It is no secret that population explosion will have a profound impact on our lives in the coming years. Most of us would agree that rising population is a ticking bomb staring us right in the face, and its consequences threaten our future in economic, environmental and social terms.
While researchers across the world work towards finding solutions to the imminent crisis, we have curated a list of reads from our Online Library to help you study the impact of the rising population and possibly point to some transformative solutions:
1. How Population Change Will Transform Our World (Author - Sarah Harper)
In this new addition to the 21st Century Challenges series, Sarah Harper works to dispel myths such as the fear of unstoppable global growth resulting in a population explosion, or that climate change will lead to the mass movement of environmental refugees; and instead considers the future shape of our populations in light of demographic trends in fertility, mortality, and migration, and their national and global impact. The book covers population trends by region to highlight the key issues facing us in the coming decades, including the demographic inertia in Europe, demographic dividend in Asia, high fertility and mortality in Africa, the youth bulge in the Middle East, and the balancing act of migration in the Americas. Harper concludes with an analysis of global challenges we must plan for such as the impact of climate change and urbanization, and the difficulty of feeding 10 billion people, and considers ways in which we can prepare for, and mitigate against, these challenges.)
2. Sparing Nature: The Conflict Between Human Population Growth and Earth's Biodiversity
Are humans too good at adapting to the earth's natural environment? Every day, there is a net gain of more than 200,000 people on the planet--that's 146 a minute. Has our explosive population growth led to the mass extinction of countless species in the earth's plant and animal communities? Jeffrey K. McKee contends yes. The more people there are, the more we push aside wild plants and animals. In Sparing Nature, he explores the cause-and-effect relationship between these two trends, demonstrating that nature is too sparing to accommodate both a richly diverse living world and a rapidly expanding number of people. The author probes the past to find that humans and their ancestors have had negative impacts on species biodiversity for nearly two million years, and that extinction rates have accelerated since the origins of agriculture. Today entire ecosystems are in peril due to the relentless growth of the human population.
3. Population Growth, Resource Consumption, and the Environment: Seeking a Common Vision for a Troubled World by Rick Searle and Harold Coward
A public-policy summary of the academic chapters presented at the 1993 Whistler Conference "Population, Consumption and the Environment" in which scholars from the world religions and the aboriginal traditions, as well as scientists, demographers, philosophers and economists from Canada, the U.S., Africa, Japan and India examined the double-sided problem of population pressure and excess consumption, and the resulting degradation of the environment.
4. Six Billion Plus: World Population in the Twenty-first Century by K. Bruce Newbold
This balanced text offers a concise and readable introduction to the world population growth and its implications for the future. With a population currently exceeding six billion and expected to reach ten billion by mid-century, the globe faces a demographic situation that is now more critical than ever before. While the developed world grapples with the problems of an aging and declining population, the developing world will contend with the opposite dilemma of explosive growth. Drawing on a geographical perspective and using examples from around the world, this fully updated edition will be an invaluable resource for all readers concerned with the intertwined issues of population, environment, and health.
5. Love the World (Author - David Adam)
Writing from lived experience as much as knowledge, David Adam conveys a delight in the mystery of being that is deeply attractive. Love the World opens by looking at the beginning of the universe, then moves on to the earth's atmosphere, the miracle of water and things that we often take for granted but are essential for our health and happiness. It focuses on our relationship with the world and encourages us to reflect on what really matters: In our most fragile moments we know that we are of dust and to dust we shall return, but in our depths, we know there is more. We are not created out of nothing but out of love. The very source of your being is love.