Population growth is a national and an international problem.

The UK is not exempt from this.

We continue to experience pressure from developers to build on well-loved sites round Stroud, and there are continued references to shortage of housing.

If you look at Stroud from Rodborough Fort it is easy to see how it has grown over the years: areas of traditional, Victorian, early and middle 20th century and modern estates are all visible.

This tendency continues, and is a consequence of increasing population.

Population growth is a national and an international problem.

Nationally, a recent report from the University of Leicester shows change of land use in UK between 2006 and 2012 ( http://tinyurl.com/q5glk9x ).

This showed that over 22,000 hectares of forest, agricultural and wetland were converted to ‘artificial surfaces’, and 9,000 hectares of arable land and pastures were converted to construction sites and mineral extraction sites, in that period.

Hence more people equals less land for their sustenance Internationally, over 40 per cent of land surface is converted to human use, much of the remainder is either desert, mountain or ice covered; even the Amazon rainforest which we long thought to be inviolable is under attack.

Humans and their animals account for 97 per cent of vertebrate mass, leaving only three per cent as wild: the number of wild animals has halved since 1970.

There is only so much fresh water in the world, and many countries are becoming water-stressed.

Extraction of water is such that some rivers, notably the Colorado, do not now reach the sea.

We are not just damaging our planet: we are wrecking it.

Roger Plenty

Rodborough Hill