Population Growth and its Impact on Natural Resources: A Study of Uttarakhand State

Abstract

Present paper is about growing population in Uttarakhand and its impact on natural resources. According to Gandhi ji," There is enough for everybody"s need and not for anybody"s greed. The geographically informed person understand that a " resource" is a cultural concept. A resource is any physical material constituting part of earth that people need and value. Natural materials become resources when humans value them. The uses and values of resources change from culture to culture and from time to time. Resources are spatially distributed varying in quantity and quality. Some resources are finite. While others can be replenished at varying rates. However, humans need to balance short-term rates of use against long-term availability. Mr. Thomas Robert Malthus (The first economist to propose a systematic theory of population) proposes the principle that populations grow exponentially while food production grow at an arithmetic rate. while food output was likely to increase in a series of twenty five year intervals in the arithmetic progression 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 ,population was capable of increasing in geometric progression 1,2,4,8,16,32,64,128,256, and so forth. This scenario of arithmetic food growth with simultaneous geometric human population growth predicted future when humans would have no resources to survive on.