The Environmental Impact of Population Growth

A larger population makes more demands on the Earth’s resources and leads to environmental problems including:1. Urbanization: population growth leads to the

growth of cities, destroying habitat & reducing biodiversity

2. Climate Change: increased atmospheric temperature from greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activity (e.g. burning fossil fuels, raising cattle)

3. Ozone Layer Depletion: thinning of the protective layer of ozone in the Earth’s atmosphere that protects us from UV rays caused by CFCs

4. Soil degradation: decline in soil quality through misuse (e.g. pollution, erosion, nutrient depletion) which leads to loss of fertile land, damage to waterways, desertification and increased flooding

5. Desertification: growth of deserts due to climate change & destructive land use (e.g. over-farming, over-grazing)

6. Deforestation: the destruction of forests, usually due to urbanization or expansion of agricultural land; it contributes to climate change, desertification & other problems

7. Acid rain: any precipitation made acidic from atmospheric pollution that causes damage to waterways, plants, buildings & other exposed surfaces

8. Water contamination: destruction of fresh drinking water through pollution and misuse

9. Groundwater depletion: lost to pumping out water faster than it can be replenished or contamination by pollution seeping through the soil (e.g. landfills, septic systems, road salt, acid rain)

Some international agreements have been made in an attempt to reduce the environmental impact of human activity:1. Brundtland Report (Our Common Future-1987):

written by the UN World Commission on Environment & Development, it focused on sustainable development, but offered little analysis of how current economic structures contributed to environmental harm

2. Canada-US Air Quality Agreement (1991): designed to combat acid rain, both countries agreed to reduce sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions; the Ozone Annex was added later to reduce emissions that cause smog

3. Global Environmental Facility (GEF-1991): UN agency that funds projects to improve the environment & promote sustainable development

4. Agenda 21 (1992): an agreement to move towards a sustainable world economy signed at Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro

5. Kyoto Protocol (1997): countries promised to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 6% by 2012

6. Montreal Protocol (2000): all industrial countries agreed to cut their use of CFCs resulting in a small reduction in the size of the hole in the ozone layer

7. Clean Air Act (2006): replaced Canada’s Kyoto targets with a goal of reducing GHGs by 45-65% by 2050

For the most part, these agreements haven’t been honoured in a way that significantly reduced environmental damage