the dangers of overpopulation essay

Overpopulation Essay

500 words essay on overpopulation.

Overpopulation refers to an undesirable condition in which the number of existing human being exceeds the actual carrying capacity of the earth. It has many causes which range from a decline in the death rate to early marriages and more. The overpopulation essay will throw light on this issue.

Ill-Effects of Overpopulation

The ill-effects of overpopulation are quite severe. The first one is that natural resources deplete at a faster level. Our planet can produce only a limited amount of water and food . Thus, overpopulation causes environmental damage including deforestation, pollution, etc.

Similarly, there is the degradation of the environment which happens because of the overuse of resources like coal, oil, natural gases and more. As a result, the quality of air also gets affected in this manner.

In developing countries, overpopulation puts a strain on resources. Thus, it gives rise to conflicts and tension. It also causes more diseases that become harder to control. Next up, we have the issue of unemployment.

Moreover, it rises due to overpopulation. There is more number of people than job opportunities. As a result, unemployment gives rise to crimes like theft and more. We also have pandemics and epidemics which happen due to overpopulation.

It is because overcrowded and unhygienic living gives rise to infectious diseases . Another ill-effect is malnutrition and starvation. When there are scarce resources, these diseases will likely to be on the rise.

Most importantly, we have a shortage of water which makes it tougher for people to get access to clean water. Similarly, lower life expectancy also happens because of the boom in population, especially in less-developed nations.

We also witness faster climate change as nations continue to develop their industrial capacities. Thus, they emit industrial waste which gives rise to global temperatures . It will keep getting worse if things are not checked immediately.

Solutions of Overpopulation

There are many solutions which we may take up to prevent overpopulation. The best measure is family planning to keep the overpopulation check. In order to do that, one can ensure proper spacing between the births of the children.

Further, limiting the number of children as per income and resources must also be important. Similarly, it is essential to increase resources. The government must make the horrors of overpopulation reach the public through the use of media.

Moreover, better education can help implement social change which can curb overpopulation. Next up, knowledge of sex education must be made mandatory in schools so students learn young about everything they need to know.

Most importantly, it is essential to empower women so they can break out of poverty. This way, they can learn about reproductive health and make better decisions. Another solution can be government incentives.

Many governments of countries already have various policies which relate to tax exemptions for curbing overpopulation. For instance, some waive a certain part of income tax for married couples with one or two children.

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Conclusion of Overpopulation Essay

All in all, overpopulation is no less than a curse that poses a permanent threat to the development of any country. It is essential to stop the flood of population. In order to do that, one must indulge in proper family planning and creating balance in society for a better world.

FAQ of Overpopulation Essay

Question 1: What is the main cause of overpopulation?

Answer 1: It is believed that the main cause of overpopulation is poverty. When there is a lack of education resource which coupled with high death rates, it results in impoverished areas witnessing large booms in population.

Question 2: How is overpopulation affecting the world?

Answer 2: Overpopulation is affecting the world as it is outpacing the ability of the planet earth to support it. It also has environmental and economic outcomes which range from the impacts of over-farming on global warming.

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Overpopulation: Causes, Effects, and Solutions Essay

Introduction, causes of overpopulation, effects of overpopulation, solutions to overpopulation, works cited.

The concept of overpopulation of the planet is not new. There is a finite amount of space and resources that the planet can offer, and technological advances can only mitigate the situation so much. The first scholar to consider the idea of overpopulation was Thomas Malthusian, who brought it up in a work called “An Essay on the Principle of Population.” He managed to outline the reasons for population growth such as the improvement of standards of living, an abundance of food, and advanced medicine (Barbier 4).

When Malthusian made his predictions, however, he did not consider technological progress. The apocalypse he predicted was averted through innovations in technology and agriculture. Today, in 2016, humanity faces the problem of overpopulation once more. Despite many who dismiss the threat of overpopulation, it is much more real now than it was in 1796, as natural resources are now much fewer than they used to be and the population – much larger.

Although different scholars point to different factors that influence population growth, the core ones remain the same. These factors include the following:

• Advances in food production and agriculture;
• Advances in industry and production;
• Advances in medicine; and
• Poor family planning (Barbier 92).

It is obvious that these four factors are the ones that affect population growth the most. Advances in food production and agriculture create a surplus of food, which allows for population growth without famine as a natural barrier to curb it. Advances in industry and production provide clothes and items for the growing population to use, thus creating and maintaining a higher standard of living. Modern medicine curbs child mortality and effectively prolongs peoples’ lives.

Lastly, poor family planning means families become large and produce many children, with no regard for how it affects the environment. Together, these factors have contributed greatly to the incredible population growth rates today.

Many scholars have identified the disastrous effects overpopulation has on the environment. There are main three points of concern to which overpopulation will inevitably lead:

• Depletion of natural resources;
• Degradation of the environment; and
• Resource wars (Barbier 75).

With consumer culture on the rise, the population requires increasingly more materials to maintain their high standards of living. Everybody wants to have an iPhone, and everybody feels the need to have a personal vehicle. While certain resources, such as wood and energy, are renewable, the rest are not. Eventually, Earth will face a resource crisis, which is only sped up by the ever-increasing population (Toth and Szigeti 284).

More people mean a quicker degradation of the environment. Humanity, in general, has a negative influence on nature. Therefore, the more humans there are, the worse the impact is. This fact is especially true for developing countries, where advances in medicine and agriculture promote population growth, but eco-technologies and recycling are not yet implemented (Cafaro and Crist 75).

As natural resources become more and more depleted, resource wars will follow. Covert resource wars are already being waged, as major powers confront one another over the oil basins located in the Middle East. This competition will become even fiercer in the future as non-renewable resources become less and less common.

There are two popular paths to take when trying to solve the overpopulation problem. The first deals with the roots of overpopulation itself and are aimed at lowering the number of births through state programs, family planning, sex education, and other such initiatives. Such a strategy is already implemented in China, where the government imposes severe financial penalties for having more than one child. The country was forced to face the overpopulation problem earlier than most due to the unprecedented population growth it experienced in the decades prior.

The second route is not aimed at lowering the population but rather at providing for them. This approach involves recycling, using renewable energy, developing eco-clean technologies, and implementing other ideas that slow down and reduce the damage caused by the excess population. Looking for materials and resources outside the planet is futuristic, but it represents a viable strategy nonetheless. Eventually, humanity will have to look for resources in space, as it is impossible to create a completely self-sustaining resource model – some resources will inevitably be lost in the recycling process.

Combining both of these paths into one all-consuming strategy seems like the most reasonable and effective approach to mitigating the problem of overpopulation. Introducing statewide policies on birth control – in addition to popularizing recycling, using renewable energy, and minimizing the damage to the environment – would severely reduce the dangers presented by overpopulation and would buy humanity more time to find a permanent solution (Barbier 184).

As it stands, the effort to combat overpopulation is in its infancy. Outside of a couple of concerned governments who have to deal with overpopulation at home, nobody seems to give the issue the proper attention it deserves. If humanity is to overcome this problem, a united stance and a complex approach are required. This effort would require cooperation between different nations on all levels, as well as a vast informative campaign to make sure the general populace understands the need for such initiatives. Without such a joint effort, any local attempt to deal with the situation at home would have a limited effect.

Barbier, Edward. Economics, Natural-Resource Scarcity and Development, New York: Routledge, 2013. Print.

Cafaro, Phillip, and Eileen Crist. Life on the Brink, Environmentalists Confront Overpopulation, London: The University of Georgia Press, 2012. Print.

Toth, Gergery, and Cecilia Szigeti. “The Historical Ecological Footprint: From Over-Population to Over-Consumption.” Ecological Indicators 60 (2016): 283-291. Print.

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IvyPanda . "Overpopulation: Causes, Effects, and Solutions." October 30, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/overpopulation-combating-analysis/.

• Overpopulation Benefits
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• The Problem of Overpopulation
• Birth Control Against Overpopulation
• Overpopulation and Limit on Number of Children
• Economic Growth and Technological Change
• How Overpopulation Affects Our Economy
• History of the English Population During the 19th Century
• The Impact of Overpopulation on the Global Environment
• China and India Population: Causes, Impact and Management
• Urban Climacteric in Davis' "The Planet of Slums"
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• Malthus’s Demographic Disaster and Its Prevention
• Population Growth Control and Malthus’ View on It

Report: overpopulation one of ten greatest threats to humanity

A new report by a group of Australian researchers identifies the ten most catastrophic threats to human survival, including overpopulation, climate change, biodiversity loss, and pandemics, and calls for urgent global action.

No government is currently prepared to tackle any of the major crises, according to the authors. They point out that decisions taken in the next few years “will determine whether present and future generations face a safe, sustainable and prosperous future or the prospect of collapse and even extinction”.

The Commission for the Human Future (CHF) is a body of scientists and concerned citizens who came together to share insights into planetary risks and how to build a safer, better future. The report, Surviving and Thriving in the 21st Century , is a result of their first roundtable discussion.

The ten listed catastrophic risks are natural resource depletion, mass extinction and ecosystem collapse, unchecked human population growth, global heating, pollution, increasing food insecurity, nuclear weapons, pandemics, dangerous new technologies, and denial and misinformation.

The group highlights the interconnectedness of all ten risks and how they must therefore be solved together in a systematic way.

On population, the report clearly states

“There are now too many people on the planet using too many resources and producing too many risky wastes. Human population growth at current levels exacerbates all other threats. Its seriousness, and preventability, are not being addressed in any country or internationally.”

Population growth is a key driver of emissions , shortage of food, water and other resources, pollution , biodiversity loss , and disease emergence and spread .

The authors note that the expected  fourfold increase in the human population  from 1950 to 2050  “ is the underlying driver of all the catastrophic risks we now face, combined with our overconsumption of scarce resources ” .

CHF is planning to come up with detailed solutions at future roundtable discussions, but the report does mention that lower birth rates can be achieved by providing access to education and reproductive healthcare, advancing women’s rights and alleviating poverty – key measures that also immediately benefit human welfare and that we have long promoted at Population Matters.

With the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic forcing humanity to reassess its relationship with the natural world, the report urges using this opportunity to embark on a less anthropocentric, more sustainable path forward.

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Public Health and Overpopulation: The United Nations Takes Action

With the world’s population rising faster than ever before, will our population growth outpace our resource reserves? How can the dangerous effects of overpopulation be managed without diminishing the major improvements in our quality of life that come about thanks to population growth?

The UN projects that over half of the Earth’s population growth in the next three decades will occur in the continent of Africa. This is due to the fact that, from 2010 to 2015, Africa’s population grew at a rate of 2.55 percent annually, with the continent still maintaining the highest pace of population growth among other continents. The UN predicts that, behind Africa, Asia will be the second greatest donor to future international population growth, with an expected addition of approximately one billion people by 2050. In contrast, within every European nation, fertility rates are currently below the population replacement level, which is approximately two children per woman. In most of Europe, fertility rates have remained beneath replacement level for decades. The global population grew fourfold in the past 100 years, so what impact could increased population growth have in the future? Will there be mass-migration? Overcrowding in already densely populated or resource-rich areas? Poor living conditions and sanitation similar to Industrial Revolution era slums?

