Kashmir's Tipping Point

World Population Day casts a long shadow over a Valley grappling with the cost of unchecked growth.

- Mohammad Hanief

Forests are disappearing beneath concrete, classrooms are packed beyond capacity, and unemployed youth are losing hope. Population pressure is no longer a distant concern in Kashmir. It is already shaping the present.

The world first paused to consider this pressure on July 11, 1987, when the global population hit five billion - a moment the United Nations later marked by creating World Population Day.

Now, in July 2025, with more than 8.23 billion people on Earth, that early warning has grown harder to ignore.

This isn't just about numbers. It's about what those numbers demand from land, water, jobs, and already strained communities like Kashmir.

Across South Asia, the fastest-growing populations are colliding with fragile ecosystems and underprepared infrastructure. While sub-Saharan Africa, parts of the Middle East, and South Asia account for the bulk of current growth, Europe and East Asia are aging rapidly, raising new concerns about shrinking workforces and social care.

This demographic split is reshaping global dynamics. For Kashmir, caught in a swirl of economic stagnation, political uncertainty, and ecological fragility, population pressure deepens existing fault lines.

The numbers tell one story. The landscape tells another.

In the past two decades, Srinagar has lost more than 50% of its water bodies to unchecked urbanisation, according to a study by the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Kashmir. Wetlands once home to migratory birds are now choked by garbage and cement. Orchard belts have become housing colonies. The iconic Dal Lake shrinks every year, despite multiple cleanup drives.

More people means more homes. More homes mean less land. Less land means more conflict, with nature, and often, among ourselves.