressures intensify on already dwindling resources within these areas. Second, migration shifts relative pressures exerted on local environments, easing the strain in some areas and increasing it in others.
Finally, urbanization, particularly in less-developed regions, frequently outpaces the development of infrastructure and environmental regulations, often resulting in high levels of pollution.
Otherwise what is there to defend? Learn more. The answer comes back to resource consumption. According to a study by the Max-Planck Institute in Mainz, some 15, people die every year in Dhaka due to air pollution. Source: Worldbank.
Composition can also have an effect on the environment because different population subgroups behave differently. For example, the global population has both the largest cohort of young people age 24 and under and the largest proportion of elderly in history. Migration propensities vary by age.
Young people are more likely than their older counterparts to migrate, primarily as they leave the parental home in search of new opportunities. As a result, given the relatively large younger generation, we might anticipate increasing levels of migration and urbanization, and therefore, intensified urban environmental concerns. Other aspects of population composition are also important: Income is especially relevant to environmental conditions.
Across countries, the relationship between economic development and environmental pressure resembles an inverted U-shaped curve; nations with economies in the middle-development range are most likely to exert powerful pressures on the natural environment, mostly in the form of intensified resource consumption and the production of wastes.
By contrast, the least-developed nations, because of low levels of industrial activity, are likely to exert relatively lower levels of environmental pressure. At highly advanced development stages, environmental pressures may subside because of improved technologies and energy efficiency. Within countries and across households, however, the relationship between income and environmental pressure is different. Environmental pressures can be greatest at the lowest and highest income levels. Poverty can contribute to unsustainable levels of resource use as a means of meeting short-term subsistence needs.
Furthermore, higher levels of income tend to correlate with disproportionate consumption of energy and production of waste. Current technology, policies, and culture influence the relationship between human population dynamics and the natural environment. The technological changes that have most affected environmental conditions relate to energy use.
The consumption of oil, natural gas, and coal increased dramatically during the twentieth century, as seen in Figure 1. Until about , developed nations were responsible for most of this consumption.
Since then, however, industrialization in the newly developing nations has resulted in greater reliance on resource- intensive and highly polluting production processes. Malone, eds. Policy actions can ameliorate environmental decline — as in the case of emissions standards — or exacerbate degradation as in the case in Central Asia's Aral Sea basin, which has shrunk 40 percent since and has become increasingly contaminated, in large part because of the irrigation policies of the former Soviet Union.
Cultural factors also influence how populations affect the environment.
For example, cultural variations in attitudes toward wildlife and conservation influence environmental conservation strategies, because public support for various policy interventions will reflect societal values. Two specific areas illustrate the challenges of understanding the complex influence of population dynamics on the environment: land-use patterns and global climate change.
Fulfilling the resource requirements of a growing population ultimately requires some form of land-use change--to provide for the expansion of food production through forest clearing, to intensify production on already cultivated land, or to develop the infrastructure necessary to support increasing human numbers.
During the past three centuries, the amount of Earth's cultivated land has grown by more than percent, increasing from 2. A related process, deforestation, is also critically apparent: A net decline in forest cover of million acres took place during the year interval —, although changes in forest cover vary greatly across regions.
Whereas developing countries experienced a net loss of million acres, developed countries actually experienced a net increase, of 20 million acres see Figure 2. These types of land-use changes have several ecological impacts. One of the byproducts of population growth has been stress on freshwater supplies. According to one report, around 15 percent of the world's population lived in "water stressed" regions in , the amount has been projected to reach 50 percent by Also consider that population growth is most rapid in part of the world where water is in high demand already, such as Africa, Southeast, Southwest, and Central Asia, and Oceania.
Human population growth and climate change have grown hand in hand as the use of fossil fuels has exploded to support industrialized societies. Most fossil fuel consumption comes from developed countries.
This volume represents the proceedings of a symposium on "Human Population and the Environmental Crisis" held at the University of California, Los Angeles. The relationship between environmental problems and population growth is For most of our existence the human population has grown very.
It is a sobering thought that most developing nations aspire to similar industrial economies as they experience economic growth, which further escalates CO2 emissions into the atmosphere. Deforestation is another important component of greenhouse gas emissions. Globally, forests store more than twice the amount of carbon dioxide than is found in the atmosphere. As forests are cleared and burned, that CO2 is released into the atmosphere, accounting for an estimated 25 percent of total greenhouse gas production. There are issues aplenty to overcome. Clearly, initiatives to switch to clean energy sources such as solar, improve agricultural practices, better manage water resources and fully embrace the principles of the circular economy will help us mitigate the impact of population growth.
