LESSON

People and Their Environments

Guiding Question: What factors influence the impact a population has
on its environment?

Describe how humans impact their environments.

Discuss the negative and positive impacts
of technology.

Reading Strategy Create a three-column KWL chart. In the

first column, write what you know about how humans impact
their environment. In the second column, write what you want
to know more about. After you read the lesson, write in the last
column what you learned.
Vocabulary wealth gap

8.3 LESSON PLAN PREVIEW

Differentiated Instruction
Less proficient readers approach
concepts of population impacts
one subheading at a time.
Real World Students research
the positive and negative
impacts various technologies
have on the environment.

8.3 RESOURCES
Lesson 8.3 Worksheets Lesson 8.3
Assessment Chapter 8 Overview
Presentation
GUIDING QUESTION
FOCUS Ask students to think about
ways that the population of their
city or town impacts the local environment. Have students volunteer
responses, and list their responses
on the board.
Ask Do people living in all areas
and in all types of societies impact
the environment in the same ways
Americans do? Why or why not?
Use students responses to launch a
discussion of factors that determine
the impact a population has on the
environment.

242 Lesson 3

WHAT WILL THE EARTH of tomorrow look like? Will open plains,
deep-green forests, and other areas to roam still exist? Or will human
population growth reach the point where human development affects
every nook and cranny of the planet? So far, this chapter has focused primarily on the human populationin particular its potential for growth.
But, we also need to understand how this growing population affects
Earth. After all, our actions today impact Earths tomorrow.

Impacts of Population
Humans have an enormous impact on their environment.
The Industrial Revolution may have changed how people live in many
positive ways, but it also has caused ever-increasing resource consumption and pollution. As the population grows in size and as more nations
become industrialized, our impact on the environment will also increase
unless more sustainable ways of living become commonplace. Currently,
the type of environmental impact varies greatly among societies.

Affluent Societies The environmental impact of humans depends on

the way people live. When people have more money, they tend to consume more food, purchase more items, produce more wastes, and live
in larger homes that use more energy. Much of the materials required
to make the products affluent societies purchase dont come from their
lands, but from far-off places. Natural resources also are required to ship
the products to the consumers.
The relationship between affluence and environmental impact is
linked directly to the concept of ecological footprints. Recall that an
ecological footprint is the amount of land needed to provide a person (or
population) with the resources he or she consumes and to handle his or
her wastes. Although the population growth rate is usually lower in affluent societies, individuals from affluent societies tend to have larger ecological footprints than those from poor societies (Figure 14). Therefore,
the addition of a person in an affluent society has a greater impact on the
environment than the addition of a person in a poorer society.

Figure 14 Ecological Footprints The average ecological

footprint of a person in each nation can vary greatly. Shown
here are average footprints for several developed (green)
and developing (blue) nations. The world average is also
shown (brown). Note that ha stands for hectare.
Apply Concepts Explain why the average footprint of someone
in China is smaller than the average footprint of an American,
even though Chinas population is much larger.

United
States
(9.0 ha)

Poor Societies When people live in poverty, they

place different types of strains on their environment than
people in affluent societies. Many of these strains are
related to population growth and survival.
As you learned in the
last lesson, poverty is strongly correlated with population
growth. When more people are added to a given area, the
impact on the environment increases. In some nations
where population growth is outpacing the nations economic growth, governments are so overwhelmed they
cannot provide infrastructure that protects people and the
environment, such as adequate sewage treatment facilities.

Overwhelmed Governments

Poverty may also force people to

engage in environmentally harmful activities just to survive. For example, people who depend on agriculture in
a region of poor farmland may continue to farm heavily,
even if it destroys the soil. They may also try to raise more
grazing animals than the land can support. This is largely
why some land in Africas once-productive Sahel region
turned to desert (Figure 15).

Canada
(5.8 ha)
Mexico
(3.2 ha)

India
(0.8 ha)

Pakistan
(0.7 ha)
World average
(2.6 ha)

Thailand
(1.7 ha)

Zimbabwe
(1.0 ha)

China
(1.8 ha)
France
(4.6 ha)

Israel
(5.4 ha)
Chile
(3.1 ha)

Land Overuse

Data are for 2006, from Global Footprint Network, 2009.

