How can nigeria government solve the problem of large population and the consequences of it.
How the problem of over population can be solve
Consequences of Large Population
Consequences of Over Population
Below are the most effective measures which can be employed to control population growth
1. Education
People, particularly those in reproductive age group, should be educated about the advantages of a small family and ill-effects of large families and overpopulation. In this, mass media like radio, television, newspapers, magazines, posters etc. and educational institutions can play important role.
Government should provide free and compulsory primary education to the children below the age of 14 years. In China, there is a legislation making “basic primary education free, compulsory and universal.”
2. Age of marriage should be raised:
Demographers explain that postponement of female marriage age from 18 years to 20 or 22 years would bring down the birth rate by 20 to 30 per cent. Even a year’s postponement in each age group will decrease total fertility rate much less than the present 2.68 per cent for the country. But according to an ICMR report, about 49 per cent women in India are married before the legal age of 18 years.
3. Family planning methods:
India was the first country to adopt family planning (in 1951) as the government sponsored programme. But after the efforts of Indian government for about 50 years, birth rate in India has come down only slightly (only from 41.7 in 1951 to 28.3 in 1997 per 1,000 per year). This showed that voluntary family planning programme was not very successful.
In 1976, Indian government thought of introducing a programme of compulsory sterilization which required one parent to undergo sterilization after a couple had produced two children. But due to public resistance, this programme was again changed to voluntary programme.
India’s goal of two children per woman seems to be more difficult. Most of the countries stress for zero population growth by bringing down the population growth rate to replacement rate (average number of children per couple which will just replace parents).
Table 4.7 shows that family planning programmes are not much successful in developing countries but highly successful in developed countries even without any government support. In India, the slogan of Family Planning Programme is “Hum Do Hamare Do” but many couples, mostly the young, urban and working one have adopted even “one child norm”
5.Medical Facilities
Medical Facilities
One big drawback of developing countries is that of limited and highly centric medical facilities. Because of the high rural-urban divide in developing countries, availability of good hospitals and doctors is limited to urban centers thus resulting in high infant mortality rate in rural areas. Rural people, in order to ensure that at least some of their kids survive, give birth to more and more kids thus contributing to the population growth. If provided with optimum medical facilities population rate will almost certainly decline.
6. Legislative Actions
Legislative Actions
Not much result can be achieved from these if family planning and use of contraception remains optional instead of mandatory. Strict legal steps are required for child marriage, education, abolition of child labor and beggary and family planning to reap significant benefits from it. Proper enforcement of laws related to child labor, slavery and beggary will ensure that parents don’t sell their children or send them out to work thus forcing them to raise lesser number of kids.
7.Providing Incentives
Providing Incentives
Incentives have proved to be an efficient policy measure in combating most development issues including population. Providing a health, educational or even financial incentive can be a highly effective population measure. There are certain incentive policies like paying certain some of money to people with not more than two kids or free or discounted education for single child etc. which are in place in most developing countries facing population related challenges and has also proved to be a useful measure
8. Spread Awareness
Spread Awareness
People need to be told and made to understand the consequences of having too many children. Government and non-government institutions can carry awareness campaigns informing people how they will be unable to provide good nutrition, education or medical facilities to their children if they have too many. Population is also a reason for illiteracy and diseases and malnutrition and the negative effects of it are required to be communicated to the general public to expand their reasoning and understanding.
9.Women Empowerment
In most developing countries, the women folks are not considered equivalent to men in terms of force and might. Such opinions are extremely common in Islamic countries and even India and Bangladesh. Gender discrimination is a major reason for population growth. People keep giving birth to kids in order to have more sons than daughters. Empowering woman with a say in matters concerning them like child birth and educating them to fight against discrimination will ensure a healthy and aware society.
10. Eradicate Poverty
Eradicate Poverty
Why most poor countries have highest population growth instead of rich ones. Poverty has a direct relation to the population growth. In developing countries of Asia and Africa, child labor, slave trading and human trafficking is highly prevalent. African countries for example still have maximum reporting of slave trading though trading of humans is legally banned everywhere in the world. People give birth to kids and sell them to rich people who in turn employ these kids in various laborious and unethical tasks. If not sell, these parents force their kids to beg or work at a very tender so as to earn some extra money for the family. These people believe that more kids mean more hands for begging and work and thus more money. Without concrete measures for growth and poverty eradication, other methods of population control may prove to be ineffective.
11.Easy and Cheap availability of Contraceptives
Easy and cheap availability of Contraceptives
Ensuring that people have easy and cheap access to contraception tools will help avoiding cases of unwanted pregnancies and births. Every state owned hospital should be made to provide cheaply efficient birth control medicines or surgeries since poor people have neither the means not awareness to use contraception. Use of condoms and contraceptives must be advertised and promoted along with ensuring cheap and ready access to these. Contraceptives do not only prove to be an important population control measure but also prevents spreading of sexually transmitted diseases like AIDS thus ensuring small healthy families.
12. Development
Development
Why the enormous population and the increasing rate of it is the biggest challenge faced by the developing nations of Africa and Asia while the same is a little or no threat in countries like America, Europe or Japan. Lack of Development implies high poverty, high illiteracy, high discrimination, lack of awareness, lack of medical facilities and thus in turn increased population growth. Any economy is termed developed is its population is non-discriminated and just. By reducing discrimination between gender and class and ensuring development of the whole population instead of a given segment of society would eliminate the challenge of population growth for once.
