Assessing the impact of population growth and it's attendant effect on natural resources and the environment

According to Roser et.al (2013), the world population increased from 1 billion in 1800 to more than 8 billion today.

According to Roser et.al (2013), the world population increased from 1 billion in 1800 to more than 8 billion today. Today China and India have a population of 1.412 billion and 1.408 billion respectively. The population of these two countries alone is threateningly close to triple the global population of the 1800s. The same natural resources versus an increased population growth, something must give, and sadly the environment is paying the price.  The impact of population growth on natural resources differs from country to country depending on livelihood activities and the quantity of natural resources available per person.  China's economy is largely based on energy-intensive industrial production and in its quest to urbanize cities, farmland is being consumed by urban sprawl. A study by Bin Lou suggests that the increase of 18 million people annually will eventually take 1.4 million hectares of land just for the development alone, but that 1.4 million hectares of land does not appear from nowhere, we are talking of carbon sinks being sacrificed in a country that emits large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere.  Malawi is one of the poorest countries in the world and with an economy that is dependent upon agriculture and the rate of population growth more than the growth rate of the economy, the environment must compensate for the differences somehow. The economy's vulnerability to climatic shocks has forced people who were once farmers to diversify and turn farmlands into charcoal mines. The country's ambition to be an industrialized nation means that green land must make way for buildings. This scramble for land is often done without consideration for future climatic shocks. There are no blueprints on what will make up for the destroyed carbon sinks. Suffice it to say population growth is exerting pressure on a rather already exhausted environment. Tree species such as the likes of Mulanje Cedar are about to be extinct, and the effects of climate change due to human activities resulted in lake Chirwa drying up - these are all clues of a dying planet and an awakening call.  Interestingly the world at large knows of the dangers of population growth and the pressure it is exerting on limited natural resources. We hear of people refusing to be vaccinated because of conspiracy theories about remedying the earth's population by wiping out poor countries. This is evidence that the impact of population growth is not a hidden reality but just an ignored fact otherwise an international assembly of scientists from 184 countries would not have endorsed an article published in the Journal Bioscience entitled “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity A SECOND Notice”.  According to Rob (2018), the warning states, “we are jeopardizing our future by not reining in our intense but geographically and demographically uneven material consumption and by not perceiving continued rapid population growth as a primary driver behind many ecological and even societal threats…” The 2016 article published by the Chinese Journal of Population Resources and Environmental asserted that “ the sooner the nations reject the Ponzi demography and make the needed gradual transition from ever-increasing population growth to population stabilization, the better the prospects for all humanity and other life on the planet” and nothing spells success more than the adoption of such.   References Garside. M (2022). Natural Resources in China -statistics & facts Rob.M (2018). A Proposal for a United Nations Framework Convention on Population Growth www.worldometers.com