Overpopulation happens when the number of existing human population exceeds the carrying capacity of a country or region. This undesirable condition is caused by a lot of factors, such as better medical facilities, reduced mortality rate and depletion of precious resources. Generally, any sparsely populated area can possibly become densely populated if it does not have the capacity to sustain life. Also, advancements in technology year after year has provided benefits to humanity in many ways, including the better medical treatments and better ability to save lives, resulting to increased lifespan, and thus growth of the population. In the past five decades or so, population growth has boomed in a large scale that resulted to overpopulation, and now people are feeling its negative effects and trying to find solutions. Now, aside from better education and family planning, there are many means to address this problem. Here are some unique solutions to overpopulation:
1. Promoting Adoption
Since international adoption became a thing, it seems like this practice has become a consideration for family planning, particularly among socially conscientious communities. And today, it has become a de-facto solution for people who are interested in starting a family, yet having concerns about overpopulation.
2. Creating and Implementing National and Worldwide Multi-Media Overpopulation Awareness Campaigns
Using both social and mainstream media, we can clearly tell people around the world the truth about overpopulation crises and what must be done to solve them the right way. This can be accomplished by collaborating with brilliant video artists and other creative minds who are concerned about overpopulation and dedicated to solving it by releasing inspiring and compelling messages. And of course, there should be substantial funding to support it.
3. Aiming for Single-Child Families
According to statistics, hundreds of thousands of people are being added to the planet every day, which is an unsustainable rate. This means that it has to stop growing at some point, and one of the best ways to do this recommended by the experts is by choosing to have smaller families. This strategy will be most effective when we aim for single-child families.
4. Treating It As a National Security Issue
Overpopulated countries should treat population boom as an issue of national security. As you can see, similar to food insecurity and climate change, uncontrolled and rapid population growth can be a national security threat in a way that it results to instability. After all, we cannot have a secure world if its populations are going out of control.
5. Changing Social Norms
Some couples choose not to have children, and instead of treating them as if they are making huge mistake or are selfish—which many people do—we can focus on respecting their decision. This way, we will be able to help curb the problem of overpopulation.
6. Providing Tax Benefits or Concessions
Governments of various countries can come up with various regulations and policies related to tax exemption to help solve overpopulation. For example, they can waive certain parts of income tax or lower income tax rates for couples who have one or two children. As a lot of human beings are more inclined to money, this strategy could generate some positive results.
7. Moving Some Large Corporations Out of the Big Cities
According to some research, young people are not able to marry after moving to big cities where houses would be small, nurseries would be scarce and everything would be expensive. As you can see, these cities (which are hotbeds of business activities) are also key centers of population, with millions of people making them their home, and some of them are even among the most populated regions in the world. What is the cause? Of course, it is in these places where huge national and multi-national companies are headquartered, attracting millions of people and leaving the rural communities depopulated. This would mean that moving these businesses to other less populated areas is a key solution to overpopulation. In fact, some of the organizations that made such a move said that they took it after discovering huge differences in birth rates between female workers in rural communities and big cities.
8. Underground Living
In some regions in the world, local inhabitants still choose to live in underground dwellings, such as caves, instead of freestanding homes. For example, in the province of Shanxi in China, people are living in caves that are burrowed out of the soft, loess soil and have been protecting them from severe weather conditions, such as extreme heat during summer and extreme cold during winter. Considering this and other similar examples from all over the world, we can say that underground dwellings that we can improvise will be an ideal solution to overpopulation, as well as particular ecological problems. This is even more of a sustainable solution considering that shortage of resources, such as wood and timber, can prevent aboveground structures to be constructed.
9. Establishing a Think Tank That Is Focused on Solving the Problem Humanely
Countries all over the world can put up think tanks to create and spread messages that effectively promulgate the truth that the world is overpopulated in a significant number. Of course, it should also be stated that humane population reduction is possible, and there is a need to reduce birth rates to succeed.
Having people is a good thing, but growing the population without limit is not. Now, we have to find some good solutions to keep the human population in check, and these should be easily applicable at grass-root levels. We have to embrace these fundamental strategies as soon as possible, with the mind-set that the problem of overpopulation is definitely solvable, to be able see the benefits early. It could be far past the best time to act, which is why we should successfully implement such a vision of curbing the problem successfully. And, aside from the traditional methods, we can start with the unique solutions that are mentioned above. Do you think these suggestions are effective?
Crystal Lombardo is a contributing editor for Vision Launch. Crystal is a seasoned writer and researcher with over 10 years of experience. She has been an editor of three popular blogs that each have had over 500,000 monthly readers.
