ABSTRACT
The environment is one of the major components of intergenerational equity under sustainability. However, this component has been facing a lot of issues/crises which include natural causes and due to human actions. Although some of these environmental issues are due to natural causes, climate change effects are on the rise. Human behaviour is also increasing greenhouse emissions and the over-exploitation of natural resources that maintain an ecological balance in the environment. Therefore, this chapter sought to investigate the debates, arguments theories, and literature informing climate challenges, especially considering environmental policies as a strategy to mitigate human growth and development to ensure an ecological balance between the growing population and available environmental resources. Based on recent projections, the growing population tends to strip the environmental resources, resulting in rapid depletion of the natural resources that maintain ecological balance within the environment. This study adopted the desktop analysis to address the main objective, which sought to address the effects of population dynamics on environmental issues and the action plan to maintain the ecological balance between the growing population and the limited resources available. Thus, collective sources of data were used to get adequate results to influence the potential findings. The major findings postulate that there is an ecological imbalance between available limited resources and the growing population. Hence, the environment is acting against humanity through the impacts of climate change. Findings further recommend that to prevent such impacts, drastic interventions are required from all stakeholders who are involved in decision-making. These include governmental or non-governmental institutions, scientists, researchers, etc. to maintain the ecological balance through mitigation, resilience, and adaptation measures. Therefore, this chapter aims to examine the implications of population dynamics on the environment and the necessary measures to maintain an ecological balance between the growing population and environmental resources, and hence the review is from a climate change context.