The global population is currently rising at a steady rate. The number of humans existing on Earth has never been as high as it is now. In 1800, Earth had approximately 1 billion inhabitants, which rose to 2.3 billion in 1940, then 3.7 billion in 1970, and approximately 7.5 billion today. In the last five decades, Earth has experienced an extreme population boom. This phenomenon is known as overpopulation, where the condition in which the amount of humans currently existing on Earth outstrips future resource availability and earth’s carrying capacity. Throughout human history, birth and death rates have always counterbalanced each other, which ensured that Earth had a maintainable population growth level. However, in the 1960s, the global population increased at an unparalleled rate. This brought about a variety of apocalyptic predictions, most prominently, a revival of the Malthusian trap panic.

Paul R. Ehrlich’s 1968 novel, The Population Bomb , eerily echoes Thomas R. Malthus’s landmark 1798 Essay on the Principle of Population . Ehrlich’s novel proposes theories regarding potential outcomes for when agricultural growth does not keep pace with population growth. Ultimately his theories say that the world’s food supply will inevitably become inadequate for feeding the general population, whose numbers would continue to swell until famine, disease epidemics, war, or other calamities took root. These Malthusian predictions about out-of-control population growth have resulted in a variety of detrimental global impacts, particularly the emergence of extreme reproductive control measures, which have taken center stage on an international scale. Today, despite the fact that population scientists mostly agree that Malthus’s forecasts were overblown, the lingering prevalence of these fears have contributed to millions of forced sterilizations in Mexico, Bolivia, Peru, Indonesia, Bangladesh and India, as well as China’s two-child policy . Overall, this has left many wondering whether extreme population growth projections are legitimate or merely groundless panic perpetuated by alarmists.

The Demographic Transition

In reality, rising birth rates and population booms are components of a four-step process called the demographic transition, which the Earth is currently undergoing. Most developed nations have already made this transition, but other countries are currently experiencing this change. In the 1700s, the entire world was undergoing the first stage of the demographic transition. During this time, the continent of Europe was in even poorer condition than the modern-day definition of a developing region, and was afflicted with inferior public health, sustenance, and medical facilities. Birth rates were higher; however, death rates were also higher. For this reason, population growth remained largely stagnant.

Statistically, in the 1700s, women birthed four to six children. However, on average, only two survived to adulthood. When the Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain in the mid-18th century, the Earth experienced the most significant shift in human lifestyles since the Agricultural Revolution. The Industrial Revolution altered every aspect of society, and fostered a greater sense of global interconnectedness. For example, many peasants became factory workers, manufactured products became widely available due to mass production, and countless scientific advancements improved existing methods of transportation, communication, and medicine.

Gradually, this economic development created a middle class and, after the work of union activists, ultimately raised the standard of living and health care for the impoverished labor demographic. Thus began the second transition stage. The increased availability of better foodstuffs, sanitation, and medicine directly contributed to lower death rates, causing a population explosion that doubled Great Britain’s population from 1750 to 1850. In the past, families tended to have more children because not all were expected to survive, but when child mortality rates decreased, the third transition stage was launched. This stage involves reduced conception rates and slowing population growth. Ultimately, a balance was established, with fewer deaths and births, creating a stable population growth rate and signifying the attainment of the fourth and final stage of the demographic transition.

Even as birth rates have decreased dramatically, Earth’s population is still rising at an alarming rate because the humans conceived during the population boom of the 1970s and 1980s are currently having more children; however, the current average number of children per family remains two and a half, while it was five during the late 1970s. As this generation ages and its fertility diminishes, the rate of population growth will likely continue to decrease in every nation. Most of the world’s countries have reached the fourth stage of the demographic transition. In approximately 80 years, developed countries will experience a reduction in fertility from over six children to fewer than three children. Malaysia and South Africa reached this point in 34 years, Bangladesh in 20 years,  and Iran in 10 years. If developing countries are afforded more support, they will reach this point much faster.

Overall, most scientists postulate that human population growth will eventually come to an end, and the UN predicts that Earth’s population will not exceed twelve billion. Some of the major causes of population growth are reduced infant mortality rates, increased lifespans, higher fertility rates, advances in science and technology, and improved access to proper medical care. With the UN’s continued assistance, concurrent with overpopulation, the development level of the global community will increase, and the number of people living in poverty will decrease. Nonetheless, an ever-expanding human population is an immense social and economic challenge that necessitates the alignment of different national interests, especially with regards to reproductive rights, resource availability, and environmental concerns.

The United Nations Takes Action

In 1969, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) was established in order to lead the UN in implementing population programs fundamentally based on the notion of family planning, or the “human right of individuals and couples to freely determine the size of their families” without governmental interference or legislation. In 1994, at the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, Egypt, the designated objectives of the UNFPA were determined in greater depth. It was decided that the UNFPA would specifically focus on the gender and human rights elements of population issues; consequently, the UN Population Fund was granted the lead role in aiding nations in fulfilling the Conference’s Programme of Action.

The three most significant sections of the UN Population Fund mandate are “Reproductive Health,” “Gender Equality,” and “Population and Development.” The United Nations Population Division (UNPD) works to confront the interconnected global issues posed by population growth, which is primarily fueled by rising fertility rates, increased longevity, and greater international migration. The UN produces the official demographic approximations and predictions for every country and all regions of the world. The UNFPA specifically addresses global population by compiling data and statistics regarding migration, fertility, marriage, regional development, urbanization, world population projections, and national population policies.

In November 2012, the UNFPA declared family planning a global human right; however, approximately 12 percent of 15 to 49-year-old women internationally are not afforded access to family planning. This is considered an egregious modern-day human rights infringement. The UNFPA aids various UN bodies like the Commission on Population and Development, and endorses the implementation of the Programme of Action undertaken by the International Conference on Population and Development (IPCD) in 1994. The UNFPA has been successful in urging international cooperation on the issue of securing family planning as a human right, pushing the UN to hold three conferences concerning the issue of population, along with two special sessions of the General Assembly and a summit in 2019 .

The Way Forward

Ultimately, apocalyptic population growth fears are overblown, and as such, draconian population control regulations are unnecessary. We have witnessed progress on an international scale in this area, perhaps most notably with China revoking its infamous, longstanding one-child policy just seven years ago. However, a broader global focus on guaranteeing family planning as a human right remains essential. In the words of economist Julian Simon, “Whatever the rate of population growth is, historically it has been that the food supply increases at least as fast, if not faster.” Since Ehrlich’s initial fear-mongering regarding an overpopulation-​induced Armageddon, the planet’s population has more than doubled . However, annually, famine deaths have dropped by millions. Today’s famines are war-induced, not caused by natural resource consumption. As production rose, prices fell and calorie consumption increased, which decreased malnutrition worldwide. In Simon’s words, human ingenuity is the “ ultimate resource .” Therefore, the enactment of heavy-handed population-​control regulations is not only abhorrent, but is also irrational and unsupported by scientific evidence.

Sophia Scott

Sophia Scott is a staff writer for the Harvard International Review. She is interested in global health & health equity, along with the intersections between science and policy.

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Home — Essay Samples — Social Issues — Overpopulation — The Causes, Effects, and Consequences of Overpopulation

The Causes, Effects, and Consequences of Overpopulation

• Categories: Overpopulation Population Growth

About this sample

Words: 683 |

Published: Jan 29, 2024

Words: 683 | Pages: 2 | 4 min read

Table of contents

Causes of overpopulation, effects of overpopulation, consequences of overpopulation, potential solutions, references:.

• Cohen, J. E. (1995). How many people can the earth support?. Norton & Company.
• Daniels, R. J. (2008). The effects of overpopulation on environment and society. Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, 105(2), 212-218.
• Ehrlich, P. R. (1968). The population bomb. Sierra Club/Ballantine Books.
• Mazur, L. A. (1998). A concise guide to the world population. ABC-CLIO.
• World Population Prospects 2019: Highlights. (2019). United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division.

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October 17, 2013

Human Overpopulation: Still an Issue of Concern?

The jury is still out as to whether the growth of human population is a positive factor or a dominant ill that could spell environmental and social catastrophe

EarthTalk® E - The Environmental Magazine

Dear EarthTalk : Is it true that human overpopulation isn’t such a big issue anymore, as numbers are expected to start declining in a few decades? —Melinda Mason, Boone, Iowa Ever since Thomas Malthus published “An Essay on the Principle of Population” in 1798, positing incorrectly that humans’ proclivity for procreation would exhaust the global food supply within a matter of decades, population growth has been a hot button issue among those contemplating humankind’s future. Indeed our very success going forth and multiplying, paired with our ability to extend our life expectancy, has meant that we are perpetually pushing the limits of the resource base that supports us.

When Malthus was worrying about the planet’s “carrying capacity,” there were only about a billion of us on the planet. Today our population tops seven billion. While better health care and medicine along with advances in food production and access to freshwater and sanitation have allowed us to feed ourselves and stave off many health ills, some so-called Neo-Malthusians believe we may still be heading for some kind of population crash, perhaps triggered or exacerbated by environmental factors related to climate change.

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But others are less concerned given projections that world population will likely start to decline once the world’s less developed nations urbanize and start lowering their birth rates, as has already happened in Europe, the U.S., Australia and parts of Asia. For example, Europe’s “fertility rate” between 2005 and 2010 was just 1.53 live births per woman (the standard replacement rate to maintain a stable population is 2.1). Without immigration, Europe’s population would already be shrinking.

Of course, the immigration that continues to fuel population numbers in developed countries is coming from somewhere. Indeed, population numbers are still growing in many of the world’s developing countries, including the world’s most populous nation, China, and its close rival, India. Also fertility rates in Africa continue to be among the highest in the world, as many countries there are growing fast, too. Poverty and health problems due to poor sanitation, lack of access to food and water, the low social status of women and other ills continue to cripple these regions. Overpopulation could plague us indefinitely if fertility rates don’t drop in these areas, especially as they ramp up their Western-style development. Globally, the United Nations estimates that the number of humans populating the planet in 2100 will range from as few as 6.2 billion—almost a billion less than today—to as many as 15.8 billion on the high end. Meanwhile, other researchers confirm the likelihood of world population levels flattening out and starting to decline by 2100 according to the lower UN estimate. To wit, the Austria-based International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) recently unveiled research showing that if the world stabilizes at a fertility rate comparable to that of many European nations today (roughly 1.5), the global human population will be only half of what it is today by the year 2200, and only one-seventh by 2300.

It is difficult to say which way the global population pendulum will swing in centuries to come, given ever-changing cultural, economic and political attitudes and the development demographics they affect. As such the jury is still out as to whether human overpopulation will become a footnote in history or the dominant ill that stands in the way of all other efforts to achieve sustainability and a kinder, gentler world. CONTACTS : Thomas Malthus, www.esp.org/books/malthus/population/malthus.pdf ; United Nations, www.un.org/esa/population/‎ ; IIASA, http:// webarchive.iiasa.ac.at/Admin/PUB/Documents/IR-08-022.pdf .

EarthTalk® is written and edited by Roddy Scheer and Doug Moss and is a registered trademark of E - The Environmental Magazine www.emagazine.com . Send questions to: [email protected] . Subscribe : www.emagazine.com/subscribe. Free Trial Issue : www.emagazine.com/trial .

Home Essay Examples Sociology Overpopulation

Overpopulation: Causes And Consequences

• Category Sociology
• Subcategory Human Populations
• Topic Overpopulation

The concept of global challenges is very ambiguous as it encompasses multifarious types of challenges, consequences and solutions. However, Professor Kristen Gelsdof succinctly defines a global challenge as “any major trend, shock or development that has the potential for serious global impacts” (1). I would like to extend this definition with “and can only be solved with global compliance and collaboration”, as I believe that no global challenge can be solved by any one nation or institution alone. They require collaborative action among all members of the international community, including IGOs, NGOs and corporations (2).

