OVER-POPULATION AND ECO-TOURISM

Over-Population and Eco-Tourism

Over-Population and Eco-Tourism

Introduction

The world is overcrowded and population growth is adding overwhelming numbers of humans to a small planet. In fact, people do live in crowded conditions, and always have. We cluster together in cities and villages in order to exchange goods and services with one another. But while we crowd together for economic reasons in our great metropolitan areas, most of the world is empty, as we can see when we fly over it. It has been estimated by Paul Ehrlich and others that human beings actually occupy no more than 1 to 3 percent of the earth's land surface.

Overpopulation is a serious, yet often ignored, problem increasing in severity with every birth. Though many of the effects of overpopulation cannot yet be seen, it is still a life threatening issue (Mader, 2000). Deadly, not to the individual, but to the Earth and the human race itself. Overpopulation results in the increasing scarcity of natural resources including agricultural goods, leading to malnutrition, economic decline, and occasionally mass violence. It is time to take action and educate others about reducing the population's rate of growth, in an attempt to save the Earth that is quite possibly too late.

In order to maintain the world's population at a constant number, many things have to be considered. When viewed simply, each person could have only one child to take his or her place in the population after his or her death. For instance, a married couple could have two children, one replacing the father and one replacing the mother. This would only work, though, if the second generation was brought into the earth at the death of the first generation (Stwertka, 1998). The attempt to create a formula to maintain a constant population grows increasingly complicated when the rising life span and low fertility rates of those in third world countries are factored in.

Each year, the Earth's population "expands at a rate of 1.5%, adding more than a quarter million people daily" (Pimentel 211). "As recently as 1972, a woman gave birth to an average of 5.6 children over her lifetime. Global population, as a result, was doubling every generation" (Longman 206). The World's population recently hit an astonishing 6 billion people. Although this number is remarkably high, it seems minute in comparison to the frightening 12 billion expected to occupy the world less than 50 years from now (Pimentel 211).

Since the beginning of time, the World's population has been increasing at a rapid rate, so why worry now? As the world's population steadily grows, "more pressure than ever is being placed on the basic resources that are essential for food production" (Pimentel, 211). It's difficult to view the strain on the earth's resources in a perspective that reflects the severity and growing danger. Already, there is a decline in the availability of agricultural resources leading to a growing number of malnourished people. It's not merely the natural resources such as food that are becoming scarce, ...