Population Explosion & Diminishing Resources: A Global Challenge - Essay Sample

Introduction

Population explosion refers to a situation where the number of people surges at a high rate within a short time. In most cases, this occurrence takes place when society experiences stability in the health and food sector. Diminishing resource, on the other hand, refers to a steady decline in the available resources, which majorly sustains the population. The resources vary from natural to artificial ones. It is factual that the world population continues to rise owing to the many factors put in place to foster its growth. As of May 2018, for instance, the world population was approximately 7.6 billion people. It is worth noting that initially, the human population grew exceptionally slowly. According to archeological revelations and historical findings, the world population reached the 1 billion mark after 200,000 years. After that, the population increased spontaneously to the level of hitting 7 billion people within 200 years. The following figures offer the statistics. By 1927, the human population on the globe was 2billion. The number kept increasing that by 1960, human beings on earth were 3billion. This number got achieved after only 33 years. The census made in the year 1974 revealed that the human beings' population was at 4billion. The time taken to add another billion had reduced to fourteen years only. The census carried out on the world population in the year 1987 revealed another additional one billion people, making a sum of 5 billion. The time taken had reduced by one year to thirteen years. Twelve years later, in the year 1999, the human population hit six billion people (Gazave, Chang, Clark, & Keinan, 2013). As the population increases, it causes a strain on both natural and artificial resources. Therefore, the population explosion is the sole reason why there is a steady rate of resource diminishing on the globe.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Order now

As stated above, the population explosion is the cardinal cause of diminishing resources. In this case, the land is one of the natural resources that have been worst hit by the surging population growth on earth. Many people are born, and the land is reducing every day. As the people's count balloons, the land on which they occupy reduces since they want to use it for their various purposes. According to Lambin and Meyfroidt (2011), land for cultivation is one of the most utilized resources by humans (p.3472). The land offers many uses, for instance, the growth of crops. As the population increases, people want to consume food. Therefore, they end up tilling land regularly to meet their feeding needs. Initially, people used traditional modes of cultivating the ground, for instance, by slashing and use of hoes. These implements were tiny that they had little or no effect on the soil structure. However, as the demand for more food rose, advanced ways of cultivating land came into existence. For instance, when the modern period began, the use of heavy machines like tractors got embraced for land cultivation. These machines alter the soil structure by weakening it and exposing it to erosion. The land has also been strained for occupation. Most populated places like the New York City, London, Berlin, California, and Rome, among other cities, face a shortage of land due to their skyrocketing populations. In light of that, there is no doubt that the explosion of population causes a reduction in land resources.

Besides, population explosion contributes massively to the decline of food resources. This problem is synonymous in the developing countries. Most countries in sub-Saharan Africa face food shortage due to the increased population. Apart from shelter and clothing, human beings majorly depend on food for their survival. Unfortunately, many people from developing countries go hungry due to food scarcity, which is attributable to the high number of consumers. Firstly, in Africa, some parts are deserts, making cultivation of crops and keeping of animals difficult. Therefore, the generation of food for human and animal consumption is limited in this continent. Unfortunately, there are a considerable number of people on this continent who want to eat. Secondly, a large segment of Africa does not have better ways of cultivating since people still depend on the traditional modes of farming (Frayne, McCordic, & Shilomboleni, 2014). Thirdly, unlike in Europe and the Americas, Africa has farmers who use conventional implements that cannot yield enough food. In addition, these people lack technical knowledge of farming since they still use the old ways of doing agriculture. All of these factors negatively affect their food production levels. When they produce crops and animal feeds, they fail to meet the needs of the surging population. According to Frayne, McCordic, and Shilomboleni (2014), the high number of human beings on the globe has led to a strain in food resources since the consumers are more than the producers (p.185). In other words, few people strive to produce yet the little that they offer gets consumed by the most extensive section, which does not contribute in any way. Ultimately, the resources get diminished through high human population demands.