A significant challenge facing us today is world population, which can be characterised as overpopulation and as a growing threat to human survival on Earth. From the beginning of human history, it took until 1804 to reach a world population of 1 billion people, but only approximately 200 years after that to reach 7 billion (see Figure 1). Now, humans are reproducing at an unprecedented rate, with the population expected to increase by 2 billion in the next 30 years and peak at 11 billion by 2100 (3). The Industrial Revolution was a pinnacle point of human history that brought advancements in science, technology and transport worldwide. These advancements have enabled more people to reach the reproductive age and have reduced the fatality rate. As a result of this, increasing worldwide population growth has become a major contributor to climate change, rising sea-levels, exhaustion of natural resources and rising living costs and unemployment (4). It is now more important than ever before to face overpopulation with global solutions, otherwise the consequences will be devastating.

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In her report The Population Explosion: Causes and Consequences, Carolyn Kinder defines overpopulation as “the condition of having more people than can live on earth in comfort, happiness and health and still leave the world a fit place for future generations” (6). With more than 220 000 consumers being added to the planet daily (7), the disparity between human consumption and renewed global resources is increasing at an extremely unsustainable and alarming rate.

Earth Overshoot Day is the date which marks the depletion of the global allowance of the Earth’s yearly quota of natural resources. These resources include clean water, clean air and carbon sequestration (8). In 2019, Earth Overshoot day was July 29th, the earliest date recorded. To put this into perspective, in 1987 the date was October 23rd and in 2005 it was August 26th (9). This current usage is equivalent to 1.7 Earths, and if this trend continues, with more people using more resources, three Earths will be needed by 2050 (see Figure 2) (10).

The first step in solving overpopulation is recognising it as a global challenge and acknowledging that it’s growing beyond its limits. When looking at Gelsdorf’s definition, it is quite evident that the concept of overpopulation cannot be denied as a global challenge. This trend has the ability to effect any area of the globe and has the ‘potential for serious global impacts’, such as resource depletion. Furthermore, because overpopulation is “trans-institutional in solution” (12) it can only be solved with ‘global compliance and collaboration’.

The 1994 International Conference of Parliamentarians on Population and Development recognised this fact. The conference identified that there is a “delicate balance between population and natural resources” (13) and it urges national governments to take responsibility to resolve their own population issues “in a way that respects their own national and cultural identity, values and tradition” (14).

A prominent example of a nation taking specific action to tackle population growth is China and it’s one child policy. Introduced in 1980, this unique and unprecedented domestic measure established strict government monitoring to ensure that Chinese couples were having one child only. Incentives were offered to those who complied with the policy, including paid vacation and priority housing. With China making up 19% of the global population alone, the policy has been effective in preventing approximately 400 million births (15), but despite this success, China has suffered from some negative side effects, including a skewed male population, an aging population and a shrinking workforce. The policy framework focused on numbers only and did not – or was not able to – take account of entrenched cultural biases that favoured survival of male children over female children. So, resolving the challenge clearly lies within shrouds of moral, religious, political and practical circumstances, as well as numbers.

Recent modifications to the policy now allow couples to have two children if either parent is a single child. A study published by The Lancet by Professor Yi Zeng and Professor Therese Hesketh highlighted that the two-child policy will “not result in a baby boom, but rather a moderate increase in fertility” (16), because of the low fertility culture in China due to the previous policy. Currently, China’s birth rates are at 1.9 children per mother (see Figure 3) and if this rate is sustained, it will lead to depopulation. However, the rate of decline will not mean a dramatic reduction in total population numbers, which still stands at 1.4 billion (17).

For the global community to benefit the most out of this solution, other nations should follow suit and implement their own birth policies within the bounds of their culture and awareness, especially nations with higher populations like India, the United States and Indonesia (18). It’s a non-disruptive way to slowly decrease the population as it doesn’t impact individuals who are already alive, but instead prevents births.

Another international solution is the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which outline 17 goals for the international community to work towards that are “the blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all” (20). Because of state sovereignty, the SDGs are not legally binding. Instead, they are an innovative and effective way to exert pressure on nations and hold them accountable to accomplish the goals within their own borders (21). Additionally, compliance with the SGDs allows nations to create or maintain ties with other countries and establish a positive reputation within the global community. Although there is no specific SDG for overpopulation, the interconnective nature of the goals ensures that progress of some SDGs, especially ‘gender equality’ and ‘quality education’, is progress towards reducing overpopulation.

In his documentary Bill Nye Saves the World, scientist Bill Nye discusses the link between empowering women and overpopulation, stating, “by empowering women, we can lower the birth rate and keep population growth manageable” (22). Giving women access to a quality education and career is an impactful and ethical way to lower the birth rate. Not only is an education a vital way to gain knowledge about the many birth control options, but having a career usually means a woman can choose to have children later in life, which usually is linked to having fewer children. While this is a desirable aim, it is unfair for the female population to address this alone. The attitude and expectation of the male cohort must change if increased population levels are to be stabilised or reduced over time.

If the UN were to modify the SDGs to add a specific overpopulation goal, it will increase awareness about this issue and hopefully encourage nations put in place their own policies to sustain their precious resources and ensure the future of the world. Such an approach requires some sort of incentive which may include attaching achievement of population goals to financial assistance levels. World lending and aid organisations need to link their practices to a more sustainable level of population growth in spite of the moral and ethical issues that such an approach presents and the financial implications of doing so.

The actions we as a global community take now to combat overpopulation will determine the future of humankind and the environment. We have the power to decide whether we want to prosper as a race or succumb to irreversible environmental degradation and resource depletion. It is vital for all members of the international community to collaborate, cooperate and comply to ensure that the global solutions put in place are effective and sustainable.

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Can We Talk About Overpopulation?

As numbers soar, scholars revisit a thorny debate.

Twenty years ago, farmers looked out at the tropical woodlands and savannahs of Uganda and saw endless virgin territory. A young man, upon starting a family, would clear a patch of wilderness near where he was raised and plant his own fields of sorghum, millet, groundnut, plantains, or cassava.

Now, after decades of unprecedented population growth, the land is running out. In southern Uganda, as in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, farm communities are bumping up against one another and against dry lands, mountains, and rain forests. Pockets of arable land can still be found, but only in malaria-ridden hinterlands where nobody wants to live. Many farmers, rather than relocating long distances, are clearing rain forests near their homes, despite the fact that a tropical forest’s acidic soil is poorly suited to growing grains, fruits, and vegetables. Other farmers are subdividing their parents’ land, reducing the typical-sized farm plot in some parts of Africa to half an acre.

“That’s too small to feed a family,” says economist Jeffrey D. Sachs, who directs Columbia’s Earth Institute.

Africans will never be able to grow enough food for themselves, Sachs argues in his latest book, Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet , unless they start having fewer babies. Subsistence farmers in sub-Saharan Africa today raise an average of six children, which is causing the populations of some nations to double every 20 years. Few of these farmers are able to feed their children properly, let alone afford their education. Children thus grow up desperately poor and have huge families of their own. Shrinking farm plots add yet another burden: Food production on a per-capita basis is declining and malnutrition is worsening, which means that children are likely to grow up even less healthy and less productive.

“The poorest places in the world right now are stuck in a demographic trap,” says Sachs. “A family of subsistence farmers with six or seven kids doesn’t stand a chance.”

The only way to break this cycle of overpopulation and misery, Sachs writes in Common Wealth , is for wealthy nations to provide birth control to the world’s poor. Sachs recommends that rich countries quadruple foreign assistance for reproductive health programs to roughly $25 billion annually. That’s enough money, he estimates, to provide birth control, as well as maternal health care and STD treatment, to some 200 million women who lack it; most of them live in rural Africa.

The prospect of giving poor people contraceptives so they can lift themselves out of poverty might not seem particularly controversial, aside from the opposition that might be expected from some religious conservatives. Yet Sachs is the first mainstream economist in decades to formally propose this idea. Since the 1980s, family planning programs have been promoted strictly as a human right, not as a way to kick-start economic development. That’s because Western family planners in the 1960s and 1970s, in their zeal to slow population growth and to spur development in Asia, supported forced sterilizations, slum demolitions, and other abuses. Women’s rights advocates subsequently wrested control of international family-planning programs and made sure they never again aimed explicitly to lower birthrates.

The days of promoting birth control purely as a way to empower women, however, may be ending. There is a growing sense among scholars that the topic of overpopulation — which has faded from public consciousness as the world’s population growth rate has declined from its mid-1960s peak of 2 percent annually down to about 1.2 percent — is going to reemerge as a hot topic. Recently, the Sierra Club, the Worldwatch Institute, and other environmental groups have offered recommendations similar to those in Common Wealth , in which Sachs urges that we halt world population at 8 billion by 2050, rather than allowing it to grow to 9 billion from today’s 6.7 billion, as the UN projects.

Still, many population experts wonder: Is the marriage bed really the place to address economic and environmental problems? Is it even possible to manage people as numbers while respecting them as human beings?

Don’t blame the victim

Joel E. Cohen, a Columbia demographer, is an expert on population growth and environmental sustainability. He cringes at the term overpopulation .

“I have no idea what that word means, and you’ll never hear me use it,” he says. “It suggests that the size of a population can become so big that it starts causing problems in itself. That’s not the way it works. I’d put the situation this way: Rapid population growth makes it trickier for a poor country to deal with every problem that it faces, from distributing food and water during a drought to providing education and health care in rural areas. But it doesn’t cause these problems.”

There’s wide agreement among economists and demographers today that rapid population growth is troublesome. A report published in April by the UN Population Division concludes that high birthrates are hampering economic development across sub-Saharan Africa, mainly by limiting per-capita investments in education and health care. (Columbia economist Xavier Sala-i-Martin has shown that high birthrates typically stunt economic development.) The UN report also states that population pressure is worsening food and water shortages in the region. Environmental concerns also are real: rain forests in sub-Saharan Africa and in South America are being destroyed primarily by subsistence farming, according to NASA data, and deforestation is reducing local rainfall and exacerbating global climate change.

Cohen’s concern is that people often imagine a direct causal link between population growth and problems like hunger, poverty, and environmental degradation. It’s easy to think this way when visceral images of teeming third-world slums and starving masses invite human-scale explanations: Why do these people have so many babies? Cohen says we then may ignore political factors that contribute to these problems. For instance, agriculture subsidies in rich nations contribute to hunger by driving down farm incomes in the developing world; and African governments are famous for mismanaging food and water supplies. “During the Ethiopian famines of the 1980s, cash croppers in that country were allowed to export alfalfa to Japan as cattle feed,” he says. “Is that a population problem? I don’t think so.”

Cohen agrees with Sachs that international family-planning programs are underfunded. But he says that family planning should continue to be promoted — both to Western donors and to government officials in developing countries — strictly as a human right. To advance birth control as a means to slow population growth, Cohen says, implies that poor people need to solve their societies’ problems through private choices of childbearing. Might this cause the West to back away from other aid obligations, or inspire poor countries to implement coercive methods of population control?

Cohen hesitates. “It’s not as if a developing country’s problems are going to vanish if it manages to lower birthrates,” he says. “I would say that until the West has done its utmost to give poor people access to education, health care, job training, and family planning for the purpose of giving them more control over their lives, it’s premature to talk about trying to convince them to have fewer babies.”

