The problems facing the environment are vast and diverse. Destruction of the world's rain forests, global warming, and the depletion of the ozone layer are just some of the problems that will reach critical proportions in the coming decades. Their rates will be directly affected by the size of the human population. APopulation Growth Human population growth may be seen to be at the root of virtually all of the world's environmental problems. Increasingly large numbers of people are being added to the world every year. As the number of people increases, more pollution is generated, more habitats are destroyed, and more natural resources are used up. Even if new technological advances were able to cut in half the environmental impact that each person had, as soon as the world's population size doubled, the earth would be no better off than before. The Population Division of the United Nations predicts that the 5.63 billion humans alive in 1994 will increase to 6.23 billion in the year 2000, 8.47 billion in 2025, and 10.02 billion in 2050. The UN's estimate assumes that population will peak and stabilize at 11.6 billion in 2200. Others predict that numbers will continue to rise into the foreseeable future, to as many as 19 billion people in 2200. Although it is true that rates of population increase are now much slower in the developed world than in the developing world, it would be a mistake to assume that the population growth problem is primarily a problem of developing countries. In fact, because larger amounts of resources per person are used in the developed nations, each citizen from the developed world has a much greater environmental impact than does a citizen from a developing country. Conservation strategies that would not alter lifestyles but would greatly lessen environmental impact are essential in the developed world. Evidence now exists suggesting that the most important factors necessary to lower population growth rates in the developing world are democracy and social justice. Studies show that population growth rates have fallen in areas where several social conditions have been met. In these areas, literacy rates have increased, and women are given economic status equal to that of men and thus are able to hold jobs and own property; also, birth control information is more widely available, and women are free to make their own reproductive decisions.
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