NSTP 2 : NATIONAL SERVICE TRAINING PROGRAM 2

MODULE 9, WEEK 9: NSTP – CWTS/LTS CURRICULAR PROGRAM

LESSON PROPER:
To understand fully the lesson for today, read the information comprehensively.
POPULATION EXPLOSION
•Never before in history, have there been so many people on Earth as right now
•Our numbers have skyrocketed, from 1 billion in 1800, to 2.3 billion in 1940, 3.7 billion in 1970, and 7.4 billion
in 2016.
•The world population increased fourfold in the last century, so what can we expect for the next century?
•And what does population growth mean for our future?
•Will there be mass-migration?
·Overcrowded slums and megacities covering continents?
·Diseases and pollution?
·Chaos and violence over energy, water, and food?
·And a human species focused only on sustaining itself?
·Will population growth destroy our way of life?
·Or is this prophecy just ungrounded panic?
•In the 1960s population growth reached an unprecedented rate, which lead to apocalyptic prophecies.
•The poor would pro-create endlessly and overrun the developed world. The legend of overpopulation was
born. But it turns out high birth rates and the population explosion are not permanent features of some cultures
or countries, But rather a part of a four step process the whole world is going through, the demographic
transition.
•Most developed countries have already made the transition, while other countries are doing it right now.
•Let's go back to the 18th century, when the entire world, including Europe, was in the first stage of the
demographic transition.
•By today's standards, Europe was worse off, than a developing region, suffering from poor sanitation, poor
diets, and poor medicine. A lot of people were born, but lots of them died just as fast, so the population hardly
grew. Women had between 4 and 6 children, but only 2 of them would reach adulthood.
•Then the industrial revolution happened in the UK and bought the greatest change in human living conditions
since the agricultural revolution. People went from being peasants to workers. Manufactured goods were mass
produced and became widely available.
•The sciences flourished and advanced transportation, communication, and medicine. The role of women in
society shifted and created the conditions for their emancipation. Slowly this economic progress not only
formed a middle class, but also raised standards of living and health care for the poor working population.

This didn't only happen in the UK, more and more countries went through the four stages.
·First, many births and many deaths due to bad living conditions.
·Second, better living conditions leading to fewer deaths and a population explosion.
·Third, fewer deaths resulting in fewer births, and population growth came to an end.
But if birth rates have dropped so much, why is the population still growing so fast?
•Well, the children born in the population explosion of the 70s and 80s are having kids themselves now.
•Leading to a noticeable spike in overall population. But they are having far fewer children on average than their
parents. The average today is 2.5, it was 5, 40 years ago. So as this generation gets older, and fertility declines
further, the rate of population growth will keep on slowing. This is true for every country.
•In the west, we tend to overlook progress in other regions of the world. But actually most of the world's
countries have made it to the fourth stage. Just look at Bangladesh. In 1971, the average woman had 7 kids,
but 25% of them would die before the age of 5.
•In 2015, the mortality rate was down to 3.8% and women had only 2.2 kids on average. This is the rule, not
an exception, we're not special, and we just had a head start. It took developed countries about 80 years to
reduce fertility from more than 6 children, to less than 3. Others are catching up fast. Malaysia and South Africa
did it in only 34 years; Bangladesh took just 20. Iran managed it in 10 years.
•All these countries that are catching up didn't have to start from scratch and the more support they get, the
faster they catch up. This is why programs that help lower child mortality or help poor nations develop, are so
important, No matter what your motivation is, whether you dream of a world where all people live in freedom
and wealth, or you just want fewer refugees coming into your country, The simple truth is, that it's beneficial to
you personally if people on the other side of the globe can live a good life. And we are getting there, the
percentage of people living in extreme poverty has never been as low as today.
•So the future of global population growth is not an apocalyptic prophecy, it's a promise!
•Population growth will come to an end.
•The UN forecasts that the 12th billionth human will never be born at all. And as the development level of the
world rises, the number of people a higher education will increase tenfold. Countries who used to be a need,
will help advance development instead. More people is going to mean more people able to advance our
species.
•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.
•It begins growing very slowly, but over generations the growth rate increases more and more rapidly, similar
to a snowball effect. It took the human population thousands of years to reach I billion in! 804. However, it took
only 123 years for us to double to 2 billion by 1927. The population hit 4 billion in 1974 (only 47 years), and if
we continue at our current rate, the human population will reach 8 billion in 2028. Doubling from our present
count of 6.8 billion to 13.6 billion will have a much greater impact than our last couple doublings combined.

Demographic Transition
•The theory of demographic transition held that, after the standard of living and life expectancy increase, family
sizes and birth rates decline. However, as new data has become available, it has been observed that after a
certain level of development the fertility increases again.
•This means that both the worry the theory generated about aging populations and the complacency, it bred
regarding the future environmental impact of population growth are misguided. Factors cited in the old theory
included such social factors as later ages of marriage, the growing desire of many women in such settings ID
seek careers outside child rearing and domestic work, and the decreased need of children in industrialized
settings.
•The factor stems from the fact that children latter a great deal of work in small-scale societies, and work less
in industrial agriculture has been cited to explain the decline in birth rates in Industrializing regions.

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."

Water
•Supplies, on agriculture depends, are running tow 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.

Food
•Studies agree that there is enough food to support the world population, but critics dispute this, particularly if
sustainability is taken into account

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; hydroelectric dams are one example. Usable land may
become less useful through salinization, deforestation, desertification. erosion, and urban sprawl. Global
warming may cause flooding or 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.

Energy
•Population optimists have also been criticized for failing to for future shortages in fossil fuels. currently used
for fertilizer and transportation for modem agriculture.

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.

Wealth and Poverty

•The United Nations indicates that about 850 million people are malnourished or starving and 1. I billion people
do not have access to safe drinking water. Some argue that Earth may support G billion people. but only if
many live-in miseries. The proportion of the world's population living on less than $1 per day has halved in 20
years, but these are inflation- unadjusted numbers and likely misleading.

Environment
•Overpopulation has substantially adversely impacted the environment of Earth starting at least as early as the
20th century. There are also 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.

Effects of Human Overpopulation

Some problems associated with or exacerbated by human overpopulation:
1.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.
2.Depletion Of natural resources, especially fossil fuels
3.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.
4.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.
5.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 2008, the IUCN Red List lists
a total of 717 animal species having gone extinct during recorded human history.
6.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. Intensive factory farming to support large populations.
It results in human threats including the evolution and spread of antibiotic resistant bacteria diseases,
excessive air and water pollution, and new virus that infect humans,
Increased chance of the emergence of new epidemics and pandemics for many
a. 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.
7.Starvation, malnutrition or poor dirt with ill health and diet-deficiency diseases (e.g. rickets). However, rich
countries with high population densities do not have famine.