Dirt to dust

Sachs insists that we speak clearly about population pressures. The problem of dwindling farmland in sub-Saharan Africa, he says, is insurmountable without a major effort to slow population growth.

As arable land in Africa has vanished, Sachs explains in Common Wealth , farmers have abandoned land-management techniques they used previously to sustain the long-term fertility of their fields, such as allowing one of the fields to lie fallow each season. Three-quarters of all arable land in sub-Saharan Africa today is severely depleted of nutrients because it has been overused, according to a recent study by the International Center for Soil Fertility and Agricultural Development.

A doubling of the region’s population since the early 1980s helps explain why almost all of sub-Saharan African countries now depend on foreign food aid. Until a few years ago, most were food exporters . “There’s a tyranny of the present at work,” Sachs writes, “and the poor, in their desperation to survive, are often contributing to massive local environmental degradation.”

Population control isn’t the only way to address food shortages, of course. Sachs points out that farmers in sub-Saharan Africa can’t afford chemical fertilizers, high-yield seed varieties, or modern irrigation. He and colleagues at the Earth Institute, as part of the United Nations Millennium Villages project, which Sachs initiated, are helping the governments of a dozen nations in Africa introduce modern farm technologies. They’ve had some remarkable success: The tiny, famine-prone nation of Malawi has tripled its grain yields in the past two years by subsidizing chemical fertilizer for all farmers.

“The problem is that these kinds of agricultural improvements never will produce gains to keep pace with a doubling of population every generation,” Sachs says.

Other types of foreign aid, such as for education or health care, also will bring diminishing returns if population growth rates don’t decline, says Sachs, who is academia’s most influential proponent of aid to Africa. He says that countries in sub-Saharan Africa now must spend huge portions of their budgets providing basic services, which leaves little money for the type of agricultural investment that Malawi is making in its fertilizer program. Economists thus say that countries experiencing explosive population growth must expend their budgets on “service widening,” to deliver basic services to more and more people, rather than on “service deepening,” to improve average services per person.

“If people continue having huge numbers of kids, and if farm sizes continue to shrink,” Sachs says, “I can’t imagine how the next generation is going to make it.”

Sordid history

Back in the 1960s, the populations of many poor countries in Asia, Latin America, and North Africa were growing as rapidly as the populations in sub-Saharan African countries are today. International health programs had gone into former colonies in these areas following World War II with antibiotic drugs, vaccines, and pesticides, which lowered mortality rates dramatically. Farmers in poor countries had always had lots of babies: They needed to, in order to ensure that at least one son grew up to work their fields and to take care of them in their old age. The problem was that while more of their children were surviving, rural people retained a cultural proclivity for huge families. Furthermore, they had little or no access to modern birth control, so they ended up with even more kids than they would have otherwise chosen.

Population growth soon was outpacing food production, especially in Asia, causing Western officials to fear that widespread famine would destabilize the continent, Columbia history professor Matthew Connelly explains in his latest book, Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population . President Lyndon B. Johnson and his advisers viewed the situation through a lens of Cold War–inspired paranoia: Johnson, speaking to U.S. troops stationed in South Korea in 1966, warned that hordes of starving Asians might one day “sweep over the United States and take what we have.” His fear didn’t seem so irrational: 19 Nobel laureate scientists in 1960 had issued a public letter decrying how overpopulation could push the world into “a Dark Age of human misery, famine, and under-education, which could generate growing panic, exploding into wars.”

So in the late 1960s, the U.S. government began pouring tens of millions of dollars annually into international family-planning programs. The programs were administered primarily by Planned Parenthood, under the auspices of the newly formed United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), which was financed largely by U.S. dollars and which claimed that its programs provided contraceptives, sterilization procedures, and abortions on a voluntary basis. In reality, American and British economists and demographers had designed these programs to slow population growth by nearly any means necessary, according to Connelly.

South Asian countries with caste systems were willing to push family planning most aggressively, Connelly writes, because many ruling-class Hindus feared social unrest among the hungry lower castes. So Indian officials, under the guidance of Western family planners, agreed to pay famished people small sums of money to be sterilized; they also agreed to fire doctors who didn’t meet sterilization quotas. India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka implanted in women a type of intrauterine contraceptive device that was proven to cause infections and the rupturing of the uterine wall. Couples in all of these countries lost medical, housing, and education benefits for having more than a designated number of children. When local health officials balked at implementing aggressive programs, the U.S. Agency for International Development and the UN threatened to shut off Western food aid.

The endgame for this chapter of family planning started to unfold in 1975, when Indira Gandhi’s government bulldozed entire blocks of Delhi slums where large numbers of residents refused to be sterilized. Around the same time, police rounded up at gunpoint all of the men in the Indian village of Uttawar and forced them to get vasectomies. These atrocities drew international outrage and led to Gandhi’s being voted out of power the following year. They also prompted a backlash from feminists and women’s rights advocates who were assuming leadership roles within the NGO community in the 1970s.

International family-planning programs, which by this time had spread throughout Latin America and North Africa, gradually abandoned coercive methods over the next few years. The population control movement would have one last gasp, though, when UNFPA and Planned Parenthood helped China launch its draconian one-child policy in 1979.

Women’s choice

By the late 1980s, the UNFPA and Planned Parenthood had cleaned up their programs so that medical workers on the ground no longer were expected to lower birthrates. Clinicians now concentrated on helping women make informed choices about their sex lives and childbearing. If family planning executives discussed the prospect of slowing population growth in public, Connelly says, it was only as an ancillary benefit of giving women more control over their bodies.

“The term population control has since had a negative connotation, as well it should,” Connelly tells Columbia .

The economic benefits of slowing population growth, though, were apparent: as birthrates plummeted in most of the developing world, prosperity and modernization typically arrived. The governments of many countries in Asia and Latin America, now that they had proportionately fewer poor people to care for, could afford to invest in industry and modern agricultural methods, which boosted grain production 300 percent in some nations between the 1960s and the 1980s. (Connelly, in Fatal Misconception , makes the controversial argument that family planning programs have received too much credit for declining birthrates, and hence for development; see sidebar to the left.)

The good news for women’s rights advocates was that voluntary family-planning programs seemed to have lowered birthrates just as much as had coercive programs. For instance, a UN-sponsored program that had offered birth control pills to all poor women in Thailand in the 1960s, on the advice of a young field-worker named Allan Rosenfield, who later became dean of Columbia’s public health school, helped to halve the number of children born per woman in that country, from six to three, in less than 20 years. Across the developing world, birthrates declined where family planners provided a range of safe contraceptives and taught people the benefits of limiting their family size — not only where they bribed people to be sterilized or threatened tax penalties.

Yet, just as family planning programs were beginning to define a new humanitarian mission, funding stagnated. The trouble started during Ronald Reagan’s first term as president, Connelly writes, when the emerging pro-life movement in the U.S. launched a major lobbying effort against international family-planning programs. Abortion opponents called attention to the fact that Planned Parenthood and UNFPA were providing technical assistance to China for its country’s one-child policy, which in the mid-1980s was in its most coercive phase, allegedly requiring some women to have abortions and to be implanted with intrauterine devices. “It was not much,” writes Connelly, “but it was enough of a perch to permit pro-lifers to pile calumny upon calumny on China’s program and all who could be associated with it.” Since then, every Republican president has refused to contribute to UNFPA, which is the primary source of funding for international family-planning services. Partly as a result, financial support for international family planning has remained flat, which means that the funding hasn’t kept pace with increasing demand as populations in poor countries continue to climb.

Sub-Saharan Africa is home to most women who lack access to birth control today in part because family planning programs arrived to the region late, in the 1980s, when the money had already begun to dry up, say family planning executives. Family planning came to Africa late, they say, because international health programs, with their ensuing population boom, had arrived late, too.

A lack of money isn’t the only thing that has kept family planning from many Africans, though: “There is mistrust in some nations about family planning programs because of their checkered past,” Connelly says. “In African countries where there are ethnic tensions, for instance, it can be politically difficult for leaders to implement family planning programs because many people fear that they’ll be used to reduce the populations of some groups, and not others.”

Counting backward

Today, UN-backed family-planning programs operate in nearly all developing countries. If the UNFPA were better funded, say its proponents, birth control would be more available in rural Africa as well as in many Muslim and Catholic countries, where Western family planners must work hard to educate local leaders about the benefits of reproductive health services.

How to raise the money? Advocates for family planning are doing a lot of soul-searching these days. Many leaders in the NGO community believe that family planning organizations would be better financed if they once again promoted their work as a way to slow population growth, says Suzanne Petroni, a researcher who monitors funding for reproductive health programs at the Summit Foundation, a Washington, D.C.–based nonprofit that promotes environmental sustainability.

“The sense among many family planners is that they’re getting less money than they used to from Western donors, in part because their programs are no longer connected to a practical purpose,” says Petroni. “They believe that the human rights pitch hasn’t worked.”

Particularly tempting to some family planners, Petroni says, is the prospect of exploiting public concerns about global warming. The sales pitch would go something like this: if we limit the number of people on earth, we limit the number of carbon footprints. (Sachs validates this logic in Common Wealth , warning that decades from now, when the crowded nations of sub-Saharan Africa modernize — and Sachs is optimistic that they will modernize eventually — energy consumption on the continent will skyrocket.)

Many women’s rights advocates fear that if family planning programs are positioned once again as a means to combat overpopulation, the door will open for more human rights abuses, Petroni says. This debate within the aid community is contentious because there remains distrust between feminists and some older environmentalists who backed the original population-control movement.

Matthew Connelly sides with the women’s rights advocates. He was convinced in writing Fatal Misconception , he says, that family planning programs that aim to lower birthrates are bound to commit abuses. He found, for instance, that crimes occurred in the 1960s and 1970s even when Western family planners tried to operate their programs ethically: medical workers in several South Asian countries strong-armed patients into accepting sterilizations because they thought that lowering birthrates was good for their own careers, and family planning programs inevitably devoted more resources to sterilization procedures and to abortions than to follow-up care.

Connelly worries that Western nations, if their aid programs once again were promoted as a means to slow population growth, would be tempted to withhold other forms of development aid from countries if they don’t lower birthrates to specified levels.

Lynn Freedman, a Columbia public health professor and an attorney who is an expert on population issues, concurs. “The idea that foreign aid could be linked to a country’s success at lowering birthrates is not wildly unlikely,” she says. “Aid agencies today are in the habit of designing all sorts of performance targets in order to account for the efficiency of their programs, and these targets can easily be misused in a way that violates people’s rights. The ’60s weren’t that long ago.”

Sachs doesn’t see that happening. “The worst I could imagine is that an agency might attempt to link a country’s family- planning money to birthrate reductions,” he says, “but I don’t think that other kinds of foreign aid would be linked in this way.” He also dismisses as unrealistic the possibility that international family-planning programs could once again employ coercive methods. Family planning programs must, and will, remain voluntary, he believes.

The greater moral danger today, Sachs argues, is that large numbers of women will continue to want for birth control, and populations will continue to grow rapidly in sub-Saharan Africa and in places like Haiti, Bolivia, Venezuela, Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Myanmar, in part because Western scholars and aid workers insist on tiptoeing around the subject of overpopulation for fear of being seen as insensitive to the abuses of the past. In Common Wealth , Sachs even advances the term population control, which has long been considered impolitic among scholars, because he says he wants to break the taboo.

