Population Sustainability capacity of the environment to support a population in the longer term

What is Population Sustainability Population Sustainability means that a countries environment can support its population into the future. This map has been drawn to show the size of each countries population, loosely in conjunction with it’s physical location and shape.. Did you know? The most over- crowded country is Monaco with 17,000 ppkm 2. India has 370. NZ has 16 ppkm 2.

In 2000 it was around 6 billion. In 2050, based on estimates from the United Nations Commission on Population and Development, it could be as high as 10 billion. An already crowded planet will have over half as many people again. Few countries face as big a challenge as India.

Can India Support its Population? One of the biggest challenges will be the supply of water. Agriculture uses most of India's fresh water. If India is to feed a population of 1.6 billion it will need to dramatically increase its agricultural production. But there will be no more available fresh water in 2050 than there is now. Indeed there may be less because of the effects of industrial pollution. Other challenges, seen in India’s Megacities, are environment pollution from the large industrial areas, mainly due to little or no enforcement by the inefficient local government. Also the inability of the infrastructure to provide for these large populations – overcrowded hospitals, lack of trained doctors, large and crowded classrooms through to time spent stuck in traffic.

What about the future? Since 1970 India’s government has actively pursued incentives to decrease its Birth Rate. And although it has dropped, India is still growing at 1.7%. Most research indicates that India’s poor and isolated will be the ones that suffer when the environment turns for the worst because of the population pressures placed upon it. A small minority argue that India can eventually provide for a population capacity of 1.6 billion – as long as there is a major change in the way India uses its resources. “We are very large, but we are also very inefficient in our use of resources. That's the nature of the development challenge that India faces." States Mahindra Singh John Key, PM of New Zealand, visiting in June 2011 to work towards a Free-Trade Agreement between India and NZ, stated that New Zealand businesses could help India to work towards a more sustainable way of living and working, so population capacity for the country could increase.