Population Explosion - A Threat to Environment?

From the dawn of civilization, humans are evolving day and they are increasing their numbers as an individual at the same time. For a broad idea, the human population in the 17th century was around 1 billion, and now in 2021 it is 7.8 billion, and as predicted it will be about 11.2 billion at the end of the 21st century. Now in the present time, it became the root of most of the major problems that our earth and humanity itself are facing.

Impacts on Environment

As mentioned above, human population growth is the root of all the major problems in this world right now. Those problems can be differentiated into two and the basis will be either if population growth is directly causing the complications or it is indirectly causing that trouble. 

Some of the problems that are directly caused by the human population growth are- deforestation, climate change, global warming, food shortage, unemployment, illiteracy, pollution, and many countless others. 

Few problems that are indirectly caused by overpopulation are- loss of forest area, loss of habitat for animals, extinction of rare species from the food web, and many more. Though these are caused indirectly, they have major effects on the whole ecosystem or environment.

How These Problems are Linked?

You may think that how all these problems may link to each other. There’s a saying in Hindi that talks about essentials for a human to survive and that is “Roti, Kapda Aur Makaan” and here roti refers to food, kapda refers to clothes and makaan refers to the shelter. 

So, let’s start with this- if the population increased, then humans will need more space to accommodate the newly formed community and this will lead to deforestation. Now we have shelter and the next thing is food and for that, we again depend on forest and because of overpopulation food shortage occurs. The next thing is clothes in the list of essentials and that too comes from the forest.

So, we are eating our resources at optimum, and because of our essentials, we sacrificed a huge area of forests, and that caused the loss in the habitat of many animals causing their extinction. Unemployment, illiteracy is also caused because present resources and infrastructure couldn’t cope up with the increasing population. 

According to scientists like the earth had faced 5 mass extinctions in the past and this huge population is driving our earth towards the 6th mass extinction that will manmade.

 

Threats Facing by Planet at Once

The major threat due to this population explosion is Global warming and Climate change. Lack of trees and forest is causing the increase in the overall earth’s temperature and this is causing polar ice caps to melt increasing sea level continuously. 

As we all are observing climate for the past ten years, predictability has been decreased like sometimes it rains a lot in winters rather than monsoon. Summer temperature is breaking records every next year and the same case is for temperature in winters.

All these things are the result of human deeds and the major reason is overpopulation.

So, this is how human population growth is the root of every major threat our earth is going through.

Conclusion

According to research done in the 1950s, the reason for the rapid increase in population is not the increase in fertility rate but its decreases in mortality rate and this is all because of advancement in medical facilities and increment in food productivity. 

Although a huge population is a problem, it means we have the huge manpower to correct our mistakes as well. We just have to work positively and go for any possible means to save our planet from our own made mass extinction.

Written By - Dewang Singh

Edited By - Anamika Malik

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