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Overpopulation is a condition where an organism's numbers exceed the carrying capacity of its habitat.
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Overdrafts on aquifers are one reason some of our geologist colleagues are convinced that water shortages will bring the human population explosion to a halt. There are substitutes for oil; there is no substitute for fresh water.
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Overpopulation is a condition where an organism's numbers exceed the carrying capacity of its habitat. In common parlance, the term usually refers to the relationship between the human population and its environment, the Earth.
Overpopulation is not a function of the size or density of the population. Overpopulation is determined using the ratio of population to available sustainable resources. If a given environment has a population of ten, but there is food or drinking water enough for only nine, then in a closed system where no trade is possible, that environment is overpopulated; if the population is 100 individuals but there is enough food, shelter, and water for 200 for the indefinite future, then it is not. Overpopulation can result from an increase in births, a decline in mortality rates due to medical advances, from an increase in immigration, or from an unsustainable biome and depletion of resources. It is possible for very sparsely-populated areas to be overpopulated, as the area in question may have a meager or non-existent capability to sustain human life (e.g. the middle of the Sahara Desert or Antarctica).
The resources to be considered when evaluating whether an ecological niche is overpopulated include clean water, clean air, food, shelter, warmth, and other resources necessary to sustain life. If the quality of human life is addressed, there may be additional resources considered, such as medical care, education, proper sewage treatment and waste disposal. Overpopulation places competitive stress on the basic life sustaining resources, leading to a diminished quality of life.
Some countries have managed to substantially increase their carrying capacity by using technologies such as modern agriculture, desalination, and nuclear power. Some economists, such as Thomas Sowell and Walter E. Williams have argued that poverty and famine are caused by bad government and bad economic policies, and not by overpopulation. In his book The Ultimate Resource, economist Julian Simon argued that higher population density leads to more specialization and technological innovation, and that this leads to a higher standard of living. Simon also claimed that if one looks at countries ranked in order by population density, there is no correlation between population density, and poverty and famine; instead, if one looks at countries ranked in order by government corruption, there is a correlation between government corruption and famine.
Others argue that overpopulation is an important cause of these problems.
Population growth
Historical Context
In order to better present the subject of Overpopulation it may be useful to first review the current population of the world in the context of human population from the dawn of civilization to date. For the purposes of this brief discussion the relevant period is from 10,000BC to the present (early 2009 at the time of writing).
10,000BC coincides roughly with two key events;
(a) the final receding of ice following the end of the most recent glacial period and
(b) the start of the "Neolithic Revolution" when there was a shift in human activity away from “hunter-gathering” and towards very primitive farming.
1750 coincides roughly with the start of the Industrial Revolution.
Notes & commentary on the graphs:
(1) "At the dawn of agriculture, about 8,000 B.C., the population of the world was approximately 5 million": .
(2) Minimal change in population for many thousands of years ending around 1,000BC.
(3) Steady growth began around 1,000BC which then plateaued around the year 0.
(4) Approx 800 years of steady growth followed from around 1000AD onwards.
(5) Yet faster growth from around 1750AD.
(6) Dramatic growth since 1950 to the present day and forecast to continue to 8.9 billion, , or perhaps even by 2050).
(7) See also of population from 1950 to date then projections to 2050.
(8) Also estimated for 10,000BC to 1950.
Clearly an inspection of these graphs reveals the unusual and very pronounced negative skewing (see also ). In this case that means after many thousands of years of minimal population there has, for the first time in human history, been a period of consistently rapid population increase followed more recently by a spectacular and unprecedented increase.
Before continuing to read the Overpopulation article it may be of interest to note the somewhat speculative estimates regarding (see also
“related wikipedia article”). When considered in conjunction with the graphs shown above that estimate further emphasises the extraordinary nature of this currently occurring population spike.
Population projections from the 1900s to 2050
United Nations reports, such as state:
- World population is currently growing by approximately 74 million people per year. If current fertility rates continued, in 2050 the total world population would be 11 billion, with 169 million people added each year. However, global fertility rates have been falling for decades, and the updated United Nations figures project that the world population will reach 9.2 billion around 2050. This is the medium variant figure which assumes a decrease in average fertility from the present level of 2.5 down to 2.
- Almost all growth will take place in the less developed regions, where today’s 5.3 billion population of underdeveloped countries is expected to increase to 7.8 billion in 2050. By contrast, the population of the more developed regions will remain mostly unchanged, at 1.2 billion. The world's population is expected to rise by 40% to 9.1 billion. An exception is the United States population, which is expected to increase 44% from 305 million in 2008 to 439 million in 2050.
- In 2000-2005, fertility at the world level stood at 2.65 children per woman, about half the level in 1950-1955 (5 children per woman). In the medium variant, global fertility is projected to decline further to 2.05 children per woman.
- During 2005-2050, nine countries are expected to account for half of the world’s projected population increase: India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Bangladesh, Uganda, United States of America, Ethiopia, and China, listed according to the size of their contribution to population growth.
- Global life expectancy at birth, which is estimated to have risen from 46 years in 1950-1955 to 65 years in 2000-2005, is expected to keep rising to reach 75 years in 2045-2050. In the more developed regions, the projected increase is from 75 years today to 82 years by mid-century. Among the least developed countries, where life expectancy today is just under 50 years, it is expected to be 66 years in 2045-2050.
- The population of 51 countries or areas, including Germany, Italy, Japan and most of the successor States of the former Soviet Union, is expected to be lower in 2050 than in 2005.
- During 2005-2050, the net number of international migrants to more developed regions is projected to be 98 million. Because deaths are projected to exceed births in the more developed regions by 73 million during 2005-2050, population growth in those regions will largely be due to international migration.
