Whenever I think about the causes of global warming and climate change, my brain immediately goes to thinking about fossil fuels and other non-renewable sources of energy. However, according to Everything Connects, overpopulation is one of the main factors that is slowly and silently augmenting environmental issues. To be more specific, here are three complications that overpopulation has and will cause:

1. Depletion of Natural Resources

As we increasingly use resources at a faster rate than they can redeem themselves, these resources become more and more scarce causing us to compete to obtain them. The resources being referred to are natural resources like land, fossil fuels, freshwater, and forests. In fact, according to a study conducted by the UNEP Global Environmental Outlook, “each person on Earth now requires a third more land to supply his or her needs than the planet can supply.”

Despite this consequence, a study by Greenfacts.org displayed that an increase in use of natural resources during the Industrial Revolution caused an a positive economical change to the countries that are now considered developed.

2. Habitat Loss

Rainforests, coral reefs, and wetlands are some ecosystems that are also being affected by overpopulation. According to ActionBioscience.org, “between 1780’s and 1980’s [in the U.S.], the lower 48 states have lost 53% of the original wetland habitat, or about 104 million acres.”

3. Loss of Freshwater

Freshwater is increasingly becoming scarce because of the increase in pollution, warm temperatures, and ocean acidity there have been since the past years. To explain just how serious this problem is, I’ll first explain how much freshwater there is in the Earth to begin with. According to PBS.org, “While 70% of the Earth’s surface is covered by water, 97.5% of the world’s water is saltwater and 2.5% freshwater. Most of this freshwater is trapped in polar icecaps, with much of the rest found as soil moisture or kept in underground aquifers.” Now from the 2.5% of freshwater on Earth, only 0.007% is actually ready for consumption according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

With all this knowledge now known, what are somethings that can be done to reduce this problem? Well, to start off, I think that we should investing a lot more in renewable sources of energy and increase our investments in Research & Development (R&D) to find ways to further limit the amount of pollution expended by them.

Another solution that was implemented in China a couple years ago was the one-child policy. Although the topic is highly controversial, according to BBC News, team leader Wang Feng, from UC Irvine, admitted “that China’s family planning policies since 1978 have helped reduce the fertility rate further and contributed to a change in attitudes.” However, there is still a dark-side to this policy – an activist named Chen Guangcheng was sent to prison in 2006 for revealing that women were “illegally forced women to have late-term abortions and be sterilised” in Linyi city, Shandong Province. Knowing one of the pros and cons of the effects of this policy, most countries have not followed China.

What is not known as much is India’s two-child policy where approximately 11 states as of 2014 passed this law. Many people have criticized this law as they pointed out that India is a country that has a “booming technology industry, one that relies on young people.” Therefore, people fear that there won’t be enough young and educated to keep the technological revolution going in the next generation and onwards. Others argue that India’s population will eventually stop growing as more people get educated and the economy gets even better.

Since the solution above is divisive and doesn’t guarantee any desired result, there are “easier” solutions that can still be attempted. They include:

• Making safe and effective contraceptives accessible for both sexes.
• Guaranteeing education (to girls especially) so that they can finish secondary school (at least).
• Provide improved age-appropriate sex-education to students of all ages.
• Encourage schools to integrate lessons about “integrate lessons on population, environment, and development into school curricula at multiple levels” (Overpopulation Solutions – Everything Connects).

Many people seem to overlook this problem because it is too big and intimidating to solve, but if we start now, we would be so much more ahead in the future!

Sources:

http://www.everythingconnects.org/overpopulation-effects.html

https://www.eartheclipse.com/environment/problems-of-overpopulation.html

http://www.thenewecologist.com/2016/04/overpopulation-affect-the-environment/

http://www.actionbioscience.org/environment/fletcher.html

http://www.pbs.org/now/science/unwater.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7000931.stm

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/051415/indias-twochild-policy.asp

Out of all the environmental concerns that are constantly discussed about, have you ever heard that sand is one of them? I know that I haven’t!

As a result of sand being a key ingredient to make concrete, roads, glass, and electronics, it is now one of the most-extracted materials in the world – possibly even surpassing fossil fuels and biomass when measured by weight (Torres, Aurora, et al).

