Table of Contents
Introduction
The world’s population is constantly growing. According to experts, This will cause problems in future years due to a lack of resources that we may have. In this report, I will show different theories made by professionals on our population and how big it can and/or will get. I will explain some of the biggest theories on demographic change which will help to understand the world’s population. I will include pictures and diagrams of experts on demographic change and their theory on the world’s population. There are over 7 billion humans on Earth now, and about one out of eight of us dont have enough to eat. The topic of what number of humans the Earth can contain is a long-standing one that turns out to be progressively extreme as the total population and our utilization of natural resources continues increasing. population discussions like this are the reason, in 2011, National Geographic distributed an arrangement called “7 Billion” on total population, its patterns, suggestions, and future. Following quite a while of inspecting worldwide natural issues, for example, environmental change, vitality, nourishment supply, and freshwater, we thought the time was ready for a profound discourse of individuals and how we are associated with all these different issues that are getting expanded consideration today, in the midst of the new population projections.
Global
The global population currently sits at around 7.647 Billion(1). This number is constantly rising as the global birth rate is higher than the death rate. In more developed countries around the world, we have national health care. Health care keeps people alive and healthy. With big technological advances in medical fields, we are able to keep people alive longer. This is mainly seen as a good thing, however, with people staying alive, that means that the global population increases and there are less of the worlds vital resources to go around for everyone. Shortages of water and food are not rare, people in under-developed countries don’t have access to clean water and food and therefore die. Despite there being a lack of food and water in some countries, in the world there is enough food for 10 Billion people(2). Water is another of earth’s vital resources. Due to modern day technology, developed countries would never run out of water as it is possible to turn seawater into drinking water.
Many people believe that the population will continue to rise until eventually people die due to starvation or dehydration. One theory that was made by Hans Rosling is this:
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the population of the world will never be able to go past 11 billion. This is because there are 2 billion children in the world, 2 billion adolescents, 1 billion young adults, 1 billion adults and 1 billion elderly people. As these people get older, the older people are replaced by the adults and then the adults are replaced by the adolescents. This increases the population by 1 billion and this keeps going until there are 2 billion people in each group. Then the age might increase meaning there is another group. This will add another 1 billion as the population moves up. However, this group will not become 2 billion as it is rare for people to live that long(3). One resource that a lot of people think will run out is oxygen, they think that because we cut down trees and destroy plants that we will lose the precious oxygen that we need to survive by preventing it from being created. This is not true as the atmosphere contains all of earth’s gases and that means all oxygen that has been created ever since plants started making it has either been used up or contained in the atmosphere. However, through deforestation and cutting plants, we are decreasing the amount of carbon dioxide that is used by the plants.
This is a picture of Hans Rosling explaining his theory using blocks, each block represents 1 billion. As you can see, there are two blocks in the first two age groups (Infants-Children-Adolescents-Young Adults) and one in the others (Adults-Middle aged-Elderly people) and as time goes on, one block will be added to the three with only one and then eventually another age group will be added but only one block will fit into it because most people will not live that long.
This is a Diagram of the worlds population and its estimated growth. It shows that in the next 20-40 years, the population will increase to 9 billion and then stay at 9 billion. This is just one estimate.
National
Spain is a very large producer of fresh fruit and vegetables, in 2013 Spain had 13% of all border crossing traffic of fresh fruits and vegetables(4). Spain has a population of 46.401 million people(5) compared to the number of people, that is a lot of food being created. This proves that given the right nutrition and land, it is possible to grow enough food for everyone.
This is a Picture of Spain and its different autonomous communities. It shows the populations for each autonomous community and is colour coded. From this you can see that the most southern (Andalucía) is one of the most populated.
This is a diagram showing the population in Spain in 1995 split into all age groups and shows the population in millions. The diagram is split into Men and Women. From this graph you can see that the most people in one age group is in the 20-24 range.
Local
A large portion of Marbella is the countryside, in the countryside, there is a large amount of farmland. Spain has more than 29 million acres (11.7 million hectares) of farmland, this is the largest in Europe(6). Marbella’s population is 141,172. This has and is rising very quickly. In 1981 the population was just 60,172(7). That is an increase of 134.6% in just 36 years. This may be due to tourists from overseas moving to Marbella as it is a large tourism hotspot in Spain.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the population of the earth is definitely rising, the amount of people being born is much higher than the number of people dying. However bad this may seem, many experts have debunked the belief that we will run out of resources and with the way our technology currently is, our population will not exceed 10 Billion.
There are many possible solutions to global overpopulation, for example:
- Promote family planning – teaching men and women to use birth control to prevent unwanted pregnancies. There is a lot of evidence to prove that this method works. In Iran in 1889, its rate of birth fell from 5.6 births per woman to 2.6 births per woman in just 10 years.
- Government incentives – There is a UK charity called Population Matters who think that a senior government official should be in control of addressing population-related issues. They are trying to make governments promote “responsible parenthood” and they want families to be limited to 2 children.
- One-child legislation – This is perhaps the most controversial on this list, In the 1960s, China introduced this as a method for them to reduce the Giant population in china. The birth rate per woman went from 6 in the 1960s to 1.5 in 2014. There is no doubt that this method yields good results however it is considered to be against a persons human rights. The major issue is that in china when it was introduced, many families only wanted to have boys and so they would ‘dispose’ of baby girls.
- Stop encouraging people to have more children – in a lot of countries there are policies that reward parents more based on how many children they have. This is normally used in underpopulated countries but there is no need for it with the way our world is changing. All governments should be promoting contraception so that our world’s population doesn’t exceed 9 billion. Countries shouldn’t worry about being underpopulated in todays world, it is much better to have less mouths to feed rather than have people starving because there isn’t enough food to go around. One of the major benefits of having a large population is that it increases the workforce. This is unnecessary as our technology is evolving and automation is in full affect, this means that a lot of people are getting fired from their jobs because they are not needed. Having a large population that are unemployed is unacceptable as others that have jobs have to pay tax to support the unemployed and the country would have to take out loans with other countries giving them a debt they cannot repay.
- Teach children about overpopulation – children who are aware of the dangers of a growing population will be more conscious later in life when they come to starting a family. This is currently in place in many countries and works very well at stopping people from having an excessive amount of kids.
