In today’s society, there are a number of issues globally, like pollution, global warming and overpopulation. Among all three, overpopulation has the greatest impact on our planet and its habitants because of the growing number of people rapidly and the limited resources of the Earth have. Overpopulation is when a number of people exceeded over the carrying capacity of its habitat. Overpopulation can have severe effects to a country especially to its residents because overpopulation has great effects to the country, people are crammed in the area, and it greatly affects the environment. From 5 billion in 1989 to 6 billion in 1999, it only took 10 years for the world’s population to increase by 1 billion causing changes in the community.
Overpopulation affects the economy of the country. Nothing on Earth is unlimited, everything is limited and breaks down. The country cannot support everybody with food, clothing, and shelter (the basic necessities in order to survive) because their resources are limited. This forces them to buy goods to other countries to keep up with the demand. Some countries are in debt because of this to prevent starvation in their communities. Which they might not be able to pay back because most of these cases happen in third world countries. “The traditional meeting of G8 finance ministers before the summit took place in London on 10 and 11 June 2005, hosted by then-Chancellor Gordon Brown. On 11 June, agreement was reached to write off the entire US$40 billion debt owed by 18 Heavily Indebted Poor Countries to the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the African Development Fund.” Also, it affects the economy as the there would be more people seeking and competing for jobs to provide income for their families means that there would also be higher unemployment rates.
Secondly, overpopulation causes people to be crammed in a particular area. The cars in the street would always be in a traffic jams because of the number of cars trying to pass. In China, last 2010 there was a major traffic jam that happened in the “China National Highway 110”. It slowed down thousands of cars for more than 100 kilometers and lasted for more than ten days. “Many drivers were able to move their vehicles only 1 km (0.6 mi) per day, and some drivers reported being stuck in the traffic jam for five days”. It is not only in the major highways that experience this kind of problems. Train stations are also burdened by this problem. In India, Indian Railway transported an unimaginary number of people; “ As of December 2012, it transported over 25 million passengers daily (over 9 billion on an annual basis)” . India has a population of more than 1 billion forcing the less fortunate people with no choice but to live in the streets, slums, beside railways, and some even live in the landfill because there is no place for them. There are about 989 people living in India per square mile. Which is very high compared to Canada which only has 10 people per square mile.
Lastly, overpopulation has an intense impact towards the environment. Rainforest are being cut down to supply wood for industrial countries so that they can make money out of it. “Since 1980 the global economy has tripled in size and the world population has increased by 30 percent.
