Overpopulation and the Impact on the Environment

4.2. GOVERNANCE AND SUSTAINABILITY
Urbanization
With respect to urbanization, local and national governments plan on expanding cities and 
the policies they bring affect the population size of the urban areas. In densely populated cities, 
carbon emissions decrease due to public transportation that is shared and because of reduction in 
the use of private cars. As the world’s second-largest economy and the largest carbon emitter, 
China aims to take action and “reduce its industrial energy demand in 2020 by 20 per cent while 
increasing productivity” (Goldin 221). Moreover, urban areas generate large amount of waste, 
which could be regarded as beneficial, since it provides more space for green initiatives that are 
already taking place in forms of “organic vegetable growing and ‘guerilla gardening’” (Baird 124). 
To develop potential for green incentives, city planners need to have vision and strategic planning 
supported by political will (Baird 124). Technological innovations can aid urban areas address their 
challenges, but to transform innovations into a process, “regulations, investment in research, and 
market incentives” need to take place (Goldin 221).
Food and water
In response to a growing demand for food and water, international agencies and 
organizations have implemented projects to help nations deal with consequences of climate change, 
but the core of the problem is grounded in unequal distribution of sources. The Consultative Group 
for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) worked on projects that deal with adjusting to 

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climate change, the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has “sponsored a 
range of projects, an example being one that has dramatically reduced the overexploitation of 
aquifers in Andhra Pradesh, India” (Goldin 225), and Chinese government managed to reforest 
large areas of highlands to avoid desertification (Goldin 225). Nevertheless, the problem shakes 
sustainability of the global community and even when nations come together, the solution to the 
issue is out of their reach because the problem is not in the availability, but in the power to the 
access of food and water resources. Large agricultural corporations, supported and encouraged by 
governments, must stop exploiting nature to acquire material gains in the production of food and 
absorption of water. The global community needs to establish “a new kind of economy, based on 
clean and renewable energy sources, on the conservation and preservation of biological diversity, 
and on working with natural systems to provide for a sustainable number of people” (Ryerson 253).