What is the Link between growing population and environmental degradation?
Answers
Answer:
The result of high population growth rates are increasing population density, increasing number of people below poverty line and pressure on natural resources which contributes to environmental degradation through over exploitation of natural resources.
Answer:
Explanation:
According to recent United Nations estimates, global population is increasing by approximately 80 million — the size of Germany — each year. Although fertility rates have declined in most areas of the world, population growth continues to be fueled by high levels of fertility, particularly in Asia and Africa. In numerous Middle Eastern and African nations, the average number of children a woman would be expected to have given current fertility levels remains above 6.0 — for example, 6.4 in Saudi Arabia, 6.7 in Yemen, 6.9 in Uganda, and as high as 7.5 in Niger. Even in areas where fertility rates have declined to near replacement levels (2.1 children per couple), population continues to grow because of "population momentum," which occurs when a high proportion of the population is young.
Population Size
No simple relationship exists between population size and environmental change. However, as global population continues to grow, limits on such global resources as arable land, potable water, forests, and fisheries have come into sharper focus. In the second half of the twentieth century, decreasing farmland contributed to growing concern of the limits to global food production. Assuming constant rates of production, per capita land requirements for food production will near the limits of arable land over the course of the twenty-first century. Likewise, continued population growth occurs in the context of an accelerating demand for water: Global water consumption rose sixfold between 1900 and 1995, more than double the rate of population growth.
Population Distribution
The ways in which populations are distributed across the globe also affect the environment. Continued high fertility in many developing regions, coupled with low fertility in more-developed regions, means that 80 percent of the global population now lives in less-developed nations. Furthermore, human migration is at an all-time high: the net flow of international migrants is approximately 2 million to 4 million per year and, in 1996, 125 million people lived outside their country of birth. Much of this migration follows a rural-to-urban pattern, and, as a result, the Earth's population is also increasingly urbanized. As recently as 1960, only one-third of the world's population lived in cities. By 1999, the percentage had increased to nearly half (47 percent). This trend is expected to continue well into the twenty-first century.
The distribution of people around the globe has three main implications for the environment. First, as less-developed regions cope with a growing share of population, pressures intensify on already dwindling resources within these areas. Second, migration shifts relative pressures exerted on local environments, easing the strain in some areas and increasing it in others. Finally, urbanization, particularly in less-developed regions, frequently outpaces the development of infrastructure and environmental regulations, often resulting in high levels of pollution.
Population Composition
Composition can also have an effect on the environment because different population subgroups behave differently. For example, the global population has both the largest cohort of young people (age 24 and under) and the largest proportion of elderly in history. Migration propensities vary by age. Young people are more likely than their older counterparts to migrate, primarily as they leave the parental home in search of new opportunities. As a result, given the relatively large younger generation, we might anticipate increasing levels of migration and urbanization, and therefore, intensified urban environmental concerns.
Other aspects of population composition are also important: Income is especially relevant to environmental conditions. Across countries, the relationship between economic development and environmental pressure resembles an inverted U-shaped curve; nations with economies in the middle-development range are most likely to exert powerful pressures on the natural environment, mostly in the form of intensified resource consumption and the production of wastes. By contrast, the least-developed nations, because of low levels of industrial activity, are likely to exert relatively lower levels of environmental pressure. At highly advanced development stages, environmental pressures may subside because of improved technologies and energy efficiency.
Within countries and across households, however, the relationship between income and environmental pressure is different. Environmental pressures can be greatest at the lowest and highest income levels. Poverty can contribute to unsustainable levels of resource use as a means of meeting short-term subsistence needs. Furthermore, higher levels of income tend to correlate with disproportionate consumption of energy and production of waste.