2. WILL THERE BE ENOUGH TO GO AROUND? - The example of one pressure (population rise) and one resource: water (2 days)

 

What are the forces that will exert pressure on our future world? How do they exert their influence? Again students look 50 years, 100 years into the future. This activity allows students to focus on two critical variables, population and a critical resource - water, and the connection between them.

Questions to investigate about population growth and water include:

1. How fast are we/have we been growing (locally, nationally, internationally)?

2. Will there be enough water for us (local, national) and for the world's population (international) in 10 years? in 50 years? 100 years?

Try the following activities:

Who Has Water?
What If We Had Less Water or Much More?

Handheld work:

° make a concept map (e.g. Picomap) of the relationship of population and water.

° Look at the spreadsheet ( e.g. Tinysheet, Quicksheet) **See ISTE for introductory material on spreadsheets) that shows the exponential of population growth for the world. (Download Population Projection databases from ______ ; Look at MobilDB databases including those that project population for your state.) Using your local birth rate, life expectancy, and infant mortality, make your own spreadsheet, and project the population for your town, region, country for 50, 100 years. [Needs teaching piece]

What about population immigration and emigration? Has it changed over time?

°Use a decision tool: What-If Builder (will be available for the PALM soon). Use this decision-tree software to consider consequences of changes. Download from:

Resources - Population

Students can visit http://www.census.gov/ (especially http://factfinder.census.gov) where they research their local birth rate, life expectancy, and infant mortality. They then can project these ahead using a spreadsheet. Look at the exponential of population growth. What else will grow exponentially? What makes an exponential level off?

See lessons in Zero Population Growth (http://www.zpg.org)
historical census info - for creating trends (http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/census/)

For international data, students can consult http://earthtrends.wri.org/ (See population)

Resources - Water:

Water References
Populations Outrunning Water Supply
http://www.worldwatch.org/alerts/990923.html

What other demands will population make upon the planet (e.g. traffic, greenhouse gases).
For international data, students can consult http://earthtrends.wri.org/ (See water)
Also: http://www.worldwatch.org/topics/water.html



 

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