Using Population Control to Achieve Environmental Sustainability

Sustainability relates to the ongoing capacity of Earth to maintain all life, which means developing ways to ensure that all resources on Earth are used and managed responsibly so they can be maintained for future generations.

Sustainability describes how well someone or something is able to thrive and survive. It also can apply to humans, in which there are three general ideas. First is environmental, which is how well humans can help the earth. Second, is economic, which states that everybody deserves the right to make money.

Geographically, Canada is the second largest country in the world (BBC, 2015). In spite of this, Canada has one of the lowest population densities at 3.8 people per square kilometer (Trading Economics, 2010). Due to the

As stated in the text “Population Impacts”, India was the perfect example, as even with the massive population increase, the Indian population still supports itself. This further proves the point that it is over consumption that is the issue, relating back to the fact that over farming is an issue we face today we can see that a growing population is still not the current issue needing to be

The idea of population control is one that ignites people to talk about and explore. Some countries have implemented population control for quite some time now. There are many attributes that go against the argument, but there are also some potential positives that could come from it. No matter what religion or background people come from, each person has their own view on if population control is right or wrong. Many people choose to see certain positives over the negatives while others look at things the other way around. One of biggest and controversial topics within population control is issues of the environment.

Thomas Malthus was an english scholar and economist who lived in the 17th century. Malthus had many theories about relationship of resources and growing populations. Malthus believed that as populations grew, Earth’s resource supply would remain the same, and we would eventually have to many people to feed and take care of. Malthus believed nothing could stop this tragedy from happening unless moral restraint produced lower crude birth rates, or if a disease famine, war, or any tragedy produced higher crude death rates. Malthus’s theories are still believed by some today. People who believe in the ideas of Malthus are called Neo-malthusians. Neo-malthusians predict an even more frightening future because of two characteristics that are different now than they were 200 years ago.

The average human being, multiplied by the Earth’s population, would need to have about four Earths just to supply enough resources (Footprint Calculator). Thinking of people around the world, the people of the United States seem to take a lot of their life for granted. Many people when they hear of the polar ice caps melting wave it off and either don’t believe in it or believe it is not their problem. Well it is their problem and if we don’t jump on the issue soon we will not be giving our future generations much of a life. This brings me to the idea of sustainability. A simple description of the word means that what we have today we will also have tomorrow, next week, next year, or even the next lifetime. Although that is the modest version sustainability is much, much more than just that. Sustainability is derived from three main parts of the human life: environmental, social, and economic. Each being just as important as the other. Environmental is the most well-known aspect of sustainability in human life, but both social and economic take their place in keeping this Earth sustainable.

Population is defined as the number of inhabitants in a particular area. Currently on the face of the earth there are approximately 7.2 billion people alive at this very moment and as of 2013, 36 million of these people live in Canada. The top 10 countries by population are: China with 1.4 billion people, India with 1.3 billion people, the United Sates with 322 million, Indonesia with 253 million, Brazil with 200 million, Pakistan with 185 million, Nigeria with 178 million, Bangladesh with 158 million, Russia with 142.5 million and Japan with 127 million people. As can be seen a lot of people live in Asia. To be specific, 61% of the world’s population lives in Asia but why is this the case?

Sustainability is “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations” (Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: Our Common Future 1987). The concept of sustainability comprises of four pillars: environmental; economic; political and social; as can be seen in the image below. Environmental sustainability is the use and management of the environment in a way that it does not deplete our finite resources. Economic sustainability is a long term sustainable economy that supports its community and political sustainability is the collaboration of different bodies of government to achieve a sustainable future. Now social sustainability is hard to define as it encapsulates many different factors; however to be very broad it is to achieve social justice. The real objective for sustainability is that all four pillars work together equally in a precautionary principle;

Since Thomas Malthus’s Essay on the Principle of Population, published in 1798, the exponential growth of population and the arithmetic growth of necessities like food production have haunted the subconscious of social scientists and demographers. However, places like China and the Soviet Union rejected Malthus’s ideas, often for historical and political reasons. In the middle of the twentieth century China faced a huge increase in population. Their solution was to create the now infamous One Child Policy. The government's main concern in both instituting the policy and later changing it to the Two Child Policy was protecting the economy from the burden of a fluctuating population. Although China has claimed the policy prevented around 400

Every living being are directly or indirectly depend on natural environment. Sustainability helps to balance financial, social, and environmental factors to facilitate responsible business decision making over the immediate and long term. . Sustainability refers to meeting the needs of present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs (Oxford University press 1987, p.43). Sustainability is also being protective and aware of use of natural resources and development that meets the need of present and everything that is need for our survival and well being depends, directly or indirectly on our natural environment. According to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Sustainability is

“Population in the world is currently growing at a rate of around 1.11% per year and the current average population change is estimated at around 80 million per year” (World Populations). Think about that for a moment how many people are added every year.    The single greatest threat to the future of our planet, to the environment and to our resources, may be overpopulation. Overpopulation can be described as the inability of the world’s resources to sustain the population. There are many more significant environmental issues that face us also, but overpopulation is the main reason why all these arise. It comes from the simple need to fulfill the needs of the human society, such as food and shelter, at the expense of harm that it will do to our environment. They think more about the short-term gains instead of the long term detrimental effect it can do. As the population of the world increases more than the available essential materials for survival, such as transport, water, shelter, food or social amenities, will decrease with the finite resources we have no matter how bountiful. Due to this, it adds a lot of the stress to the environment just meet this demand. This regularly contributes to environmental deterioration, worsening in the quality of life, or even the disintegration of the population.

Environmental sustainability is about making responsible decisions that will reduce the negative impact on the environment caused by business activities, not simply about reducing the amount of waste you produce or using less energy, but is concerned with developing state that will make businesses more reliably sustainable in future operations.

The notion that there are limits to growth is not new to science. The debate that exponential population growth and economic growth, coupled with natural resources depletion, cannot be sustained has started already a few centuries ago with a ground-breaking publication: “Essay on the principle of population” Thomas Malthus in 1798. With more scientific knowledge developed around this debate, a reverse strategy was formed on the international political agenda called Sustainable Development, and nowadays became a widely used terminology.

    A nineteen year old pregnant Chinese girl is forced to abort because she is "too young" to have a child. Iran, an Islamic nation, instructs religious leaders to promote contraception as a social duty. A Norwegian international banker worries about "migratory tensions" that would engulf his nation with waves of third world immigrants. A Los Angles Times article decries the lack of an official United States population policy. What do these statements share in common?