- In 2000-2005, net migration in 28 countries either prevented population decline or doubled at least the contribution of natural increase (births minus deaths) to population growth. These countries include Austria, Canada, Croatia, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Qatar, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, United Arab Emirates and United Kingdom.
- Birth rates are now falling in a small percentage of developing countries, while the actual populations in many developed countries would fall without immigration.
- By 2050 (Medium variant), India will have almost 1.7 billion people, China 1.4 billion, United States 400 million, Indonesia 297 million, Pakistan 292 million, Nigeria 289 million, Bangladesh 254 million, Brazil 254 million, Democratic Republic of the Congo 187 million, Ethiopia 183 million, Philippines 141 million, Mexico 132 million, Egypt 121 million, Vietnam 120 million, Russia 108 million, Japan 103 million, Iran 100 million, Turkey 99 million, Uganda 93 million, Tanzania 85 million, and Kenya 85 million.
- 1900
- Africa - 133 million
- Asia - 946 million
- Europe - 408 million
- Latin America & Caribbean - 74 million
- Northern America - 82 million
- 2050
- Africa - 1.9 billion
- Asia - 5.2 billion
- Europe - 664 million
- Latin America & Caribbean - 769 million
- Northern America - 445 million
The demographic transition
The theory of demographic transition, while unproven to apply to all world regions, holds that, after the standard of living and life expectancy increases, family sizes decline. Factors cited in the decline of birth rates include such social factors as later ages of marriage, the growing desire of many women in such settings to seek careers outside of child rearing and domestic work, and the decreased need of children in industrialized settings. The latter factor stems from the fact that children perform a great deal of work in small-scale agricultural societies, and work less in industrial ones; it has been cited to explain the decline in birth rates in industrializing regions.
Another version of demographic transition is that of Virginia Abernethy in Population Politics, in which she claims that the demographic transition is primarily in effect for nations where women enjoy a special status (see Fertility-opportunity theory). In strongly patriarchal nations, where she claims women enjoy few special rights, a high standard of living tends to result in population growth.
Many countries still have high population growth rates while having lower total fertility rates. This is because high population growth in the past has skewed the age demographic in many countries toward a young age, meaning that the population will still rise as the more numerous younger generation approaches maturity.
"Demographic entrapment" is a concept developed by Maurice King, who posits that this phenomenon occurs when a country has a population larger than its carrying capacity, no possibility of migration, and exports too little to be able to import food. This will cause starvation. He claims that for example many sub-Saharan nations are or will become stuck in demographic entrapment, instead of having a demographic transition.
For the world as a whole, the number of children born per woman decreased from 5.02 to 2.65 between 1950 and 2005. A breakdown by continent is as follows:
In 2050, the projected world number of children born per woman is 2.05. Only the Middle East & North Africa (2.09) and Sub-Saharan Africa (2.61) will then have numbers greater than 2.05.
Carrying capacity
Estimates of the carrying capacity of Earth range between 1 billion and 1 trillion people, depending on the values used in calculations. The variability of estimates has grown larger since 1950, compared to earlier estimates.
David Pimentel, professor of ecology and agriculture at Cornell University, and Mario Giampietro, senior researcher at the National Research Institute on Food and Nutrition (INRAN), place in their study Food, Land, Population and the U.S. Economy the maximum U.S. population for a sustainable economy at 200 million. To achieve a sustainable economy and avert disaster, the United States must reduce its population by at least one-third, and world population will have to be reduced by two-thirds, says the study.
In 2006, WWF's "Living Planet" report stated that if we all want to live with a high degree of luxury (European standards), we would be spending three times more than what the planet can supply.
Steve Jones, head of the biology department at University College London, has said, "Humans are 10,000 times more common than we should be, according to the rules of the animal kingdom, and we have agriculture to thank for that. Without farming, the world population would probably have reached half a million by now."
Some groups (for example, the World Wide Fund for Nature and the Global Footprint Network) have stated that the carrying capacity for the human population has been exceeded as measured using the ecological footprint. Critics question the simplifications and statistical methods employed in calculating ecological footprints. Some point out that a more refined method of assessing ecological footprint is to designate sustainable versus non-sustainable categories of consumption.
Resources
David Pimentel, Professor Emeritus at Cornell University, has stated that "With the imbalance growing between population numbers and vital life sustaining resources, humans must actively conserve cropland, freshwater, energy, and biological resources. There is a need to develop renewable energy resources. Humans everywhere must understand that rapid population growth damages the Earth’s resources and diminishes human well-being."
These reflect the comments also of the United States Geological Survey in their paper . "As the global population continues to grow...people will place greater and greater demands on the resources of our planet, including mineral and energy resources, open space, water, and plant and animal resources." "Earth's natural wealth: an audit" by New Scientist magazine states that many of the minerals that we use for a variety of products are in danger of running out in the near future. "A handful of geologists around the world have calculated the costs of new technologies in terms of the materials they use and the implications of their spreading to the developing world. All agree that the planet's booming population and rising standards of living are set to put unprecedented demands on the materials that only Earth itself can provide. Limitations on how much of these materials is available could even mean that some technologies are not worth pursuing long term.... "Virgin stocks of several metals appear inadequate to sustain the modern 'developed world' quality of life for all of Earth's people under contemporary technology".
