Conversations about overpopulation can quickly become controversial because they beg the question: Who exactly is the cause of the problem and what, if anything, should be done about it?
Basically, overpopulation is an undesirable situation in which the current population exceeds the Earth's real carrying capacity. With the world's population growing at an extraordinary pace, the resources available to deal with this increase are diminishing. It's become the source of several other societal problems, including unemployment, starvation, and homelessness.
According to a study, the present population of 7.9 billion people would rise to 8.5 billion by the year 2030. Nations in the world's fastest-growing regions, such as Africa and America, are still facing a scarcity of food and water supplies.
Overpopulation has numerous reasons that are impacted by a variety of elements such as economic, cultural, religious, as well as personal concerns. An imbalance between births and deaths is the fundamental (and arguably most visible) driver of population increase. As per the World Health Organization, the worldwide infant mortality rate has dropped, with 4.1 million newborn deaths in 2017 relative to 8.8 million in 1990. (WHO). Of course, this is good news for public health.
Simultaneously, lifespans are growing all across the world. Those of us alive now will most certainly live considerably longer than our forefathers and mothers. Thanks to improvements in medicine, technologies, as well as basic hygiene, global average life expectancy has more than quadrupled since 1900.
The second most important cause of overpopulation is the lack of family planning. Most developing nations have a large population of people who are illiterate, live below the poverty line, and have little knowledge about family planning. Getting their children married at a young age increases their chances of having additional children. Those people are oblivious to the negative consequences of overpopulation, and their lack of value education leads them to avoid family planning measures.
Nowadays, there are various cutting-edge treatments available for fertility. It has come out to be practical for couples who can't contemplate experiencing richness treatment procedures and having their own children, thanks to current mechanical advancements as well as additional disclosures in therapeutic sciences. Currently, there are effective prescriptions that can increase the likelihood of conception and speed up the birth rate. In addition to that, today's pregnancies are undoubtedly safer due to modern techniques.
“To Overcome Poverty, We Need More Hands”, this is a kind of belief that has led people to give birth to more and more children, eventually giving rise to overpopulation. When considering overpopulation, however, we must remember that there is also a mental component. For many years, a small portion of the population had enough money to live comfortably. The others faced poverty and planned to have large families to adjust for the high infant mortality rate. Families that have been in need, have endured terrible occurrences, or just require additional hands to work are a major factor in overpopulation. In comparison to previous generations, the bulk of these extra children now survive and consume resources that are not abundant in nature.
Furthermore, it is only natural that as the global population grows, so will the demands upon supplies. As the population grows, so does the need for food, water, shelter, energy, healthcare, transport, and other necessities. All of this consumption adds to environmental degradation, increasing conflicts, and an increased chance of large-scale calamities such as pandemics.
Ecological degradation is a major consequence of overpopulation, as mentioned earlier. Increasing population will certainly result in far more deforestation, less biodiversity, as well as increased pollution and emission, all of which will lead to global warming. Many experts believe that unless we take steps to help limit future population increase in the second half of this century, the added stress on earth could lead to catastrophic ecological upheaval and breakdown, perhaps jeopardizing the survival of civilization on Earth as we know it.
Each and every increase in the world's population has an influence on the earth's wellbeing. According to Wynes and Nicholas (2017), in industrialized nations, a family with one less kid may cut emissions by 58.6 tonnes CO2-equivalent annually.
Scarcity resulting from environmental damage and overcrowding has the potential to promote violence and political upheaval. Battles over water, housing, and energy supplies are already raging in the Middle East as well as other parts of the world, and the unrest is only going to become worse as the world's population rises. In other words, overpopulation leads to a rise in disputes.
Moreover, a chance of catastrophic events as well as epidemics is greatly increased. Many of the recent new diseases that have wreaked havoc on people throughout the world, such as COVID-19, Zika virus or Ebola, began their lives in animals or insects before being transmitted to human beings.
Humans are losing natural habitats and getting into more frequent contact with wildlife, which is one of the reasons the globe is approaching "a time of heightened epidemic activity." Now that we're in the middle of a pandemic, it's apparent how impossible it is to maintain social isolation in a world where over 8 billion people live.
Now the question arises; what can be done? When it comes to managing overpopulation, it's critical to use an empowering strategy while uniting against anyone promoting the use of compulsion or aggression to solve our issues. The combined efforts of expanding reproductive health information, enhancing women's autonomy, and refuting commonly held contraceptive misconceptions will have a significant impact on the global population trend.
In addition, China took a major step towards the control of population growth, i.e. ‘the one child policy’. The one-child policy was a Chinese government initiative that was adopted countrywide in 1980 to restrict most Chinese families to having just one baby. The program was implemented to tackle the nation's rate of population growth, which is something the government deemed to be excessively fast.
Therefore, it can be successfully concluded that changes in reproductive behavior can be influenced by raising awareness regarding family planning options as well as the environmental and economic advantages of having smaller households.