Introduction
Overcrowding condition is generally the undesirable increase in organization numbers which exceeds the carrying capacity of the habitat. The term often refers to the relationship between the human population and its environment, the earth, or smaller geographical area such as communities (Berezow, 2011). According to Walt (2008), the recent rapid increase in human population over the past three centuries has raised concern that the planet may not be able to sustain present or larger number of inhabitants. Many environmental problems such as rising level of atmospheric carbon dioxide, global warming and pollution are aggravated by the population expansion (Mason, 2011). He further added that overcrowding include the increased demand for resources such as fresh water and food, starvation and malnutrition as well as decrease in living conditions.
More houses can reduce the negative impacts of overcrowding; however it is necessary to design houses for peak population. This can be achieved by reducing more health implication in houses, developing the yard, providing additional sleeping area and ensuring that the health facilities in the houses is functioning most of the time through regular maintenance (National Indigenous Housing Guide (NIGH), 2010).
Causes of overcrowding
According to Cage and Foster (2002), the following are the causes of overcrowding;
- Decline in mortality
- Increase in birth rates
- Availability of resources
- Food land
- Fossil fuels
- Trade
- Increase in immigration
Decline in mortality: Mortality has to with death rate. It is a factor to put into consideration when investigating overcrowding. This is because; a decline in mortality increases the population of an area thus causing overcrowding in such area.
Increase in birth rate: It has been confirmed that the higher the number of birth in the country or area, the higher the population and this gives room for increase population thereby resulting to overcrowding especially amongst the poor.
Availability of resources: Overcrowding does not depend only on the size or density of the population but also on available and sustainable resources. It depends on the way in which resources are used and distributed throughout the population. A place where there is available resources tends to be overcrowding because people from other places or area will want to migrate to that place due to the resources that are available there and as they do so, they tend to increase the population of such an area which will at the end lead to overcrowding.
Food: Scientist have shown that people tend to migrate to places where there is enough food to support the population. Due to the quest for food, many people have moved to places where there is enough food and this has cause increase in the population growth of such areas which in turn results to overcrowding in that area.
Land: The availability of land for use by the people prompts relocation from initial place of abode. When there is available land, people move to such area in order to acquire it and establish themselves with it and this is a major cause of overcrowding, we see in cities today.
Fossil fuels: Population optimists have been blamed for failing to take into accounts the depletion of petroleum as well as fossil fuels. A fuel attracts explorers, traders and expatiates to an area, thus increasing population thereby resulting to overcrowding in such areas.
Trade: Without finance, survival will; be difficult hence the exchange of goods and services is another factor which increases the population of an area to the extreme which in turns represents overcrowding.
Increase in immigration: The movement of people from one place to another in search of social stability and comfort tends to prompt a rise in the population growth of certain areas which at last result to overcrowding.
Projections of population growth
The world’s population is currently growing by approximately 74 million people per year. Current prediction estimates that the world population will reach 9.8 billion around 2050 assuming a decrease in average fertility rates. Almost all growth will take place in the less developed regions which today is 5.3 billion; population of under-developed countries is expected to increase to 7.8 billion in 2050.
During 2005-2050, nine countries are expected to account for half of the world’s projected population increase, places such as India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo, China, United States, Bangladash, Ethiopia and Uganda etc.
Global life expectancy at birth is expected to continue rising from 65years, in 2000 to 75years, in 2045-2050. During 2005-2050, the net number of international migration to more developed regions is projected to be 98million.
Effects of overcrowding
According to Gary (2013), some problem associated with or increased by overcrowding are as follows:
- Depletion of natural resources especially fossil fuels (firewood).
- Intensive factory farming to support large population. It results in human treats including the evolution and spread of antibiotic resistance bacterial, excessive air and water pollution as well as new virus that infect human.
- High crime rate due to drug cartels and increased theft by people stealing resources to survive. There may also be conflict over scarce resources.
- Inadequate fresh water for drinking and sewage treatment or effluent discharge
- Poverty coupled with inflation in some region and resulting low level of capital formation. This is aggravated by bad government and bad economic policies.
- Deforestation and loss of ecosystem that sustain global atmospheric oxygen and carbon dioxide balance, about 8million hectares of forest are lost each year.
- Less personal freedom and more restrictive laws.
Houghton (2009) stated that the effects of overcrowding can be succinctly discussed under the following sub-heading:
Food shortage: The more people there are, the greater the amount of food needed. If people in a specific place are more than the food in that place, there will be food shortage and people will become undernourished.
Limited space: The population of a place increase in just a short time. However, the space in a place remains the same. When the houses in a neighborhood are overcrowded, it shows that the population in the area is too big.
Water shortage: When population increases, the demand for water also increases, farmers need more water to irrigate their fields so that they can produce more crops, factories need more water to use in manufacturing more goods and more household need more water for drinking, cooking, washing, personal hygiene and many other activities.
Environmental degradation: More people generates more waste, solid waste such as plastics, tin, cans and bottles which when not properly disposed off, becomes eyesores in a place. Garbage and sewage if left untreated can pollute water supply and emit offensive odour, burning of more fuels by factories and transportation facilities lead to more pollution of the air.
According to Soaita (2014), overcrowding contribute to far reaching social problems in the society examples are as follows;
- Overcrowding in schools and houses contributes to substandard education and functional illiteracy and may be related to increase in child labor.
- Overcrowding affect women access to social and economic resources as it increases their responsibilities at home.
- It also contributes to the decision leading to girl’s early marriage which in turn leads to serious social problems for women.
- It places a stain on social relation within the home and the community.