As well as the food shortage being attributed to the population explosion, the third reason why the population explosion remains the primary cause of resource diminishing is the reduction of vegetation cover. Before 1923, the earth's forest cover was high. Natural vegetations like trees and bushes covered many parts of the globe. However, the period between 1923 and 2018 has witnessed a steady decline in the forest cover across the world. Firstly, the forest cover has reduced because many people jostle for space to settle. There are some who cut down trees to establish homes and others want to cut these trees to use it for developing industrial parks. Secondly, the forest cover has declined because the increased number of people wants to use timber for construction. The industrialization era led to many construction activities, which needed wood and timber to take place. As a result, deforestation set in as people fell trees to use for their various purposes within the construction realm. According to the research by Zhao, Chen, Jiang, Ren, Wang, Vause, and Yu (2013), the industrial age marked the highest number of the tree falling since industries used wood and timber for various purposes. For example, steam engines used firewood to run (p.459). Besides, most factories used wood fuel to heat raw materials during different processing stages. All these activities took place as a way of meeting the demands of the increasing population in various aspects. Ultimately, the vegetation cover, which is a critical natural resource reduced significantly.

Nonetheless, some critics insist that the diminishing of resources is not entirely attributable to the human population explosion. From the findings made by Yamaguchi, Aruga, and Nagasaki (2014), human industrialization is the primary cause of diminishing resources but not the high human population (p.27). How the world was designed offers enough room for human beings to exist without depleting any natural supply. Therefore, an argument that an increase in population is the sole contributor to resource depreciation is untrue. There are reasons why industrialization causes a reduction in resources. Firstly, when industries were established, they increased the high demand for raw materials like petroleum and other mineral deposits. Daily, natural gas and crude get exploited through industrialization, making them get depleted. If these materials were unaltered, there could be no depreciation despite an explosion in the human population since the natural aspect of the earth was well balanced until industrialization ruined the status quo. However, there is a rebuttal to the above findings. Begum, Sohag, Abdullah, and Jaafar (2015) look at the issue of industrialization to have emerged from the demands of the population (p.600). As human beings increased in society, they got interested in raw materials like crude oil and natural gas since they wanted to utilize these items to help survive amidst high competition for resources amongst themselves. Therefore, an assertion that industrialization operated independently from population demands to cause a reduction in natural resources does not augur well with the reality that population explosion diminishes resources.

Other critics argue that the human population is too tiny in the eco-system that it cannot cause a decrease in resources on the globe. Firstly, they claim that human beings are just but a small percentage in the web of the ecosystem. Therefore, they cannot consume resources to a level that can be detected. Secondly, human beings are natural beings who contribute positively in the ecosystem through their biological processes like excretion, reproduction, and feeding. Therefore, the more they increase in number, the more the natural resources in the ecosystem increase. According to Akerlof, Maibach, Fitzgerald, Cedeno, and Neuman (2013), global warming is to blame for the diminishing of most resources on the globe (p. 82). Trees and other vegetations, for example, are reducing in number because of the excessive heat being generated through the greenhouse effect, which offers conditions that do not support the growth of vegetation. Nevertheless, a question lingers as to what causes the greenhouse effect. There is no doubt that global warming is the result of human activities that cause an increase in the earth's temperatures. Such actions are not limited to industrialization and animal husbandry. The human population fits in this jigsaw in a manner that when the human beings' population was less, greenhouse gases that were getting emitted were in less volume. As the population increased, the gases equally ballooned. In light of this, the human population increase led to high earth's temperatures that led to the decline in vegetation cover, which is an essential natural resource.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the topic of population explosion and diminishing resources remains an integral discourse in contemporary society since it directly affects the subsistence of humanity on the globe. Realistically, as the population increases, it causes a strain on both natural and artificial resources. By consequent, the population explosion is the sole reason why there is a steady rate of resource diminishing on the globe. Through population explosion, food, land and vegetation cover have declined significantly. However, some people claim that human beings' population is insignificant in the ecosystem. Thus, their population explosion has no adverse influence on these resources. They attribute the decline in resources to other factors like global warming and industrialization. However, these activities are indirectly affected by human activities whereby the more the population increase, the higher the rate of manufacturing and greenhouse effect (McCright & Dunlap, 2011). Therefore, they turn back to the human population explosion as the cause of the reduction in resources. In light of the above, world governments and other stakeholders should establish policies to control human population growth so that the strain on resources can ease. This initiative will help reduce the cutthroat competition for resources, which is adversely affecting the ecosystem.

References

Akerlof, K., Maibach, E. W., Fitzgerald, D., Cedeno, A. Y., & Neuman, A. (2013). Do people "personally experience" global warming, and if so how, and does it matter? Global Environmental Change, 23(1), 81-91. doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2012.07.006

Begum, R. A., Sohag, K., Abdullah, S. M., & Jaafar, M. (2015). CO2 emissions, energy consumption, economic and population growth in Malaysia. Ren...