At the other end of the spectrum, policies that encourage family planning, education, gender equity and other measures to help slow population growth will help reduce pressure on the planet. Take time to understand the issues, and support policies that will make a difference. The Balance Small Business uses cookies to provide you with a great user experience. By using The Balance Small Business, you accept our. Sustainable Businesses Resources.
By Rick LeBlanc. Continue Reading. Consider, for instance, the following declaration made in by the Club of Earth, whose members all belong to both the US National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences:.
Arresting population growth should be second in importance only to avoiding nuclear war on humanity's agenda. Overpopulation and rapid population growth are intimately connected with most aspects of the current human predicament, including rapid depletion of non-renewable resources, deterioration of the environment including rapid climate change , and increasing international tensions. This vision of the issue by the scientific community is not isolated.
The famous Heidelberg Declaration signed by prominent scientists, including 52 Nobel prize laureates, at the time of the end of the conference in Rio called overpopulation a 'plague' comparable to 'hunger and pandemics'.
This vision is, in part, purely egoistic. In Rufin's words it is the fear of the 'new barbarians' Rufin , that a degradation of the situation in the South will threaten the North's welfare. As Lorimer, a leading demographer, bluntly put it:. Frustration breeds envy, suspicion and violence.
The security of the lucky nations with large national resources, accumulated wealth and advanced techniques may be critically affected by the progress or reverse experienced in the less fortunate nations during the next few decades. In response, Southern countries have imposed the view that Northern lifestyles, and not Southern population growth, was the central cause of the global environmental crisis see the chapter in this book by Lipietz. The absence of any official debate on population growth in Rio - although the topic was on everybody's lips in the corridors - can be seen as a diplomatic victory of the South But the North-South divide is not that clear, because population growth also underlines the split between the westernized elites of the South and the vast majority of the people living in those countries.
To have a large number of children is often the best strategy for the poor: children are rapidly productive; they are an insurance for old age; indeed, each child is an additional chance of economic success for the family. But for the governing bodies of developing countries, population growth is increasingly perceived as hindering economic development.
It raises the demand for capital so as to increase the capital available per worker; it increases the demand for social services, notably in education, and thereby diverts some resources from more directly productive investments see Lewis ; Coale and Hoover Population policies are thus designed in the perspective of a race between population growth and economic development. Note that the long-term effects of population growth notably population density - are given little attention Stamper Today, many developing countries have official population planning policies geared at slowing down the rate of population growth.
Altogether, about 61 per cent of people in the world live under a government which incites them to have fewer children. The North - from the point of view of sustainability - and the westernized elites of the South - from the point of view of development - could thus find a common interest in controlling population growth from the perspective of 'sustainable development'. Already in the World Conference on Population in Mexico, the South was asking for financial aid from the North to run population planning policies.
In these conditions, who will protect the basic reproductive rights of the poor? For these different reasons, population growth may seem a very convenient and statistically highly visible cause of environmental degradation. Because it stems from non-modern behaviours, it does question the modern ideology. Furthermore, it appeals to common sense: environmentalists consider that the level of human activities on earth is reaching unsustainable limits.
Since the total of human activities is the sum of each person's activity, it would appear intuitively correct to say that the more persons there are, the greater the total activity. Thus population growth is often held, notably by biologists and international organizations, as an important factor, if not the main one, of environmental degradation Ehrlich and Ehrlich ; WCED ; UNEP ; Myers But the reality is much more complex because different people have varying impacts on the environment.
Lifestyles is the other main possible factor of environmental degradation. If sustainability puts some constraints on the total level of human activity, it does not, at least initially, determine how this activity is to be distributed. In theory, a sustainable society could equally be characterized by a small number of people with a high level of consumption per person, or by a large number of people consuming little resources but enjoying long periods of leisure.
In this respect, a number of authors have argued that modern institutions are the real culprit, and that population growth has only a marginal impact on the environment. Indeed a number of recent famines have been explained, not as an absolute scarcity in food, but as a scarcity of entitlements to food See, Environmental problems linked to agriculture - desertification, deforestation, erosion of soils due to over use, pollution due to the over use of pesticides and fertilizers - would thus stem from a misuse of land under the pressure of market forces.
Another important factor would be modern technology, oriented toward economic efficiency at the cost of environmental degradation Commoner In response to this chorus of conflicting views, there has been a number of attempts to arrive at a synthesis and to measure the contribution of each factor. This required a theoretical framework, often referred to as the 'Ehrlich equation'.
This equation is merely an identity and is therefore always valid. In fact, C' and T are never observed directly.