Lesson 3 ·Class 10 · Population — The Increasing Numbers and Rising Problems · Respond
Population Pressure on Natural Resources
Food, water, land, forests, energy and minerals, all pulled in one direction
Six resources are under pressure from rising numbers. Decide what each situation really means.
Handled 0/4
Situation 1 of 4
🌲 A district clears 200 hectares of forest to build housing for its growing population. The council argues that trees can simply be replanted later.
Free play — read each situation and choose what you would do; each choice explains itself. Switch to when you're ready to test yourself.
Sort every resource into renewable or non-renewable before you judge it. Forests renew; minerals, coal and petroleum do not.
What this lesson covers
Challenges to clear
- Work through all four situations.
- Answer the minister''s claim about farm output correctly.
The task
Six resources are under pressure from rising numbers. Decide what each situation really means.
What this lesson covers
- A district clears 200 hectares of forest to build housing for its growing population. The council argues that trees can simply be replanted later. Best choice: Forests are renewable and afforestation can restore them, but the cleared cover meanwhile brings droughts, flash floods, soil erosion and loss of wildlife — Forests are one of our renewable resources and careful management with afforestation can maintain and even improve them. That does not make deforestation harmless: droughts, flash floods, soil erosion, extinction of wild animals and global warming all follow.
- A minister says there is no need to worry about feeding the country, because farm output rises every single year. Best choice: Output rises by adding at each step while unchecked population rises by multiplying, so food falls behind — Food production rises in arithmetic progression — 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 — by bringing more land under cultivation and farming better. Population grows in geometrical progression — 1, 2, 4, 8, 16. Multiplication always outruns addition.
- A city plans to meet all its new electricity demand by burning more coal and petroleum. Best choice: Both are fossil fuels whose reserves are fast depleting, so solar, nuclear, tidal and wind sources must take some of the load — At current and still rising rates of consumption petroleum reserves may be exhausted within 150 years and coal may last a bit longer. Once finished, neither can form again in a lifetime, so non-conventional sources have to be popularised.
- A family buys its third car and several new sets of clothes each season, saying one household among millions can hardly matter. Best choice: Rising living standards deplete resources even faster than rising numbers do, so sustainable use is every citizen's business — The increasing numbers, and even more than that the increasing standards of modern living, cause very rapid depletion. Sustainable development means meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own.
Hint
Sort every resource into renewable or non-renewable before you judge it. Forests renew; minerals, coal and petroleum do not.