IMPACT OF POPULATION PROBLEM ON THE ENVIRONMENT OF BANGLADESH

EXEUCITIVE SUMMARY
Environmental pollution is as old as the civilization itself. It has become a major concern in the
last few decades. It is the by product of the development of civilization and in fact a price for the
progress. It is more prone in case of Bangladesh. Air pollution of Bangladesh is mainly caused by
the vehicle emission, industrial discharge and burning of fossil fuel. The water resource of
Bangladesh becomes a major health hazard due to arsenic contamination, inadequate solid waste
and industrial effluent management. Necessary steps are to be taken to protect the environment for
our own existence. This paper provides an overview of different environmental problems of
Bangladesh and discusses the ways to improve it

Keywords: Environmental Pollution, Air Pollution, Water Pollution, Noise Pollution

INTRODUCTION
Population Growth and Environment A research paper has outlined the effect of population on the
environment. According to this research, environmental pollution is one of the serious problems
faced by the people in the country like rapid population growth; industrialization and urbanization
in country are adversely affecting the environment. Though the relationship is complex, population
size and growth tend to expand and accelerate these human impacts on the environment. All these
in turn lead to an increase in the pollution levels. However, environmental pollution not only leads
to deteriorating environmental conditions but also have adverse effects on the health of people.
Bangladesh is one of the most degraded environment countries in the world and it is paying heavy
health and economic price for it.
Throughout the twentieth century, Bangladesh has been in the midst of a demographic transition.
At the beginning of the century, endemic disease, periodic epidemics, and famines kept the death
rate high enough to balance out the high birth rate. Between 1911 and 1920, the birth and death
rates our virtually equal--about forty-eight births and forty-eight deaths per 1,000 populations. The
increasing impact of curative and preventive medicine (especially mass inoculations) brought a
steady decline in the death rate. By the mid-1990s, the estimated birth rate had fallen to twenty-
eight per 1,000, and the estimated death rate had fallen to ten per 1,000. Clearly, the future
configuration of Bangladesh's population (indeed the future of Bangladesh itself) depends on what
happens to the birth rate and it’s survived. Even the most optimistic projections do not suggest that
the birth rate could drop below twenty per 1,000 before the year 2000. Bangladesh's population is
likely to exceed the 20 million mark before the 2021 census. Though the population of a country
is an asset, it becomes a problem when the country cannot afford to give people the basic
necessaries of life like food, clothing, education, medicine and shelter soon. This problem has not
only one side it has two sides. One is its original look which is known to us and the other is its
background which is not familiar to us. There are causes of rapid growth of population. Now a
day’s medical facilities and improvement of standard of living the death rate has gone down much
but the other hand the birth rate is on the constant increase. Early marriage and illiteracy rate are
two important causes of the growth of population. While population control can involve measuring
that improve. People lives by giving them greater control of their reproduction, some programs
have exposed them to exploitation. No improvement is possible unless this problem is solved.

Importance/Rational of the Study

In modern times, Earth’s population has grown enormously and it has become the planet’s leading
problem, the root of the evils, so to speak. So, it has become the burning questions that how to
check the overpopulation. So, it is now become very important to learn and know about the
overpopulation, and why countries become overpopulated and what are the negative prospects of
this kind of overpopulation. In a word, it is now very important for all to know something about
population study. Especially, for the people of overpopulated countries like Bangladesh population
study is must to protect the grown problem for which we are not developing further. Population
study is concerned not only with the population variables but also with the relationship between
population variables genetic, geographical and interrelationship. Between those variables. It
includes both qualitative and quantitative aspects of human population. Population study was not
given much priority in the past. But at present days’ people of different field require the
information about population studies, so, its importance is increasing day by day, particularly for
Bangladesh. With an estimated population of 162 million (2010). Bangladesh is the most popular
country of the world. The per capita earning is around 1440 dollars which is still among the west
of the world. Even after considerable rise in adult literacy in recent years reaching 56 percent male
and 49 percent of female education. Bangladesh is poor country, its peoples are not well educated,
its people have to starve, people suffer to lead happy life, political crisis is or the top pets level etc.
These all happen, because Bangladesh is overpopulated country. So, it is very important us to
know what are the causes of overpopulation, its consequences and what steps should take to
remove this problem.
 For knowing the actual condition of population Bangladesh.
 For knowing the rate of population growth.
 For knowing the causes of being oven populated.
 For knowing the consequences of overpopulation.
 It’s negative and positive effects.
 For finding ways to solve this problem
 And for process the information to the general people and make them aware about this,
studies about overpopulation is very much important.

Research question
 Find out the problems which are eased by the population.
 Analysis the factors for which people are suffering for food due to over population.
 Find out the effects of environment.
 Overpopulation in our country creates an environmental problem. It’s a big problem what
created by over population.
 Analysis the effects of population problem on environment.
 Find out the steps to remove this problem.