“For years people have been telling me, ‘Don’t talk about population, talk instead about access to reproductive health services,’” Sachs says. “And I’ve said, ‘No, I want to talk about population, because it’s a serious problem.’ I think it’s time we take this subject out of the whispers.”

Birth control, under audit

Columbia professor Matthew Connelly’s Fatal Misconception, a history of the population-control movement of the 1960s and 1970s, is shocking for its parade of morally compromised scholars and diplomats who spread birth control around the world. There’s Planned Parenthood head and ecologist William Vogt, who thought that starving people in the developing world should be left to die and therefore opposed food aid; there’s Robert McNamara, who, as head of the World Bank, resisted funding healthcare programs in poor countries because they saved lives and contributed to overpopulation; there are the Planned Parenthood doctors who at a 1963 UN conference decided that a female contraceptive’s tendency to pierce the uterus, causing sterilization, was to be considered a side benefit.

Fatal Misconception was among the most controversial scholarly monographs of 2008, not just because Connelly calls out early family planners as xenophobic and racist, however. His most startling critique is that these programs didn’t even lower birthrates as designed: he says that between 1950 and 2000, the dozen or so developing nations that employed the most aggressive family- planning tactics reduced birthrates little more than did other countries. Relying on UN data, Connelly notes that China, for instance, reduced the number of children per woman from 6.2 to 1.7 during that 50-year period. In Brazil, where little effort was made to encourage family planning, the numbers fell from 6.2 to 2.3 children during the same period. Connelly lists half a dozen such examples to make his point. He then argues that girls’ education, women’s employment, and other social factors affected birthrates more so than did family planning programs.

“In many poor countries where birthrates declined dramatically,” Connelly tells Columbia, “the declines actually started before family planning programs even showed up.”

How could people have managed to have fewer babies without contraception? The same way they did in early-19th-century Europe, where birthrates plummeted a full century before modern birth control became available, Connelly says: They used traditional forms of birth control like the rhythm method.

Connelly charges that UN and Planned Parenthood officials who administered most family-planning programs in the 1960s and 1970s knew that data on the ground weren’t validating their efforts. They soldiered on, he says, because of institutional inertia. “These programs gave jobs to millions of people, and administrators weren’t interested in scrutinizing the numbers,” he says. “They were interested in making payroll.”

Many contemporary family planners are apoplectic over Connelly’s assertion that birth control programs don’t lower birthrates. Steven Sinding, a professor at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health and past director-general of Planned Parenthood International, has blasted Connelly over his book’s conclusions. Sinding claims that about 50 percent of birthrate declines in poor countries are attributable to family planning programs.

Columbia called T. Paul Schultz, a Yale economics professor who has spent his career studying birthrate dynamics. This subject invites confusion, he says, because no long-term controlled studies have ever been conducted. That’s partly because there are a multitude of factors that influence birthrates, so aid agencies whose programs target any one of these areas are reluctant to fund expensive, long-term studies to showcase the relatively small impact that their work likely has on fertility. The dearth of data, Schultz says, allows both advocates and opponents of family planning to cherry-pick statistics.

But the most sophisticated data available, collected over two decades in Bangladesh, Schultz says, suggest that the availability of free contraception accounted for about 20 percent of the region’s birthrate decline. That’s a strong relationship, considering how many variables were tested, he says. “The intuition of development experts has always been that family planning must slow population growth,” Schultz says, “and I’ve never seen any good data that suggest otherwise.”

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Introduction: Overdevelopment, Overpopulation, Overshoot

The following essay was written by William Ryerson, President of Population Media Center, as the Introduction to Overdevelopment, Overpopulation, Overshoot. 

MOST CONVERSATIONS ABOUT POPULATION begin with statistics—demographic data, fertility rates in this or that region, the latest reports on malnutrition, deforestation, biodiversity loss, climate change, and so on. Such data, while useful, fails to generate mass concern about the fundamental issue affecting the future of the Earth. In reality, every discussion about population involves people, the world that our children and grandchildren will live to see and the health of the planet that supports all life. In my roles as president of Population Media Center and CEO of the Population Institute, I spend most of my time in developing countries, where many of my friends and acquaintances are educated and prospering. But I also know individuals who are homeless, unemployed, or hungry. The vast majority of people in these societies, regardless of their current status, do not enjoy a safety net. They live from day to day in hopes that their economic circumstances will improve. Abstract statistics on poverty are irrelevant to families struggling to secure the food, water, and resources needed to sustain a decent life. Those who blithely dismiss the challenges posed by population growth like to say that we could physically squeeze 7 billion people into an area the size of Texas. They don’t stop to consider the suffering already caused by overpopulation. The population debate is not about the maximum number of people that could be packed onto the planet. The crucial question is: How many people can the Earth sustain, at a reasonable standard of living, while leaving room for the diversity of life to flourish? There is no precise answer to this question, but the facts overwhelmingly support one conclusion: We cannot go on the way we are going. We are already doing severe and irreparable harm to the planet. Something has to give. If we cannot live sustainably with 7.2 billion people, how are we going to support billions more by the end of this century? The United Nations’ latest “medium-variant” projection indicates that we could have 10.9 billion people by 2100, but that may be an underestimation. Fertility rates in many parts of the world are not falling as fast as previously anticipated. In some countries, both developed and developing, fertility rates are actually on the rise again. In 2014 the global total fertility rate—the average number of children born to each woman during her lifetime—was 2.5. If this rate were to remain unchanged, demographers suggest that we could have 27 billion people on the planet by the end of the century. Given our limited inheritance of soil, water, and arable land, sustaining a global population of that size is not even remotely possible. As vividly illustrated by this book, human numbers and activity are already destroying the planet’s ecological integrity—running roughshod over myriad other species. But it’s not just the environmental damage we’re inflicting that should concern us. Equally appalling is how our actions threaten humanity’s future prospects. We have passed a crucial tipping point. Our quest for greater and greater material prosperity is now impoverishing future generations. The Global Footprint Network estimates that humans already use 150 percent of the Earth’s renewable capacity annually, and it estimates further that by 2030 we will need “two planets” to sustain us. Further growth simply deepens the crisis of ecological “overshoot” as we draw down Earth’s carrying capacity, and it comes at the direct expense of our own children and grandchildren. Is that any kind of way to behave? If you care about people, you must care about what we are doing to the planet. If you care about what we are doing to the planet, you must also care about human numbers. Given a planet with infinite space and resources, population growth could, arguably, be a blessing. We do not live on such a planet. However, there was a time when the Earth and its resources appeared boundless. Some people still adhere to that anachronistic belief. If nothing else, the photographs in this book should shatter that illusion. Many of us today do recognize that the Earth and its resources are limited, yet too many people still cling to the notion that modern science and technology will enable us to defy physical limits. In the Middle Ages, alchemists sought in vain for a “philosopher’s stone” that would convert base metals into gold. They never succeeded. Why? Because what they were looking for did not, and could not, exist, because its existence would have violated the physical laws governing the universe. Modern-day alchemists are trying to find ways of sustaining perpetual growth in a finite and increasingly resource-constrained world, searching for a scientific or technological breakthrough that will enable us to keep growing indefinitely. Like the philosopher’s stone, it does not exist. Our faith in breakthroughs is misplaced, as amply demonstrated by the past three hundred years of scientific and technological advances that have accelerated, not slowed, the degradation of the natural world. Even if scientists were to develop a relatively cheap, abundant, and clean form of energy that powered continuous economic and population growth, it would only accelerate the rate at which humanity is destroying the ecological systems that make the planet habitable. In the meantime, while we are waiting for magical breakthroughs, we are in a headlong race to extract and consume fossil fuels at whatever the cost to the Earth. Scientists warn that we will fry the planet if we burn all the world’s known reserves of coal, gas, and oil, but that concern has not slowed the relentless exploration for more fossil fuels. An ever-expanding human population and rising demand for products and services makes humanity’s hunger for fossil fuels utterly insatiable. Some cling to the notion that we can achieve sustainability by reducing consumption in the overdeveloped world. As meritorious as that idea may be, it has no critical mass of support. A growing number of political leaders are supporting the idea of “greener” or “smarter” growth, but there is not a single politician of significant stature in the world calling for slower economic growth, no growth (a steady-state economy), or de-growth. Yes, there are individuals who are trying to reduce their carbon and ecological “footprints,” but their numbers, for the moment, are dwarfed by the growing numbers of people who want to expand their ecological footprint through additional consumption. Much of humanity, of course, desperately needs a larger share of Earth’s resources. More than 2 billion people in the world live on less than $2 per day. Nearly a billion people go to bed hungry every night. About half the people in the world do not have access to toilets or other means of modern sanitation. I do not know of anyone who would deny these people a better quality of life, but if world population continues to grow as currently projected, many, if not most, of these people will never have their most basic needs realized, let alone fulfill their aspirations. The world is not that bountiful. I wish it were, but it is not. If we have any hope of bringing about a genuine balance between what humans demand of nature and what nature can reasonably provide for humanity, we must take crucial steps. Starting with the first step, we must devote more resources to preventing unplanned pregnancies through expanded access to contraceptives. Women everywhere should have the means to time, limit, or space their pregnancies. But greater access to contraceptives alone will not suffice. In those countries where population growth is most rapid today, girls and women lack reproductive choice; they live in traditionally male-dominated societies where large families are still the norm. Large-family norms, misinformation, and cultural barriers account for most decisions to not use contraception. If we do not enable girls to remain in school and delay marriage until adulthood, provide accurate information, and empower women in the developing world, then we will have failed countless individuals. Moreover, in the face of this humanitarian failure, fertility rate declines may continue only very slowly, or not at all—but certainly not fast enough to avoid the kind of human suffering that results when countries are overpopulated. In many parts of the world, child marriage is still prevalent. It is estimated that some 14,000 girls become child brides each day. In some areas, particularly poor rural communities, parents require their daughters—who have not yet reached puberty—to wed men who are twice or three times their age. Child brides do not enjoy reproductive choice in any meaningful sense. Most are condemned, if they survive childbirth, to having many children, and their families are condemned, in turn, to a life of continued poverty and deprivation. As important as it is to reduce unplanned pregnancies in the developing world, it is just as important to do so in the overdeveloped world, where the per capita consumption of resources is so much greater. Nearly half of all pregnancies in the United States are unplanned, and while America’s teenage pregnancy rate is declining, it remains the highest among industrialized nations. Shockingly, several state legislatures in recent years have slashed support for family planning, resulting in dozens of clinics having to either close their doors or limit services. These individual and community-level actions, in aggregate, have global consequences. The leading scientists of the world are concerned that we are approaching as many as nine planetary tipping points, which, if surpassed, would cause irreparable harm to the environment and the well-being of future generations. We have already crossed one boundary in terms of greenhouse gas emissions; the climate is changing, and we have already inflicted incalculable harm on posterity as a result. Because of population growth and changing diets, the world’s demand for food is projected to rise by 70–100 percent over the next forty years. No one knows how we will meet that demand. Cultivated farmlands already occupy a land mass the size of South America, and ranchlands used for livestock grazing occupy a land mass the size of Africa. There’s very little arable land left; most of it is in the form of tropical forests, which if cut down to expand agriculture would accelerate biodiversity loss and further complicate efforts to rein in greenhouse gas emissions. Water scarcity in many parts of the world has already reached crisis proportions. Demand for water is expected to outstrip supply by 40 percent within the next twenty years. As one research organization put it, we will need the equivalent of 20 Nile Rivers—which we do not have—to meet demand. By 2030, an estimated 3.9 billion people, nearly half the world’s population, will be living in areas of high water stress. We live today in a “Catch 22” world, where addressing one urgent problem often exacerbates another. If we double food production to feed a growing world, we expand greenhouse gas emissions. If we discover and exploit more fossil fuels, we fry the planet. If we reduce our water consumption, we curtail our food production. If we grow the world’s middle class, we increase the pressure on Earth’s natural ecosystems. There is, however, one exception to our “Catch 22” world, and that concerns population. Viewed from almost any angle, addressing population is a win-win proposition. By empowering girls and women in the developing world and expanding family planning services and information everywhere, we produce a world of good: Fertility rates decline; maternal and child health improve; food security increases; poverty decreases; education and economic opportunities expand; and degradation of the environment is curtailed. In discussions about family planning and its many benefits, the health of nature is often an afterthought. Far too often it is overlooked entirely. We tend to see the well-being of people as somehow distinct from the well-being of the Earth. Some even see the environment as being in “competition” with humans. The obvious truth, although unacknowledged by some, is that we are not separate or distinct from nature. Our hopes and our fate are inextricably linked to the fate of the natural world. We are part of a complex web of interdependent life, and our welfare depends upon the health of the whole. When life took hold on this planet it produced millions of species that have lived and evolved and produced both wondrous beauty and diversity. We modern humans are both products of and beneficiaries of that evolutionary process. We are, however, acting as ungrateful beneficiaries. Scientists tell us that we are exterminating our fellow plant and animal species at a rate that is a hundred or even a thousand times faster than the natural rate of extinction. Leading biologists now warn that human numbers and activity are triggering the “sixth mass extinction,” the largest since the dinosaurs were wiped out 65 million years ago. As a young man, after earning undergraduate and graduate degrees in biology with a specialization in ecology and evolution, my interest in moths and butterflies was so strong that I seriously considered becoming a lepidopterist. Many of the species that piqued my interest as a college student are now in danger of becoming extinct. Even the common Danaus plexippus, otherwise known as the monarch butterfly, is fast approaching endangered status. Its winter habitat in Mexico has shrunk dramatically. Biologists warn that herbicide use is decreasing availability of the milkweed plants, limiting a primary food source for monarchs and thus diminishing their numbers. But it’s not just the monarch butterfly that is imperiled. Every year there are fresh reports about the senseless slaughter of elephants, rhinos, lions, tigers, and other “megafauna.” Some of their population decline is attributable to poachers seeking to harvest ivory or other body parts, but much of the dramatic decline has been caused by an ever-increasing loss of habitat. Many of these animals live in areas, like sub-Saharan Africa, where human fertility rates equate to a doubling of the human population every thirty or forty years. In my college days, we were taught that, since the end of the last Ice Age about 12,000 years ago, humans have been living in the Holocene Epoch, but our impact upon the planet and its environment has become so great that some geologists today suggest we change the epoch’s name to the “Anthropocene,” or “Age of Man.” To most scientists, that development is a frightening prospect; it means that we are changing the planet—for the worse—on a global scale. Some scientists, though a distinct minority, insist that we can “manage” this change; that we can strike a balance with nature that will allow us to feed, clothe, and meet the economic aspirations of an additional 3 or 4 billion people moving forward. As well illustrated by the photographs in this book, that line of thought reflects the worst kind of wishful thinking. Our 7.2 billion on the planet are already doing grave harm to the biosphere. Several decades ago, a cartoon character named “Pogo” made popular the oft-quoted saying: “We have met the enemy and he is us.” We might say this today in regards to the challenge the world faces, only it’s not a comic matter. If we are to reduce severe poverty, defeat hunger, and bring about a sustainable world, we must achieve change on a global scale, beyond just our consumption habits, and that change must begin with us. This conviction led me to work for the Population Institute more than forty years ago and subsequently spurred me to establish the Population Media Center fifteen years ago. Despite the widespread belief that simply making contraceptives more widely available can stabilize world population, there are other reasons why women in the developing world end up having more children than they might otherwise desire, as revealed through the Demographic and Health Surveys supported by USAID (United States Agency for International Development). In reality, many of these women have no reproductive choice. Child brides often have nothing to say about how many of their own children they will have or when. Some women abstain from using contraceptives because of misinformation or blatant lies about the possible side effects or risks of using modern methods of contraception. Still other women have more children than they want because of fatalism, or religious teachings, or insistent in-laws who want more grandchildren. At the Population Media Center (PMC) we create long-running serial dramas (soap operas) that serve to educate women about their contraceptive choices. Using a methodology based upon the “social learning” theories of the great Stanford psychologist Albert Bandura and the programs developed by Miguel Sabido, the vice president of Televisa in Mexico, we work with in-country teams to develop long-running dramas, generally broadcast via radio, that provide positive role models for men and women in the developing world. Our listening audiences learn from popular “transitional” characters who are torn between good and bad influences. In the process the characters and the listening audience discover the benefits of family planning and small family norms. Our programs also address the deeper social stereotypes that demean women and effectively deny them reproductive choice. When girls are educated, women are empowered, and gender equity is achieved, women tend to have smaller, healthier families. By changing attitudes and behavior toward girls and women we can improve their lives, the well-being of their families, and prospects for the planet and our posterity. At PMC we also use the “Sabido methodology,” as it is now known, to achieve positive social change with respect to environmental conservation. In Rwanda, our radio programs have encouraged farmers to participate in reforestation programs aimed at restoring natural habitats and preserving the land for future generations. Similarly, we can use our programs to alter harmful consumption patterns or promote sustainable agricultural practices. The potential is enormous. WHILE THE OBSTACLES before humanity are real, we should be careful not to overestimate the difficulty of following the path of the United Nations’ lowest population projections, which show a possible global stabilization as soon as the year 2050. Achieving this stabilization is a challenge, but it is far from an insurmountable one. The United Nations estimates that it would cost an additional $3.5 billion per year to provide contraceptive information and services to the more than 220 million women in the developing world who want to avoid a pregnancy but who are not using a modern method of contraception. (That’s less than 4 percent of what Americans spend on beer each year.) That’s a very small price to pay for a more sustainable world. Combine that investment with efforts through entertainment mass media and other means to change attitudes and behavior towards girls and women in the developing world, and we can stabilize world population at 8.3 billion and then begin a gradual reduction in the total number of humans on the planet as soon as 2050. If we can hew to the United Nations’ low variant demographic projection, by 2100 global population would be back down to 6.7 billion—more than 4 billion fewer than can be expected in the business-as-usual, medium variant projection of the human population trajectory. Such numbers may seem incomprehensible but the reality is that these two possible futures—one of 6 billion versus 10 billion humans to feed, clothe, educate, and employ—is the difference between a world of scarcity and nightmarish suffering for much of humanity and a world in which it may be possible to balance the needs of people and nature. Put another way, a population difference of 4 billion—the result of either staying complacent or working hard to share family planning tools and information around the globe—is 46 percent more than the current combined populations of North America, Central America, South America, Oceania, Europe, and Africa (roughly 2.7 billion)! While I am deeply concerned about the future of humanity and the planet, I’m not a pessimist. It’s not too late. There are things that we can do to achieve a harmonious world and many of the steps that are required, like PMC’s radio programs, do not require an enormous investment of resources. Time, however, is beginning to run out. Given the central role that population dynamics will play in determining the welfare of future generations, what the world needs today is a wake-up call. This book is that wake-up call. The photographs to follow are emotionally jarring. The thoughts expressed herein are not reassuring; they are deeply provocative. But that is the nature of wake-up calls. The way that human numbers and behavior are transforming the Earth, undermining its ability to support the human family and the rest of life, is apparent for all to see. The reality of this urgent moment calls us to think, to care, and to act.