Health implications of overcrowding
Until the last two debates, it has been assumed that people living in crowded conditions have ill health, because they are poor. European data from the turn of the century considers overcrowding unhygienic as being synonymous with poor housing condition. Overcrowding, unhygienic and insanitary condition has been assumed to explain the poor health condition and high mortality rate among the working class (Zinkina & Korotayev, 2014)
According to Houghton (2009), food shortage, overcrowding, poor water supply and environmental pollution affect the health of the people, particularly the children. Poor environmental sanitation is major causes of diseases such as diarrhea, typhoid, malaria and cholera, dirty insects such as flies and cockroaches contaminate food with disease causing germs. He added that many children who play around bare-footed in dirty areas and do not wash their hands before eating becomes infected with worms and communicable diseases which can easily be transferred from one person to another in overcrowded places.
Summarily Fred (2009) stated that overcrowding can lead to the following health implications;
- Increase level of air pollution, water pollution, soil contamination and noise pollution.
- Changes in atmospheric composition and consequent global warming.
- High infants and child mortality.
- Increased chanced of emergency of new epidemics and pandemics.
- Starvation, malnutrition and poor diet with ill-health
- Low life expectancy in countries with fastest growing population
- Unhygienic living conditions for many based upon water resources depletion, discharge of raw sewage and solid waste disposal.
- Spread of communicable diseases such as whooping cough, measles, small pox, tuberculosis, Rubella, chicken pox etc.
Mitigating measures for overcrowding
There are several mitigation measures that have been or can be applied to reduce the adverse effects of overcrowding. All of these mitigations are ways to implement social norms.
Overcrowding is an issue that threaten the state of the environment in the above mentioned ways and therefore societies must take a change in order to reverse some of the environmental effects brought on by current social norms. In societies like China, the government has put policies in place that regulate the number of children allowed to a couple.
Other societies have already begun to implement social marketing strategies in order to educate the public on overcrowding effects. The intervention can be widespread and done at a low (flyers, brochures, fact sheets, stickers) need to be produced and distributed throughout the communities such as at local places of worship, sporting events, local food markets, schools and at car parks (taxis/bus stands) (Gilland, 2012).
Widjojo (2008) stated that the following measures could help in mitigating overcrowding problems:
- Education and empowerment
- Birth regulation
- Extra-terrestrial settlement
Education and empowerment: One option is to focus on education about overcrowding, family planning, birth control methods and to make birth control devices like male/female condoms, pills and intrauterine devices easily available. Worldwide, nearly 40% of pregnancies are unintended (some 80million unintended pregnancies each year). An estimated 350 million women in the poorest countries of the world either did not want their last child, do not want another child or want to space their pregnancies, but they lack access information, affordable means and service to determine the size and spacing of their families.
Birth regulation: Overcrowding is related to the issue of birth control, some nations, like the peoples’ Republic of China, use strict measures to reduce birth rates. Religious and ideological opposition to birth control has been cited as a factor contributing to overcrowding and poverty. Some leaders and environmentalists have suggested that there is an urgent need to strictly implement a China-like one child policy globally by the limited Nations, because this would help control and reduce population gradually.
Extra-terrestrial settlement: Building space habitats that could support 30,000 times the carrying capacity of earth using just the asteroid belt and the solar system as a whole could sustain current population growth rates for a thousand years. It may be possible for other parts of the solar system to be inhabited by humanity to same point in the future. But many authors have argued that shipping the excess population into space is not a viable solution to human overcrowding and that the population battle must be fought and won here on earth. Building of more and spacious houses can reduce the adverse impact of overcrowding on man.
Conclusion
It is therefore concluded that;
- Overcrowding exist in our environment
- There are causes of overcrowding in the environment
- There are implication of overcrowding on man and the environment
- There are ways of mitigating these problems of overcrowding
Recommendations
The problem of overcrowding in the world today can be solved if the following recommendations can be adhere to:
- Government should build more classrooms for schools and extra-terrestrial habitants to accommodate more people.
- Laws should be enacted for the control of birth rates at the state and federal levels.
- The general public should be enlightened on the need for birth control.
- Birth control methods and device should be made reality available at affordable cost at all times.
- Steps should be adopted by parents to avoid teenage pregnancy.
- Parents should try as much as possible to adopt the use of contraceptives and child spacing as means of birth control.
- Parents should also try as much as possible to teach their children sex education and its importance instead of leaving them to stranger who will teach them sex practices.
References
Berezow, A. B. (2011). The World is not over-populated. Washington: Real Clear Science.
Cage, P. A. & Foster, J. (2002) overworking And infant mortality: A tale of two cities. Scottish Journal of Political Economy, 49 (2), 129 149.
Fred, P. (2009). Consumption Dwarfs population as main environmental threat. Proceeding of sectional seminar at Yale University, 16th-19th September, 2009.
Gilland, B. (2012). ‘World population and food supply.’ Food policy 27,47-38.
Gray, A. (2013). Definition of overcrowding and the effect on health. New York: Ministry of Social Policy.
Houghton, J. (2009). Global warming: The complete briefing Cambridge: University Press.
Mason, M. K. (2011). Has urbanization caused a loss to agricultural land? Retrieved on 30th September, 2015 from http//www-Moyak.com/papers/urbanization-agriculture
National indigenous housing guide (NIHG). (2010). Overcrowding effects on housing and health. Australia: (council of Australian governments (coag).
Soaita, A/ M/ (2014). Overcrowding and ‘under-occupancy in Romania. A case study of housing inequality environment and planning 46 (1), 203-221.
Walt, V. (2008, Nov. 30th). The world’s growing food price crisis. New York: New York Times
Widjojo, N. (2008). ‘Population frauds in Indonesia’. Jakarta: Equinox Publishing.
World Population Prospects Report (2011). Projections of population growth. New York: United Nations
Zinkina, J. & Korotayev, A. (2014). Explosive crucial omission in development forecast. World futures 70 (2), 120-139.
