Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
4.3 Population-resource relationships - Coggle Diagram
4.3 Population-resource relationships
Key Concepts:
Carrying Capacity:
The maximum population that an area can sustain with its available reasources.
Influenced by:
Natural Resources: Food, water, energy and raw materials.
Technology: Enhancements in resource extraction, production and management.
Social and Economic Systems: Efficiency in resource use and distribution.
Overpopulation and Underpopulation:
Overpopulation:
When the population exceeds the carrying capacity, leafing to resource scarcity, environmental degradation and reduced living standards.
Underpopulation:
When the population is too small to fully utilise available resources, resulting in underdeveloped economies and inefficiencies.
Optimum Population:
The ideal population size that can sustainably use resources to achieve the highest living standards.
Theories of Population and Resources:
Malthusian Theory (Thomas Malthus):
Predicted that population grows geometrically (exponentially), while food supply grows arithmetically (linearly)
Suggested that population would outstrip resources, leading to famine, disease and conflict (Malthusian catastrophes).
Advocate for preventive checks (e.g., reduced birth rates) and positive checks (e.g., famine, war).
Neo-Malthusian Views:
Builds on Malthus' ideas, emphasising resource scarcity due to population growth and environmental degradation.
Advocates for family planning sustainable resource use, and population control.
Boserupian Theory (Ester Boserup):
Argued that population pressure stimulates technological innovation, increasing resource production and sustainability.
Suggests that humans adapt and innovate to avoid resources crises.
Population, Resources and Development:
The Relationship:
A dynamic relationship between population size, resource availability and levels of economic development.
Population growth can lead to resource depletion but also stimulate technological advancement.
LICs:
Rapid population growth strains limited resources, causing issues such as deforestation, soil degradation and food insecurity.
Resource extraction often driven by external demand, with limited local benefits.
HICs
Slower population growth but higher per capita resource consumption.
Reliance on imports to meet resource demands, often from LICs.
Sustainability and Resource Management:
Sustainable Development:
Meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of the future generations to meet their own needs.
Stratigies for Managing Population-Resource Relationships:
Conservation:
Protecting natural resources to prevent depletion (e.g., renewable energy, water conservation).
Efficient Resource Use:
Reducing waste and increasing efficiency in resource consumption (e.g. recycling, green technology).
Population Policies:
Pro-natalist policies to encourage population growth in underpopulated areas.
Anti-natalist policies ti control population growth in overpopulated areas.
Technological Solutions:
Innovatios in agriculture and energy production to meet growing demands.