Overpopulation: Impacts and 6 Solutions for 2024 (Guide)

Liza pivoted from environmental consulting and doing impact assessments to writing about her two most counter-intuitive but passionate interests: sustainability and the importance of living an eco-conscious life; and marketing, martech, and AI. When she’s not writing, you can find her living a zero-waste-adjacent life in South Africa, falling down research rabbit holes on the internet, or out hiking with her dogs.

Introduction

Liza Shuttleworth pivoted from a career in environmental impact assessment and consulting to becoming a full-time writer, focusing on her most passionate (and diverse) interests: ecological conservation, sustainability, waste management and marketing, mar-tech, and AI.

Her professional portfolio reflects a diverse array of writing and consultancy roles spanning environmental science, marketing, and technology.

She has written for prestigious online and print publications on topics that include sustainability, climate change advocacy, waste management, and marine conservation, as well as marketing strategy, mar-tech, and the proliferation of AI tools for marketing.

Liza has an extensive professional background, having held management and consultancy positions within the environmental science, waste management, technology, and marketing sectors.

Her writing and editorial positions for both print and online publications have shaped content in ways that educate and inspire readers about sustainable living, climate change, and the power of innovative technology to overcome challenges in any setting.

Liza's academic background is rooted in a Bachelor of Social Science, focusing on Media and English. Beyond this, she has pursued tertiary qualifications in geography, psychology, and marketing, further enriching her knowledge base and contributing to her multi-faceted approach to writing and advocacy.

Overpopulation solutions have become a focal point at the intersection of a wide range of interest groups, from human rights to environmental impacts and climate change.

As human population numbers continue to boom globally, concerns are over the impacts of overpopulation on the natural environment, finite and renewable resources, and environmental degradation have escalated to unsustainable levels.

Several strategies are needed for reducing overpopulation, including gender equality, family planning resource access, education, and sustainable development programs.

We can work to achieve a balance between the growth of the human population and the planet’s carrying capacity by providing people with the information and means to make wise decisions about the size of their families, promoting women’s rights and reproductive health, and creating equal opportunities for economic growth.

Furthermore, in order to ensure a sustainable future for future generations, it is essential that expenditures be made on sustainable technologies and practices that reduce resource use and ease the effects on the environment.

In this article, we briefly discuss overpopulation, the numbers, and observable trends, the impacts of overpopulation on the natural environment, and some of the solutions to overpopulation that can mitigate these negative impacts.

Keep reading to discover solutions to overpopulation and find out how you can start making a difference today!

What is Overpopulation?

Overpopulation occurs when there are more people than the planet can sustain and our needs outstrip the carrying capacity of the earth.

In ecology, carrying capacity refers to the number of individuals in a specific region or habitat that can be sustained in that area, without the loss of lives due to insufficient resources like food, water and shelter, and without irreversible degradation of natural resources.

In simple terms, overpopulation leads to a situation where resources are depleted quicker than they can renew themselves naturally, which leads to fewer resources and in turn a limitation on the number of lives that can be sustained.

This can also result from overconsumption , which often goes hand in hand with overpopulation. Overconsumption refers to the use and depletion of resources at a rate that outpaces the ability to replenish those resources. Even smaller populations can consume too much, too quickly, if how they’re using resources is unsustainable.

Overpopulation: The Numbers

In 2023 there are over 8 billion people alive on earth. Experts expect that if something doesn’t change, we could see 9.7 billion people by 2050 and 11 billion by 2100.

It took over 2 million years for the global population to reach 1 billion in the year 1800. That number doubled in 130 years to 2 billion in 1930. It took just 44 years for that number to double again, to 4 billion in 1974.  As of 2020, the number has almost doubled again to 7.8 billion in just 46 years!

Have a look at the video below, by Data is Beautiful on YouTube, for a nice visual representation of how the numbers change over time:

What Causes Overpopulation?