Specific objective to find out the problems:

 Find out reasons which are responsible for population problem.
 Find out the conditions of the basic needs of people offer the population problem.
 Besides finding out the effects and reasons find out the ways of getting solution of this
problem.
 Find out the main steps which earn play a vital role to stop this problem as early as possible
Literature Review
Population is fundamental and the most important element of a state. But over population is a
great challenge for a country. Over population is a condition where an organism’s numbers exceed
the carrying capacity of its habitat. The term often refers to the relationship between the human
population and its environment, the Earth. Steve Jones, head of the biology department at
University College London has said, "Humans are 10,000 times more common than we should be,
according to the rules of the animal kingdom, and we have agriculture to thank for that. Without
farming, the world population would probably have reached half a million by now. “Over
population does not depend only on the size or density of the population, but on the ratio of
population to available sustainable resources. It also depends on the way resources are used and
distributed throughout the population. Over population can result from an increase in births, a
decline in mortality rates due to medical advances, from an increase in immigration, or from an
unsustainable biome and depletion of resources. Population of a country is a great asset unless this
becomes unusually big in relation to the ability of food production of the country. Bangladesh is
an over populated country. So population problem is one of the top problems in Bangladesh. The
statistics about the population of Bangladesh has given below.
The causal relationship between population growth and environment or resource use as observed
from earlier literatures are both ways. But from the available studies, we get the conflicting
arguments on how population growth affects and is affected by the environmental changes.
Historically human action has often been blamed for its adverse impact on environment and
resource condition. More than two Centuries back, Malthus (1798) was concerned about the
growth of population to outrun the available food supply. The negative impact on the nature due
to increasing pressure caused by the population growth and natural logic of diminishing marginal
productivity of resources was highlighted in an Essay on the Principles of Population. In
Malthusian view, the population growth would undo itself through its rising pressure on natural
resources like land, water, forest and thereby declining the productivity of such resources and
rising incidence of poverty, pollution, mortality etc.; ultimately leading to a low level equilibrium.
The pessimistic views have also been found in the writing of Ehrlich (1968), Meadows et al (1972),
Ehrlich and Ehrlich (1990) etc., who were of the opinion that the world would be falling short of
critical natural resources after some time if population continues to grow. They argued that if the
existing patterns of population growth and resource use continued, it would lead to environmental
break down and economic collapse. Even the renewable natural resources like forest, fishery can
be exhausted if the population exceeds the carrying capacity and thus rate of extraction is higher
than the rate of regeneration. Therefore, a balance between the population growth and resource use
is well warranted for the maintenance of ecological balance and sustainable growth of the
economies. On the other hand, Julian Simon (1981, 1996), Simon and Myers (1994), were of the
opinion that population growth is not a danger, but a benefit. According to them, the world is not
running at the risk of shortage of resources. Rather, population growth in many ways helps
economic development and better management of resources through their effort and improving
knowledge, innovation, etc. Human being continuously learns how to overcome the bottlenecks
imposed by the nature. Johnson (2000) also tried to prove through historical evidences that in spite
of huge population growth in the last century the level of well-being has increased manifold. Their
arguments derive supports from the fact that at the beginning of Christian era i.e., 1 A.D. world
population was around 2.5 crore and growing at around 0.04 per cent per year. Now the world's
population passed 6 billion and growing at an annual rate of around 1.5 per cent (Tietenberg, 2003;
De, 2006b). Still now, Malthusian catastrophe that was expected to happen much before and the
world to return to a subsistence level have yet not been observed. The progress was supposed to
halt because of over dependence on agriculture (that was subject to diminishing returns) and
economic growth was supposed to be outstripped by the growth in population. In 1761 Robert
Wallace also argued that the progress would eventually undo itself by overstocking the world with
people (http://www.sthopd.net, visited in December, 2005). The interesting point to note is that at
the time Malthus wrote, most societies were constrained by the agricultural limits and the world
population was what India's population today. Still now we did not observe any such catastrophe,
rather we are living on an average in a better world today with better food security, fewer famines,
lower mortality rates, enhanced life expectancy, better amenities and access to resources and most
of those have been possible due to the advancement of education and technology in different fields.
Whatever famines and food insecurity we observe today are mostly localized and occur largely
due to war, political unrest, market distortions, loss of entitlement and sometimes due to crop
failure (that sometimes may be because of unplanned or unsustainable use of land resources) (De,
op. cit.). At the same time, we observe rising pollution level at many parts of the world, global
warming, acid rain, ozone layer depletion, declining forest resources, rising mortality due to lack
of access to safe drinking water, falling long term productivity of soil, loss of biodiversity etc.
Those may be not only due to the growth of population but also for the application of advanced
technology (but not environment friendly) to meet the increasing need of the growing population.
"The rapid growth of knowledge has resulted both from the growth of world's population and the
increase in the percentage of that population that is now able to devote time and energy to the
creation of knowledge" (Johnson, 2000, p. 13). Johnson's argument may be partly true at the global
level but not at the regional level. If it is certain that population growth helps development in the
field of science and technology and thereby innovations, more scientific inventions would have
occurred in Asia and more so in China and India (where more than one third of world's population
live and the region has experienced much higher population growth than any other region in the
world) and not in Western Europe. It may however be related to the percentage of people engaged
in academic and innovative activities i.e., the level of human quality, which is defmitely higher in
European countries. If the acquired knowledge is not distributed uniformly, the gain as happened
may not lead to uniform development across the globe that has always happened due to political
and social disturbances as well as individual/selfish oriented motives (De, 2006a). Here it is to be
noted that rising population, when total population is well below the carrying capacity may raise
the labor supply, contribute more to the production, better management of resources and thus
wellbeing. In other words, if we accept the notion of carrying capacity and the level of population
is well below that capacity, growth in population normally tends to better utilization of resources
from their sub-optimal level with given technology and other parameters. If it crosses that limit, it
would lead to rise in pressure on and thus depletion of resources. Defmitely, technological
development enhances the scope for use of any resource, its productivity and the capability to
tolerate and bear more people (i.e., enhance carrying capacity) over time but there is uncertainty
whether the same can grow at the desired pace all the time and uniformly

