Global threats to human beings caused by human population growth - Essay Example

Human overpopulation has several negative effects on the environment. Environmentalists have established that nearly all environmental problems are as a result of rapid human population growth rate. Environmental trends such as loss of biodiversity, depletion of water resources, alteration of climate and atmosphere are some of the environmental problems that are associated with human population growth. This paper only discusses how overpopulation lowers living conditions, depletes natural resources, and causes environmental degradation.

In most developing countries, cultural traditions and lack of access to birth control programs have led to rapid population growth rate (Zuckerman & Jefferson, 1996). The number of people living in these regions has created pressure on land and food securities. This has led to overpopulation where the available resources are insufficient to sustain population growth and developmental growths. This results in ever increasing number of poor people across Middle East, Africa, Southeast Asia, and other developing countries across the world (Zuckerman & Jefferson, 1996).

This people suffer from lack of clean water, malnourishment, inadequate shelter, overcrowding, AIDS and other waterborne diseases. Most of these people lack sufficient access to basics of life, and this means that their living standards are significantly lower than those people living in developed countries. Poor living standards resulting from overpopulation in a given region is evident in most African slum dwellings. In these slums, people lack adequate access to clean drinking water and enough food.

Domestic water used for cleaning and cooking in the slum dwellings is usually contaminated, and this is the reason why waterborne diseases such as cholera, bilharzia, and typhoid are common in these regions (Zuckerman & Jefferson, 1996). The second cause of human population growth is depletion of natural resources. While rapid growth of human population is slowly diminishing or leveling off in most developed nations such as United Kingdom and United States, the rate at which people are utilizing the world’s natural resources is significantly on the rise (Zuckerman & Jefferson, 1996).

Over dependence on natural resources usually creates environmental problems such as loss of biodiversity, climate change, depletion of water resources and over fishing. The ever increasing human population requires more land for settlement. This makes human to clear natural forest and displace animals living in it, and this leads to loss of biodiversity. In addition, gases that are released into the atmosphere deplete the ozone layer, which in turn causes climate changes such as global warming.

With global warming, the amount of annual rainfall received in an area decreases significantly. This has made human to adopt irrigation as the alternative source of water for the crops. Heavy irrigation, on the other hand, causes excessive loss of natural water resources such as rivers and lakes (Zuckerman & Jefferson, 1996). Finally, overpopulation posses the biggest threat on the environment more than any other thing. Most of the environmental degradations such as depletion of the ozone layer, pollution, climate and atmosphere changes, and overfishing are common phenomena in industrialized nations (Zuckerman & Jefferson, 1996).

Developed countries own capital industries, which consume a lot of natural