On the other hand, some writers, such as Julian Simon and Bjorn Lomborg believe that resources exist for further population growth. However, critics warn, this will be at a high cost to the Earth: "the technological optimists are probably correct in claiming that overall world food production can be increased substantially over the next few decades...[however] the environmental cost of what Paul R. and Anne H. Ehrlich describe as 'turning the Earth into a giant human feedlot' could be severe. A large expansion of agriculture to provide growing populations with improved diets is likely to lead to further deforestation, loss of species, soil erosion, and pollution from pesticides and fertilizer runoff as farming intensifies and new land is brought into production." Since we are intimately dependent upon the living systems of the Earth, scientists have questioned the wisdom of further expansion.
According to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, a four-year research effort by 1,360 of the world’s leading scientists commissioned to measure the actual value of natural resources to humans and the world, "The structure of the world’s ecosystems changed more rapidly in the second half of the twentieth century than at any time in recorded human history, and virtually all of Earth’s ecosystems have now been significantly transformed through human actions." "Ecosystem services, particularly food production, timber and fisheries, are important for employment and economic activity. Intensive use of ecosystems often produces the greatest short-term advantage, but excessive and unsustainable use can lead to losses in the long term. A country could cut its forests and deplete its fisheries, and this would show only as a positive gain to GDP, despite the loss of capital assets. If the full economic value of ecosystems were taken into account in decision-making, their degradation could be significantly slowed down or even reversed." The MA blames habitat loss and fragmentation for the continuing disappearance of species.
Another study by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) called the Global Environment Outlook which involved 1,400 scientists and took five years to prepare comes to similar conclusions. It "found that human consumption had far outstripped available resources. Each person on Earth now requires a third more land to supply his or her needs than the planet can supply." It faults a failure to "respond to or recognise the magnitude of the challenges facing the people and the environment of the planet... 'The systematic destruction of the Earth's natural and nature-based resources has reached a point where the economic viability of economies is being challenged - and where the bill we hand to our children may prove impossible to pay'... The report's authors say its objective is 'not to present a dark and gloomy scenario, but an urgent call to action'. It warns that tackling the problems may affect the vested interests of powerful groups, and that the environment must be moved to the core of decision-making... '
Additionally, other issues involving quality of life - would most people want to live in a world of billions more people - and the basic right of other species to exist in their native environments come into play.
Although all resources, whether mineral or other, are limited on the planet, at least for mineral resources historic evidence shows that the market tends to self-correct whenever a scarcity or high-demand for a particular kind is experienced. For example in 1990 known reserves of many natural resources were higher, and their prices lower, than in 1970, despite higher demand and higher consumption. Whenever a price spike would occur, the market tended to correct itself whether by substituting an equivalent resource or switching to a new technology.
Fresh water
Fresh water supplies, on which agriculture depends, are running low worldwide. This water crisis is only expected to worsen as the population increases. Lester R. Brown of the Earth Policy Institute argues that declining water supplies will have future disastrous consequences for agriculture.
However, the amount of freshwater is not necessarily limited to what is currently available in nature. Malta derives two thirds of its freshwater from desalination of salt water, a very energy-intensive process. A number of nuclear powered desalination plants exist, Some argue that there are billions of years of nuclear fuel available., but the high costs of desalination, especially for poor third world countries, make impractical the transport of large amounts of desalinated seawater to interiors of large countries, and the "lethal byproduct of saline brine that is a major cause of marine pollution when dumped back into the oceans at high temperatures."
One study of the costs of desalination and its transport says that "Indeed, one needs to lift the water by 2000 m, or transport it over more than 1600 km to get transport costs equal to the desalination costs.. Desalinated water is expensive in places that are both somewhat far from the sea and somewhat high, such as Riyadh and Harare. In other places, the dominant cost is desalination, not transport. This leads to somewhat lower costs in places like Beijing, Bangkok, Zaragoza, Phoenix, and, of course, coastal cities like Tripoli." Still, the study, while generally positive about the technology for affluent areas that are proximate to oceans, concludes that "Desalinated water may be a solution for some water-stress regions, but not for places that are poor, deep in the interior of a continent, or at high elevation. Unfortunately, that includes some of the places with biggest water problems."
Israel is now desalinating water for a cost of 53 cents per cubic meter. Singapore is desalinating water at a cost of 49 cents per cubic meter. In the United States, the cost of desalination is $3.06 for 1,000 gallons (81 cents per cubic meter).
The world's largest desalination plant is the Jebel Ali Desalination Plant (Phase 2) in the United Arab Emirates, which is capable of producing 300 million cubic meters of water per year, or about 2500 gallons of water per second.
The largest desalination plant in the United States is the one at Tampa Bay, Florida, which began desalinizing 25 million gallons (95000 mł) of water per day in December 2007. A January 17, 2008, article in the Wall Street Journal states, "Worldwide, 13,080 desalination plants produce more than 12 billion gallons of water a day, according to the International Desalination Association." After being desalinized at Jubail, Saudi Arabia, water is pumped inland though a pipeline to the capital city of Riyadh.
Food
Some argue there is enough food to support the world population,, but other sources dispute this, particularly if sustainability is taken into account.
More than 100 countries now import wheat. Some 40 countries import rice. Egypt and Iran rely on imports for 40% of their grain supply. Algeria, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan import 70% or more. Yemen and Israel import more than 90%. And just 6 countries - the US, Canada, France, Australia, Argentina and Thailand - supply 90% of grain exports. The U.S. alone supplies almost half of world grain exports.
A 2001 United Nations report says population growth is "the main force driving increases in agricultural demand" but "most recent expert assessments are cautiously optimistic about the ability of global food production to keep up with demand for the foreseeable future (that is to say, until approximately 2030 or 2050)", assuming declining population growth rates.
