“Excessive population growth may reduce output per worker, repress levels of living for the masses and engender strife.”    (Confucius)

During the time of Confucius, Chinese population was not more than 50-60 million. In such vast region, this amount of scattered population was too small, howbeit it was a worry for him. Nevertheless, he would be in grievance, somehow, if he knew that the present China is fostering 138 billion people! Occasionally, it has been said proudly by some injudicious people that the larger population means the larger manpower. In most of the cases, such statement is erroneous, because unskilled, uneducated and unemployed population is nothing but a sheer burden for a country. But, why and how the overpopulation can be problematic?

History presents three distinctive eras of population increase during which the growth was higher backed with some specific reasons in compare to the other time periods. The first period of population expansion occurred in 8000 B.C., because of the impact of First Agricultural Revolution in the Fertile Crescent. The invention of agriculture offered people more food supply for more people to survive, and food security over the years, which facilitated more reproduction of at least 50 times higher than the previous.

The second phase of population rise occurred after the First Industrial Revolution in England in the second half of the 18th century. This extraordinary event of industrial development paved the way to increase industrial and agricultural production that consequently improved individuals’ income, healthcare and living. After the Second World War, the world population was in a rapid acceleration due to Medical Revolution that much helped to increase proper healthcare and prevention of fatal diseases, boosted life expectancy and minify the infant mortality rate.

Natural increase is the primary reason for population growth—more birth causes population increase. Fertility rate means the number of child birth per woman. Population increase frequently depend on women’s higher fertility rate in a country, and in contrast, lesser the fertility rate would decrease the population. Mortality rate is also a factor that oscillate the population where lower death rate help to rise the population.

The better healthcare facilities and living improve life expectancy which too force to ascend the population. Abundance of food supply sometimes encourage people to enlarge family size. Technological advancement, proper education, employment facilities and other necessary benefits often leads towards overpopulation. Coincidently, these factors also have potential to reduce the population growth at a remarkably which are being seen in highly developed, mostly in European countries. External factors, such as migration, also amplify population.

Julian Assange posited in his recent tweet that ‘Capitalism + atheism + feminism = sterility (childlessness or fewer child) = migration’. The statement, though having some flaws which ‘The Economist’ finds out, is somewhat an indicator of the lower fertility rate in European countries (average 1.6) in contrast of Bangladesh, India and Pakistan (respectively 2.14, 2.40 and 3.55) in South Asian region. What are the driving forces behind population reduction in these countries?

Paramount development in four broad sectors: political, social, economic and technological, are considered as a cumulative force that oftentimes either make slower or halt the population growth. Alongside, religious belief, social structure, work engagement of both parents due to economic reason, changes in traditional views, expectations and family planning, unwillingness, altogether compel people to control child birth. Women’s fertility rate in China dropped from 6.24 in 1966 to 1.57 in 1996, mainly under Deng Xiaoping’s economic reformation.

Scarcity indicates one of the prime economic problem—the gap between the limitless human needs and limited resources. Increased population density has a significant effect of natural resources, because more people means more consumption, mismanagement and waste. Inadequate structure of societal institutions and resource distribution process with a large amount of population nothing but put the progress into stalemate and such scenario is common in developing and underdeveloped nation-states.

The increased population do not always tend to indicate the increased manpower, rather raise unemployment problem, poverty and lower the per capita income. After the Black Death in Europe, income level of workers became higher than previous along with their living, the countries were onward to prosperity, and the ultimate reason behind such consequence was: ‘People die, but coin do not.’ Proper resource allocation facilitates the people’s lives, and can be hampered due to the swelling population.

British economist Thomas Malthus in his ‘Essay on Population’ (1797) claimed that the population tend to grow more rapidly than the food supply, because ‘population increase geometrically while food supply increase arithmetically’. But later, he was proved wrong practically as the food supply increase relatively higher than the population increase, and fewer people can produce more food for more people that was not possible even in the near past. For an instance, in the United States now, a farmer alone can feed 155 people, thus and 24 million farmers (17% of total workforce) are feeding 323 million people of the country. This increased capacity of farming creates more opportunities to engage more people in other necessary activities.

In the meantime, ‘Green Revolution’ initiated by Norman Borlaug in 1960s, having a few downsides, ensure much higher yield from the same amount of land, and this new invention, to some extent, proved the former Malthusian idea of ‘limited scope’ untrue. With the benefits of this remarkable incident, agricultural productivity has increased at a global scale faster than the population growth. But surely, population growth put negative impacts on total arable land. Physiological density (number of people per unit area of arable land) and agricultural density (number of farmer per unit area of arable land) indicates the proper conditions of farming land.

Environment consists of nature, lives, and other fundamental elements such as: water, air and land. Mother of all environmental degradation can be addressed as ‘deforestation’—the act of cutting down trees and freeing the nature from green. In 1980s Bangladesh, the rate of forest destruction was 8,000 hectors per year that climbed up at a rate of 37,700 hectors per year in 2014, where annual rate is 3.3%; almost 50% of the forest has been destroyed in the last 20 years due to rapid expansion of population, as study shows.

Lack of forest (a country should have at least 25% forest area) would be catastrophic in many ways. Bengali settlers and now refugee Rohingyas are accommodating themselves in hilly areas by decimating the local forest.

Besides, river and canal pollution by waste mainly from local industries, and unplanned embankment baldly causing the death of water bodies. More vehicles for more people emit more harm-causing gases that pollute the air surrounds us. In the meantime, Dhaka has confirmed its apex position as the most polluted air in the entire world. Overpopulation also arrange relentless crowd and noise.

According to the latest data of World Bank, ‘among 88 countries having population of over 10 million, Bangladesh (1114) is most densely populated followed by Republic of Korea (500). Rwanda (472), Netherlands (406) and India (390) is at 3rd, 4th and 5th place, respectively.’ The position of Bangladesh in the list of the most densely populated countries in the world is at number twelve, though the previous ten countries out of eleven are either sovereign coastline micro city-states or port cities and business harbor, (e.g. Singapore and Macau) Based on these statistics, it is evident that Bangladesh is situating on a risk-zone with population crisis which demand immediate solution, otherwise it would reward with dangerous consequences.

Dhaka has 18.2 million people with 44,500 people per square kilometer, the highest population density as a city. All are somewhat acquaintance with the misery of them—how they are living, feeding themselves, living their lives with regular emerging crises. Unlike elsewhere in the world, Bangladesh is bearing and rearing a ‘clustered population’ which surely is an obstruction on the path of development. A country’s progress highly depends on how her population is being managed, trained up and employed. To elevate the quality of populace, concentration and control over demographic factors is ineluctable. In this respect, not only government and authority but also individuals need to be conscious and proactive as well.

The writer is a researcher on demographic issues.

Email: [email protected]