Is increasing population a burden or a boon for the earth?
The United Nations estimates that on November 15, 2022, the human population in the world will reach eight billion.
Population growth has created a huge divide among the people. Some people are worried about it, while many people are telling it an unprecedented success story. In fact, an ideology is growing rapidly in the world that believes that we need more people.
In the year 2018, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos predicted a future when one billion humans would spread in our solar system. He announced that he was planning to achieve this goal.
Meanwhile, many people, including British broadcaster and historian of nature Sir David Attenborough, have called such a large population of humans the ‘Plague on Earth’.
According to this view, the environmental problems we are facing today, whether it is climate change, or loss of biodiversity, water crisis or land conflict, are all related to our population which has increased rapidly during the last few centuries. Is.
In 1994 the world population was only 5.5 billion. Then researchers from Stanford University in California calculated that the ideal size of the human population should be 1.5 to 2 billion.
So is the world’s population really that big? And what is the future of the global impact of humans?
a very old concern
Plato’s famous book ‘The Republic’ discusses about two imaginary kingdoms around 375 AD. While one is ‘healthy’, the other is ‘luxurious’ but ‘unhealthy’.
The population of another state likes to live a more luxurious life than what they need and spends a lot of money in it.
This morally dilapidated state eventually tries to capture neighboring lands and this effort eventually turns into war.
This state cannot handle the burden of its huge and greedy population without additional resources.
Taking the help of this story, Plato raised a question, which is relevant even today. What is the problem, the human population or its consumption of resources?
In his famous thesis, ‘An Essay on the Theory of Population’, published in 1798, Thomas Malthus mentioned the two basic instincts of humans ‘food and sex’.
When he took this conclusion to his logical conclusion, he explained that because of this, the situation of demand more than supply arises.
Malthus wrote, “When population is left uncontrolled, it grows in geometric proportion. Whereas the means of living increase only in an arithmetical ratio.
Simply put, the production and supply of resources increases at a much slower rate than the rate at which the population grows.
These words of Malthus had an immediate effect. This increased fear in many and anger in many, which was visible in the society for decades.
One group thought that something should be done to get the population out of control. The other group believed that attempts to control the population were absurd or immoral. This group was of the opinion that instead of controlling the population, they should do everything possible to increase the food supply.
When Malthus’s essay was published, there were only 800 million people on Earth.
However, modern concerns about the world’s overpopulation came to the fore in 1968, when Stanford University professor Paul Ehrlich and his wife Anne Ehrlich wrote a book called The Population Bomb.
This book was about New Delhi, the capital of India.
He narrated his experiences. One night when both of them were returning to the hotel by taxi, their taxi passed through some poor area. During that time, he got distracted seeing the crowd of humans on the streets.
The way he had described his experience, there was a lot of criticism. This criticism also came because at that time the population of London, the capital of Britain, was more than twice that of New Delhi.
The couple wrote extensively on the concern of the famine in their book. Both of them believed that famine would soon come in developing countries. He also expressed this apprehension about America, where people were beginning to feel the impact on the environment.
Much credit is given to his book for bringing to the fore most of today’s concerns being faced by overpopulation.
conflicting view
There are different estimates about when the world’s population will touch the maximum limit. But it is estimated that between 2070 and 2080, the maximum human population on Earth can reach between 9.4 to 10.4 billion.
The United Nations expects that if our population reaches the level of 10.4 billion, it will remain stable at that level for almost two decades. But after that the population phenomenon will start.
This presumption has created conflicting views about our future.
On the one hand, there are those who see the declining fertility rate in some areas as a crisis.
A demographer is so concerned with Britain’s falling birth rate that he has suggested a tax on childless people.
In the UK in 2019, an average of 1.65 children were born per woman. This is less than the birth rate needed to prevent population decline in 2075. However, due to migrants coming from other countries, the population will continue to increase.
On the other hand, there are those people who think that it is very important to slow down and stop the population growth of the world. They also believe that population growth can be controlled only through voluntary means without putting pressure on the people.
Such people believe that this will not only benefit the earth, but can also improve the lives of the world’s poorest people.
At the same time, some people believe that the debate about whether or not to reduce the growth rate of population is useless. They believe that the consumption of products by humans should be curbed.
They argue that the consumption of resources by a person has a greater impact on us. Therefore, by reducing your personal needs, the effect of a growing population can be reduced without affecting development in the poorest countries.
Due to the interest of Western countries in reducing the population growth of backward parts of the world, it is alleged that they have a sense of racism. This is also because Europe and North America together are very densely populated regions. impact on environment However, beyond this debate, the statistics of human impact on the earth are shocking.
According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Agency (FAO), 38% of the Earth’s surface is used to produce food and other products (such as fuel) for humans or their animals. This area is about five crore square kilometers.
Our ancestors once lived among many giant creatures on Earth, but today humans are the most effective vertebrate species on Earth.
In terms of weight, humans have the highest percentage of weight in vertebrates at 32. At the same time, the figure of wild animals is only one percent. The rest are cattle.
According to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the world’s wild animal population has decreased by two-thirds between 1970 and 2020. But in the same period the world’s population has more than doubled.
In fact, as human influence has increased, so have many changes in the environment. Many big environmentalists and naturalists of the world have expressed their concern about this.
In 2013, Attenborough wrote in the Radio Times magazine, “The solution to all our environmental problems is easy when the population is low and it becomes impossible to solve it when the population is high.”
Caring for the betterment of humanity, many people have decided to have fewer children or not even a single child.
Over time, the number of women who do not have children is increasing. These women have declared that until the ‘climate emergency’ and the problem of extinction of animals are not resolved, then they will go on a ‘birth strike’.
Today it is widely believed that people are constantly putting pressure on the limited resources of the world. For this, it is now being told by celebrating ‘Earth Overshoot Day’.
Every year on this day it is estimated that humanity has exploited all the biological resources to the level that the earth can sustainably replenish.
In 2010 it was celebrated on 8 August, while in 2022 its date was 28 July.
Jennifer Scuba, author of the book ‘8 Billion and Counting: How the Sex and Migration Shape Our World’, writes, “Is the problem with too many humans or the resources we use, or both. I can’t even imagine how more humans can prove to be better for the environment.
However, Scuba points out that the idea of a ‘population bomb’ coming soon, which will destroy the Earth, is now out of date.
According to her, when this idea was given, the average fertility rate of women in 127 countries of the world was five or more.
At that time, the trends of increasing population seemed really alarming. They believe that due to this the increasing population has instilled a panic in the minds of many generations, which is still alive today.
“But today the number of countries producing more than five children on average is only eight,” she says. So I think it’s important to realize that now those trends have changed.
dream of a happy future
Demography not only affects the environment and economy, but it is also a huge hidden force, which also enhances the quality of life of the people.
According to Alex Ageh, professor of global health at Drexel University in Pennsylvania, the number of people in a country is not the most important thing.
Instead, the rate of population growth or decline determines its future.
“In many countries, especially in southern Africa, fertility rates have dropped and contraceptive use has increased, which is good news.”
At the same time, many countries in Central Africa still have high rates of population growth due to high fertility rates and the potential for longevity.
“In many places this rate is more than 2.5, which is very high,” he says. In many countries, the population will double every 20 years.
According to him, “I think the conversation about size and numbers has gone astray.”
“Just think of a city whose population is doubling every 10 years. Does any government really have the resources it needs every 10 years to keep the coverage of the services there?
“Economists think that a large population is good for many different outcomes, but the big question is, over how many years has the population been increasing?”
