Population explosion: The silent emergency crippling societies
PESHAWAR, (APP): As the sun sets over the small village in Nowshera, 32-year-old Nigar Bibi lights a small oil lamp in a dim corner of her house to prepare her children for school.
Her eyes well with tears as she gazes at an old photo of her mother who, in pursuit of bearing a son, lost her life during her sixth pregnancy.
“I have four sisters. My parents wanted a son but fortune turned negatively and lost battle for life during pregnancy,” she says, voice cracking with emotion in her village Mohib Banda. “the desire for a baby boy deprived us of her love forever.”
Nigar’ story is not unique. It is one among millions in a country grappling with an invisible but ever-expanding crisis of overpopulation.
The desire for a son alongside poverty, climate change, and unemployment, the population explosion is now seen as a major challenge threatening the stability of developing nations and Pakistan is on the frontline.
According to the UN population report, the global population had surpassed 8.2 billion this year. With estimates projecting 8.5 billion by 2030, 9.7 billion by 2050, and a staggering 10.4 billion by 2100, the pressures on natural resources and public services are expected to grow exponentially.
Modern medical advancements may have reduced mortality, but the unintended consequence has been an unsustainable surge in population especially in underdeveloped regions like South Asia, Central Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa.
The first census in 1951 recorded a population of 75 million. By 2017, this had ballooned to nearly 208 million, with projections estimating that the number could reach 440 million by 2040 if current trends persist.
With a population growth rate of 1.91% this year, Pakistan now ranks as the fifth most populous country globally and the second-largest Muslim-majority nation after Indonesia.
This rapid growth is taking a devastating toll on public infrastructure. Hospitals, schools, roads, agriculture, and job markets everything is overstretched,” says Prof. Dr. Muammad Naeem, former Chairman of Economics Department at the University of Peshawar.
He calls overpopulation the “mother of all socioeconomic ills”, attributing it to rising poverty, corruption, injustice, and increasing dependence on foreign loans besides desire for sons for property inheritance.
“In the aftermath of the 2022 and 2025 floods that caused huge financial damages, the World Bank estimated that around 6 to 9 million people could fall into poverty,” Dr. Naeem added.
Already, about 20% of Pakistanis ie 55 million people live below the poverty line, with the hardest-hit areas being the tribal and underdeveloped districts. The soaring cost of basic staples like flour and sugar reflects the grim food insecurity in KP.
In the hospitals of KP, doctors report treating up to 500 patients a day which is an overwhelming caseload made worse by poor maternal health and malnutrition.
Dr. Samiullah Khan, Head of the Children’s Department at Government Hospital Pabbi, links high child and maternal mortality rates directly to overpopulation and inadequate spacing between births.
“About 30 to 40 percent of children here suffer from stunting due to poor maternal nutrition and lack of awareness,” he explains. “Much of it can be prevented through better reproductive health services and access to contraceptives.”
He warns that the first six months of a child’s life are the most critical and often the most neglected due to the poor health of lactating mothers.
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Population Welfare Department has taken various steps, including approving its first provincial population policy to combate overpopulation. The policy aims to increase contraceptive prevalence and reduce fertility rates from 3.9 to 2.1 births per woman.
The spokesman of Population Wefare Department said that Govt plans to establish 260 Family Welfare Centers, mobile units in remote districts, and adolescent reproductive health centers in the province.
He said social taboos, poverty, early child marriages, and the cultural obsession with baby boys are major hurdles.
“We have trained psychologists in schools and colleges across 14 districts and partnered with 3,500 religious scholars to promote awareness at the grassroots.”
In the merged tribal districts, 120 new family planning centers have been approved, and mobile services are expanding to areas with no previous access to reproductive health facilities.
Still, experts agree that infrastructure alone cannot solve the problem. This is a collective problem. Unless political leaders, civil society, media, and religious leaders come together to address it, the situation will only worsen.
Pakistan, an agriculture-based economy, currently produces only 20% of its edible requirements, spending around $4 billion annually on food imports. With a population growing faster than its economy, the burden is increasingly unsustainable.
Experts recommend austerity measures, cuts in luxury imports, energy conservation, and investment in education and healthcare particularly for women.
But more than policy, the solution lies in changing mindsets.”We need to reframe the conversation,” says Prof. Naeem. “Population control is not a Western agenda. It’s a survival strategy.”
For Nigar Bibi and millions like her, the stakes couldn’t be higher.
“I wish people understood the cost of this race for sons,” she says, her voice a whisper in the silence of her modest home. “We lost our mother. No child should go through what we did.”
