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PESHAWAR, Jan 25 (APP):As dusk settles over a small village in Nowshera, 25-year-old Shagufta Bibi lights an oil lamp in the corner of her modest home.
Its faint glow falls on schoolbooks spread before her children and on a faded photograph resting on a mud wall being the only picture she has of her late mother.
Her eyes fill with tears as she recalls the price her family paid for a deeply rooted desire about the birth of a son.
“I have three sisters,” Shagufta says quietly in Mohib Banda village. “My parents wanted a son. My mother died during her fifth pregnancy.” Her voice trembles. “That desire took her life and deprived us of her love forever.”
Shagufta’s story is not an isolated tragedy. It reflects a much larger, quieter problems unfolding across KP driven by unchecked population growth, entrenched cultural norms, and shrinking resources.
The global population crossed 8.2 billion this year, according to the United Nations, and is projected to reach 8.5 billion by 2030, 9.7 billion by 2050, and 10.4 billion by the end of the century.
While medical advances have reduced mortality, they have also contributed to rapid population growth particularly in underdeveloped regions of South Asia, Central Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa.
Pakistan stands among the most affected by this growing social phenomenon.
The country’s first census in 1951 recorded a population of 75 million. By 2017, that number had surged to nearly 208 million. If current trends continue, experts warned the population could reach 440 million by 2040.
With an annual growth rate of 1.91 percent, Pakistan is now the fifth most populous country in the world and the second-largest Muslim-majority nation after Indonesia.
“This rapid growth is stretching every sector beyond capacity,” says Prof. Dr. Zilakat Malik, former chairman of the Economics Department at the University of Peshawar. “Hospitals, schools, roads, agriculture, job markets everything is overstretched putting extra burden on society.”
He describes overpopulation as the “mother of all socioeconomic ills,” linking it directly to poverty, corruption, social injustice, unemployment, and increasing reliance on foreign loans compounded by the cultural preference for sons as heirs to property.
The consequences are already visible in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa where devastating floods of 2022 and 2025 created problems did to deforestation and poverty.
The World Bank estimated that 6 to 9 million Pakistanis could slip into poverty if climate change was not addressed.
Today, nearly 20 percent of the population such as around 55 million people live below the poverty line, with tribal and underdeveloped districts bearing the brunt.
In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, soaring prices of basic staples such as flour and sugar have deepened food insecurity.
Hospitals across KP are overburdened due to lack of health units. Doctors report seeing up to 500 patients a day, a crushing workload exacerbated by poor maternal health and widespread malnutrition.
Dr. Malik Riaz, Head of the Children’s Department at Government Hospital Pabbi, says high fertility rates and inadequate birth spacing are directly responsible for alarming maternal and child mortality.
“Thirty to forty percent of children suffer from stunting,” he explains. “This is largely due to poor maternal nutrition and lack of awareness. Much of it is preventable with proper reproductive health services and access to contraceptives.”
He warns that the first six months of a child’s life crucial for physical and cognitive development are often neglected because lactating mothers themselves are malnourished and exhausted.
Recognizing the scale of the crisis, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Population Welfare Department has approved its first provincial population policy. The plan aims to raise contraceptive prevalence and reduce fertility rates from 3.9 to 2.1 births per woman.
According to a department spokesperson, the government plans to establish 260 Family Welfare Centers, mobile service units in remote districts, and adolescent reproductive health centers across the province.
“Social taboos, poverty, early marriages, and the obsession with male children continue to undermine economic progress,” the spokesperson said.
To counter these challenges, psychologists have been deployed in schools and colleges across 14 districts, while 3,500 religious scholars engaged to spread awareness at the grassroots level.
In the merged tribal districts, 120 new family planning centers have been approved, alongside expanded mobile services for communities previously cut off from reproductive healthcare.
Experts agree that clinical reforms and policies alone are not enough.
“This is a collective problem,” says Prof. Zilakat. “Unless political leadership, civil society, media, and religious leaders act together, the situation will not improve.”
Pakistan, an agriculture-based economy, produces only 20 percent of its edible requirements, importing food worth nearly $4 billion annually. With population growth outpacing economic expansion, the burden is becoming unsustainable.
Economists advocate austerity measures, reduced luxury imports, energy conservation, and most critically greater investment in education and healthcare, particularly for women.
“But beyond policies, we must change mindsets,” Prof. Zilakat stresses. “Population control is not a western agenda. It is a survival strategy.”
Back in Mohib Banda, Shagudfta Bibi watches her children study under the dim light, determined to give them a different future.
“I wish people understood the cost of this race for sons,” she says, her voice barely audible. “We lost our mother. No child should have to grow up like that.”
For families like hers and for a nation standing at a demographic crossroads of climate change the silent emergency of population explosion is no longer distant. It is already shaping lives, futures, and the fate of generations to come.