World Population Growth

too many people or too few resources / too many cars & too little education?

Created by

Greg M^cCausland

mccauslg@bcsdgw.stier.org

Binghamton High School

Introduction: Thomas Malthus published, Principles of Population Growth, in 1798 and he warned that unchecked population growth would result in population outstripping available food supplies and, of course, the problem lay with the poor. Malthus was an early economist and his predictions earned economics the lasting moniker “the dismal science.” Today, many people argue that the world population is growing at an alarming rate. The current world population is between 6 and 7 billion people and in the next 50 years our world population will approximately double. That means when you reach the age of retirement there will be nearly 14 billion people in the world. The United States population is currently 290 million and by your retirement the population will exceed 420 million people. Is this population growth a problem? How will it affect your future and the future of the planet?

You are working as a consultant for the Population Division of the United Nations to develop guidelines for dealing with the rapid growth of human population. Questions you will consider are: 1. the nature of world population growth, 2. how is it impacted by our lifestyle, 3. how does it impact the planet we all must share.

Task: Your task as a population consultant to the United Nations is to:

1. Define what are the problems associated with world population growth.

2. What are the causes of these problems associated with world population growth?

3. Make written recommendations to the world community for dealing with the issue of world population growth and associated problems.

4. Your task will be concluded when you participate in a round table discussion to share your findings and recommendations.

The Process in Steps:

step

1. Define the problem of world population growth. Complete Worksheet Number 1 answering the following questions.

a. How fast is the world growing?

b. Are populations growing everywhere?

c. Where is the world growing the fastest?

d. What are three problems associated with population growth?

2. Gather evidence using the resources provided to define in detail three problems associated with population growth. Complete Worksheet Number 2.

3. What are the causes of these three problems and how are they associated with population growth? Complete Worksheet Number 3 for each problem.

4. Given what you have discovered about the nature world population growth and the problems associated with population growth develop three policy recommendations to the world community to deal with growing world population. Complete Worksheet Number 5.

5. Based on the feasibility and potential effectiveness of these three policies, which one do you think will be the best? Complete Worksheet Number 6

6. What are your recommendations to the world community? Prepare an oral report using the information on your worksheets that defines the parameters of world population growth and three problems associated with population growth. Give a single policy recommendation to address the issue of world population growth. Explain why your policy recommendation is the single best choice.

Resources are listed with the associated step

Step 1 a Demographic Facts of Life

World Population Change: Boom or Bust

Step 1 b/c Fertility Rates (Children per Family)

Step 1d/Step 2/Step 3

Population and the Environment

Population and Water

Population and Women

Step 4/5 Connecting the Dots: Population, Women, Environment, Family

FACTOIDS BY TOPIC

World Resources

Water Scarcity
8/15/2002

Per-capita water consumption is rising twice as fast as world population. At least 300 million people live in regions that already have severe water shortages; by 2025, the number could be 3 billion.

Water
5/18/2002

Globally, 2.3 billion people suffer from diseases linked to water. These diseases cause an estimated 12 million deaths a year, 5 million of them from diarrhea diseases. Most of the victims are children in developing countries.

Source: Population Reports, Johns Hopkins

Soil of the Earth
9/9/2002

Land degradation from deforestation, waste disposal and overuse of fertilizers has rendered a third of the earth's soil unfit for growing food.

Source: NY Times

Sprawl vs. forests and farms
9/16/2002

Suburban sprawl consumes more than 500,000 acres of forest and farmland per year in the U.S. Put another way, we're adding a population four times larger than Seattle's every year while suburban sprawl is consuming an area 10 times larger than the city limits.

Source: The Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Resource scarcity
2/26/2002

As deforestation forces people to travel longer distances for fuel wood, fodder, and water, women and men expend larger amounts of energy. The World Health Organization estimates that the energy used to carry water may consume one-third of a woman's daily calorie intake.

Source: PRB

Poverty and Debt

Zambia debt
2/1/2001

The continuous debt problem in poor nations is taking a toll on people and the environment. In 1997, Zambia spent 40% of its national budget on foreign debt payments, and only 7% on basic health and education, clean water, sanitation, family planning, and nutrition.

Source: State of the World 2001, Worldwatch

Poverty
2/8/2001

"Just how many poor people are there in the world?" The World Bank's World Development Report 1999/2000 estimates that the number of people living on the equivalent of $1 a day increased from 1.2 billion in 1987 to 1.5 billion in 2000. The number could reach 1.9 billion by 2015.