Turns out that although sand seems abundant, it is a common source for illegal mining. In Tamil Nadu, India alone, approximately “5,500 to 6,000 truckloads of sand (about 20 tons each)” gets mined from “scenic beachfronts and 17 river basins” every day(Propescu). The mining generally takes place “within the high tide line” and in the “coastal regulation zone” which should be off-limits for this kind of activity (Propescu).

https://www.wired.com/2015/04/adam-ferguson-illegal-sand-mining/

However, India isn’t the only target of sand mining, Southeast Asia, Morocco, South Africa, the United States, and the Caribbean are a couple other places suffering from the same issue. On a much larger scale, “the amount of natural resources used in building real estate and transportation infrastructure in 2010 was 23 times higher than in 1900” and 80 percent of it was sand and gravel (Propescu).

Since I introduced this problem taking place in Tamil Nadu, India, I was curious to see what actions have been taken to stop the illegal mining. According to Mongabay, “since 2013, the state completely banned the mining and exporting of beach sand,” however this has ended up making no difference as the amount of illegal mining seems to have increased since then.

This is probably due to the government not being forceful with their banning. Part of the reason they are not being forceful is because there is a “widespread fear of sand miners, and protesting against mining leads to disastrous and sometimes fatal consequences” such as alleged killings and threatening according to Sibi Arasu, a journalist (Propescu).

http://thepointeruwsp.com/2016/11/25/frac-sand-mining-some-residents-cannot-sand-it/

So how bad are the consequences of sand mining? Since this issue isn’t a common topic amongst most, are the effects of it really that bad compared to other environmental problems that the world has been facing? Here’s a list of some of the problems that I found while researching:

1. Sand mining can make sea water intrusion even worse creating a decrease in land productivity and freshwater supply causing people to have lower access to basic resources (Propescu).
2. It can also lead to people living with more extreme weather conditions “such as storm surges and tsunamis” as a result of removing the “buffer against sea level rises” (Propescu). In fact, according to the Water Integrity Network, sand mining aggravated the impact of the Indian Ocean tsunami that occurred in Sri Lanka back in 2004 (Torres, Aurora, et al). Furthermore in the Mekong Delta located in Vietnam, a similar issue is being faced – sand mining is leading to “saltwater intrusion during the dry season.” This result is creating a crisis for the local community’s water and food security (Torres, Aurora, et al).
3. Sand extraction can alter “rivers and coastal ecosystems, increase suspended sediments and cause erosion” (Torres, Aurora, et al).
4. According to The Conversation, research shows that sand mining also effects various species such as “fish, dolphins, crustaceans, and crocodiles” (Lempriere).

https://cosmosmagazine.com/geoscience/the-hidden-social-and-environmental-costs-of-sand-mining

Some things that can be done:

1. The international community developing a global strategy for monitoring the amount of sand being mined and creating regional sand budgets too (Torres, Aurora, et al).
2. According to Mining Technology, sand mining may be altered to become more sustainable. In order to do this, the quantity being extracted must be less than the quantity being replaced, but this is not an easy process (Lempriere).
3. Instead of using sand extraction for transportation and construction, we could look at other alternatives and practice reusing and recycling construction debris to limit the amount of sand used (Lempriere).

What do you think about these possible solutions? Are they feasible and realistic? Are there any other possible solutions that could take a step towards ameliorating this problem?

One step I could think of was that there should be more campaigns done to raise awareness for this issue. Although there are more pressing climate change issues that are being talked about, this issue should still be publicized more so that it isn’t a problem that no one has heard about until today.

Sources:

Lempriere, Molly. “Can Sand Mining Ever Be Green?” Mining Technology, Kable, 19 June 2017, www.mining-technology.com/features/featurecan-sand-mining-ever-be-green-5842185/.

Popescu, Alexandra. “Demand for Sand Leads to Global Ecological Crisis.” Mongabay, Conservation News, 8 Feb. 2018, news.mongabay.com/2018/02/a-run-on-for-sand-leads-to-a-creeping-crisis-worldwide/.

Torres, Aurora, et al. “The World Is Facing a Global Sand Crisis.” The Conversation, The Conversation, 7 Sept. 2017, theconversation.com/the-world-is-facing-a-global-sand-crisis-83557.