Sustainability Issues: Population Growth, Stakeholders, and Solutions

This report examines the multifaceted issue of sustainability, with a specific focus on the impact of population growth. It begins by outlining various interconnected factors threatening the planet, including overpopulation, urbanization, energy usage, climate change, and waste generation. The report then delves into population growth as a primary sustainability concern, citing statistical data and projections from the United Nations. It analyzes the ecological footprint and the strain on resources, leading to deforestation, biodiversity loss, and increased greenhouse gas emissions, which contribute to climate change and global warming. The report identifies key stakeholders, including the environment, people, wildlife, healthcare, and governments, highlighting the varied impacts of population growth on each. It further discusses the disparities in resource consumption between developed and developing countries and the vulnerability of certain populations to environmental issues. The report concludes by exploring potential solutions, such as reducing consumption, promoting sustainable practices, and empowering women through education and economic opportunities. It emphasizes the importance of family planning and the need for global justice to achieve sustainable population levels and protect the planet for future generations.

Running Head: SUSTAINABILITY ISSUES
Sustainability Issues
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

Running Head: SUSTAINABILITY ISSUES
It is found that there are few factors that are quite interactive in nature and effecting as
well as threatening to the very existence of the whole planet. It consists of overpopulation, the
urbanization, energy usage, climate change, waste generation, air pollution and many others. One
selected sustainability issue is population growth. As per the report of 2007, the estimation of
world Population was 6.7 billion having the annual growth rate of 1.2 %. In order to put this
current growth in a perspective, the population of the world in the year 1960 was only 1.6 billion
and in 1960 it was 3.0 billion. As per the reports of United Nations, the world population into
2050 is going to be 7.9 billion or 10.3 billion approximately (Un.org 2020). Hence, it is found
that the population is rapidly growing at many places where the growth cannot be afforded. The
analysis of the ecological footprint shows the challenges of environmental sustainability. The
ecological footprint compares the biosphere ability of region, resources with human demand on
nature. This specific approach can be applied to one activity as the manufacturing of driving of
car or a product (Cumming and von Cramon-Taubadel 2018). People need more resources with
the growth of population for which, the resources of the earth are rapidly depleting. The outcome
is that the forestation and biodiversity loss because the humans are vacating the earth of its
resources for accommodating the numbers of rising population. The result of the population
growth is increasing the greenhouse gases, changing the climate patterns and giving rise to long-
term phenomena called global warming.
As far as the stakeholders of population growth concerned, the environment is the biggest
stakeholder. It is found that the growth of population in few areas has accelerated the rates which
can frustrate the efforts of conquering poverty. With the beginning of the 21st century, the
growth in the number of people along with the rise in level of consumption per capita are leading

Running Head: SUSTAINABILITY ISSUES
to the depletion of natural resources along with the degradation of the environment. The Rapid
increase of the population combines with poverty for depleting and polluting the local resources
founded on the livelihood of present and future generations. Although, the connection is quite
complex, the size of the population and the growth tend to expand and then accelerate the human
impacts on the whole environment (Ellram and Murfield 2017). The more concerning aspect is
that the population rise will increase the extent which will lead to huge scarcity of resources. The
next stakeholder is people. There will be inconsistency in terms of food security and the priority
group such as lactating mothers, pregnant women and children will be having difficulties in
consuming sufficient food which will disturb the livelihood also. The wildlife is another
stakeholder which is on the verge of losing its place, food and ecosystem. The growth of
population will also affect almost extinct species in the wildlife since most of them are not
available in today's world. The Healthcare and the government are the other stakeholders of
population growth (Faddy, Gosden and Gosden 2018). According to the industry reports, the
healthcare is positioned to grow at the estimated annual rate of 19 % for reaching to 80 billion by
2020 (Un.org 2020). Also, the growth of population will leave impact on the primary health care
area suggesting the child health maternal health along with infectious diseases. There will be
increase in number of people with insufficient caregivers.
Considerably, the population growth is a challenge because the uses of the resources
along with the impact of environmental issues are not equal across the entire globe. People who
are in developed countries need more resources substantially for maintaining the lifestyle as
compared to people who are living in the developing countries (Kamarudin et al. 2018). Taken
for example in the United States, there are 5% of world’ population producing 25% of Co2
emissions currently(Un.org 2020). Hence, people who are living in the developing countries are

