 Dear students, in this module we are going to talk about the impacts of overpopulation. It means that how this issue is having an impact on the other aspects, other life aspects of Pakistani society. The first one is the depletion of natural resources. The overpopulation gives way to the depletion of natural resources. As you know that the more people we have for the given resources, the more are the chances that they would be consumed in the greater quantity. And to the contrary, if we have the lesser people, the more would be probability to have more resources for that specific number of people. So the earth can only produce a limited amount of food, which is falling short in the because of the current needs of the population. And that is why the most of the environmental damage or environmental degradation is being seen in the last 50 odd years because of the growing population. So in order to settle down this population, as you can witness that we are continuously having a deforestation effect on our urban areas surroundings, which is also making the agricultural land to be converted into the housing societies, which is another another dying effect on the depletion of natural resources. So they are cutting down the forests, hunting the wild life in the reckless manners and competing for the available resources that is further creating the complexities of life. So on the whole, this overpopulation is producing such a maness for the smooth functioning of the society and living our coexisting peacefully in a very ordered society. Environmental degradation becomes the direct consequence of the depletion of these natural resources that the over usage of coal, oil, gas and natural resources is the direct consequence of the overpopulation that has started producing the serious effects on our planet. Because the more the population, the more is the emission of carbon dioxide, which is also degrading our environment and rising the number of vehicles and industries has badly affected the quality of air and rising the amount of CO2 emission is also leading to the global warming. So all these changes in the climate you are currently observing are direct consequences of having more population on planet earth. So as you know that we have limited resources and scarcely available opportunities. If in the past, for example, there were five positions and maybe there were 10 competitors for these five positions. But right now, if we have five positions announced, there would be more than 50,000 competitors, more than 50,000 potential candidates who are striving to be fighting or maybe competing for these merely available five positions. So that brings a high rise in the unemployment rates because the high population in the country gives rise to the unemployment and almost 5% of Pakistanis are currently unemployed and it is one of the factors which is contributed to this high rate of unemployment. And at the same time, not only the unemployment, but the rate of underemployment is also increasing underemployment means that the persons who are already employed are getting far less than what they should get. So they are not being paid the adequate salaries for the work that they are doing. It means that the 14% of Pakistanis are underemployed and fewer jobs to support the larger number of people rising the unemployment ultimately would give rise to the rise in crime rate as well as you have witnessed that Pakistan is also facing the serious problems of street crimes. So then we see that we have the high cost of living and difference between the demand and supply continues to expand. The products are having we are continuously having the price hikes for the products that we consume. So these price hikes are also based on the high demands of the population for the limited resources and raises the prices of various commodities like food, shelter and clothing. As you can observe that the land is becoming more and more scarce resource. The clean drinking water is becoming more and more scarce resource. And similarly are the other amenities of life. So means that the people have to pay more to survive and feed their families. And then you see that when more population occupies more space, it means that we have the lesser geographic area available for the other amenities of life like the entertaining places for example, the population density increases the restrictions on the freedom of movement in the in the highly dense urban areas like Lahore and Karachi. You find that everywhere there is there are the problems of traffic jam wherever you go. There are the congestions a lot of people you would find on the public spaces like parks shopping mall markets. So these these areas are overburdened and overfed by the number of people because of the population high population growth. So need for more rules and restrictions to regulate their interaction. So right now because of having larger urban populations, the urban planning is continuously shifting towards restricting the movements of more and more people. So they are taking the mayors to stop people from going outside or by restricting those movements and as much as possible. Democracy is threatened due to the overpopulation which could give rise to the totalitarian styles of government. And finally, we have the increased crime rate, which means that the competitiveness for the resources due to the higher populations is a must. And right now we have scarcely available employment opportunities and against each opportunity we find almost a multiplicity of candidates. So more the number of people are in the population. The more would be the competition for the scarce resources like job opportunities. And those who would fail to find the better job opportunities would be discouraged by the standard behaviors or standard norms of the society and thereby they can lead towards the antisocial behavior and where they would tend to be more engaged into the deviancy and crime rate. So drug cartels and theft by the people in order to survive that you find that especially in the urban areas and the dark ghettos of the urban areas where there are impoverished people living the crime rates are higher and even the drug consumption is higher in those areas. So balanced population countries do have the lower crime rate whereas the street crime has significantly increased during the recent years especially in the metropolitan cities of Karachi and Lahore.