Overpopulation refers to a situation that occurs when the total number of occupants in a particular geographical area exceeds the provision ability for its occupants (Peacock, 2017). According to Hedberg (2020), the current world population is 7.8 billion. This has been as a result of improved medical care and facilities, advanced modern fertility treatment, immigration, and low mortality rates. However, this leads to environmental damage, depletion, and destruction of natural resources, biodiversity loss, political unrest, pollution, economic stagnation, and mass species extinction. This, therefore, has captured scientists’ attention to come up with ways of dealing with the overcrowding world concern.
According to Bedi & Mishra (2016), empowering women, especially in developing countries, is the most modern effective way of reducing fertility rates and achieving a sustainable population size that appreciates the limits of Earth’s carrying capacity. Educated girls and women are more likely to be knowledgeable of their rights, thus putting an end to early and forced marriages. Educating women as a way of empowering them enables them to be more informative in reproductive matters, which will allow them to use modern, safe and effective family planning methods despite resistance from their male partners, cultural barriers as well as affordability.
Involving both men and women in contraception education has been a better way of effectively promoting family planning worldwide. This has a significant impact on curbing population growth alongside its associated dangers since it enables families to have desired smaller families and reduces the cases of unintended pregnancies. According to Peacock (2017), lowering the population growth through family planning helps in improved food security as well as in reducing harmful emissions, which are a major cause of climate change.
In the current population of close to eight billion people, there is a great need for improved sanitation and hygiene to maintain a clean environment and reduce diseases such as diarrhea and cholera. Reusing people's waste through the use of composting toilets has effectively led to the achievement of proper sanitation and environment conservation. The toilets are also used in fertilizing crops (Hedberg, 2020).
According to Kobsa, Bargman, Russell, Aubuchon, & Guzman (2018), as the world continues to become more crowded, housing materials, as well as design, are becoming a crucial way of dealing with population growth considerably. Therefore, the need for energy-efficient buildings which effectively ensure fresh air circulation, temperature regulation, use of own generated power as well as reusing wastewater. This, however, has called for the use of compressed earth blocks and temperature-regulating construction materials.
Conclusion
Overpopulation is seriously straining the Earth’s resources. However, the achievement of the deployed ways of addressing the population growth will help stabilize this and, if not now, then, in the future.
