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OVERPOPULATION AND THE IMPACT ON THE ENVIRONMENT

Overpopulation and the Impact on the Environment

Chua, Joanna Marie, Carpio, Lee Andrea, Galiza, Athena Michelle, Garcia, Anjelo Cyrus,

Yaun, Nicole Yvette

St. Luke’s College of Nursing, Trinity University of Asia

Author Note
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Keywords: Over Population, Water Shortages, Rise in Population, Climate Change,

decreased biodiversity, deforestation, governments, environment

When the entire population exceeds the earth's bearing capacity, Overpopulation occurs. This
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means that the Earth's resources are insufficient to support everyone on the planet. As soon as

possible, we must become aware of what is going on around us. We need to know what is causing

this scenario, what the ramifications are, and how we will be able to deal with it.

If overpopulation continues, it will endanger the planet's resources and the future of the next

generation. Food, energy, and water scarcity will generate conflict, disease spread will be rapid, and

pollution in land, water, and air will be too much to handle. This would surely affect Earth's weather

and temperature, harming not only people but all wildlife and plants as well. Energy demand and

transportation use increased in tandem with the growth of the economy and population. All of this

meant that our countries' agricultural, forestry, and marine resources were put to greater use,

increasing environmental pressure. As the population grows, there are huge implications not only for

the economy but also for the environment. Those in positions of power should consider

sustainability so that, even if the population grows, we will not be alarmed. Focusing on the

development of renewable energies such as windmills, geothermal energy, and solar energy, as well

as growing more crops and trees, minimizing the usage of plastics, and understanding how our

favorite things and food are created (Sharma, 2009).

Overpopulation continues to be a challenging problem for the Philippine government to solve

because of the complexity and problems it causes for individuals and society. The Philippine

government must respond appropriately to these issues and establish measures to address them. In

the end, if individuals and governments work together to overcome the negative effects of

overpopulation, sustained progress and development will be possible.

Earth is the home to different kinds of people and populations. Earth inhabits all kinds of people

of different races, religions, castes, creed, and belief. It should not come as a surprise that the

population around the world is not equally divided but scattered in different numbers in different

countries. There are countries that are densely populated and have more people per square

kilometre. The more the population is, the more people would be per square kilometre.

To begin with, Overpopulation is a primary contributor to the majority of the world's issues,

including food scarcity, a lack of safe drinking water and energy insufficiency (Dimick, 2014). As the

population grows, so does the need for food and other requirements. It was stated in a government
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document that Philippines’ rapidly growing population is increasing its vulnerability to climate

change. The country has slipped recently from 12th to 3rd most vulnerable in the world to climate

change. In 1970, the population of the Philippines was 30 million. Population growth has slowed

since then, but the number of people living in the country is nonetheless expected to double in the

next thirty years.In addition, deforestation and pollution will be widespread (Kopnina and

Washington, 2016). All these factors lead to decreased trees in forestry and escalating greenhouse

emissions that contribute to the wreckage of the atmosphere. According to (Yeo, 2015) it has been

reported that greenhouse emissions only from road transport make up 36.8% of total energy

demand.

Secondly, the relation between population and environmental degradation is often considered

straightforward: More people should have a greater impact on the environment, if all other factors

(such as per capita consumption) remain unchanged. As Laurie Mazur (2012, p. 2) writes, “if we

increase by 30% by 2050, we must swiftly reduce our collective impact by a third just to maintain the

disastrous status quo.” The formal expression of this idea is the famous IPAT decomposition (Holdren

and Ehrlich 1974), where humans’ environmental impact (I) is conceived to be a product of

population size (P), per capita affluence (A), and technology (T) per unit of affluence. IPAT is still

frequently referred to in the scientific debate, in particular by critics of population–environment (P–

E) studies (e.g., Angus and Butler 2011). However, researchers in this field have long acknowledged

the limits of IPAT for empirical research. In many applications, T is simply a ratio of I and A, and thus,

the relative impact of population growth cannot be empirically assessed (see, e.g., York et al. 2003).

In addition, in its simplest form, IPAT neglects possible interactions between the right-hand side

variables.