Global perspective
The amounts of natural resources in this context are not necessarily fixed, and their distribution is not necessarily a zero-sum game. For example, due to the Green Revolution and the fact that more and more land is appropriated each year from wild lands for agricultural purposes, the worldwide production of food had steadily increased up until 1995. World food production per person was considerably higher in 2005 than 1961.
As world population doubled from 3 billion to 6 billion, daily calorie consumption in poor countries increased from 1,932 to 2,650, and the percentage of people in those countries who were malnourished fell from 45% to 18%. This suggests that Third World poverty and famine are caused by underdevelopment, not overpopulation. However, others question these statistics.
The number of people who are overweight has surpassed the number who are undernourished. In a 2006 news story, MSNBC reported, "There are an estimated 800 million undernourished people and more than a billion considered overweight worldwide."
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations states in its report The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2006, that while the number of undernourished people in the developing countries has declined by about three million, a smaller percentage of the populations of developing countries is undernourished today compared with 1990–92: 17 percent against 20 percent. Furthermore, FAO’s projections suggest that the proportion of hungry people in developing countries could be halved from 1990-92 levels to 10 percent by 2015. The FAO also states "We have emphasized first and foremost that reducing hunger is no longer a question of means in the hands of the global community. The world is richer today than it was ten years ago. There is more food available and still more could be produced without excessive upward pressure on prices. The knowledge and resources to reduce hunger are there. What is lacking is sufficient political will to mobilize those resources to the benefit of the hungry."
As of 2008, increased farming for use in biofuels, world oil prices at over $100 a barrel, global population growth, climate change, loss of agricultural land to residential and industrial development, and growing consumer demand in China and India have pushed up the price of grain. Food riots have recently taken place in many countries across the world. An epidemic of stem rust on wheat caused by race Ug99 is currently spreading across Africa and into Asia and is causing major concern. A virulent wheat disease could destroy most of the world’s main wheat crops, leaving millions to starve. The fungus has spread from Africa to Iran, and may already be in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Africa
In Africa, if current trends of soil degradation and population growth continue, the continent might be able to feed just 25% of its population by 2025, according to UNU's Ghana-based Institute for Natural Resources in Africa.
Hunger and malnutrition kill nearly 6 million children a year, and more people are malnourished in sub-Saharan Africa this decade than in the 1990s, according to a report released by the Food and Agriculture Organization. In sub-Saharan Africa, the number of malnourished people grew to 203.5 million people in 2000-02 from 170.4 million 10 years earlier says The State of Food Insecurity in the World report.
According to the BBC, the famine in Zimbabwe was caused by government seizure of farmland. However drought has also played a major role. Thirteen-million people are threatened by famine, in light of the drought in southern Africa. Six-million of them live in Zimbabwe. So that is a contingent of fully half of those potentially threatened by the current food shortages, if indeed they get worse, as is projected. Prior to this combination of drought and seizure of farmland, Zimbabwe had been exporting so much food that it was called "the breadbasket of southern Africa." So other countries were also harmed by these farm seizures. People who study the Zimbabwean famine claim that normally there are more than enough natural resources to feed the people. Some claim that the dams and rivers in Zimbabwe are full, and that the famine has nothing to do with drought. And though it's undoubtedly true that bad governance has exacerbated the famine, still notes the article, "Four weeks without rain at the critical germination phase has led to the failure of [the villagers] small crops. There will be no harvest again until next June."
Prior to President Robert Mugabe's seizure of the farmland in Zimbabwe, the farmers had been using irrigation to deal with drought, but during the seizures of the farmland, much of the irrigation equipment was either vandalized or looted. A 2006 BBC article about Mugabe's seizure of farmland states, "Critics say the reforms have devastated the economy and led to massive hunger. Much of the formerly white-owned land is no longer being productively used - either because the beneficiaries have no experience of farming or they lack finance and tools. Many farms were wrecked when they were invaded by government supporters."
Israel has 302 people per square kilometre compared with Zimbabwe's 33 people per square kilometre. Although Israel is a desert country with frequent drought and very high population density, it does not have famine. One possible reason why Israel does not have famine is because its government encourages farmers to use modern agriculture and irrigation to grow huge amounts of food. Still, Israel remains a net importer of food, somewhat detracting from this argument. It must also be noted that the high productivity of modern agriculture is currently dependent of the utilization of fossil fuels for fertilizer production, pesticide and fuel.
Asia
According to a 2004 article from the BBC, China, the world's most populous country, is suffering from an obesity epidemic. More recent data indicate China's grain production peaked in the mid 1990s, due to overextraction of groundwater in the North China plain. Nearly half of India's children are malnourished, according to recent government data. In China, only 8% of children are underweight. Japan is facing a potential food crisis that could reduce daily diets to the austere meals of the 1950s, a senior government adviser believes.
America
According to a 2007 article from the BBC, scientists at Columbia University have theorized that in the future, densely populated cities such as Mexico City, Los Angeles, and New York City, which are the largest in North America, may use vertical farming to grow food on each floor of 30-story skyscrapers.
Population as a function of food availability
Thinkers such as David Pimentel, a professor from Cornell University, Virginia Abernethy, Alan Thornhill, Russell Hopffenberg and author Daniel Quinn propose that like all other animals, human populations predictably grow and shrink according to their available food supply – populations grow in an abundance of food, and shrink in times of scarcity.
Proponents of this theory argue that every time food production is increased, the population grows. Some human populations throughout history support this theory. Populations of hunter-gatherers fluctuate in accordance with the amount of available food. Population increased after the Neolithic Revolution and an increased food supply. This was followed by subsequent population growth after subsequent agricultural revolutions.