Overpopulation is the result of too many births and too few deaths, low emigration and high immigration in a specific area. Globally, overpopulation is caused by rapid population growth due to advances in medicine and technology leading to fewer mortalities and longer lifespan, poverty, lack of education, and restricted access to birth control and family planning.

However, how this came about is more complex:

There are many, interrelated, factors that lead to overpopulation but there are two major factors that play a crucial role in the scale and rapid rate of our population growth:

Advances in medicine have led to fewer deaths from diseases, especially diseases that once took large numbers of lives in short periods, like smallpox and polio.

The result is fewer people dying but also longer life expectancy, which means that as new generations are born, preceding generations are still present and the overall population size increases faster.

Advances in technology , especially in agriculture, have led to our ability to feed population numbers that were thought to be impossible as recently as the 1960s. In 1968, American biologist Paul Ehrlich wrote ‘The Population Bomb’, in which he stated that “in the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death…”.

His theory was that population growth would outstrip our ability to feed the population and everyone would starve to death.

However, in the late 1960s the ‘Green Revolution’ took food production to levels never seen before and the global population continued to grow.

The video below, by BBC Earth Lab on YouTube, gives a brief overview of the population boom and how we got where we are today:

Better natal practices have served to mitigate one of the biggest, and saddest reasons why population growth rates were lower in the past, namely that child and infant mortality rates were much higher. 

Even though birth rates were higher between the 17 th and 21 st centuries, averaging around 6 children per woman, the struggle for survival meant that many children did not grow old enough to have children themselves.

Within the last century, global child mortality rates have decreased from around 25% to just 2.9%. The steepest decline has been within the last 50 years. 

Advances in natal healthcare and surgical safety mean that though people in developed countries are having fewer children, more of those children are growing up to live full lives and start families of their own.

Lack of education in developing countries has resulted in a poor understanding of family planning and the continuation of traditional beliefs like the perception that many offspring are a sign of wealth.

In many African countries, children are viewed as potential workers who can contribute to the family’s needs, incentivizing larger family units.

Effects of Overpopulation on the Environment

Overpopulation and overconsumption are closely linked to negative environmental outcomes.

There is now no part of the earth that is not affected in some negative way by human activities. This is magnified by the ever-growing demands our ever-growing population places on the planet.

Increased human population sizes and increased demand for natural resources have led to severe negative impacts.

The video below, by The Knowledge Exchange and Sir David Attenborough on YouTube, briefly covers the impacts of human activity on the natural environment, as amplified by overpopulation:

While over 70% of the earth’s surface is covered with water, only around 1% of that is fresh and accessible. Increases in immigration to developed countries place massive pressure on freshwater supplies in countries like the USA, UK, and Australia. 

Increasing populations in developed countries increase the need for intensive farming practices , which damage ecosystems, and increase agricultural pollution.

Agricultural pollution has been responsible for some of the biggest environmental declines on the planet, resulting in the permanent loss of biodiversity. 

Increased demand for consumer goods and transportation results in heavier mining for fuel resources, and damaging practices like fracking which pollute groundwater, release greenhouse gases, and can cause earthquakes.

These changes have a ‘domino effect’ on ecosystems around the world and interrupt or destroy environmental cycles that are crucial for sustaining life on earth.

The 20 th century saw a marked increase in the effects of natural disasters stemming from events like El Nino. Fires, flooding, and erosion devastate ecosystems and necessitate higher immigration to safer areas.

Effects of overpopulation on the environment: 

• Habitat loss and deforestation
• Loss of biodiversity and mass species extinction
• Land, water and air pollution
• Soil degradation and desertification
• Depletion of finite resources
• Use of renewable resources at unsustainable rates
• Climate change due to excessive greenhouse gas emissions
• Oceanic acidification

6 Overpopulation Solutions for Individuals

Overpopulation has no simple (or at least simple and ethical) solution. There are differing theories about how to tackle the problem and different approaches or viewpoints.

Some see population as a problem that is gradually solving itself due to demographic transition , where populations tend to have fewer children as their economic and educational circumstances improve, and advances in education and female economic empowerment that allow women to choose if and when they will have children.

Others feel that the solution to overpopulation lies in more proactive measures like economic incentives to have fewer children or regulating the number of children allowed per family. These kinds of measures quickly lead to social and ethical considerations that are difficult to solve.

Mitigating the impacts of overpopulation is perhaps a simpler route to take for individuals who are not responsible for things like government policies.  On an individual level, there is much we can do to support a decrease in birth rates and a shift away from overconsumption.

These are 6 overpopulation solutions and things you can do, today, to support the earth as it tries to sustain our ever-growing numbers:

#1: Support Education for Women and Girls

Numerous studies (such as this one by Harvard Health Review ) have shown that there is a direct and significant link between improved education for women and girls and a lower reproduction rate.

The Harvard study cited above states that “case studies of improved secondary education for females offer hope for the future. A 1998 study of Niger discovered a 31% decrease in fertility rate among women who had completed secondary school. A comparable 1997 study in Yemen found a 33% decrease”.

These findings have been echoed over and over again .

Supporting the education of women to at least secondary school level is a definitive impact on reducing birth rates. It also improves the spacing between children and improves the health and quality of life for those children.

This has a knock-on effect, where the children of better-educated mothers are also more likely to be educated themselves.

#2: Support Initiatives that Provide Education and Access to Family Planning

Accurate, factual and unbiased education for children, adolescents and adults about reproduction, sexual health and consent are essential to reduce the number of unintentional births that occur each year.  Approximately 40% of pregnancies are unintended, which translates to around 85 million unintended pregnancies per year.

Easy, affordable, and reliable access to contraceptives and birth control is a major factor in preventing unplanned births and is one of the stronger overpopulation solutions.

Improved education improves the use and efficacy of these but they must be available and accessible.

In poorer countries, access is lacking and leads to millions of unplanned births every year.

The impact of planned families can also be reduced by using eco-friendly baby products, like biodegradable nappies and non-synthetic wet wipes . Small changes can have a big impact on your impact!

#3: Invest in and Support Responsible and Innovative Agriculture

Agriculture is responsible for 80% of global deforestation, biodiversity loss, habitat loss, soil and water pollution, and even desertification .

From poorly managed small farms, overgrazing and logging to huge commercial farms that exploit local water supplies and encroach on natural habitats, the environmental impact of agriculture are huge.

Responsible farming techniques, education and pressure from consumers can go a long way to improving this. However, if we want to keep producing enough food for a booming population, we need to start thinking differently about food production.

Check out this incredible video by Freethink on YouTube about how the Netherlands produce food:

Just as the advances in technology and food production got us to 7 billion without starvation, we need it to get us to 11 billion without causing ecological collapse.

Vertical farming, in urban areas, to feed local populations also uses controlled growing conditions, indoors, to grow food as efficiently and rapidly as possible.

Their reduced physical footprint means that more food can be produced using less land, which negates things like habitat loss and deforestation for agriculture.

#4: Consume Less, Consume Better and Choose Sustainable Sources

Overconsumption is a major driving force behind the depletion of natural resources at unsustainable rates. Wealthy countries like the US consume more per capita than underdeveloped countries that have higher population numbers. Overpopulation solutions must go hand-in-hand with overconsumption solutions to be effective at all.

This video, by DW Planet A on YouTube, shares an interesting perspective on consumption and overconsumption:

Choose to consume less. Responsible and thoughtful consumption can drastically improve the ecological footprint of every individual and every industry.

From energy, fuel and transportation choices to the kinds of food you buy , and the clothes you wear. Choosing zero-waste toiletries, like shampoo and conditioner bars ,   natural soaps , and zero-waste toothpaste , plastic-free deodorant and switching to more sustainable cleaning products, like eco-friendly laundry detergent and zero-waste dish soap , is also a good way to lower your environmental impact. There are always better options available.

Research your products and the companies that supply them and then support the ones that put the environment first. Look for companies that use renewable resources, that farm or manufacture sustainably and that use ethical labor practices .

#5: Choose Renewable Energy Resources

One of the biggest sources of environmental degradation and pollution is energy production from fossil fuels. Overpopulation solutions are lacking and incomplete if they do not include changes to energy production.

Coal and oil are finite resources and their overexploitation is not sustainable. In addition, the process of using them for power and fuel generates massive water pollution, land degradation and air pollution.

Choosing to buy and support renewable energy resources like solar and wind power makes reduces the footprint of your energy consumption. It also supports the shift away from fossil fuels at a larger scale when governments and industries see the buy-in of consumers.

Supplement your power needs using solar or wind power. Choose to support the businesses that do the same. Support the renewable energy wherever you can – be it by voting on policies, investing in the industry, or simply choosing to use it when it becomes available in your area.

#6: Actively Participate in Reducing Waste and Pollution

Zero-waste is a trend that has proved it is here to stay. But you don’t have to go full zero to make an impact! Any measures you take to prevent waste from going to landfill or polluting natural environments makes a difference.

Small changes that add up:

• Choose biodegradable materials
• Refuse plastics where you can
• Choose refillable zero-waste products , like toothpaste tablets and mouthwash tablets.
• Recycle the plastics you can’t refuse
• Use products that do not come in plastic packaging, like zero-waste soaps and shampoo bars
• Choose items made from recycled materials
• Make compost at home
• Choose eco-friendly alternatives, like bamboo toothbrushes and wooden soap holders, over plastic ones
• Sell or swap things you don’t need
• Choose brands that support sustainability

In conclusion, overpopulation and overconsumption are of great concern for the natural environment and human life.

They’re associated with biodiversity loss, habitat destruction, pollution, unsustainable rates of consumption for renewable resources and rapid depletion of finite resources.

They’re directly related to climate change and global warming.

Scientists have long been warning us of an impending ecological collapse that could end life as we know if for humans and the planet itself.

Overpopulation solutions are complex and multifaceted but there are solutions and at an individual level, there is a lot we can do to mitigate the environmental impact of our existence and continued population growth.

The choices we make day-to-day and the causes, initiatives, and industries that choose to support all make a difference in how we consume resources and how the consumption of those resources impacts the planet.

References and Further Reading

Active Sustainability: Causes and Consequences of Overpopulation

Euro Scientist: What Causes Population?

Everything Connects: Effects of Human Overpopulation

Slate: About That Overpopulation Problem

The Balance: The Environmental Impacts of Overpopulation

Vox: We’ve worried about overpopulation for centuries. And we’ve always been wrong.

Wikipedia: Human Overpopulation

World Bank Blogs: Female Education and Childbearing: A Closer Look at the Data

Frequently Asked Questions

What is overpopulation.

Overpopulation occurs when the number of people on earth surpass the earth's carrying capacity. Too many people, consuming too much in terms of natural resources. Read the full guide for more detail on what overpopulation is.

How many people are on earth now?

There are currently around 7.8 billion people on the earth. Read the full article to find out more about the past and future numbers of people on earth.

Does overpopulation cause climate change?

This is a complicated question to answer but human activity is a leading cause of climate change and the more humans there are on earth, the greater our impact on the earth. Read the full article to learn more about how population and climate change are connected.

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Overpopulation and the Dangers of Ignoring the Issue

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Essay on Overpopulation Causes, Effects and Solutions

Overpopulation is a global problem of today. It has reached an alarming extent and demands a quick remedy. Family planning is considered to be the most effective way to check this problem. Family planning helps to create a balance between the population and the resources of a country it means that the population should match the available resources. Any difference gives rise to the problem. On the whole family planning is useful for the happiness and welfare of the individual, the country, and the whole humanity at large.

