Are We Overestimating Overpopulation?

I believe by exploring trends in our population will help shape our modern society and our future as a species by exploring different aspects. It will give us an insight of what is likely to unfold with the next few decades. According to the results of the 2015 Revision by the United Nations the world population reached 7.3 billion June 2015. This has added nearly one billion people in a span of a decade. With majority of the population living in Asia, with 60% of the Population in Asia which is 4.4 billion.

Currently, the world population continues to grow at a lower and stable rate compared to the previous 3 decades at a consistent 1.24% per year. This symbolizes the increase in average life expectancy of all Homo sapiens. Through the expansion of knowledge in medicine and science as well as education.

However, it is highly recognized that fertility rate will fall. This concludes that we are ‘Overestimating Overpopulation’, as population growth will fall.

*Check out my Artifact, which includes my research on each continent of the world with some interesting case studies.

The Interview with Robert Kunzig

I had the amazing privilege to interview Robert Kunzig through Skype, who is the Senior Environment Editor of National Geographic magazine, to discuss one of his articles ‘7 Billion’. He is a scientific journalist who is famous for his research on oceanology and a member of the European Division.

What are your views with our current population?

“I believe that if our population were to spread perfectly around the world according to the number of resources, our world would never experience overpopulation. The high numbers in Homo Sapiens (us) is raising exponentially, scientists like myself would also agree that it is affecting countries economically, socially and especially environmentally. Today’s macro objective aims of governments is to ignore the fact that overpopulation has been secretly playing a role in nearly every single event whether it is a catastrophic or simply magical.”

Mr. Kunzig and I discussed that there have been hundreds if not thousands of studies and ongoing investigations about this issue. However, all of them lead to the same conclusion, we can maintain our population only if we can sufficiently increase our food with it. However professor Kunzig explained that global fertility rate without a doubt will fall. Thus he concluded that the media such as news and movies greatly exaggerate the consequences of global population. However we mutually agreed that the world should stride to innovation to support countries, which are suffering from poverty and disease.

My Findings

7.15 billion is truly a massive and impressive number. This number not only proves our successful survival on Earth, it proves our time in which we thrive on Earth.

Already at seven billion people we are already beginning to realize terrible problems, with nearly 1 billion people still hungry and suffering from malnutrition or lack of medical attention. However it won’t end there, by 2050 the next 2 billion people are expected to cause much more environmental damage than ever before. Thus each added individual, on average, must now be fed from more marginal land, supplied with water from more distant or more polluted sources, therefore to reach these parts more materials will need to be used.

The UN stated that they are highly confident that the earth’s population will reach a peak and decrease. As you can see in Fig 1, from 1975 to 2025 the gradient of the population remains high. From 2025 onwards, there is a clear decrease in gradient. Moving on to Fig 2, the UN demographers have narrowed down most likely predictions in the future. With the low and medium variant decreasing, and the high variant with the population increasing dramatically.

High variant reasons: The world population continues to go at its current rate and increases the population, with every next billion in less than 15 years. Medium variant reasons: As a more of countries develop (but not all) into stages 3‐5 they would slowly aging population and a low birth rate, causing a slow decrease in population. (Like LV but slower.) Low variant reasons: As an increasing amount of countries develop into stages 3‐5 they would begin to have an aging population and a low birth rate, causing a decrease in population.

The statistics on Figure 1 and 2 were measured for the global population, and it has been suggested by many biologists that the population will reach a stage where the population will “stationary phase”. This has been proven by the use of bacteria, fungi, ants and mice, all in which followed the same pattern, which all formed similar population growth of the Sigmoid graph.

The Lag phase is the first stage where a group of species is first introduced into their environment, and are trying to find food and are beginning to reproduce, however their life expectancy is low. The Log

phase is the point where the species is at their highest potential, they have found a large variety of food and resources sources. This causes reproduction to increase and death rate to decrease, as the resources are plentiful. The predicted stationary phase for the human

population as resources become scarce, reproduction rate and death rate is somewhat equal to each other and population stabilizes and maintains at it’s highest number. The Death phase suggests that when all resources are loss the population falls with minimum birth rate, with large amount of the population old. The population reaches zero.

This theory suggests that the current human population has undergone the “Lag phase” and now on the “Log phase”. By using this graph we should be progressing to the “stationary phase” graph shows. Even if this theory is true the Nobel award‐winning scientists John B Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka have researched this area. They have stated several times in the National geographic and Time magazines that the global human population would begin its ‘stationary’ phase by 2100 and it predict it will end the phase by only 4300. By then our resources would have depleted.

The Solutions

There are several solutions to overcome overpopulation. The first and most obvious to many is education. Education is seen to all economists as a source of a positive multiplier effect. This means it improves social benefits to the community of a small region and the country. Sex education allows people to understanding the uses of contraceptives so that it can be introduced in cultures and to be more widely accepted. This will eventually lead to an improvement in economy and standard of living. The lack of education is commonly associated with poverty, which decreases the working opportunities and understanding of family planning. This allows families to have efficient birth control such as those who are struggling can discourage having large families. On top of that it enables women to make their own reproductive choices. This will cause an increase in abortion and sterilization.

However this solution is an expensive one, especially to Less Economically Developed Countries (LEDCS). Current studies from the Globe show that 84% of the population can read and write meaning more than 818 million people do not know how to read and write. The UN has described if the educated percentage rises, especially in LEDCs the world will experience the medium variant as described in the graph above. This will cause a decrease in gradient size and a slower birth rate and death rate, due to the improvement of medicine and knowledge of all societies.