Critics of this idea point out that birth rates are lowest in the developed nations, which also have the highest access to food. In fact, some developed countries have both a diminishing population and an abundant food supply. The United Nations projects that the population of 51 countries or areas, including Germany, Italy, Japan and most of the states of the former Soviet Union, is expected to be lower in 2050 than in 2005. This shows that when one limits their scope to the population living within a given political boundary, human populations do not always grow to match the available food supply. Additionally, many of these countries are major exporters of food.
Nevertheless, on the global scale the world population is increasing, as is the net quantity of human food produced - a pattern that has been true for roughly 10,000 years, since the human development of agriculture. That some countries demonstrate negative population growth fails to discredit the theory. Food moves across borders from areas of abundance to areas of scarcity. Additionally, this hypothesis is not so simplistic as to be rejected by a single case study, as in Germany's recent population trends - clearly other factors are at work: contraceptive access, cultural norms and most importantly economic realities differ from nation to nation.
As a result of water deficits
Water deficits, which are already spurring heavy grain imports in numerous smaller countries, may soon do the same in larger countries, such as China or India. The water tables are falling in scores of countries (including Northern China, the US, and India) owing to widespread overdrafting beyond sustainable yields. Other countries affected include Pakistan, Iran, and Mexico. This overdrafting is already leading to water scarcity and cutbacks in grain harvest. Even with the overpumping of its aquifers, China has developed a grain deficit. This effect has contributed in driving grain prices upward. Most of the 3 billion people projected to be added worldwide by mid-century will be born in countries already experiencing water shortages. One suggested solution is for population growth to be slowed quickly by investing heavily in female literacy and family planning services. Desalination is also considered a viable and effective solution to the problem of water shortages.
After China and India, there is a second tier of smaller countries with large water deficits — Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Mexico, and Pakistan. Four of these already import a large share of their grain. Only Pakistan remains self-sufficient. But with a population expanding by 4 million a year, it will also soon turn to the world market for grain.
Land
World Resources Institute states that "Agricultural conversion to croplands and managed pastures has affected some 3.3 billion [hectares] — roughly 26 percent of the land area. All totaled, agriculture has displaced one-third of temperate and tropical forests and one-quarter of natural grasslands." Energy development may also require large areas, like for hydroelectric dams. Usable land may become less useful through salinization, deforestation, desertification, erosion, and urban sprawl. Global warming may cause flooding of many of the most productive agricultural areas. Thus, available useful land may become a limiting factor. By most estimates, at least half of cultivable land is already being farmed, and there are concerns that the remaining reserves are greatly overestimated.
High crop yield vegetables like potatoes and lettuce do not waste space with inedible plant parts, like stalks, husks, vines, and inedible leaves. New varieties of selectively bred and hybrid plants have larger edible parts (fruit, vegetable, grain) and smaller inedible parts; however, many of the gains of agricultural technology are now historic, with new advances being more difficult to achieve. With new technologies, it is possible to grow crops on some marginal land under certain conditions. Aquaculture could theoretically increase available area. Hydroponics and food from bacteria and fungi, like Quorn, may allow the growing of food without having to consider land quality, climate, or even available sunlight, although such a process may be very energy-intensive.
Some claim that not all arable land will remain productive if used for agriculture, as they argue that some marginal land can only be made to produce food by unsustainable practices like slash-and-burn agriculture. Even with the modern techniques of agriculture, the sustainability of production is in question.
Some scientists have said that in the future, densely populated cities will use vertical farming to grow food inside skyscrapers.
Some countries, such as the United Arab Emirates and particularly the Emirate of Dubai have constructed large artificial islands, or have created large dam and dike systems, like the Netherlands, which reclaim land from the water to increase their total land area.
The space taken by a human being itself is not a problem. It has been noted by a number of thinkers who deny that overpopulation is a problem - like noted philosopher Justin West - that the entire population of the world could live in Texas (or a land mass the size of Texas). Texas has a total surface area of , which is 7.30174326 × 10^12 square feet. Divided by 7 billion (slightly larger than the current population of the world) would yield an average of per person. Were everyone allotted space thus, a family of 4 would have roughly a home. Compacted this way, the rest of North America, and all of South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia and Antarctica would be left vacant of human beings and open to farming. This is assuming, of course, single floor houses, as well as no requirements for public spaces such as roads, schools, hospitals, separate commercial or industrial buildings, or recreational space. Also questionable is the meaning of "could live", with an average space between two people of just over - the experiments done which involve crowding by John B. Calhoun and others suggest that overpopulation and overcrowding leads to a host of major social problems.
Energy
Population optimists have also been criticized for failing to account for future shortages in fossil fuels, currently used for fertilizer and transportation for modern agriculture. (See Hubbert peak and Future energy development.) They counter that there will be enough fossil fuels until suitable replacement technologies have been developed, for example hydrogen in a hydrogen economy.
In his 1992 book Earth in the Balance, Al Gore wrote, "... it ought to be possible to establish a coordinated global program to accomplish the strategic goal of completely eliminating the internal combustion engine over, say, a twenty-five-year period..." Plug in electric cars such as the Tesla Roadster suggest that Gore's prediction will come true. The Earth has enough uranium to provide humans with all of their electricity needs until the sun blows up in 5 billion years, assuming that we develop large scale breeder reactors.
There has also been increasing development in extracting renewable energy, such as from solar, wind, and tidal energy. If used on a wide scale, these could theoretically fulfill most, if not all, of the energy needs currently being filled by non-renewable resources. Most renewable energy forms rely on an oil-based economy to produce, i.e. you can't make a wind turbine without the oil run machinery to begin with, making the whole process moot. However, it should be noted that some of these renewable resources also have ecological footprints, though they may be different or smaller than some non-renewable resources.