ANSWERS

Figure 14 Because there are many millions of people

living in China who are not affluent, and who do not
have a large effect on the environment, the average
footprint is smaller overall.

Figure 15 Land Overuse In the semiarid Sahel region

of Africa, where population is increasing beyond the lands
ability to handle it, drought and dependence on grazing and
agriculture led to poor soil conditions.

Human Population 243

The ever-increasing need for more farmland, land to

raise livestock, and wood contributes to deforestation. Loss of forests
can lead to flooding in areas that did not have flooding problems before.
Flooding causes property damage, lost crops, and disease, which increase
the level of poverty in the area.
As people continue to expand their territory, they come into closer
contact with animals that they generally did not come into close contact
with before. Many new diseases, sometimes called emerging diseases, that
could become threats to the human population as a whole have arisen
because human and animal habitats have merged. Human takeover of
habitat has also led to an increased rate of species extinction.
Many international agencies have introduced programs to help people
in poorer nations earn a living, while conserving their land and other
resources. Many efforts concentrate on introducing sustainable farming
techniques and gaining access to renewable energy sources.

Land Clearing

Figure 16 Wealth Gap The graph

reveals the wealth gap among different
regions of the world. (a) The number
of cars on American roads is one sign
of the wealth gap. In 2002, there were
812 cars per 1000 people in the United
States. (b) In India, in the same year,
there were 17 cars per 1000 people.

Percent

Population and Wealth Shares by Region, 2000

40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0

Population share

China

India

Share of global wealth

Europe

Africa

The Wealth Gap All societies affect their

environment in some way. To move toward

a sustainable future, we will have to address
the environmental issues of both developed
and developing nations. But the stark contrast
between affluent and poor societies in todays
world is the cause of social as well as environmental stress. This contrast is often called the
wealth gap, which refers to the difference in
assets and income between individuals in a
society or between nations.

North
Latin
America America
and
Caribbean

Region
Source: United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research.

(a)

(b)

244 Lesson 3

As Figure 16 indicates, the regions of the world with the greatest

population sizes have a much smaller percentage of global wealth. About
1.4 billion people in developing nations live below the internationally
defined poverty line of U.S. $1.25 per day. Another 2.6 billion live on less
than $2 a day. The richest one fifth of the worlds people uses 86 percent of
the worlds resources. Many of these resources are actually imported from
developing nations, leaving these nations with fewer resources to support
their own populations. That leaves only 14 percent of global resources
energy, food, water, and other essentialsfor four fifths of the worlds
people. It seems reasonable that at some point, four fifths of the world will
demand a more equal share of resources.
Reading
Checkpoint

 hich region shown in Figure 16 has the smallest share of

W
global wealth?

ANSWERS

Reading Checkpoint India

Figure 17 Resource Strain

As Chinas population has increased
and become wealthier, larger demands
have been placed on its natural
resources. For example, a combination
of drought and excessive water use has
greatly depleted the Yellow River in
some areas.

When Developing Nations Develop As developing nations

develop, they may encounter new sets of problems. For example, consider
Chinas immense economic growth over the past few decades. While
millions of Chinese are increasing their material wealth and their consumption of resources, the nation is battling environmental challenges
brought on by this rapid economic growth. People are purchasing more
food, which has forced agriculture to expand westward out of the moist
rice-growing areas. Poorer farmland is eroding and literally blowing away.
A similar situation occurred in the United States during the 1930s, when
parts of the Great Plains became known as the Dust Bowl.
China has overpumped many of its underground water supplies and
has drawn so much water for irrigation from the Yellow River that the
once-mighty waterway now dries up in many stretches, as shown in
Figure 17. Although China is reducing air pollution from industry and
charcoal-burning homes, the nation faces new urban pollution and congestion threats from rapidly increasing numbers of cars. As the worlds
developing nations try to attain the level of material prosperity that
industrialized nations enjoy, China provides a glimpse of what much of
the rest of the world could soon become.