Some countries have introduced policies such as China’s one child policy. The policy allows people to gain Tax benefits or concessions including child funds for their future education. Some others might be to waive of certain port of income tax or lowering rates of income tax for those married couples who have single or two children. This is highly beneficial to the world as it introduces a more skilled workforce in the future, resulting in an increase in the economy in general.

This idea has it’s downside. By having these policies Less Economically Developed Countries (LEDCS) are restricting the country to grow it’s population causing them to unable to expand to become More Economically Developed Country (MEDC). The LEDCs may not be able to afford child funds as most of the government’s income is spent on government spending of public goods.

Wealth is essential to all people, but it depends in area, culture and lifestyle of the person. The main purpose of this wealth distribution plan is to provide the basic necessities to all. This is a very expensive solution as UNICEF has calculated it would cost 23 trillion for this to happen. The distribution plan may help for short term but eventually all the money will end up with the 1% of the population. The main fear of introducing so much money may cause markets to crumble, as the unit of currency would be worth nothing.

Food distribution is one of the main factors in order for the world to solve the global issue of overpopulation. The world needs to ensure that there would be enough food and resources. This is a difficult problem to solve, as it will be solving the basic economic problem of ‘People have unlimited wants, but there are limited resources to provide for those wants.’ National Geographic says currently all food and agriculture collected; one third is lost or wasted. A typical family of four wastes nearly 563 Kg of food annually. Many people believe that we are simply not producing enough food. This is simply not the case; the amount of food the world wastes is enough to feed another 3 billion. This means our current food supply can feed up to 10 billion people. With proper distribution of the food and less waste will end world hunger.

However realistically we can never evenly distribute all the food in the world. To solve this problem the human race must look to other sources of food to satisfy our wants without extinction of species such as Tuna, Salmon and dear, which are at the verge of distinction. Currently 75% of the meat people eat is red meat, throughout the past few years this percentage has decreased. This is because more people are looking towards a healthier lifestyle. Many parts of the world rely heavily on rice as a source of calories, Scientists fear that is a disease were to take place and affect the supply of rice, countries such as Thailand will virtually collapse as their culture forms around the growth and consumption of rice.

This graph displays the demand for rice over 50 years. We find a constant large increase. This means more people are relying on rice as part of their daily meals. Due to the industrial production of rice, bacteria, fungi and viruses are able to mutate against the rice to spread and grow because of the plentiful supply. Technology is advancing at a rapid rate. The final possible solution for overpopulation is space. By sending people to space to collect resources such as Mars’s Iron, gold, silver, copper ore, which makes up nearly 70% of the planet’s crust. This would allow Earth to concentrate its production on agriculture and aquaculture rather than polluting and deforestation of more land because there would be brown fields available for it. NASA suggests that by mining in other planets for precious ores and minerals will create more job opportunities for the larger population and more space.

On the 26th of November 2015, I carried out a survey to a handful of the student body of the school. These are the results, majority of the students between the ages of 14 to 15. My primary research shows that the younger generations do believe many of the global issues are due to global warming. Whereas demographers from Harvard University disagree to some extent and stated ‘the root of climate change is the ever increasing population, sucking in many resources which are not used to full efficiency.’ In fact many of the statistics I collected I found quite astonishing, as many of the students do not see overpopulation as a problem. This may seem as alarming as this may conclude that there may be no further efforts in the future to solve this long term problem.

After I collected all my data, I ensured I developed my research and point of view around these statistics. These statistics show that majority of the people see global warming as a more serious issue. Without realizing overpopulation is the largest factor affecting it, commented by the NAT Geo People Channel. Overpopulation leads to geographical, sociological, economical, political and mathematical problems of countries and regions.

Conclusion

In conclusion I believe despite the rapid growth of the population we should celebrate our large achievement, but we should also solve the current problems effectively and quickly with the population such as hunger, poverty and global warming. We should really consider preparation for the next large generation. This can include: more sustainable sources for resources and we should expand our circle of food variation because we are relying mainly on rice, corn and wheat and finally resolve global warming issue in which we should be concerned about. Even though theories suggest that the population should experience a natural decrease, this will mean billions of people in the future will die from the lack of resources.

Throughout my research I saw many of the solutions to fall under two main categories the first are plans to reduce population size and growth and the other is to improve resources as the growth progresses. By reducing population size by using policies governments may end up stripping couples from their rights from having the sized family they want. However by increasing sources of resources may result into an even larger population in the future, which is even harder to control. By 2080 Discovery magazine has predicted that humans may live up to 160 years old. Even though some scientists argue about this statistic, they say that the average life expectancy will definitely increase. In result increasing the population even further. Many of the solutions themselves may cause negative multiplier effects, which will result in a variety of different problems. Therefore I conclude there is no current solution to overcome the problems of overpopulation.

Evaluation

The question that I had chosen created an excellent research opportunity, and was great task, which closely relates to various topics. However the research was very difficult, as there is so much information, which describes global population. This made it difficult to select the essential, reliable and accurate information required for my project. Hence this took a great deal of time to search for the necessary information.

This project has allowed me to explore how the world is interconnected with various subjects such as geography, politics, religion, sociology, psychology, and biology. By expanding my research on a fairly broad question I have achieved a higher understanding about the world we live in. This project has also allowed me to understand why governments choose to make certain decisions in the news, and understand the consequences as of a result of these decisions.

The questionnaires I handed out to the student body, which consisted of a variety of people of different ages and backgrounds. However many responses were inappropriate, thus I discarded and left the detailed and reasonable ones. The questionnaires allowed for a much wider‐opinion and enabled me to take in account of other factors to this topic. Whereas on the other hand I found that the time management was excellent, I completed my project early, allowing me to improve the quality of my work and ensure all corrections were made to help improve my mark.

#GlobalizedIssues