Problems in Population Growth
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During the first fifteen centuries of the Christian era, the world's population grew at a rate of 2 percent to 5 percent per century. The rate today in many countries is between 3 percent and 4 percent per year - meaning an increase of more than nineteenfold in the next century if nothing changes. It now takes less than a decade to add a billion people to the earth's population. The consequences of this unprecedented growth are the grounds for controversy. Continued growth at current levels will quickly outstrip the world's food supplies. Figures show global hunger has increased inexorably in recent years. One can look at the rates at which global food production has risen, outpacing population growth in recent years, and deduce that hunger is merely the result of the inequitable allocation of food supplies. A 1983 United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization study (Brown and Jacobson 13) concluded that, with modern technology, only 19 countries, with a total population of 104 million, would be unable to feed their peoples at minimum levels by the year 2000 - how this would be paid for, the study did not say. Nevertheless, that would mean a substantial reduction in hunger, even with much greater populations. There seems to be some hope that the hunger problem can be solved. A further look at the U.N. study, though, begins to shed some light on the true consequences of food self-sufficiency for an additional billion people. To sustain the new population, the st
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e most part, only the productivity of the last: croplands. Fisheries, forests and grasslands are all entirely subject to the pressures of demand.
Fisheries provide a good illustration of the concept of sustainable yield and carrying capacity. In some areas, they also represent the tragic consequences of ecological stress.
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the worldwide catch of fish increased by an average of 5 percent yearly, as the fishing industry adopted sophisticated technology. But in 1970 the trend was abruptly interrupted, and since then, the catch has fluctuated between 65 and 75 million tons (Simon and Kahn 124). Many marine biologists feel that this is because the global catch may be approaching the maximum sustainable limit. Further efforts to increase the harvest could lessen the oceans' carrying capacity and affect future harvests.
This process has already hurt many of the world's fisheries. Peru's fishing industry expanded spectacularly in the late 1950s, and by the late 1960s, Peru had emerged as the world's leading fishing nation. This was almost entirely the result of expanding efforts to harvest Peru's vast offshore anchovy fishery. In 1970 and 1971, there were record catches of 11 million and 12 mil
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Simon Kahn, West Africa, Johnson Taylor, Ultimately Brown, Brown Jacobson, Latin American, World Bank, Frank Notestein, , Central America, population growth, carrying capacity, sustainable yield, food production, forests grasslands, birth rates, death rates, resource base, population pressures, maximum sustainable, maximum sustainable yield, zones west africa, economic social gains, york basil blackwell, basil blackwell ltd,
Approximate Word count = 2513
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)
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