Population Explosion, Affluence and Technology Bring Disasters for Environment

Impact on the environment has often been defined as the effect of
population x affluence x technology

I=PAT, (I for Impact, P for Population, A for Affluence, and T for Technology)

Population Growth: Growth of the human population is a major factor affecting the environment. Simply put, overpopulation means that there are more people than there are resources to meet their needs. Almost all the environmental problems we face today can be traced back to the increase in population in the world. The human population is at 6 billion; with an annual global growth rate of 1.8%, three more people are added to the earth every second. This represents an increase of almost 60% since 1970 and over 150% since the Second World War.

Affluence: Affluence is a problem because with increasing affluence comes an increase in the per capita resource utilization. Less than 20% of the world's population controls 80% of the world's wealth and resources. The high standard of living that accompanies the increased production and consumption of goods is the major cause of pollution and environmental degradation.

The problems of overpopulation, overconsumption, development and industrialization are intertwined and the causes are not singular and straightforward.

Humans have been altering their environment for thousands of years. The process probably began with the setting of fires in savannah grassland to aid hunting. Most forests contain the marks of human-set fires, clearance and tree planting, and little strictly “virgin” vegetated land surface now remains.

In the past 10 000 years the dominant technological influences have been the use of timber for building and the spread of crop cultivation. This has accelerated, particularly in the past 150 years during which time the rising population has doubled the area of arable land in use on the Earth’s surface.

The extent of ecosystem loss and alteration is closely related to population density, which is very uneven across the planet. Today, one half of the human population lives on less than 10 percent of the Earth’s land, and three quarters on only 20 percent.

For much of human history, the most heavily populated regions of the planet, and the most ecologically disturbed, have been Europe and South and East Asia – and that remains the case. The population densities of the Americas and Africa have only now risen to those achieved in Europe and India by 1750. In India today, population density is more than 300 people per square kilometer, seven times the global average; little land is unused by humans; and almost 80 percent of the original forest cover has been lost

Land affected by human activity can be divided into areas transformed – notably by agriculture, which in some parts of the world such as the North American prairies is characterized by low population density but high ecosystem loss – and areas degraded and fragmented by pollution, sporadic human activity including hunting and tourism, or infrastructure development such as highways and pipelines.

Overall, at least half of the world’s forests have disappeared at the hand of humankind – three quarters of these in the past 300 years and the majority within the past century.

Their survival is lowest where population density is highest. The Asia/Pacific region has lost 76 percent of its original forest cover, mostly to agricultural development but also to urbanization and mineral exploitation. Losses in Europe (excluding Russia) average 75 percent, in Russia 24 percent, in Africa 68 percent, and in the Americas 35 percent, but with much higher rates in more densely populated areas such as the coastal regions and Central America


The link between population density and environmental damage is also disrupted when prosperous or powerful communities, either deliberately or accidentally, buy local ecological conservation at the expense of damage to other areas. Such transference has a long history. The ancient city of Rome turned North Africa into a grain-growing “breadbasket” to supply its million-plus population, until most African soils were exhausted. The grain, meanwhile, was transported across the Mediterranean aboard a fleet of a thousand ships made of wood cut from the Levant.