Societies and Population Growth

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Societiesand Population Growth
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• Changes in the way people live and advances in
  technology and medicine have led to a population
  explosion.
• The number one threat to the environment is
  population growth.

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Types of Societies

• Humans have evolved through three basic ways of
  life
• Hunter-gatherer
• Agricultural
• Industrial

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Industrial
Agricultural
Hunter - Gatherer
Permanently Settled
Settled
Nomadic
Lifestyle
Mass production, advanced tech
Plow, simple machines
Simple tools weapons
Technology
Overused will run out
Some overuse of soil and forest
Only what they needed
Resource Use
Little to none damage environment
Basic farming practices
Excellent
Environmental Knowledge
Threatened by pollution/stress medicine
increases life span
Healthy disease common
Healthy short life spans
Health
Threatens global ecosystem - Overuse resources
Overgrazing, deforestation, erosion
Little to none
Environmental Impact
Huge
Large
Small
Energy Use
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Population Growth

• Increasing exponentially
• Currently about 6.5 billion people
• Only about 1 billion people in 1800

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Current growth rate 6

• Humans-double in 11 years
• Rats-double in 47 days
• Bacteria-250 an hour-double more than 2 times in
  an hour

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Population Growth

• Reasons
• Agricultural Revolution
• 10,000 years ago larger food production
  supports larger populations
• Industrial revolution
• 300 years ago mass production of products to
  support basic needs
• Improved health care better hygiene / medicines
  result in longer life spans

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Measuring Growth Rate

• Populations change based on interactions between
  births, deaths, and migration
• Death rates have dropped because of medical
  advances more births than deaths

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• Every time your heart beats, 2.3 people are added
  to the world or 161 people per minute thats
  14,490 people per class!

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Problems from Population Growth

• Increased disease
• Food and water shortages
• Pollution
• Overuse of resources
• Damage to the environment

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• Sustainable population and acceptable quality of
  life for every person is a reachable goal with
  actions that keep this goal as a priority
• That the environment will be protected as well is
  necessary for sustainable life

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Problems of overpopulation
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Limiting resources

• Shortage of fuelwood
• even w/ enough food not enough wood to cook it
• some foods not edible uncooked
• ability to boil water

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Water that kills...

• 25 million people a year die of diseases received
  from using dirty water
• Local water supply
• drinking
• washing (bodies, clothes, dishes)
• sewage disposal

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The Urban Crisis

• More people moving to urban areas
• looking for work, education
• Few jobs in country
• United Nations
• by 2020 1/4 of all city dwellers will be homeless

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Social Unrest

• Increased conflicts
• ethnic groups
• countries
• Competition for resources
• water
• food
• illegal immigration

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Environmental refugees

• People must flee area due to severe environmental
  damage
• destroyed or depleted soils
• radiation contamination
• acts of nature-hurricanes, earthquakes, floods

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• Other countries now have to provide, food,
  shelter, education, health care, job for refugees
• Causes problems in host countries
• As population increases so do environmental
  refugees

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Solving the Problems

• GOAL-Stable populations
• Better education
• health care
• less environmental stress
• increased sustainability of resources

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Difficulties

• Lack of education
• Sexual inequality
• no access to family planning
• religious beliefs
• expensive birth control

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Developed Countries

• Not an overpopulation process
• OVERCONSUMPTION
• more use of resources per person
• worst offender????

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BIODIVERSITY AT RISK
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BIODIVERSITY

• Number and variety of species on earth
• all plants, insects, fish, mammals, reptiles,
  amphibians, bacteria.etc

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• Our planet has experienced several mass
  extinction's, each probably caused by a change in
  climate

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• Number of known species is 1.4 million (mostly
  insects)
• )

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• Estimated number of actual is 10 - 100 million
• Why such a large variation????

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How are humans causing extinction?

• Human population increases by 260,000/day

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• Plant animal species are disappearing at an
  alarming rate.
• Normal extinction- 1 out of every 10,000 species
• today-over 4000x that.

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Reasons

• Habitat destruction
• cause of 75 of extinction's
• Most are occurring in tropical rain forests
• 2nd-coral reefs

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• Hunting
• in US no longer a major cause
• developing countries still threatens many species

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• Poaching (illegal hunting) threatens animals with
  extinction

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• Exotic/ invasive species (not native to a
  particular region)
• threaten native species which have no natural
  defenses against them

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Invasive species
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VALUE OF BIODIVERSITY

• Why should we work so hard to slow the rate of
  extinction?

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Saving species preserves ecosystems

• Want to maintain a healthy ecosystem because they
  ensure a healthy biosphere
• by regulating the flow of energy and cycling of
  nutrients

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• Keystone species - a species so important to an
  ecosystem that the loss might cause the complete
  collapse of the ecosystem

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Keystone species
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Practical Uses of Species

• 70 of all prescription drugs are derived from
  living things
• plant species not yet discovered might provide
  food for the future

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• half of the worlds food is corn, rice and wheat
• potato famine in Ireland

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• Genetic diversity necessary for continued
  evolution
• science-ability to predict
• potential new food sources

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• Aesthetic reasons
• time spent with other living things renews our
  sense of connection with nature
• Artists inspiration
• Inspires technology
• airplanes.
• Good for the soul!

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• Biodiversity allows us to appreciate the world as
  a living system

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FUTURE OF BIODIVERSITY
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Saving individual species

• Captive breeding programs - zoos wildlife parks
  carefully manage.
• Goal-release species back into the wild
• EX Californian condor
• SSP-Species Survival Plan
• breeding for most genetic diversity

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Save plants too..?

• Botanical Garden- storehouse of genetic diversity
• Germ Plasm Bank - store germ plasm (reproductive
  cells) for future use in case species become
  extinct

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• Germ cells-seeds, sperm, eggs
• frozen and stored
• Cloning?

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The Ecosystem Approach

• Save the entire ecosystem rather than an
  individual species

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• There are more species in danger than can be
  listed
• Protection of entire habitats most efficient way
  to save many species

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Other Benefits from preserving ecosystems

• Forests-add oxygen, remove pollution
• wetlands-clean water, support breeding grounds
• health of biosphere!!

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How much land should we protect??

• Hard to determine
• Different species require different amounts of
  resources and habitat
• Hot spots-unusually large amount of biodiverity
  should be protected first

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What about human needs?

• Must find ways to meet human need and manage
  living resources at the same time.
• Developing countries-life or death conflicts
  between human needs and biodiversity

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Developed countries

• Have the capability to help
• have the RESPONSIBILITY to participate.