BIG QUESTION
How does the human population
affect the environment?
Perspective Draw students attention to the Big Question by pointing
out that resource use is one of the
main ways that human populations
impact the environment. Review
with students the information in the
text that describes 86 percent of the
worlds resources being used by only
one fifth of the worlds population.
Have students work in pairs to write
a description of the use of global resources from the point of view of an
individual in a developing nation
one of the four fifths of the worlds
population left with only 14 percent
of the worlds resources.

Human Population 245

What Do
you think?
Consider your own city or town.
Can you find examples of how
population, affluence, and technology affect your own environment?
How might your city reduce negative effects on the environment?
ANSWERS

What Do You Think? Answers will

vary, but should reflect knowledge of
the local populations impact on the
environment.

Figure 18 Limited Space Space is

a limited resource. We cannot expand
Earth like a balloon to increase its
surface area. In cities such as Bangkok,
Thailand, people make the most
of limited space by building giant
skyscrapers.

246 Lesson 3

Quality of Life The impact that human populations have on the environment not only affects ecosystems, but it affects quality of life. Quality
of life refers to how well an individual lives. It includes having basic life
necessities such as a reliable food and water supply and space to live.
Quality of life also includes less tangible, but life-affecting elements. For
example, it includes a persons feeling of safety, access to healthcare and
education, and available time for recreation.
Of course, quality of life is a relative term that depends greatly on the
areas where people live, their likes and dislikes, and their culture. But in
general, for humankind to experience the most basic quality of life in the
future, the availability and quality of resources need to keep pace with
population growth and resource consumption.

Impacts of Technology
Technology can have both negative and positive impacts on
the environment.
Without the technology that has brought about modern life, its unlikely
that the human population ever would have experienced the ongoing exponential growth of the past couple of hundred years. We have
developed technology time and again to fight diseases, reduce our strain
on resources, and allow us to further expand our population size. For
example, technology has allowed global agricultural production to grow
faster than our population has grown. Because of such technologies,
many people live longer, healthier, and often more comfortable lives. But
to the rest of the biosphere, human technology has brought a mix of both
negative and positive effects (Figure 19).

(a)

(b)

Negative Impacts The environment has often paid the price for
human achievements because many of these technologies have involved
exploitation of resources such as soil, minerals, fossil fuels, old-growth
forests, and the oceans. The short-sighted use of technology that has
occurred for the past several hundred years has caused many problems.
We are currently witnessing some of these problems in the form of pollution and loss of biodiversity. Other problems, for example the ongoing
effects of climate change, can only be predicted.
In recent years, the use of technology has intensified the environmental impact of developing nations. Often the same industrial technologies
from the developed world that have caused such harm are exported to
poorer nations that are eager to become industrialized.
Positive Impacts In recent years less harmful technologies have

begun reducing environmental impact. For example, recycling programs

and advances in wastewater treatment are helping reduce waste output.
Solar, wind, and geothermal energy technologies are producing cheaper
and cleaner renewable energy. Ensuring that these technologies become
equally available and implemented in developing nations is a goal of
many international agencies.

Figure 19 Impacts of
Technology Much of human
technology over the past few
centuries has had negative
effects on the environment.
(a) Mining for fossil fuels can
be particularly destructive.
This mountaintop in West
Virginia was blasted off to
mine coal. (b) The focus of
new technologies, such as
solar energy, is to provide
people with the energy
they need at less cost to the
environment.

ANSWERS

Lesson 3 Assessment
1. Affluent individuals tend to consume more resources and generate more wastes than those from
poorer societies. Poorer individuals
may participate in activities that
harm the environment in order to
grow food or earn a living.
2. Many technologies of the past
couple of centuries involved taking
resources from Earth. More recent
technologies focus on lessening
our impact on the environment.
3. Answers will vary. Accept all reasonable responses.

3
1. Explain Explain the relationship between wealth
and poverty, and impact on the environment.
2. Describe How has technology had both a negative
and positive impact on the environment?

3. Explore the BIGQUESTION As developed nations

implement ways that reduce their effect on the
environment, do you think this will affect quality of
life throughout the world? Explain.
Human Population 247