The beginning of human civilization has marked a devastating change over this planet. Everything, in terms of land, natural resources, animals, water bodies were occupied by the humans at once without any apologies. The breeding and interbreeding resulted in the blast of human population over this earth. Although the spread of this deleterious wasn’t a great deal for our mother earth to handle until it became an obligation and started pulling out every single bit of it’s own resources.

The people of a country are it’s real wealth. It is they who make use of the country’s resources and decide its policies. But what could be done when the real wealth of the country becomes a real burden and starts exploiting it’s own resources?

According to researchers, the world population at the beginning of 21st century recorded the presence of over 6 billion people. But within a very few years it marked 7 billion, as compared to 1930s when it took 30 years to reach 3 billion mark.

Patterns of population distribution in the world –

There is a drastic difference in the way the world’s population is distributed on the land mass. Broadly,90 per cent of the world population lives in about 10 percent of its land area, which is in itself a big reason to worry. The 10 most populous countries of the world contribute about 60 percent of the world’s population. Namely –

• China
• India
• USA
• Indonesia
• Brazil
• Pakistan
• CIS
• Bangladesh
• Japan
• Nigeria

Density of population –

Each land has a limited capacity to hold a certain number of people living on it. Hence, it is necessary to understand the ratio between the number of people to the size of land.

The areas with more than 200 persons on every sq. Km. are densely populated areas (North -Eastern part of USA, North – Western part of Europe,South, South east and East Asia) as compared to those with 11-50 persons per sq. Km., these are the countries that are either developed or scarcely support human conditions, such as Western China, Southern India in Asia, Norway, Sweden. Other areas like those near North and South Poles, the hot and the cold deserts and high rainfall zones near the equator have very low density of population regions of the world with less than 01 person per sq. Km.

Though there is an availability of such a great land mass,the world’s population is congested in such a small portion of land, rather a great sign to think upon,since it not only grapples up the natural resources of a particular niche,but also creates a chaos in terms of the survival of every individual. Neglecting the fact that certain factors affect the distribution of population over the earth – geographical, economic, social and cultural – the trend in which population grows is also a large factor that has contribute towards the overburdening of the earth.

Trends in population growth –

Since the beginning of human civilization, the population change also have seen different patterns in it’s doubling time, there is a great variation among regions in doubling their population. While the population doubling time in the developed countries is more, whereas we see that the time taken by the developing countries to double their population is less, i. e. there is a negative correlation between the economic growth and population growth.

8,000 -12,000 years back the world population then was nearly 8 million. In first century A. D. it crossed over 300 million mark. Around 1750s , at the dawn of industrial revolution, the world population exploded to 550 million. It took more than a million years for the human civilization to attain 1 billion mark. But it took only 12 years for it to rise from 5 billion to 6 billion between the years 1987 and 1999.

Impact of population change –

A small increase in population is desirable in a growing economy.

However,surpassing the limits of population spurt can lead to severe problems –

• Continuous depletion of resources
• Increased hatred among people
• Extinction in large number of flora and fauna
• Increase in global warming and degradation of environment
• Disturbed food chain

Apart from over population being an everytime issue,decline in the population is also a major headache for the developing human community. It’s never too late to hold on the dreadful explosion of human bombs and it could only be done with the ” Human” efforts so as to maintain a balance over the earth, otherwise the earth will take the revenge in it’s own way and would leave no stones unturned to destroy this human population from the earth.