Population Pressure on Natural Resources; By 2030 We Will Need Two Earths To Survive

According to the estimates by United States Census Bureau, the population of the world is 6.875 billion. The world’s population has significantly increased in the last 50 years, mainly due to medical advancements and substantial increases in agricultural productivity. According to the World Development Indicator published by the World Bank on October 2, 2010, the world population was estimated to be 3 billion in 1960; however it is more than 6 billion which is more than double the amount at that time.

According to a projection made by United Nations Population Division, the world’s population will pass 10 billion by 2055.

The world population is anticipated to grow at a brisk rate and than a decline will be observed because of anticipated economic reasons, health problems, land exhaustion and natural hazards.

According to the United Nations, there is an 85 percent chance that the world’s population will stop growing by the start of the next century. There is a 60 percent chance that the population will not go passed 10 billion before 2100. There is a 15 percent chance that the world population will be less than 7 billion at the end of the current century.

Asia accounts 60 percent of the world population with 3.8 billion people and India and China make up together 40 percent of the world population.

The amount of biodiversity existent in various ecosystems is characterized as a natural resource, currently natural resources are derived from the earth, but it may be possible in the future that these limited resources may even be derived from other planets. Certainly as the population continues to grow the pressure on the echo system to provide the necessities increases immensely. Most of the resources are consumable and non renewable and with this growing pressure of population expansion, our earth is quickly losing its ability to sustain life.

According to the biennial Living Planet Report, human demands are stripping the earth of its natural resources, and as humanity carries on with its need for resources, the capacity of two earths will be needed by 2030 to meet the need of human beings.

A measure of human demand on earth’s resources is called an ecological footprint; United Arab Emirate, Qatar, Denmark, Belgium and United States are the five worst countries for an over consumption of natural resources. Other than these top five nations, rich countries have the biggest ecological foot print, which is five times more than that of the developing nations.

Forests are being devoured, which make oxygen for all living animals; farms are replaced with houses to accommodate people thus reducing the output of the commodities, regular occurring natural disasters represent a further deterioration of the system, continuous rise in temperature with an ultimate threat of global warming will be but a few of the major problems in the minds of future policy makers.

All the organisms that belong to the same species and live in same geographical area are called a population.

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