The call for World Population Day July 11 – The Crisis of Overpopulation

“There are over 7 billion people in the world and You are the only one I love”

When people hear this line they often think about love. But has anyone ever noticed that we already have over 7 billion of us?

As of 2020, it is estimated that there are over 7 billion, 794 million people out there. With this big number of people comes a series of big crises.

Why World Population day ?

On July 11th we celebrate World Population Day. This day exists mainly as a reminder that there are too many humans on earth. It is roughly estimated that the earth has a total human capacity of around 10 billion. Considering that we are nearly 8 billion, it won’t take long before we exceed this number.

This is important because we as humans do not just simply eat, sleep and reproduce. We change our environment to our needs. Although you may not feel like you are changing it much, just the simplest act of driving to work is changing the environment. Now if you were alone, it wouldn’t matter much. But add in all the people and it becomes a huge problem

Sure a tsunami can raise a city but can it ruin 13 thousand hectares of forest every day or 5 million hectares each year? Nope!

World Population Day exists just to aware people of this. That enhances the awareness of people about population – including the effects, impact, way to control population, and way to minimize damage caused by the evergrowing population

Side note* The Population day was established by UNDP back in 1989 and was first observed on July 11 of 1987. It was officially decided to continue in December of 1990 in the United General Assembly with the resolution of 45/216

What crisis of Overpopulation?

So you must be wondering what crisis can have a few more people bring right? Well, we are finally here on the part where we talk about it.

1. Resource Exhaustion

Everything is a resource for us – even the soil. If you did not know we need soil to grow crops and we need soil to build houses. The more people there are, the less each individual has. Sure we can share but how long can you share food when there aren’t enough being produced?

This is not just about food but about every resource, we can use including metal, fuel, and every mineral we use. As our population expands, we use more of them. While some are renewable, a lot of these resources aren’t. Once they run out, we will have none. However, the effect of overpopulation goes much deeper than just making the resources run out.

2. Environmental Degradation

Let’s make one thing clear, our environment is indeed getting worse each year. We have all heard about how the overuse of fossil fuels to meet global demands has caused global warming and change in the weather pattern.

We have also heard how humans have deforested a large portion of the forests for wood, fruits, and farmlands and how it has resulted in floods. We don’t need to tell you how the pollution is greater in places with a large population. Well, this is just a small size of how the environment has degraded.

For those who think Environment degradation doesn’t affect us much – just remember the fire in august of 2021. Reports say that the fire was caused by long dry spells, windy weather, and discarded cigarette. Now a discarded cigarette is not a major threat unless the air is so dry that everything can be set on fire with a few small embers from cigarettes.

3. More unemployment

This is a rather simple one.

The more people there are, the more competitions there will be.

If the population is big and the jobs remain the same, there will naturally be a lot of jobless people. Plus it is not like new job prospects open frequently. So the same amount of job vacancies but more people. This leads to people not getting the job they want and even the qualified people being forced to work small-time jobs – just to stay alive.

This is the situation if you are lucky and we are sure that a lot of people have faced this at one point or another.

If you are among those, there is still hope, and don’t give up. As long as you have the skills and fight hard for your job post, you will eventually get it.

Going back to the topic – overpopulation causes unemployment and being unemployed is bad.

4. Higher cost to live

So When we combine all of the things that we have so far, what do you think we will get? We have limited resources, unpredictable weather and a damaged environment, more people and fewer jobs, and a large number of jobless people.

The answer is – everything will become expensive. Especially for a country like Nepal which relies mostly on imported goods and that has a large number of people under the poverty rate. According to some sources, as of 2020, nearly a third of the population is near the poverty rate. This means that for nearly a third of our people, everything is expensive. Add the fact that they cannot afford to buy things before they run out while they save money, then boom – living cost reaches nearly dire state for these people.

Simple solutions – longer durations for the crisis of overpopulation

So the situation seems pretty grim for us, right? Yes, absolutely yes. There is no silver lining to this issue except some hope as the population increment rate seems to be dropping. Still, it was still seen to be increasing at the rate of 1.05% per annum as of 2020 so it’s not time to rejoice yet. If you are wondering how many people that amounts to, it is 85 million and 845 thousand.

The sad part is, there is no quick way to control the rise of the population. There are only a few solutions and most of them are common sense – once you know the crisis of overpopulation. They are:

Proper Family Planning
Having fewer children
Educate yourself about population issues
Spread awareness
Use contraceptive devices when you are having sex without planning for children
Help the organizations that spread awareness about population

These are just about everything an individual – you – can do. Although if the government intervenes, this can be a different story.

Countries like China and Japan have a few child policies. While on china there is a policy stating something like “one couple must have no more than one child”. Although recently the rules have been a bit lax allowing up to three children, it still puts a restriction on population.

Meanwhile, Japan had transitioned from one child to one or two children in 2009 and then to a two-child policy in 2017.

Before the end,

Overpopulation is a crisis and we are a part of the crisis. No dark thoughts here but if we cannot control the population, as per the estimates the population can reach 11 billion by 2100 – which is over the maximum capacity of the earth. By then we might find alternatives to grow the population yet have a harmonious environment but just remember that it is already 2021 and 2100 is nearer than it seems.

If we don’t control overpopulation now and keep growing – with the destruction that just the mere presence of our massive population causes – our grandkids might just the among the last generations on earth. The future is grim if this happens so let’s not make it happen.

Let’s focus on the quality of our future generations – rather than the quantity.

And as always, thank you for reading till the end. If you have any suggestions for us, do us know them down in the comments below.

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