The Human Population Explosion on a Finite Planet Essay

The Human Population Explosion on a Finite Planet - Essay Example The exponential growth of the world’s population is a fact that is undisputed by many scholars concerned with the ecological support the world can comfortably offer, which has created a growing concern about whether the world can eventually support future generations given that the population has shown no signs of declining (Hauser, 1979). Currently, the world’s population stands at more than 7 billion and it is expected to hit a higher record because the populations in the developing world are still growing at very high rates since people their people have not been exposed to family control methods that are, currently being used in the developed world. One of the reasons that have contributed to this is the lack of education that has led to higher levels of illiteracy. Therefore, it is, undoubtedly the world’s population would hit the expected 9 billion mark by 2050 (Meyer & Turner, 1992). Safety has become a major challenge today due to human encroachment on unsafe areas that have often led to the loss of life and property. For instance, human beings have encroached areas prone to floodplains and tsunamis, and this has caused a number of loss of lives whenever catastrophes have struck. Most of these areas, which were 30 years ago sparsely populated have now registered a high number of people due to human encroachment (Hauser, 1979). Moreover, because land has become a scarce resource people have now moved to occupy lands that were formerly being used for agriculture. All these has been attributed lar to population explosion, which has seen many people moving to urban areas due to rural-urban migration. This has reduced the population that was actively engaged in farming and thus leading to the food shortage in some parts of the world (Bouvier & Bertrand, 1999).