POPULATION AND THE ENVIRONMENT

BY:AMPONSAH K. ERIC

Population, term referring to the total human inhabitants of a specified area, such as a city, country, or continent, at a given time. Population study as a discipline is known as demography. It is concerned with the size, composition, and distribution of populations; their patterns of change over time through births, deaths, and migration; and the determinants and consequences of such changes.
Population studies yield knowledge important for planning, particularly by governments, in fields such as health, education, housing, social security, employment, and environmental preservation. Such studies also provide information needed to formulate government population policies, which seek to modify demographic trends in order to achieve economic and social objectives.
Environment, all of the external factors affecting an organism, these factors may be other living organisms (biotic factors) or nonliving variables (a biotic factors), such as temperature, rainfall, day length, wind, and ocean currents.
The interactions of organisms with biotic and a biotic factors form an ecosystem. Even minute changes in any one factor in an ecosystem can influence whether or not a particular plant or animal species will be successful in its environment.
Population, term referring to the total human inhabitants of a specified area, such as a city, country, or continent, at a given time, the environment on the other hand are all the external factors affecting an organism, these factors may be other living organisms (biotic factors) or nonliving variables (a biotic factors), such as temperature, rainfall, day length, wind, and ocean currents.
The UN Statistical Office, after extensive investigations, estimated for mid-1955 a world total of almost two and two-thirds billion people:
Whatever errors, especially for Asia and Africa, these approximations may contain, it is known that since the end of the 19th century the growth of the world's population is of a magnitude unparalleled in history, and that the human race is multiplying at a constantly accelerating rate.

According to the best available estimates, the phenomenon started around the middle of the 17th century; until then, the world's population had risen very slowly and during long periods had either been stagnant or was even on the decline.

Between about 1650 and the end of the 19th century it probably tripled, going from about 500 to 1,500 million. Between 1920 and 1950, in spite of the enormous blood-letting of a number of catastrophic wars, including World War II, it increased, according to the best estimates, from 1,834 to 2,406 million, or by 31 per cent. Meanwhile, the rate of growth has again increased, amounting now to 17 per cent per decade — which means, for the single year of 1957, an increase of world population of approximately 47 million.
Within the memory of many Americans, the United States had 75 million inhabitants.
By 1980, the figure will most probably have tripled: forecasts indicate a population of some 240 million by that date. Between 1950 and 1955, the increase for the country as a whole was 9 per cent per decade; for the decade ending 1965, it has been estimated at 16.3 per cent. Even for the United States — which is not only the wealthiest country but is also relatively not yet very densely populated — this unparalleled development creates a host of problems.

To mention only one, authorities foresee that the total of Americans, now numbering 30 million (estimate of the U.S. Public Health Service) who are suffering from mental or emotional disturbances will further increase as a result of the 'aging' of the population and the increasing strains of living in ever more congested urban areas.
The 'population explosion' is a world-wide phenomenon and is staggering and unpredictable in its international and domestic repercussions. However, its intensity varies from area to area. It is most marked in the underdeveloped and industrially less advanced countries.
Changing Age Structure of Populations.
The above observations apply also to other underdeveloped and less advanced countries in the world, and focus attention on one of the most crucial population problems, the significance of the age structure of any population.
From the standpoint of statistics, the population of an area decreases if the deaths exceed the births; it is stationary if their number is equal; and it increases if births exceed deaths. However, in order to appreciate the profound economic, social, and human implications of population trends, not only the absolute mortality figures but also the ages at which deaths occur, must be considered.
Obviously if a person dies before having attained a productive age, he will only have been a consumer, and will have contributed nothing to his nation's or family's income. The economic loss is particularly glaring in the less industrialized countries, where the economy's most urgent need is for more production, not more consumption.
Infant Mortality Rates.
While many aspects of the present 'population explosion' are as yet unexplored, there is general agreement that the unequaled population growth is due not to an increase in fecundity nor to a higher fertility, but primarily to a lower infant (and foetal) mortality.
Experience has shown that this results from even relatively elementary or inexpensive improvements in public sanitation, in medical services (especially insecticides and antibiotics), and in personal hygiene.
In Mexico, for example, of every 1,000 infants born, 223.1 died during the first year in 1921, but only 106.6 (estimate) in 1949; for Puerto Rico, the corresponding figures were 132.2 in 1932, against 67.7 in 1949.
Ghana's first postindependence population census in 1960 counted about 6.7 million inhabitants. By 1970 the national census registered 8.5 million people, about a 27 percent increase, while the most recent official census in 1984 recorded a figure of 12.3 million--almost double the 1960 figure.
The nation's population was estimated to have increased to about 15 million in 1990 and to an estimated 17.2 million in mid-1994. With an annual growth rate of 2.2 percent for the period between 1965 and 1980, a 3.4 percent growth rate for 1981 through 1989, and a 1992 growth rate of 3.2 percent, the country's population is projected to surpass 20 million by the year 2000 and 35 million by 2025.
The underlying cause of biodiversity loss is the explosion in human population, now at 6 billion, but expected to double again by the year 2050. The human population already consumes nearly half of all the food, crops, medicines, and other useful items produced by the Earth’s organisms, and more than million people in Ghana lack adequate supplies of fresh water.
Cultivation of the land, especially over cultivation or the introduction of nonnative plant species, can lead to the loss of topsoil and degradation of the soil.
Human population growth is at the root of virtually all of the world’s environmental problems. Although the growth rate of the world’s population has slowed slightly since the 1990s, the world’s population increases by about 77 million human beings each year. As the number of people increases, crowding generates pollution, destroys more habitats, and uses up additional natural resources.
Soil faces many threats throughout the world. Deforestation, overgrazing by livestock, and agricultural practices that fail to conserve soil are three main causes of accelerated soil loss. Other acts of human carelessness also damage soil.
These include pollution from agricultural pesticides, chemical spills, liquid and solid wastes, and acidification from the fall of acid rain. Loss of green spaces, such as grassland and forested areas, in favor of impermeable surfaces, such as pavement, buildings, and developed land, reduces the amount of soil and increases pressure on what soil remains. Soil is also compacted by heavy machinery and off-road vehicles.
Compaction rearranges soil particles, increasing the density of the soil and reducing porosity. Crusts form on compacted soils, preventing water movement into the soil and increasing runoff and erosion.