Fertilizer
Modern agriculture uses large amounts of fertilizer. Since much of this fertilizer is made from petroleum, the problem of peak oil is of concern. According to a 2003 article in Discover magazine, it is possible to use the process of thermal depolymerization to manufacture fertilizer out of garbage, sewage, and agricultural waste. A follow up article from 2006 gave more information.
Wealth and poverty
The United Nations indicates that about 850 million people are malnourished or starving, and 1.1 billion people do not have access to safe drinking water. Thus some argue that the Earth may support 6 billion people, but only on the condition that many live in misery. The percentage of the world's population living on less than $1 per day has halved in twenty years, but these are inflation unadjusted numbers and likely misleading.
However states the UN Human Development Report from 1997 "During the last 15-20 years, more than 100 developing countries, and several Eastern European countries, have suffered from disastrous growth failures. The reductions in standard of living have been deeper and more long-lasting than what was seen in the industrialised countries during the depression in the 1930s. As a result, the income for more than one billion people has fallen below the level that was reached 10, 20 or 30 years ago." How do some massage the numbers to come up with a rosy picture for the third world? Says Pimm and Harvey "Lomborg’s great optimism about humanity’s future shows up in the way he presents statistics. In sub-Saharan Africa, 'starving people' constituted '38 percent in 1970 … [but only] '33 percent … in 1996. [The percentage is] expected to fall even further to 30 percent in 2010.' The absolute numbers of starving are curiously missing from these paragraphs. The region’s population roughly doubled between 1970 and 1996. To keep the numbers of starving constant, the percentage would have had to have dropped by more than half.". In other words, the percentages Lomborg presents would indeed be impressive in an environment with no population growth, but in one wherein the population has doubled the absolute numbers has actually risen dramatically.
For example, North Korea and South Korea have similar population densities, natural resources, and even parallel cultures (ethnically based in Korean) sharing the same peninsular homeland; but, whereas North Korea is a poverty-stricken, totalitarian dictatorship where its people are suffering from widespread famine and are destitute, South Korea is a prosperous, capitalist country where the people are well nourished and materially/economically secure, despite the fact that South Korea's population is double that of North Korea. This suggests that it is bad economic polices, not "overpopulation," that causes famine. Various Indices of Economic Freedom suggest that countries with a strong level of economic freedom avoid famines, regardless of how high their population densities.
Environment
Overpopulation has had a major impact on the environment of Earth starting at least as early as the 20th century. There are indirect economic consequences of this environmental degradation in the form of ecosystem services attrition. Beyond the scientifically verifiable harm to the environment, some assert the moral right of other species to simply exist rather than become extinct. Says environmental author Jeremy Rifkin, "our burgeoning population and urban way of life have been purchased at the expense of vast ecosystems and habitats. ... It's no accident that as we celebrate the urbanization of the world, we are quickly approaching another historic watershed: the disappearance of the wild."
Says Peter Raven, former President of AAAS (the American Association for the Advancement of Science) in their seminal work , "Where do we stand in our efforts to achieve a sustainable world? Clearly, the past half century has been a traumatic one, as the collective impact of human numbers, affluence (consumption per individual) and our choices of technology continue to exploit rapidly an increasing proportion of the world's resources at an unsustainable rate. ... During a remarkably short period of time, we have lost a quarter of the world's topsoil and a fifth of its agricultural land, altered the composition of the atmosphere profoundly, and destroyed a major proportion of our forests and other natural habitats without replacing them. Worst of all, we have driven the rate of biological extinction, the permanent loss of species, up several hundred times beyond its historical levels, and are threatened with the loss of a majority of all species by the end of the 21st century."
A 2001 United Nations report has postulated that, although human activity can be blamed for much of the environmental degradation in the last century, overpopulation is not a major cause, but rising per-capita production and consumption and the use of particular technologies used in such production are more likely major factors. Further, even in countries which have both large population growth and major ecological problems, it is not necessarily true that curbing the population growth will make a major contribution towards resolving all environmental problems.
Cities
In 1800 only 3% of the world's population lived in cities. By the 20th century's close, 47% did so. In 1950, there were 83 cities with populations exceeding one million; but by 2007, this had risen to 468 agglomerations of more than one million. If the trend continues, the world's urban population will double every 38 years, say researchers. The UN forecasts that today's urban population of 3.2 billion will rise to nearly 5 billion by 2030, when three out of five people will live in cities.
The increase will be most dramatic in the poorest and least-urbanised continents, Asia and Africa. Surveys and projections indicate that all urban growth over the next 25 years will be in developing countries. One billion people, one-sixth of the world's population, or one-third of urban population, now live in shanty towns, which are seen as "breeding grounds" for social problems such as crime, drug addiction, alcoholism, poverty and unemployment. In many poor countries slums exhibit high rates of disease due to unsanitary conditions, malnutrition, and lack of basic health care.
In 2000, there were 18 megacities – conurbations such as Tokyo, Mexico City, Mumbai (Bombay), Săo Paulo and New York City – that have populations in excess of 10 million inhabitants. Greater Tokyo already has 35 million, more than the entire population of Canada.
By 2025, according to the Far Eastern Economic Review, Asia alone will have at least 10 hypercities, those with 20 million or more, including Jakarta (24.9 million people), Dhaka (25 million), Karachi (26.5 million), Shanghai (27 million) and Mumbai (with a staggering 33 million). Lagos has grown from 300,000 in 1950 to an estimated 15 million today, and the Nigerian government estimates that city will have expanded to 25 million residents by 2015. Chinese experts forecast that Chinese cities will contain 800 million people by 2020.