Source: PRB

Debt in perspective
4/27/2001

Combined foreign debt of 47 of the poorest countries:
$422 billion

Amount U.S. spends in the interest on the national debt every 24 months:
$422 billion

Military expenditure of the rich countries in one year: $427 billion

Source: Worldwatch

World poverty
9/13/2001

One in five of the world's people -- 1.2 billion -- live on less than $1 a day. 56% of the developing world lacks basic sanitation, and more than 50 countries have lower real per capita incomes today than they did a decade ago.

Source: U.N. Development Programme

Resource Consumption

Cars
2/22/2001

Each U.S. car requires on average 0.07 hectares (0.18 acres) of paved land for roads and parking space. For every five cars added to the U.S. fleet, an area the size of a football field is covered with asphalt.

Source: Worldwatch

SUVs
2/26/2001

Switching from driving an average new car to a 13 miles per gallon SUV for one year will waste more energy than:
-Leaving a refrigerator door open for 6 years
-Leaving a bathroom light burning for 30 years
-Leaving a color television turned on for 28 years

Source: Sierra Club

Roads
2/28/2001

The U.S., with its 214 million motor vehicles, has paved 6.3 million kilometers of roads, enough to circle the Earth at the equator 157 times.

Source: Worldwatch

Transportation choice
3/2/2001

Number of new models of cars available to suburban residents in 2001: 197

Number of convenient alternatives to the car available to most such residents: 0

Source: Worldwatch

Automobiles
5/21/2001

In China, there are only about 8 vehicles per 1,000 persons, and in India, only 7 per 1,000 persons; by contrast, there are about 750 motor vehicles per 1,000 persons in the United States.

Source: World Resources Institute

oil

Gender

Girls--education
4/30/2001

An estimated 200 million girls who should be in schools worldwide are not studying. In Yemen, for instance, only 31 percent of girls are in schools, as compared to 81 percent of boys.

Source: World Information Transfer, Fall 2000 Report

Age at marriage
5/17/2001

The percentage of girls marrying by age 18 varies considerably around the world. 73 percent of girls in Bangladesh are married by age 18, but only 3 percent of girls in Germany are married by age 18.

Source: PRB

STANDARDS

SOCIAL STUDIES

Standard 2:   World History
Students will use a variety of intellectual skills to demonstrate their understanding of major ideas, eras, themes, developments, and turning points in world history and examine the broad sweep of history from a variety of perspectives.

Standard 3: Geography
Students will use a variety of intellectual skills to demonstrate their understanding of the geography of the interdependent world in which we live—local, national, and global—including the distribution of people, places, and environments over the Earth’s surface.

LANGUAGE ARTS STANDARDS

Standard 1:   Language for Information and Understanding
Students will listen, speak, read, and write for information and understanding. As listeners and readers, students will collect data, facts, and ideas; discover relationships, concepts, and generalizations; and use knowledge generated from oral, written, and electronically produced texts. As speakers and writers, they will use oral and written language that follows the accepted conventions of the English language to acquire, interpret, apply, and transmit information.

Standard 3:   Language for Critical Analysis and Evaluation
Students will listen, speak, read, and write for critical analysis and evaluation. As listeners and readers, students will analyze experiences, ideas, information, and issues presented by others using a variety of established criteria. As speakers and writers, they will use oral and written language that follows the accepted conventions of the English language to present, from a variety of perspectives, their opinions and judgments on experiences, ideas, information and issues.

Standard 4:   Language for Social Interaction
Students will listen, speak, read, and write for social interaction. Students will use oral and written language that follows the accepted conventions of the English language for effective social communication with a wide variety of people. As readers and listeners, they will use the social communications of others to enrich their understanding of people.

Rubric

RUBRIC FOR ORAL PRESENTATION

Category	Not Acceptable	Developing	Acceptable	Above Average	Exemplary
Population growth description	1	2	3	4	5
3 Problems defined	1	2	3	4	5
Use of Facts	1	2	3	4	5
Policy recommendations	1	2	3	4	5
Cooperativeness of group	1	2	3	4	5
Clarity of presentation	1	2	3	4	5

CONCLUSION

At the conclusion of this WebQuest you should have an understanding of the complex issues tied to the growth of human population. Human population is not simply a matter of numbers, to few or too many people, but is related to our lifestyles. The conclusions we draw on human population depend on the choices we make regarding housing, transportation, support for education, gender equality and access to resources for the 2 billion people on the planet living on less than $1 a day.