High birth rate and low death rate account for the population growth globally. According to the United Nation (UN) estimates, there were 4.4 billion people in the World in 1981. Today, the number of people has risen to a staggering 6 billion people. Population experts indicate that the World’s population could double to nearly 12 billion people in a few decades.

Also, the United Nation Population Fund (UNPF) opined that the World’s total population is likely to reach 14 billion by 2025 unless aggressive birth control measures are introduced and made good use of.

It is note worthy that in the past, infant and childhood mortality and short life span used to limit population growth. Currently, improvement in nutrition, Sanitation, Medi-care such as incubation, makes babies survive their first few years of life. Hence, population control should be a high priority particularly amongst thickly populated Agricultural countries, from where the issue of population growth is inherent.

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However, rapid population growth often contributes to environmental damages like soil degradation, deforestation, erosion, diminishing food supply etc. Traditional land and resource management systems may be unable to adapt fast enough to prevent over use and Government may be unable to keep up with the Infrastructural and human needs of a food, shelter, water, education and employment opportunities.

The poor are both victims and agent of the environmental damages because they lack resources and technology, land hungry farmers resort to cultivation erosion-prone hills sides and moving into tropical forest areas where crop yields on cleared field usually drop sharply after just a few years. Poor families often have to meet urgent short term needs are prompted to engage in excessive cutting of trees for firewood and failure to replace soil nutrient and fertility.

Furthermore, birth rate and death rate has changed drastically due to the Industrial revolution of 1850 which ushered in a far reaching advance in science and technology. The success of reducing death rate to a large extent is attributed to factors such as increase in food production and distribution as a result of better farming techniques and availability of farm input like Agro- Chemicals, Miracle seeds of high yielding Varieties (HYV). All these help farmers increase food production geometrically. Also, improvement in public health (water and sanitation) access to safe drinking water, housing and other basic needs has contributed to the increase in population by the reduction of death rate. Up to 75% of people had access to good drinking water in contemporary times which reduced the incidence of water borne diseases like Cholera, Diphtheria, and Diarrhioe etc.break through in Medicare, Introduction of vaccines, antibiotics and antibodies coupled with better health education have enabled children to survive common diseases like measles, yellow fever, small pox, influenza.

It is commendable to say that public health measures like water treatment/purification vaccination and nutritional education are better developed more in advanced countries of Europe and America than in the less developed nations or third World Countries of Africa, Asia and the Caribbean.

Nevertheless, the only solution to the diverse problem created by population growth lies in Governmental policies and legislation on family size and also indicating the number of children each family in the country must have to avoids over population and over crowding, check population distributes based on age and sex of the populace. Population education should be introduced into the school Curriculum so that students will be aware of the dangers of over population in the country.