Outskirts of a shantytown in Madagascar. (Photo by R. Butler)
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POPULATION and POVERTY
The ultimate driving force behind all deforestation is human overpopulation; both the population in the temperate region that places demands on the resources derived from the tropical rainforests, and the expanding population of developing tropical nations, who exploit the rainforest for survival. Today the world's population stands at approximately 6,510,000,000 (6.51 billion) people. Each minute another 145 people are added to the planet, each day another 208,000, and each year another 76,000,000. Despite declining global birth rates, which have now fallen to the lowest level in recorded history, the U.S. Bureau of the Census projects the population will reach 8 billion by 2026 and expects the population to then level off at 9.1 billion in 2050, barring an outbreak of a widespread deadly plague or a catastrophic environmental disaster. Over 99 percent of this new growth will occur in the less-developed countries of today.
Population Growth
World population growth rate continues to plummet
Tropical deforestation rates to slow in future - new study
Whether one is a Malthus believer or not, this increase in human population will place tremendous pressure on the planet's resources. The most pressure will come from the world's developing countries, which have the fastest-growing populations and most rapid economic (industrial) growth. In 1995, economic growth in developing countries reached nearly 6 percent, compared with the 2 percent growth rate for developed countries. The rapid economic transformation of India and China will present one of the greatest challenges to managing future resource consumption and environmental sustainability.
Despite economic growth in developing countries, poverty and hunger continue to expand as economic disparities in these countries continue to widen. One in six people in the world lacks sufficient food to fulfill basic daily requirements, despite increasing food supplies worldwide. There are many reasons for this hunger, including the increasing cost of food against falling real wages and the limited access to food reserves. FAO predicts that food demand in developing countries will grow 1.8 percent annually until 2010. To meet this need, another 222 million acres (90 million hectares) of new land must be brought into agriculture in developing countries, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. It is no longer a question whether forest land will be converted, but what forest land.
Additionally, as developing countries become more integrated into the world economy, they will place greater demands on their own natural resources and as a result, pollution and environmental degradation are projected to increase at a rate exceeding the population growth rate. For example, during the 1980s, the population of tropical developing countries grew by roughly 19 percent, while their deforestation expanded by 90 percent. Industrial demand increases for wood, oil, and mineral products found on forest lands. Consumption of wood products—including sawnlogs and veneer logs, pulpwood, and roundwood—is projected to increase over the next few years to supply demand.
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One of the greatest threats to the world's environment is the compounding numbers of rural poor who turn increasingly to the rainforests to feed and shelter themselves. These poor farmers are sometimes pushed off more fertile soils by large, wealthy landowners who are capable of purchasing land or using political influence to gain title to land. Without realizing it, these poor farmers are perpetuating their own situation by their role in deforestation, which worsens their quality of life by increasing their chance of disease, degrading their drinking water stocks, escalating soil erosion, and leaving their children without the benefits of sustainably utilized forest. As the human population grows, the quality of all forms of life plummets as people are forced to move into more and more marginal lands with higher incidence of natural disasters (floods), crop failures, and disease.
Review questions:
- How does population growth impact the environment?
- How can a falling population growth rate in developed countries still result in deforestation and other environmental problems?
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Continued: Consumption, Conclusion
This article was written by Rhett A. Butler [bibliographic citation for this page] and was last updated on the most recent date listed in the column on the right side.
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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
INTERACT
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Recent news
Top 10 Environmental Stories of 2011
(12/22/2011) Many of 2011's most dramatic stories on environmental issues came from people taking to the streets. With governments and corporations slow to tackle massive environmental problems, people have begun to assert themselves. Victories were seen on four continents: in Bolivia a draconian response to protestors embarrassed the government, causing them to drop plans to build a road through Tipnis, an indigenous Amazonian reserve; in Myanmar, a nation not known for bowing to public demands, large protests pushed the government to cancel a massive Chinese hydroelectric project; in Borneo a three-year struggle to stop the construction of a coal plant on the coast of the Coral Triangle ended in victory for activists; in Britain plans to privatize forests created such a public outcry that the government not only pulled back but also apologized; and in the U.S. civil disobedience and massive marches pressured the Obama Administration to delay a decision on the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, which would bring tar sands from Canada to a global market.
11 challenges facing 7 billion super-consumers
(10/31/2011) Perhaps the most disconcerting thing about Halloween this year is not the ghouls and goblins taking to the streets, but a baby born somewhere in the world. It's not the baby's or the parent's fault, of course, but this child will become a part of an artificial, but still important, milestone: according to the UN, the Earth's seventh billionth person will be born today. That's seven billion people who require, in the very least, freshwater, food, shelter, medicine, and education. In some parts of the world, they will also have a car, an iPod, a suburban house and yard, pets, computers, a lawn-mower, a microwave, and perhaps a swimming pool. Though rarely addressed directly in policy (and more often than not avoided in polite conversations), the issue of overpopulation is central to environmentally sustainability and human welfare.
Five ways to feed billions without trashing the planet
(10/13/2011) At the end of this month the UN predicts global population will hit 7 billion people, having doubled from 3.5 billion in less than 50 years. Yet even as the Earth hits this new milestone, one billion people do not have enough food; meanwhile the rapid expansion of agriculture is one of the leading causes of global environmental degradation, including greenhouse gas emissions, destruction of forests, marine pollution, mass extinction, water scarcity, and soil degradation. So, how do we feed the human population—which continues to rise and is expected to hit nine billion by 2050—while preserving the multitude of ecosystem services that support global food production? A new study in Nature proposes a five-point plan to this dilemma.
UN calls for secure contraceptives as wildlife group hands out Endangered Species condoms
(10/06/2011) Sometime at the end of this month, the seventh billion person on Earth will be born: that's seven billions mouths to feed, seven billion throats to water, and seven billion bodies to keep warm. But the population continues to rise: experts believe the global human population could hit 10 billion by 2050. A UN meeting last month said that to meet the needs of the world's women, the developing world needs a secure supply of contraceptives and voluntary family planning initiatives.
Balancing agriculture and rainforest biodiversity in India’s Western Ghats
(08/08/2011) When one thinks of the world's great rainforests the Amazon, Congo, and the tropical forests of Southeast Asia and Indonesia usually come to mind. Rarely does India—home to over a billion people—make an appearance. But along India’s west coast lies one of the world's great tropical forests and biodiversity hotspots, the Western Ghats. However it's not just the explosion of life one finds in the Western Ghats that make it notable, it's also the forest's long—and ongoing—relationship to humans, lots of humans. Unlike many of the world's other great rainforests, the Western Ghats has long been a region of agriculture. This is one place in the world where elephants walk through tea fields and tigers migrate across betel nut plantations. While wildlife has survived alongside humans for centuries in the region, continuing development, population growth and intensification of agriculture are putting increased pressure on this always-precarious relationship. In a recent paper in Biological Conservation, four researchers examine how well agricultural landscapes support biodiversity conservation in one of India's most species-rich landscapes.
More news on population
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