Human population growth

It took hundreds of thousands of years for the world population to grow to 1 billion – then in just another 200 years or so, it grew sevenfold. In 2011, the global population reached the 7 billion mark, and today, it stands at about 7.6 billion approximately. This dramatic growth has been driven largely by increasing numbers of people surviving to reproductive age and has been accompanied by major changes in fertility rates, increasing urbanization and accelerating migration. These trends will have far-reaching implications for the environment and generations to come.

Human population.jpg

From (https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2015/07/31/the-worlds-population-is-set-to-surpass-11-billion-people-infographic/ )

For a more detailed analysis on population growth watch the video below.

Human activities

Human population and the desire for expanded economic growth within the community has brought the issue of sustainability to the forefront of current economic, political and environmental discussion. Although the term environmental sustainability is broad, the range of topics and activities including population growth, and economic development, most discussion on environmental sustainability focus on the use of natural capital. Natural capital is a range of natural resources provided by ecosystems such as the air, water, soil, nutrients, food etc. that are essential to human existence. Environmental sustainability relates to the exploitation of natural ecosystems by human populations and its ability to sustain the exploitation of natural capital to meet the growing human needs.

Sustainability is an idea that is fraught with ambiguity, it is a widely used concept, but it is rarely quantifiable. However, in a modern global challenges’ context, environmental sustainability is defined as responsible interaction with the environment to avoid depletion or degradation of natural resources and allow for long-term environmental quality. The practice of environmental sustainability helps to ensure that the needs of today's population are met without jeopardizing the ability of future generations to meet their needs.

However, environmental sustainability is difficult to achieve with an increasing human population. As a human population increases so does demand for food security and economic growth. This in turn results to land conversion culture which results in habitat destruction and degradation which can increase extinction risk for other species.

Overall increased human population growth has resulted in habitat degradation, habitat fragmentation, overexploitation of biological resources, introduction of non-native species, human induced climate change. All of which the ecological interactions and ecosystem processes, which in turn not only increases extinction risk will also increases challenges sustain human civilisation.

For more detail on human impacts on ecosystem watch the video below