Another poblems with IPAT are less acute in its stochastic version known as STIRPAT (Dietz and

Rosa 1997) which allows for over- or underproportional weights of the factors in the equation

determined by empirical data. Unobserved variables or interactions lead to a large error term which

informs the researcher that the model only partly captures what is going on in the real world. There

are many mechanisms of environmental degradation that do not involve population size or growth

(see, e.g., de Sherbinin et al. 2007 for an overview). In the following, we review theoretical

arguments on the link between population and the two outcomes of interest in this paper: urban
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land use change and CO2 emissions. According to UN-Water, 75% of planet Earth is covered in water.

97.5% of that is ocean and 2.5% is freshwater. 70% of freshwater is divided into glaciers and ice caps

and the remaining 30% into land surface water, such as rivers, lakes, ponds and groundwater. Most of

the freshwater resources are either unreachable or too polluted, leaving less than 1% of the world's

freshwater, or about 0.003% of all water on Earth, readily accessible for direct human use.

According to the Global Outlook for Water Resources to the Year 2025, it is estimated that by

2025, more than half of the world population will be facing water-based vulnerability and human

demand for water will account for 70% of all available freshwater. Furthermore, a report in

November 2009 by the 2030 Water Resources Group suggests that by 2030, in some developing

regions in the world, water demand will exceed supply by 50% and a report jointly produced by more

than two dozen U.N. bodies states that, "By 2030, nearly half of the world's people will be living in

areas of acute water shortage." The planet is in the midst of what the United Nations is calling a

"Global Water Crisis." Freshwater is the most fundamental finite resource with no substitutes for

most uses, yet we are consuming fresh water at least 10 times faster than it is being replenished in

regions of northern Africa, the Middle East, India, Pakistan, China, and the U.S.. According to the

World Resources Institute, "Freshwater ecosystems – the diverse communities found in lakes, rivers,

and wetlands – may be the most endangered of all. Some 34 percent of fish species, mostly from

fresh water, are threatened with extinction, according to the latest tally of the World Conservation

Union (IUCN), which tracks threats to the world’s biodiversity. Freshwater ecosystems have lost a

greater proportion of their species and habitat than ecosystems on land or in the oceans; in addition,

they are probably in greater danger of further losses from dams, pollution, overfishing, and other

threats. In extent, freshwater ecosystems are quite limited, covering only about 1 percent of the

Earth’s surface. Yet, they are highly diverse and contain a disproportionately large number of the

world’s species." As human populations grow, so will the problem of clean freshwater availability.

As the human population continues to explode, finite natural resources, such as fossil fuels,

fresh water, arable land, coral reefs and frontier forests, continue to plummet, which is placing

competitive stress on the basic life sustaining resources and leading to a diminished quality of life. A

study by the UNEP Global Environment Outlook, which involves 1,400 scientists and five years worth
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of work to prepare, found that "Human consumption had far outstripped available resources. Each

person on Earth now requires a third more land to supply his or her needs than the planet can

supply." Furthermore, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, which is a four-year research effort by

1,360 of the world's leading scientists commissioned to measure the actual value of natural

resources to humans and the world, concluded that, "The structure of the world's ecosystems

changed more rapidly in the second half of the twentieth century than at any time in recorded

human history, and virtually all of Earth's ecosystems have now been significantly transformed

through human actions." Explore 'Finite Earth'

Another problems caused by overpopulation is water security. Water is one of the most

essential aspects of daily life for every human being such as food, clothing, and almost everything

else humans interact with involves water. According to United Nations DESA, water security will be a

crucial focus for governments in the next few decades, especially since the population is expected to

reach approximately 9.7 billion by the year 2050, and 11.2 billion by 2100. Similar to oil and other

fossil fuels, water is a finite resource, and the knowledge for world leaders to be able to manage a

limited resource with a growing population will be hard to maintain water security (Brown, 1999).

Approximately 50% of the population by the year 2030 will be living in regions around the globe that

are considered “water stressed”, a term defined as when supply of water exceeds the amount that is

OVERPOPULATION AND THE IMPACT ON THE ENVIRONMENT

available, either due to lack of it. Reports by United Nations World Report stated that since 1990, the

global population increased by an average of eighty million people, which heightens the world

demand for freshwater by about sixty four billion cubic meters of water per year. This increasingly

high demand for water will also affect food production in water stressed areas such as the Middle

East, India, China, and the south-western United States (GreenFacts, 2005). Overpopulation will

strain current water resources to their limits, cause an increase in water pollution, and lead to an

increase in civil and international conflicts (EverythingConnects.Org, 2013). According to World

Health Organization, the growth in regional and global population will also lead to increased cases of

water pollution. As of 2013, there are an estimated seven hundred and eighty million people who
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don’t have access to safe drinking water, while about two billion people don’t have proper water

sanitation. About half of these statistics are for people living in cites. Urban areas have a high risk of

water pollution. Runoff from streets can carry oils, heavy metals, and other containments, while

sewage water can leak into ground water, bringing bacteria, nitrates, phosphorus and other

chemicals.