Despite the increase in population density within cities (and the emergence of megacities) UN Habitat states in its reports that urbanization can in fact be the best compromise in the face of global population growth. Cities concentrate human activity within limited areas, limiting the breadth of environmental damage. This mitigating influence, however, can only be achieved if urban planning is improved and city services are properly maintained.
Ecological footprint by world region
As set forth on page 18 of WWF's Living Planet report, the regions of the world with the greatest ecological footprint are ranked as follows as of 2003:
- North America
- Europe (European Union countries)
- Middle-East and Central Asia
- Asia and Pacific Islands
- Africa
- Europe (Non-European Union countries)
- Latin-America and the Caribbean
Effects of overpopulation
Some problems associated with or exacerbated by human overpopulation:
- Inadequate fresh water for drinking water use as well as sewage treatment and effluent discharge. Some countries, like Saudi Arabia, use energy-expensive desalination to solve the problem of water shortages.
- Depletion of natural resources, especially fossil fuels
- Increased levels of air pollution, water pollution, soil contamination and noise pollution. Once a country has industrialized and become wealthy, a combination of government regulation and technological innovation causes pollution to decline substantially, even as the population continues to grow.
- Deforestation and loss of ecosystems that sustain global atmospheric oxygen and carbon dioxide balance; about eight million hectares of forest are lost each year.
- Changes in atmospheric composition and consequent global warming
- Irreversible loss of arable land and increases in desertification Deforestation and desertification can be reversed by adopting property rights, and this policy is successful even while the human population continues to grow.
- Mass species extinctions. from reduced habitat in tropical forests due to slash-and-burn techniques that sometimes are practiced by shifting cultivators, especially in countries with rapidly expanding rural populations; present extinction rates may be as high as 140,000 species lost per year. As of 2007, the IUCN Red List lists a total of 698 animal species having gone extinct during recorded human history.
- High infant and child mortality. High rates of infant mortality are caused by poverty. Rich countries with high population densities have low rates of infant mortality.
- Increased chance of the emergence of new epidemics and pandemics For many environmental and social reasons, including overcrowded living conditions, malnutrition and inadequate, inaccessible, or non-existent health care, the poor are more likely to be exposed to infectious diseases.
- Starvation, malnutrition or poor diet with ill health and diet-deficiency diseases (e.g. rickets). However, rich countries with high population densities do not have famine.
- Poverty coupled with inflation in some regions and a resulting low level of capital formation. Poverty and inflation are aggravated by bad government and bad economic policies. Many countries with high population densities have eliminated absolute poverty and keep their inflation rates very low.
- Low life expectancy in countries with fastest growing populations
- Unhygienic living conditions for many based upon water resource depletion, discharge of raw sewage and solid waste disposal. However, this problem can be reduced with the adoption of sewers. For example, after Karachi, Pakistan installed sewers, its infant mortality rate fell substantially.
- Elevated crime rate due to drug cartels and increased theft by people stealing resources to survive
- Conflict over scarce resources and crowding, leading to increased levels of warfare
Mitigation measures
While the current world trends are not indicative of any realistic solution to human overpopulation during the 21st century, there are several mitigation measures that have or can be applied to reduce the adverse impacts of overpopulation.
Birth control
Overpopulation is also related to issue of birth control, with some nations like China using strict measures in order to reduce birth rates, while religious and ideological opposition to birth control has been cited as a factor contributing to overpopulation and poverty.
There are an estimated 350 million women in the poorest countries of the world who either did not want their last child, do not want another child or want to space their pregnancies, but they lack access to information, affordable means and services to determine the size and spacing of their families. In the developing world, some 514,000 women die annually of complications from pregnancy and abortion. Additionally, 8 million infants die, many because of malnutrition or preventable diseases, especially from lack of access to clean drinking water.
In the United States, in 2001, almost half of pregnancies were unintended.
Many philosophers, including Thomas Malthus, have said at various times that when man doesn't check population-growth, nature takes its course. However, this course might not necessarily result in the death of humans through catastrophes; instead it might result in infertility. German scientists have reported that a virus called Adeno-associated virus might have a role in male infertility, though it's otherwise not harmful. Consequently, if this or similar viruses mutate, they might cause infertility on a large-scale, though otherwise not harming humans, thus resulting in human population-control over time naturally.
Other Implemented
- Indira Gandhi, late Prime Minister of India, implemented a forced sterilization programme in the 1970s. Officially, men with two children or more had to submit to sterilization, but many unmarried young men, political opponents and ignorant men were also believed to have been sterilized. This program is still remembered and criticized in India, and is blamed for creating a wrong public aversion to family planning, which hampered Government programmes for decades.
- As of June 2008, Egyptian Minister of Health and Population Hatem el-Gabali announced that his country has set aside 480 million Egyptian pounds (about 90 million U.S. dollars) to cope with its overpopulation problem through family planning.
Suggested
- Some people argue about the futility of marriage, and propose "no-marriage", and, thus, "no-children" as a solution. NoMarriage quotes: "most people end up having kids because 1) They are unknowledgeable regarding proper use of birth control and/or 2) They have an unrealistic vision of what parenthood entails."
- Others propose that governments around the world should stop spending funds on child-vaccination because children would and should survive naturally by principle of "survival of the fittest", rather than artificially through vaccination, and argue that humans survived even before the introduction of modern vaccination. They suggest that the funds saved from vaccination should instead be better spent on providing free-of-cost primary and higher education to everyone, particularly the meritorious but needy scholars and students. Alternatively, they argue that it was only the introduction of modern vaccination that led to the growth in world population from less than 1 billion people to more than 6 billion people in the 20th century only. They argue about the futility of saving children who are unable to get proper and higher education, thus, leading to unemployment because such uneducated children gradually become a burden on society as well as their nation as many of them resort to becoming criminals as well as inflating population.
