The Population as a Global Problem
The Population as a Global Problem

Summary/Abstract: This article presents the issue of human evolution while Homo Sapiens is a centre of ecosystems, shaking natural selection and being involved in a demographic expansion, facing the challenges of its own reproduction as well. The highest population growth rates over the last three centuries and the danger of exhausting resources needed for the existence of today’s and future generations are discussed. The club of Rome is one of the first informal scientists’ group and acts as a whistle-blower. In the 1970s it was indicated using the method of system dynamics that a large population growth rate in the developing countries and its stop have been recommended, while the UN undertook a multifaceted population programme aimed at birth control and acceleration of demographic transition in those countries (at present embracing 81% of world’s population, about 7 billion by 2011). It is highlighted that many versions have been drafted concerning the future population growth and the transition finalising but nothing is being said about the post-transition perspectives. This is the context where the Bulgarian case is presented as an example of fast transition without reaching stable population and jumping into negative natural growth while the descending birth rates, increasing mortality and fast ageing are dominating: a process acquiring the nature of a crisis. The hypothesis is that the same model could be followed by the global population. This model considered by some Bulgarian scholars as the demographic transition’s fifth stage, probably might lead to the end of Homo Sapiens’s existence. Avoidance of such perspective is to be among the key issues on researchers’ agenda and is to be considered as a responsibility not only for the next generation, but the human being surviving on the planet alike.

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