Resources to Feed All People of the World - Research Paper Example

? RESEARCH PAPER ORDER NUMBER:  512312 PAGES: 4 WORDS: 1000 REFERENCES: 4 of Paper BIOL 2406 Environmental Biology Spring, Whenever we are given the responsibility to run or manage a house the two important things to put to consideration are its capacity and resources i-e how much is its capacity to reside the people and how much resources it has to fulfill the needs of those people? Without this basic knowledge any kind of management however vigilant and hardworking will surely fail. Since earth is our home so we cannot manage to run it well without answering these two basic questions. Our planet earth is inhibited by 6.8 billion people and the number is increasing every second (Population, n. d.). Have we enough resources to feed them all and to give them a comfortable life is the burning question since the last century. Fortunately the concern to answer this question is increasing day by day. Not only the demographers, economists and the qualified scholars are trying hard to answer it but the layman in the street is quibbling about it in the hope to find a clear picture of the whole situation. Wiraj and John are two students studying in an American University. John is the native so he represents the thoughts and ideas of the developed world while Wiraj is a Sudanese student belonging to one of the poorest countries of the world. Thus the debate becomes interesting as both of them unveil the two extreme existing conditions of the world in which the people are living. John: Hello Wiraj , how are you ? Remember the last time we met and talked about overpopulation and scarcity of resources, you were of the opinion that the misuse of the resources and not the overpopulation generating the scarcity. I was not able to refute you as I was not well prepared but now I have done my homework and I can prove that over population is the main cause of all our problems. You know that after the agricultural and industrial revolution the human population increased dramatically. The main causes were better medical facilities and better sanitation conditions. The death rate decreased and the mortality rate among the new born was also lowered down thus increasing the number of people inhibiting the earth. This growing population used the natural resources that were present everywhere in abundance. Take the example of coal, in 17th century the people used to pick coal from the surface of the earth. Now we have to dig deep to get it. It is hard to believe that your country is suffering from all kinds of problems due to overpopulation and you are not facing the facts. Tell me honestly what do you think is the main difference between America and Sudan. Let me give you some rough estimation, the average annual income in Sudan is 266.35$ while in America it is 33,070.30$(NationMaster. n. d.). it mean in Sudan people are living below poverty line. Wiraj: I think the main difference is that in Sudan we lack good governance. Our leaders are usually corrupt and incompetent. We never have a stable government as there is so much diversity of racial, religious and ethnical groups that it is hard to harness them under one power. Moreover we have a long history of colonial slavery. In 1956 we got independence from British Empire. Then we have our first civil war which lasted for almost seventeen years. The second civil war is fought for six years. You can imagine the excessive waste of all types of resources and also more than one million people died in these wars (Sudanese stories, n. d.). John: My God, if those one million people would have been living and producing more children what would be the condition of your country? Wiraj: My father says that every child brings one mouth to feed but two hands to work. Our people think that the children are their strength and will support them in their old age. We still have joint family system in our country. Don’t you think that this individual living style is a waste of resources, the separate houses, the separate cars and the separate property? John: I can’t imagine of living in a joint family .what’s about your personal rights and privacy? I want my personal space in the world. Oh that reminds me about the problem of space on earth. According to a prediction if the population of the earth continues to grow on the same rate there would hardly be a space available on the earth to stand. Wiraj: Mother Nature has her own ways of controlling things. See all those earthquakes, tsunamis, feminine and droughts. In spite of all his modern equipments man is not able to control them. Moreover Misra states that our knowledge of world population is far from exact because some countries have no record of their population while the other countries have incomplete or unreliable records (1982, p.5). I mean if we don’t know about the exact number of the population then how we can definitely pinpoint that it is the main cause of all our problems. I always have that bizarre idea that by birth controlling we are impeding the way of many Einsteins and Newtons from coming into this world who could have discovered new resources in the sea , in the space and in the earth for the survival of human race. John: Although I don’t agree with you on many points but I appreciate your approach. It is somewhat different because after hassling with the same note for so many years we are still standing in a dead alley. So it is the need of the hour to approach the problem from a different angle because I am of the opinion that our problem is not actually our problem but our reaction to that problem is our problem. Anyway nice talking to you, I have to leave now. Goodbye. This intercultural debate really throws an ample light on the fact that there are still so many dimensions to be discovered and so many issues to ponder that can help us in solving this ever increasing problem of human race. Meanwhile, all we can do is, to make the people aware of the gravity of the problem and to educate them to use the remaining resources wisely. References NationMaster(n. d.).Economy Statistics, Gross National Income by Country.Retrieved March 19, 2o11 from http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/eco_gro_nat_inc_percap-gross-national-income-per-capita Misra Bhaskar D. (1982). The Study of Population. New Delhi, India,South Asian Publisher Population Media Center(n. d.).Population. Retrieved March 19, 2011 from http://www.populationmedia.org/issues/population/?gclid=CNHcu8rF26cCFZBkfAodtGCz9A Sudanese Stories, a Blacktown community history project(n. d.) Life in Southern Sudan . Retrieved March 19, 2011 from http://www.migrationheritage.nsw.gov.au/exhibition/sudanesestories/project-exhibition-information/ Read More