Running Head: SUSTAINABILITY ISSUES
likely to feel the influences of the environmental issues in a more accurate way than people
living in the coastal areas who are affected directly by the rise in sea level and the extreme
weather conditions accompanying change in the climate.
Notably, the most vulnerable populations experience reduced access to the clean water
along with increased exposure to the air pollution and the diseases which are the main results
from the biodiversity decrease. Next comes the impact of population growth due to the depletion
of local resources such as animals and plants (Kyaw 2019). With the population growth there is
interconnected problems such as environmental issues which is significant of remembering that
humans can drive the changes which can impact the planet positively (Newman, Shah and
Collingwood 2018). It is also about understanding the application of the concept of sustainability
that is opposite of the depletion of resources. And sustainability is about describing uses of a
resource model where the current generation makes use of only the resources provided by the
earth indefinitely after ensuring that the future generations can inherit the resources.
There are many ways of reducing the issue of population growth. The humankind needs
to take many actions for reducing the influence of the richest of people who leave the most
environmental impact. The humankind can help by reducing the consumption to the sustainable
levels and making systematic and some economic modifications for ensuring that global justice
is done with the environment of the planet. The most effective steps will be to reduce
environmental impacts and ending the population growth through selecting smaller family size
and empowering those people (O'Sullivan 2020).. The United Nations has made a particular
range of the projections for the growth of the population in future founded on the assumptions
about how long people will leave what will be the rate of fertility in different countries . In order
to reduce the population growth each of the families will have to reduce their family planning to

Running Head: SUSTAINABILITY ISSUES
only one child that will be of great help. The birth rates can be brought down for having success
in reducing population growth. For instance, Thailand has reduced the fertility rates by 75%
within two generations with creating a systematic family planning programme.
The education of girls is most important because they should be taking initiative in
reducing the number of family members. They should be economically empowered with freedom
and education. There should be removal of the barriers to contraception. Nowadays, most of the
women are avoiding pregnancy and not using the modern day contraception. Also, there can be a
variety of the reasons including the lack of access to the contraceptives and their social pressure
of not to use it (Rosen 2018). These types of human usually belong to the least developed
countries where the population is said to rise by 3 billion by the year 2100. It is projected by
United Nations, that if population growth is not controlled today the growth by the next century
will be driven by only poverty. The fertility should be reduced along with decreasing the child
mortality, developing education and economic opportunities to women also the fair trade the
international, the global justice are some tools for helping in the sustainability of global
population.
On a concluding note, it can be said that in the developed world, the people possess the
power of selecting the size of their families instead of having all types of difficulties faced.
During making the selection regarding that, it is quite important to have in mind that the people
in the richer parts of the world have an unequal influence on the whole environment through
their high levels of greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, humankind should understand the
implications of their environment and the future of the children in a growing population so that
they can recognize that selection of smaller families is the most positive choice one can make.
Planet earth is at extreme peril because of certain factors such as the population explosion. The

Running Head: SUSTAINABILITY ISSUES
human have been blessed with the access of natural resources such as food, water and the rare
minerals which are indispensable for the evolution and the progress of the humanity. The world
further needs the elimination of all types of harmful practices such as the forced and early child
marriage. This will help in advancing the position of women worldwide. Also, the enhancement
of the policies related to family planning will help the societies in coping up with the pressure of
the population having brought down the rates of fertility to a sustainable standard. In turn this
will improve the economic condition of the families and then alleviate the inequality and
poverty. Further, the economic burden on the families will be reduced and people will have
sufficient supply of food.

Running Head: SUSTAINABILITY ISSUES
Reference
Cumming, G.S. and von Cramon-Taubadel, S., 2018. Linking economic growth pathways and
environmental sustainability by understanding development as alternate social–ecological
regimes. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(38), pp.9533-9538.
Ellram, L.M. and Murfield, M.L.U., 2017. Environmental sustainability in freight transportation:
A systematic literature review and agenda for future research. Transportation
Journal, 56(3), pp.263-298.
Faddy, M.J., Gosden, M.D. and Gosden, R.G., 2018. A demographic projection of the
contribution of assisted reproductive technologies to world population
growth. Reproductive biomedicine online, 36(4), pp.455-458.
Kamarudin, M.K.A., Wahab, N.A., Mohamad, M., Saudi, A.S.M., Samsurijan, M.S., Saad,
M.H.M., Yusri, S.N., Sazali, N.A.A., Latif, N.F.A.A., Rahim, S.N.A. and Samsuri,
N.N.S., 2018. Population Growth and Economic Development in Developing and
Developed Countries. International Journal of Engineering & Technology, 7(4.34),
pp.123-127.
Kyaw, K.S., 2019. Voice of editors: Population and economic growth. International Journal of
Management, Economics and Social Sciences (IJMESS), 8(1), pp.1-4.
Newman, B.J., Shah, S. and Collingwood, L., 2018. Race, place, and building a base: Latino
population growth and the nascent Trump campaign for president. Public Opinion
Quarterly, 82(1), pp.122-134.
O'Sullivan, J.N., 2020. The social and environmental influences of population growth rate and
demographic pressure deserve greater attention in ecological economics. Ecological
Economics, 172, p.106648.

Running Head: SUSTAINABILITY ISSUES
Rosen, M.A., 2018. Environmental sustainability tools in the biofuel industry. Biofuel Research
Journal, 5(1), pp.751-752.
Un.org, 2020. World Population Prospects 2019: Highlights | Multimedia Library - United
Nations Department Of Economic And Social Affairs. [online] Un.org. Available at:
<https://www.un.org/development/desa/publications/world-population-prospects-2019-
highlights.html> [Accessed 29 March 2020].