Since March 2019, thousands of households in Metro Manila have been reeling from

intermittent to no water supply. This severe water crisis has resulted in crop losses in the Philippines,

amounting to 464 million Philippine pesos (PHP). Moreover, approximately 6 million people in the

Philippines have suffered from the insufficient water supply. One of the causes that led to this water

crisis was the lack of effective and resilient infrastructure, which was exacerbated by the improper

management of several projects by Manila Water, a company that provides water treatment, water

distribution, sewerage and sanitation services to the east side of Metro Manila. In addition, climate

change has significantly impacted the water security of Metro Manila. It has led to irregularities in

weather patterns and changes in the natural cycle of the El Niño phenomenon. (Jaewon Son, 2020)

In the Philippines, El Niño is related to high temperatures and severe dry spells. It is commonly

followed by La Niña, which is characterized by heavy rains, severe typhoons and flooding. El Niño

refers to warmer than normal sea surface temperatures in the eastern tropical Pacific due to

OVERPOPULATION AND THE IMPACT ON THE ENVIRONMENT

anomalous atmospheric circulation patterns known as the Southern Oscillation. It is a complex and

naturally occurring weather pattern that occurs when ocean temperatures in the Pacific Ocean near

the equator vary from the norm. Although El Niño is a natural phenomenon, climate change extends

and intensifies the El Niño cycle. While it is clear that climate change has led to increased disaster

risk in the Philippines, assessing its actual impact on the water crisis could provide reliable

information for implementing water-related policies and mitigating climate change. (Halim lee,

2020)Metro Manila, home to more than 13 million residents, is heavily reliant on the Angat Dam as

their main source for clean and safe water. The city's water provider, Manila Water, draws up to 1.6

billion litres from the dam each day. In recent years this number has increased to 1.75 billion litres
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everyday to accommodate the growing population. As cities continue to develop, the demand for

resources increases; with a limited supply of natural water, the challenge of providing adequate

water and sanitation services surges. In 2019, large parts of the capital region experienced water

shortage as their taps ran dry for over 2 weeks. Despite the intended solution of the La Mesa Dam,

the water plummeted to its lowest level in 21 years due to the recent dry spell conditions. (water

roam, 2020)

The Philippines is experiencing a very high rate of biodiversity loss, indicated by a phenomenal

decline in the quality and number of habitats such as forests, coral reefs, and mangroves. This loss

has harmful impacts on the long-term sustainability of community livelihood systems, political

cohesion and governance, and overall national welfare. Biodiversity loss has root causes in the social,

institutional, economic, and political spheres. A host of socioeconomic factors, including financial and

political history and rapid population growth, contribute to the erosion of environmental quality and

biodiversity loss. Conservation efforts have failed to reverse the trend largely because of inattention

to these root causes. (Phil, 2019)

The world's population is expected to grow during the next few decades (Kopnina and

Washington, 2016). These issues may become irreversible. When this happens, it might lead to

conflict and violence between nations since everyone's perspective will be one of survival. Leaders

are closing their eyes and ears to the numerous options available in this topic. They continue to

consume coal, oil, and other natural gasses in excess, resulting in bad air quality, illnesses, and

climate change (Kopnina and Washington, 2016). Scientists are marching in the streets, providing us

with all of the evidence and knowledge that, if we continue on this path, the once-feared scenario

will become a reality. We can avoid the problems from worsening if the government focuses more on

education and overpopulation policies (Whiting, 2018).

Finally, Better education can aid in the implementation and create social change. Sex education

should be made mandatory in schools so that children learn what they need to know so that they

will have an idea of what may happen in a certain situation and be able to avoid it. Following these

rules, personal and social adjustments, we must not forget to help the Earth to breathe. We

consumed more than we needed over the years, causing our home to deteriorate. We should plant
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trees and crops, save water and electricity, avoid smoking, drive less, and help spread awareness

because we can all make a difference if we work together.

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