Solutions to Overpopulation - Essay Example

Topic: Environment Solutions to Overpopulation Essay type: Problem and Solution Word count: 1534 Over the last few decades, the world has been facing with a wide range of serious environmental problems that are urgent to be solved. However, one of the most leading and discussed one seems to be the issue of overpopulation as it has become more serious problem in the recent years. According to United Nations “World population passed 6 billion persons at the end of the twentieth century and stands at 6.5 billion in 2005, which is currently growing at 1.2 percent annually”(2005, p5). The main causes of overpopulation are migration from rural areas to urban ones, poor family planning and medical advancements aimed at prolonged life span. Consequently, this migration poses a shortage of people in remote areas and cause to stress in urban as well. Moreover, advanced medicine means a longer life span that result in the unequal balance between birth and death rate which in its turn gives rise to the lack of basic needs for the whole populace. Furthermore, overpopulation leads to environmental degradation due to pressure on natural resource. However, the issue of overpopulation can be tackled by providing financial incentives to small size families and diminishing poverty rate as well as achieving equal balance between birth and death rate. The first viable solution that could ameliorate the problem of overpopulation is to offer financial bonuses to the low sized families. In population control, money can be utilized as a form motivation to encourage people to a decrease in fertility rate. As Berelson states money is proven to be one of the most powerful motivators.(Cited in Donner, 2010a).Therefore, it is likely that people’s desire towards money will discourage them from having more children and large families. According to Donner (2010) financial incentives in the form of credits for the couples who decided to limit number of children would be an excellent motivation to curb family size. This policy could be implemented by creating a program that provides a credit to the couples by the government when they have their first or even second child but refunding the given credits as long as they exceed this number. As a result, people would try to curb themselves from their third baby in order not to return the given credits and this trend is likely to increase the number of fewer children families in the society. Another way of accomplishing this policy is that government would cover high school payments of first and second child for free, however, this financial aid automatically is stopped upon the third child. Supporting this, statistics identifies that Taiwanese parents obtain financial assist from the government for their first two children’s high school education, contribution would be halved upon the birth of a third child and cancelled by forfeiting this right if a fourth child was born(Donner, 2010b). Despite these severe penalties, this policy successfully reduced the number of children in Taiwan. According to the statistics, 75% of Taiwanese women enrolled to this program and contraception practice increased from 19% to 31% (Donner, 2010c). This is an effective solution not only in terms of declining population rate, but also saving society’s money that might be used to fund other social requirements with the intent to improve social welfare. However, some developing countries might not be able to afford these policies and economic deficit is likely to occur in the country. Thus, this policy should be introduced internationally by organizing international co-operation between countries where industrialized countries assist to developing ones with finance with a view to achieving the desired goal of global population stabilization. The second feasible approach to overcome the problem of overpopulation is to accomplish an elimination of poverty. It is obvious that poverty poses to illiteracy among people and due to this illiteracy, people mostly fail to realize the adverse effects of fertility on their family’s wellbeing and continue to live in poor conditions with more children (Sharif, 2007a). Therefore, the first step would be achieving a universal education in order to make uneducated people more well-informed about different fertility programs and harms of high fertility rate for both individual family and country. Research reveals that educating society about negative outcomes of high fertility rate and providing them with the use of affordable family planning services are essential factors to alleviate poverty which in its turn will also contribute to lowering population growth and achieving early population stabilization (Sharif, 2007b). In order to implement this, in rural areas, especially where poverty rate is high, new offices should be built and stuffed with family planning officers, doctors and extension workers. By doing so, uneducated people are involved in participating free lessons and consultations regarding to proper family planning and usage of family planning service. In addition, birth control means should be free of charge for poor people due to making it available when needed. “Providing people with free means of birth control is assumed to lead to the adoption of measures, which is expected to reduce fertility and arrest population growth”(Sharif, 2007c, p13). Lastly, poor people’s standard of living should be improved for accomplishment of modernization because modernization has played a considerable role in bringing about sizable portion of fertility reduction. This claim is supported by the fact that fertility rate for the has not yet dropped, only that of the educated reflects a substantial decline (Sharif, 2007d). Also, the survey conducted in Bangladesh shows that almost 50% of its population still living in poverty and maintaining very high fertility which is totally a serious barrier to any effort to stop population growth (Sharif, 2007e). This clarifies that, if there was not poverty, the decrease in fertility and population growth would be much larger. Overall, it is clear that connection between poverty and fertility is very high and population growth can not be arrested unless poverty is reduced. The elimination or faster reduction in poverty will serve as a better population policy. The last possible solution that could eradicate the problem of overpopulation appears to be equalizing the birth and death rate. There are several steps that need to be taken in order to achieve this balance. First and foremost, young couples’ awareness should be raised about how they will be unable to provide good nutrition, education and medical facilities to their children if they start early marriages and have many children. In other words, early marriages should be avoided by imposing some legal age requirements for marriage. According to United Nations, if the legal marriage age is 20 years, there is likely to be a significant decrease in the number of children (Smit, 2016). It is because of the fact that at the age of 20 or above people will have already been informed about challenges of nurturing more children and therefore, they will willingly prefer to have less children that contributes to a decline in the birth rate. Moreover, an introduction of two-child policy into the society will be a beneficial factor to reduce the number of births for the purpose of reaching equalized balance between birth and death rate. For example, over the past two years, China has taken some reforms in its population policy based on their current financial conditions and ended up with introducing two-child policy in January, 2016(Wu, Wu and Dou, 2016a).As a result, under the new fertility policy China is predicted to drop its population sharply by the year of 2050. Statistics reveals that total population of China is likely to peak at 1.448 billion in 2022 and experience sustaining decline phase until 2050 when the final total population will be equal to 0.961 billion (Wu, Wu and Dou, 2016b). Thus, this two-child fertility policy should further be implemented in the future. Last but not least, the control of birth rate requires the usage of productive and long-lasting contraceptive methods. It is true that sterilization is one of the effective and widespread forms of birth control. In 1990, it was utilized by almost 20% of all married couples in China and brought desirable outcomes in a fertility decline(Scharping, 2005a). Supporting this, Chen (1985) claims that “the family planning programs promoted the sterilization as a effective contraceptive method”(Cited in Scharping, 2005b, p36).To conclude, limiting early marriages, two-child policy and sterilization per couples should be practiced with a view to reaching the population stabilization that alleviate the environmental degradation and enable people to have a sustainable life on the earth in the long run. In conclusion, it seems that suggested solutions to the issue of overpopulation are difficult to accomplish and they require a huge amount of effort and time since it has been increasing in an alarming level in the recent years. It is therefore important for the countries to offer people financial incentives for the purpose of encouraging them to limit family size, to alleviate poverty that contribute to eradication of population growth and to achieve a desirable balance between birth and death rate by practicing two-child policy and sterilization. In order to overcome the problem of overpopulation quickly and effectively all these solutions should be implemented together. If these approaches are accomplished in the countries through the world, the desired goal of population stabilization and sustainable life on the earth will be guaranteed in the long run. Read More