By Joseph Soboka
Overpopulation has social, political, economic and environmental impacts on the society. Ethiopia is among the fast growing countries in population, second in Africa next to Nigeria. The sequence of the population growth from 30 million during Haile Selassie’s reign and now it has exceeded a 100 million. The pressure of overpopulation is so much that in Addis Ababa and major cities in Ethiopia, creating population density and adverse consequences in various ways. Overpopulation can lead to a surplus of unemployment, shortage of housing, and a possible shortage of supplies and materials which will have a negative impact on families.
Many believe that God created a perfect earth where man could lead a care-free life enjoying the bounteous gift of nature. Creation was then intact and was filled with all natural resources that man could then use them in any way he liked to lead a healthy and long life. He was given the dominion over everything on the earth, both animals and plants including birds and sea creatures therein. He was also blessed to be fruitful, multiply and to replenish the earth and to manage it. Situations that would hustle man into inconvenience never existed; full-fledged peace and love reigned nature in its entirety. Literally, there was no worry about population explosion for thousands of years perhaps until after the beginning of the industrial revolution.
To be more specific, history shows that the population explosion first occurred on a small scale and with a relatively moderate intensity in Europe and America, more or less between 1750 and 1950. From 1950 on, a much more substantial and intensive population explosion started to take place in Asia, Latin America and Africa. For everything to happen there should be a cause. In principle, cause and effect are glued together even though one of them precedes the other. In case of population explosion, poverty is considered as the leading cause of overpopulation. As we have witnessed in Ethiopia, in the absence of educational resources, coupled with high death rates, which ironically resulted in higher birth rates; that is why the impoverished areas are seeing large booms in population. Education, for that matter, plays a pivotal role; lack of knowledge about the proper care to be taken during pre natal and post natal period which in most cases results in steel birth and during post natal, death of the child before reaching the age of five. To compensate for the loss, the practice that has been there for centuries, parents keep on producing as many children as possible; the situation that should seriously be considered. The problem of a family can grow and in the final analysis engulfs the entire world as the objective realities depict. The number of the people everywhere, in Ethiopia in particular, is fast growing uncontrollably.
In Ethiopia, unfortunately, that is an undesirable situation where the number of the existing human population exceeds the actual carrying capacity of the land. During Emperor Haile Selassie’s era, the population of Ethiopia was only thirty million; yet, now it has, in about forty-seven years, exceeded a hundred million. The fact is that although the number of the inhabitants increases, the land remains the same in size. Overpopulation is caused by a number of factors. Reduced mortality rate, better medical facilities, depletion of precious resources are among the few. No country on the glob is free of it. It is possible for a sparsely populated area to become densely populated if it is not able to sustain life.
The unprecedented advancement of technology in each succeeding year has affected humanity in many ways. This has become possible by the ability to save lives which is totally reliant on the accessibility of a better medical treatment for all. A direct result of this has been the increased lifespan and the growth of the population. As a result, in Ethiopia and elsewhere on the earth, may be in half a century or so, the growth of the population has boomed and has turned into overpopulation. Formerly, as we learn from history, the birth and death rates have always been able to balance each other and maintain a population growth rate that is sustainable. But that is not the case at present; medical treatment, as much as it has positively affected the human life, it has also created a new unfavorable phenomenon as related to over population.
The problem of overpopulation is more pronounced in developing nations like Ethiopia than in developed ones. While we are talking about overpopulation, we should first try to understand the underlying causes of it.
It is important to examine the relationship between poverty and population and its impact on a country’s development. Evidently, poverty is influenced by dynamics, including population growth, age structure, and rural-urban distribution. All of this has a critical impact on a country’s development prospects and raising living cost for the poor. In plain words, wherever over population is conspicuous, poverty has strong control over the life standard of the people. Thus, poverty and the lack of access to education lead to higher birthrates and eventual overpopulation. Where rapid population growth far outpaces economic development, Ethiopia, unless situations are averted, will have difficult time investing in the human capital needed to secure the well-being of its people and to stimulate further economic growth.
Rapid population growth is likely to reduce per capita income growth which tends to increase poverty. In densely populated areas, it puts pressure on land, increases landlessness for instance in Kambata and Hadia in Southern Ethiopia.
The rapidly growing population impacts countries in a number of ways. The impacts are associated with negative environmental and economic outcomes ranging from over-farming, deforestation, and water pollution,
Human overpopulation is among the most pressing environmental issues which silently aggravating the forces behind global warming, environmental pollution, habitat loss and mass extinction, intensive farming practices and the depletion of finite natural resources, such as fresh water, arable land and the like.
How does overpopulation affect the economy? Therefore, overpopulation especially with illiterate, not educated, not skilled people means, slower economic growth in today’s competitive economy.
The world cannot keep living with the problem while the inhabitants suffer from lack of the amenities of life. Thus, solutions have to be sought one way or the other. One possible solution is to empower women. Studies show that women with access to reproductive health services find it easier to break out of poverty, while those who work are more likely to use birth control. The other one is to promote family planning; there needs to be decision to limit the number of children proportional to the family’s economic power to adequately raise their children. And make education entertaining in a way that the child can learn to pleasantly prepare himself for the career he plans to pursue. This is another way to tackle the problem of over population. Education, therefore, should not be a burden but joyful experience. In addition, the government has to provide incentives to assist the child learn with interest; now we see that poor children are being provided with food, school uniforms and learning materials. In addition, child legislation should be in place if the uncontrolled increase of the population has to be curbed to some extent.
Population growth together with rural-urban migration creates higher urban agglomeration that disrupts the smooth flow of achieving sustained growth in large urban centers and elsewhere, too.
In the face of such alarming situation, arable land size is continually diminishing, fertility of the soil is fast depleting. Yet, the human eating desire is ever growing. The use of fertilizers for one thing, apart from increasing yields, has become the reason the loss of the organic nature of the produce and one way or the other exposing the consumers to different kinds of health hazards.
What should be done about such insurmountable problem mankind is faced with? It should be the concern of all.
The Ethiopian Herald 11 April 2021