- Some leaders and environmentalists (including Ted Turner) have suggested that there is an urgent need to strictly implement a China-like one-child policy globally by the United Nations, because this would help control and reduce population gradually and most successfully as is evidenced by the success and resultant economic-growth of China due to reduction of poverty in recent years. Because such a policy would be uniformly and unanimously implemented globally and would be implemented by a reputable central-global organization (United Nations), it would face little or no political and social opposition from individual countries.
- Huffington Post quotes: "There is a far better way -- and it is something we should be pursuing anyway. It is called feminism. Where women have control over their own bodies -- through contraception, abortion and general independence -- they choose not to be perpetually pregnant. The UN Fund For Population Activities has calculated that 350 million women in the poorest countries didn't want their last child, but didn't have the means to prevent it. We should be helping them by building a global anti-Vatican, distributing the pill and the words of Mary Wollstonecraft."
- Another option is to focus on education about overpopulation, family planning, and birth control methods as well as to make birth-control devices like male/female condoms and pills easily available.
Extraterrestrial settlement
In the 1970s, Gerard O'Neill suggested building space habitats that could support 30,000 times the carrying capacity of Earth using just the asteroid belt and that the solar system as a whole could sustain current population growth rates for a thousand years. Marshall Savage (1992, 1994) has projected a population of five quintillion throughout the solar system by 3000, with the majority in the asteroid belt. Arthur C. Clarke, a fervent supporter of Savage, argued that by 2057 there will be humans on the Moon, Mars, Europa, Ganymede, Titan and in orbit around Venus, Neptune and Pluto. Freeman Dyson (1999) favours the Kuiper belt as the future home of humanity, suggesting this could happen within a few centuries. In Mining the Sky, John S. Lewis suggests that the resources of the solar system could support 10 quadrillion (10^16) people.
K. Eric Drexler, famous inventor of the futuristic concept of Molecular Nanotechnology, has suggested in Engines of Creation that colonizing space will mean breaking the Malthusian limits to growth for the human species.
Many authors (eg. Carl Sagan, Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov) have argued that shipping the excess population into space is no solution to human overpopulation, saying that (Clarke, 1999) "the population battle must be fought or won here on Earth." It is not the lack of resources in space that they see as the problem (as books such as Mining the sky demonstrate); it is the sheer physical impracticality of shipping vast numbers of people into space to "solve" overpopulation on Earth that these authors and others regard as absurd. However, Gerard O'Neill's calculations show that the Earth could offload all new population growth with a launch services industry about the same size as the current airline industry in .
Birth Credits
Urban designer Michael E. Arth has proposed a "choice-based, marketable birth license plan" he calls "birth credits." Birth credits would allow any woman to have as many children as she wants, as long as she buys a license for any children beyond an average allotment that would result in zero population growth (ZPG). If that allotment was determined to be one child, for example, then the first child would be free, and the market would determine what the license fee for each additional child would cost. Extra credits would expire after a certain time, so these credits could not be hoarded by speculators. Another advantage of the scheme is that the affluent would not buy them because they already limit their family size by choice, as evidenced by an average of 1.1 children per European woman. The actual cost of the credits would only be a fraction of the actual cost of having and raising a child, so the credits would serve more as a wake-up call to women who might otherwise produce children without seriously considering the long term consequences to themselves or society.
See also
Further reading
- Virginia Abernethy, professor (emerita) of psychiatry and anthropology, Population Politics, (1993)
- Albert Bartlett, emeritus professor of physics, Arithmetic, Population, and Energy: The Forgotten Fundamentals of the Energy Crisis, (1978)
- Joel E. Cohen, Chair, Laboratory of Populations at the Rockefeller University, How Many People Can the Earth Support? (1996)
- Barry Commoner, American biologist and college professor Making Peace with the Planet (1990)
- Herman Daly, professor at the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, College Park Ecological Economics and the Ecology of Economics (1999)
- Paul R. Ehrlich, Bing Professor of Population Studies, The Population Bomb, (1968) The Population Explosion, (1990) The Population Bomb, (1995) reprint
- Garrett Hardin, 1941 Stanford University - Ph.D. Microbiology, Living Within Limits, (1995) reprint
- Steven LeBlanc, Constant battles: the myth of the peaceful, noble savage, (2003) ISBN 0312310897 argues that local overpopulation has been the major cause of warfare since paleolithic times.
- F. L. Lucas, The Greatest Problem (1960); an early wake-up call on over-population, by a distinguished Cambridge academic
- Andrew Mason, Professor, head of the University of Hawaii's population studies program, Population change and economic development in East Asia: Challenges met, opportunities seized (2001)
- Donella Meadows, lead author Ph.D. in biophysics from Harvard, Jorgen Randers, professor of policy analysis at the Norwegian School of Management, Dennis Meadows, director of the Institute for Policy and Social Science Research Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update (Paperback) (2004)
- Thomas Malthus, English demographer and political economist,
- Julian Lincoln Simon, professor of Business Administration The Ultimate Resource 2, (1998)"
- Ben J. Wattenberg, senior fellow at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute, The Birth Dearth (1989) ??? Fewer: How the New Demography of Depopulation Will Shape Our Future, (2005)
- Daniel Quinn, author The Story of B, pp 304-305 (1996)
External links
- Projections and historical information.
- UN Online databases with selectable variants, either or information.
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- By Dr Jacqueline Kasun
- An unofficial summary
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- FLYP Media story on the photography of overpopulation
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