“It is individuals that populate the world.”

It is the basic right of every human being to get certain basic necessities of life These include proper food, clothing, housing, medical treatment, education, and employment. The availability of these facilities results in peace and prosperity and moral and social welfare of the people. But any laps Creates. moral and Social Crisis.

The overpopulated country is the one that does not have enough basic material facilities to provide to its citizens. Most of the developing countries including Pakistan are the worst victims of overpopulation and need family planning.[the_ad id=”17141″]

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• People are ignorant. They are not aware of the disastrous results of over-population so they overproduce children.
• Many simple people quite wrongly believe that it is irreligious to produce fewer Children It is quite baseless.
• Early marriages are common so these result in battalions of children.
• There is no proper jong term economic planning. So the population increases but resources decrease.
• Poor people do not have many pleasures in life. So they enjoy their married life. It increases the population.

Disastrous Effects

• Overpopulation increases the demand for more jobs but employment opportunities decrease. As a result, many people are left without jobs.
• Second is dearness. According to an economic principle, supply decreases when the demand increases. overpopulation does this.
• In an overpopulated country, people cannot get a sufficient amount of good food. The result is poor health and countless diseases.
• Overpopulation leads to Crowded and Congested living. Houses are narrow, dark, and ill-ventilated. Streets are dirty. Drains stink and gutters overflow.
• In an overpopulated country, people are unhappy.

[the_ad id=”17142″]

“No country can be overpopulated if there is a work for everyone.”

Family planning is the best measure to check overpopulation that causes countless social evils. The following measures can help in effective family planning

[tie_list type=”lightbulb”]

• Proper Spacing: With proper spacing between the birth of the children population can control over-population.
• Limiting the Number: Number of children should be according to income and resources.
• Increase in Resources: It is necessary to increase mineral, agricultural and industrial resources of a country.
• The sense of Responsibility: Everyone must realize his role in national prosperity.
• Role of Govt: The Govt should propagate through media to make people aware of the horrors of over-population.

In the end, we can say that overpopulation is a curse and a permanent threat for the development of the country if we need to keep pace with other nations of the world we should stop the flood of the population. In this regard, only proper family planning can help in creating balance in society and it is the only way to create a happy world.

3 thoughts on “ Essay on Overpopulation Causes, Effects and Solutions ”

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April 2, 2024

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Hundreds of Philippine schools suspend classes over heat danger

by Cecil MORELLA

Hundreds of schools in the Philippines, including dozens in the capital Manila, suspended in-person classes on Tuesday due to dangerous levels of heat, education officials said.

The country's heat index measures what a temperature feels like, taking into account humidity.

The index was expected to reach the "danger" level of 42 degrees Celsius in Manila on Tuesday and 43C on Wednesday, with similar levels in a dozen other areas of the country, the state weather forecaster said.

The actual highest recorded temperature for the metropolis on Tuesday was 35.7C, below the record of 38.6C reached on May 17, 1915.

Local officials across the main island of Luzon, the central islands, and the southern island of Mindanao suspended in-person classes or shortened school hours to avoid the hottest part of the day, education ministry officials said.

The Department of Education was unable to provide an exact number of schools affected.

March, April and May are typically the driest months of the year for swathes of the tropical country. This year conditions have been exacerbated by the El Niño weather phenomenon.

Primary and secondary schools in Quezon, the most populous part of the capital, were ordered to shut while schools in other areas were given the option by local officials to shift to remote learning.

Some schools in Manila also reduced class hours.

A heat index of 42-51C can cause heat cramps and exhaustion, with heat stroke "probable with continued exposure", the weather forecaster said in an advisory.

Heat cramps and heat exhaustion are also possible at 33-41C, according to the forecaster.

The orders affected hundreds of schools in the Mindanao provinces of Cotabato, South Cotabato and Sultan Kudarat, as well as the cities of Cotabato, General Santos and Koronadal, Zamboanga regional education ministry spokeswoman Rea Halique told AFP.

Five schools in Mindanao's Zamboanga region also shut schools for the day, though local officials in the area did not recommend the suspension of in-person classes in other schools, the ministry said.

"At the Pagadian City Pilot School one (kindergarten) student and two in the elementary school suffered nosebleeds," Zamboanga regional education ministry official Dahlia Paragas told AFP.

"All of them are back at home in stable condition and were advised to avoid exposure to the sunlight."

Cotabato city experienced the highest heat index in Mindanao, reaching 42C on Monday and Tuesday, the state forecaster reported.

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Guest Essay

Is This the End of Academic Freedom?

By Paula Chakravartty and Vasuki Nesiah

Dr. Chakravartty is a professor of media, communication and culture at New York University, where Dr. Nesiah is a professor of practice in human rights and international law.

​At New York University, the spring semester began with a poetry reading. Students and faculty gathered in the atrium of Bobst Library. At that time, about 26,000 Palestinians had already been killed in Israel’s horrific war on Gaza; the reading was a collective act of bearing witness.

The last poem read aloud was titled “If I Must Die.” It was written, hauntingly, by a Palestinian poet and academic named Refaat Alareer who was killed weeks earlier by an Israeli airstrike. The poem ends: “If I must die, let it bring hope — let it be a tale.”

Soon after those lines were recited, the university administration shut the reading down . Afterward, we learned that students and faculty members were called into disciplinary meetings for participating in this apparently “disruptive” act; written warnings were issued.

We have both taught at N.Y.U. for over a decade and believe we are in a moment of unparalleled repression. Over the past six months, since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza, we have seen the university administration fail to adequately protect dissent on campus, actively squelching it instead. We believe what we are witnessing in response to student, staff and faculty opposition to the war violates the very foundations of academic freedom.

While N.Y.U. says that it remains committed to free expression on campus and that its rules about and approach to protest activity haven’t changed, students and faculty members in solidarity with the Palestinian people have found the campus environment alarmingly constrained.

About a week after Hamas’s attacks in October, the Grand Staircase in the Kimmel student center, a storied site of student protests , closed indefinitely; it has yet to reopen fully. A graduate student employee was reprimanded for putting up fliers in support of Palestinians on the student’s office door and ultimately took them down; that person is not the only N.Y.U. student to face some form of disciplinary consequence for pro-Palestinian speech or action. A resolution calling for the university to reaffirm protection of pro-Palestinian speech and civic activity on campus, passed by the elected Student Government Assembly in December, has apparently been stuck in a procedural black hole since.

The New York Police Department has become a pervasive presence on campus, with over 6,000 hours of officer presence added after the war broke out. Hundreds of faculty members have signed onto an open letter condemning the university’s “culture of fear about campus speech and activism.”

Such draconian interventions are direct threats to academic freedom.

At universities across the country, any criticism of Israel’s policies, expressions of solidarity with Palestinians, organized calls for a cease-fire or even pedagogy on the recent history of the land have all emerged as perilous speech. In a letter to university presidents in November, the A.C.L.U. expressed concern about “impermissible chilling of free speech and association on campus” in relation to pro-Palestinian student groups and views; since then, the atmosphere at colleges has become downright McCarthyite .

The donors, trustees, administrators and third parties who oppose pro-Palestinian speech seem to equate any criticism of the State of Israel — an occupying power under international law and one accused of committing war crimes — with antisemitism. To them, the norms of free speech are inherently problematic, and a broad definition of antisemitism is a tool for censorship . Outside funding has poured into horrifying doxxing and harassment campaigns. Pro-Israel surveillance groups like Canary Mission and CAMERA relentlessly target individuals and groups deemed antisemitic or critical of Israel. Ominous threats follow faculty and students for just expressing their opinions or living out their values.

To be clear, we abhor all expressions of antisemitism and wholeheartedly reject any role for antisemitism on our campuses. Equally, we believe that conflating criticism of Israel or Zionism with antisemitism is dangerous. Equating the criticism of any nation with inherent racism endangers basic democratic freedoms on and off campus. As the A.C.L.U. wrote in its November statement, a university “cannot fulfill its mission as a forum for vigorous debate” if it polices the views of faculty members and students, however much any of us may disagree with them or find them offensive.

In a wave of crackdowns on pro-Palestinian speech nationwide, students have had scholarships revoked, job offers pulled and student groups suspended. At Columbia, protesters have reported being sprayed by what they said was skunk, a chemical weapon used by the Israeli military; at Northwestern, two Black students faced criminal charges , later dropped, for publishing a pro-Palestinian newspaper parody; at Cornell, students were arrested during a peaceful protest . In a shocking episode of violence last fall, three Palestinian students , two of them wearing kaffiyehs, were shot while walking near the University of Vermont.

Many more cases of student repression on campuses are unfolding.

Academic freedom, as defined by the American Association of University Professors in the mid-20th century , provides protection for the pursuit of knowledge by faculty members, whose job is to educate, learn and research both inside and outside the academy. Not only does this resonate with the Constitution’s free speech protections ; international human rights law also affirms the centrality of academic freedom to the right to education and the institutional autonomy of educational institutions.

Across the United States, attacks on free speech are on the rise . In recent years, right-wing groups opposed to the teaching of critical race theory have tried to undermine these principles through measures including restrictions on the discussion of history and structural racism in curriculums, heightened scrutiny of lectures and courses that are seen to promote dissent and disciplinary procedures against academics who work on these topics.

What people may not realize is that speech critical of Israel’s occupation and apartheid policies has long been censored, posing persistent challenges to those of us who uphold academic freedom. Well before Oct. 7, speech and action at N.Y.U. in support of Palestinians faced intense and undue scrutiny.

Our students are heeding Refaat Alareer’s call to bear witness. They are speaking out — writing statements, organizing protests and responding to a plausible threat of genocide with idealism and conviction. As faculty members, we believe that college should be a time when students are encouraged to ask big questions about justice and the future of humanity and to pursue answers however disquieting to the powerful.

Universities must be places where students have access to specialized knowledge that shapes contemporary debates, where faculty members are encouraged to be public intellectuals, even when, or perhaps especially when, they are expressing dissenting opinions speaking truth to power. Classrooms must allow for contextual learning, where rapidly mutating current events are put into a longer historical timeline.

This is a high-stakes moment. A century ago, attacks on open discussion of European antisemitism, the criminalization of dissent and the denial of Jewish histories of oppression and dispossession helped create the conditions for the Holocaust. One crucial “never again” lesson from that period is that the thought police can be dangerous. They can render vulnerable communities targets of oppression. They can convince the world that some lives are not as valuable as others, justifying mass slaughter.

It is no wonder that students across the country are protesting an unpopular and brutal war that, besides Israel, only the United States is capable of stopping. It is extraordinary that the very institutions that ought to safeguard their exercise of free speech are instead escalating surveillance and policing, working on ever more restrictive student conduct rules and essentially risking the death of academic freedom.

From the Vietnam War to apartheid South Africa, universities have been important places for open discussion and disagreement about government policies, the historical record, structural racism and settler colonialism. They have also long served as sites of protest. If the university cannot serve as an arena for such freedoms, the possibilities of democratic life inside and outside the university gates are not only impoverished but under threat of extinction.

Paula Chakravartty is a professor of media, communication and culture at New York University, where Vasuki Nesiah is a professor of practice in human rights and international law. Both are members of the executive committee of the N.Y.U. chapter of the American Association of University Professors and members of N.Y.U.’s Faculty for Justice in Palestine.

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