Mumbai University > First Year Engineering > Sem 1 > Environmental Studies

Marks: 3M

Year: May 2016

1. Recently several things encounters with people who think that the human population should be restricted or reduced ‘for the sake of the planet’. Anyone who has taken a course in Environmental Studies will be aware of the basic Environmental Impact formula: EI = P x R x T
2. In other words, the total environmental impact of humans on the planet (EI) arises from a combination of three factors – the number of humans on the planet (P), the average per capita level of resource use (R) and the technological efficiency of producing these resources (T).
3. My encounters got me thinking about the nature of this formula. It is a very simple formula, if P increases then EI increases, if R increases then EI increases, and if T decreases then EI increases. However, behind the simplicity lurk a number of assumptions and complications. The primary assumption is that any increase in EI is bad. The primary complication concerns the nature of EI.
4. Population growth: the total human population has expanded since the introduction of agriculture, around 12 000 years ago, and its rate of growth has generally increased over time, largely as a result of increased food production and improved sanitation and health care.
5. Achieving the first one billion of human population took most of human history, whilst the most recent increase of one billion was achieved in little more than a decade.
6. However, recent declines in the rate of growth of population have occurred in many parts of the world, and in some countries populations are now declining. The total human population was around 5.9 billion in 1998; it currently far exceeds 6 billion people and is expected to have reached 9.4 billion people by 2050.
7. The increasing human population inevitably places greater demands on the natural environment - for habitat, resources and waste assimilation - although the extent to which the human 'population explosion' is driving environmental degradation is a complex and controversial question.
8. Significant differences exist in cultural attitudes to the issues of human population size and the rate of population growth. In this way global environmental crisis is related to population.