Environmental Studies: A Sample Essay For Inspiration & Mimicking

There are two types of growth which are the linear growth and the exponential growth. The linear growth is an increase in quantity with a constant rate. The exponential growth refers to the rate of increase which is proportional to the current value or quantity. According to Thomas Malthus, natural resources have a linear growth while the population has an exponential growth. He also argues that the population growth will exceed the rate of increase of resources which could lead to catastrophic effects in the future. He also argued that population control is necessary in order to avoid catastrophic events such as famine, war and spread of diseases.
Demographic transition refers to the societal change from high mortality and birth rates to low mortality and birth rates due to the industrialization of the economic system. At the beginning of the transition, the decrease in death rate was due to several societal improvements such as technological advancements, improvement in the agriculture, and improvement in the health care methods. The end of the transition is characterized by decrease in the birth rate. Several reasons for this decrease include higher survival of people, spread of contraceptives and incorporation of women in several sectors of society.
Demographic divide refers to the large difference between the birth and death rates of various countries around the world. On one side, most of the less developed countries suffer from high birth rates but low life expectancies. On the other side, most of the more developed countries have lower birth rates but higher life expectancies. This difference was mainly due to the differences in the various sector of society among countries which includes the health and agriculture sector. The demographic divide also involves several demographic forces which could affect the political, social and economic sector of countries. In the modern times, the difference between the demographics of less developed countries and more developed countries are very wide.
One of the most controversial issues which were debated by several experts is the relationship between population change and the environmental quality. These experts have been studying the impact of human activities on the environment. Experts who are concerned about the allocation, scale and distribution of natural resources have been studying the concept of population growth and its effects on environmental quality. Some of them believed that population growth will result to the destruction of the quality of the environment due to the larger demand for natural resources. Some of the studies also focused on several societal concepts such as migration patterns, space distribution for the large population and mobility patterns.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, almost 17% of the world’s population are suffering from hunger during the 1990s. It corresponds to about 810 million people around the world. The proportion of the people who are suffering from hunger around the world slightly decreased from 20 % during the 1950s. However, the global population during this period of time is only about 2 billion. In this case, 400 million people around the world are suffering from hunger during the 1950s. The quantity of hungry people doubled from the 1950s to 1990s but the proportion remains almost the same.
The green revolution refers to the set of initiatives in order increase the agricultural yield to support the increasing global population. The biotechnology revolution also opts to increase the food production of the society. However, these two changes are different. The green revolution involves development of grains, improvement of the irrigation method and modernization of agricultural practices. However, it could lead to several environmental problems. On the other hand, biotechnology revolution focused on genetic modification in order to increase the growth rate of agriculture products. However, it is a controversial issue since it involves genetic changes which could lead to unintended consequences.
Agroecology refers to the concept about the incorporation of more socially and environmental approach to agriculture. On the other hand, low input farming refers to the agricultural method which opts to minimize the production inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides in order to reduce the environmental effects of agricultural practices. Experts believed that these methods could support the world’s food need since it could also lead to soil improvement and mitigate the environmental hazards of agricultural practices. It could also lead to improvement in the agriculture sector.
The United Nations developed or established the United Nations Fund for Population Activities in order to support some of the international programs and policies to stabilize the population growth. They fund international programs to help people around the world to understand the effects of global population growth. The United Nations also supports the use of information dissemination programs in order to educate children especially women about the risks and problems brought by large family size. The United Nations also developed the provisions for Family Planning services and used technology to easily help people around the world for planning their family size.