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Indeed, some analysts claim that overpopulation's most serious impact is its effect on the environment. [142] Some scientists suggest that the overall human impact on the environment during the Great Acceleration , particularly due to human population size and growth, economic growth , overconsumption, pollution , and proliferation of ...
Many studies have tried to estimate the world's sustainable population for humans, that is, the maximum population the world can host. [5] A 2004 meta-analysis of 69 such studies from 1694 until 2001 found the average predicted maximum number of people the Earth would ever have was 7.7 billion people, with lower and upper meta-bounds at 0.65 and 9.8 billion people, respectively.
Overshoot can apply to human overpopulation as well as other animal populations: any life-form that consumes others to sustain itself. Environmental science studies to what extent human populations through their resource consumption have risen above the sustainable use of resources.
A 2021 article published in Sustainability Science said that sensible population policies could advance social justice (such as by abolishing child marriage, expanding family planning services and reforms that improve education for women and girls) and avoid the abusive and coercive population control schemes of the past while at the same time ...
Overpopulation or overabundance is a state in which the population of a species is larger than the carrying capacity of its environment.This may be caused by increased birth rates, lowered mortality rates, reduced predation or large scale migration, leading to an overabundant species and other animals in the ecosystem competing for food, space, and resources.
[50] [5] This suggests that 8 billion people may be sustainable for a few generations, but not over the long term, and the term ‘carrying capacity’ implies a population that is sustainable indefinitely. It is possible, too, that efforts to anticipate and manage the impacts of powerful new technologies, or to divide up the efforts needed to ...
Human impact on the environment. From top left, clockwise: satellite image of Southeast Asian haze; IAEA experts investigate the Fukushima disaster; a seabird during an oil spill; depiction of deforestation of Brazil's Atlantic forest by Portuguese settlers, c. 1820 –25; acid mine drainage in the Rio Tinto; industrial fishing in 1997, a practice that has led to overfishing.
Ecological footprint analysis is widely used around the world in support of sustainability assessments. [9] It enables people to measure and manage the use of resources throughout the economy and explore the sustainability of individual lifestyles, goods and services, organizations, industry sectors, neighborhoods, cities, regions, and nations. [1]