Consequences of Large Population
Consequences of Over Population are:
1.Depletion of Natural Resources:
The effects of overpopulation are quite severe. The first of these is the depletion of resources. The Earth can only produce a limited amount of water and food, which is falling short of the current needs. Most of the environmental damage being seen in the last fifty odd years is because of the growing number of people on the planet. They are cutting down forests, hunting wildlife in a reckless manner, causing pollution and creating a host of problems. Those engaged in talking about overpopulation have noticed that acts of violence and aggression outside of a war zone have increased tremendously while competing for resources.
2.Degradation of Environment:
With the overuse of coal, oil and natural gas, it has started producing some serious effects on our environment. Rise in the number of vehicles and industries have badly affected the quality of air. Rise in amount of CO2 emissions leads to global warming. Melting of polar ice caps, changing climate patterns, rise in sea level are few of the consequences that we might we have to face due to environment pollution.
3. Conflicts and Wars: Overpopulation in developing countries puts a major strain on the resources it should be utilizing for development. Conflicts over water are becoming a source of tension between countries, which could result in wars. It causes more diseases to spread and makes them harder to control. Starvation is a huge issue facing the world and the mortality rate for children is being fuelled by it. Poverty is the biggest hallmark we see when talking about overpopulation. All of this will only become worse if solutions are not sought out for the factors affecting our population. We can no longer prevent it, but there are ways to control it.
4. Rise in Unemployment: When a country becomes overpopulated, it gives rise to unemployment as there fewer jobs to support large number of people. Rise in unemployment gives rise to crime as people will steal various items to feed their family and provide them basic amenities of life.
5. High Cost of Living: As difference between demand and supply continues to expand due to overpopulation, it raises the prices of various commodities including food, shelter and healthcare. This means that people have to pay more to survive and feed their families
7. Water supply. Water is one of the basic elements of live, and it is needed to preserve the balance of every ecosystem. It cools down and cleanses the environment and is used by plants and animals to carry out vital functions. As human population increases, so does the consumption of water. In the past fifty years, the per capita availability of fresh water has decreased by one third.* Fresh water supply is a problem in most of the developing countries, especially those located in arid climates such as in Africa, South America and Asia. In some African countries, fresh water needs to be carried daily from sources more than two hours walking distance. Water supply is an issue in urban areas as well. In Beijing, the water table falls down with as much as two meters annually.*
8. Loss of biodiversity. All of the previously described effects of overpopulation on the environment lead to the destruction of the natural habitat of many wildlife species. The natural flora and fauna have been under constant pressure to adapt to a quickly changing environment. Since they have been unable to do so, they have been displaced from their natural ecological niche. The constant clearing of the Amazon forest has had devastating effect on many rare tropical species. It has been estimated that 10% of the species in the region have become extinct
9. Soil Degradation. Population growth results increases the demand for food production. Since the arable land in many of the overpopulated regions is limited, farmers begin to cultivate dry, hilly, nutrient-poor areas that are not very suitable for farming. Exploiting such lands makes them easily susceptible to erosion and loss of nutrients. For example, in search for farmland in Indonesia, peasants have been planting their crops on steep slopes. As a result, almost one half of Java's land is now in danger of erosion.* Globally, the statistics are even more frightening. It is estimated that 1.2 billion hectares of land, approximately the size of Europe, U.S. and Mexico combined, have lost much of their agricultural output capability in the last 50 years.*
10. Water pollution. The problem with water is not only overconsumption, but also pollution. "More than 95% of urban sewage in developing countries is discharged untreated into the nearest waterway or field."* The main contributors to water pollution are factories and open mines, discarding waste water with heavy metals, toxic substances and solid waste, which are virtually impossible to purify. The situation is even worse when it comes to ocean exploitation and pollution. Overfishing changes the balance in coastal ecosystems and decreases fish populations. Sometimes it might even lead to extinction of certain marine species. Overfishing also damages coral reefs, because it allows algae to overgrow them. It turns out that the ocean is "the ultimate garbage dump "* because eventually all of the sewage, sediment from forest clearing, fertilizer and pesticide run-off flow into it. It is important to preserve the ocean, not only because it is an important source of food, but also because it plays a major role in climate regulation. The circulation of cold and warm water protects the earth from extreme temperature fluctuations. In addition, oceans absorbs between 30 and 40% of the CO2 given off as a result of human activity, thus keeping global warming at stake.
11.Deforestation. The search for more farmland causes other damaging agricultural practices such as slash-and-burn cultivation. Basically, a forest area is burned and converted into pasture, but due to poor soils, it looses its productivity in about three years.* This initiates a vicious circle which results in the deforestation of large areas, mostly in tropical regions. Deforestation is also caused by the use of wood as fuel, since 9 out of 10 African households use wood for cooking and heating. This is the reason why Ghana lost almost a third of its dense forest from 1938 to 1980.* In addition, the building of roads and the expansion of residential areas have contributed to the loss of primary forest.
How can nigeria government solve the problem of large population and the consequences of it.
How the problem of over population can be solve
Consequences of Large Population
Consequences of Over Population
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