The rapid growth of population in the North East India is partly due to the influx of people from
the neighboring countries, Bangladesh and Nepal. Singh (1987, p. 146) pointed out that those
immigrants in many cases are responsible for the damage of forest cover.
Population Growth and the Environment
The historical perspective reveals that population growth has been faster than ever before during
the last 50 years which stands at 2.17 percent per year currently. Despite the successful lowering
of total fertility and growth rates over the past few years the population of Bangladesh has shot up
from 89.9 million in 1981 to 111.45 million in 1991 growing at a rate of 2.17 percent per year.
Accordingly, the density of population has increased from 609 in 1981 to 756 in 1991. At present
the population of Bangladesh stands at 129 million and growth rate is 1.5 percent (Fifth Five Year
Plan, 1998). It has been projected that by 2020 the population of the country will add up to 169.8
million with a growth rate of 1.05 annually (Fifth Five Year Plan, 1998). The projection on
population growth and other indicators are presented in Table 1.

Crude Birth Rate has fallen (from 34.6 per 1000 in 1985 to 19.9 in 1998) but not enough to control
population growth. Despite decline in fertility rate (from 4.71 in 1985 to 2.98 in 1998) continuous
population growth may be linked to the reduction in mortality rate due to the immunization and
mother and child health programmers. Child Death Rate per 1000 of children between 1-4 years
has come down from 12.5 in 1987 to 11.8 in 1996. Life Expectancy at Birth has improved from
56.9 years in 1980 to 60.8 in 1998 (BBS, 1998). Slow reduction in birth rate can also be attributed
to other demographic, social cultural and economic factors. The age structure is such that females
aged between 15-49 years’ account for 48 percent of the total female population. Age at marriage
is still low. Forty-nine percent of women in the age group of 15-19 are married. In the poor families
more children are considered to be a future investment which can ensure economic and social
security of parents during their old age which acts as a barrier to successful population control
programmers. The future scenario of population in Bangladesh is shown to be slightly brighter
though population will keep growing at a rate higher than expected and stable growth will still
remain as a distant goal to be achieved. In the year 2020 crude Birth rate will be down to 18 per
1000 persons from the present 22.4 per 1000 people., while Crude Death Rate will come down to
7.5 from 8.2 per 1000 persons. Total Fertility Rate per woman is projected to be 2.2 in 2020
compared to 3.0 in 2000. Life Expectancy will improve to 67.0 years from 60,8 years at present
(Table 1).

Environmental Concerns
In Bangladesh degraded environment is being manifested mainly in water and sanitation problem,
soil erosion, air pollution, deforestation, wetland loss, biodiversity loss and degradation of the
coastal environment. Increasing population, industrial and vehicular pollution, excessive use of
chemical fertilizer and unsustainable commercial exploitation of resources coupled with market,
institutional and policy failures are the major causes of environmental degradation. The following
section gives a brief overview of the major environmental concerns in Bangladesh.
Land Degradation
Land use pattern shows that more than 50 percent of the land is under crop production. About 20
percent of the total land is used for homestead, cities and settlements, while 14.5 of the land is
under forestry. The rest of the land is used for industry, infrastructure and social needs (BBS,
1998). Limited land resources and the increasing demand for food led to the practice of intensive
agriculture based on the use of irrigation, chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Extensive and
inappropriate use of these land-augmenting technologies is reported to degrade the soil resource
base ((Pagiola, 1995).

Water Pollution
The shortage of water and deteriorating water quality are major problems with respect to water
resources. Though a water abundant country, Bangladesh faces severe water shortage in the dry
season. Access to safe water still remains an urgent need in the country. In Bangladesh though
about 89 percent of the rural households has access to safe drinking water only 16 percent use
clean water for all purposes, that is for drinking, cooking and washing (World Resources, 1996-
97; UNDP, 1995).
Air Pollution
Indoor air pollution is also affecting the health and environment, especially in the rural areas. In
Bangladesh about 70 percent of total energy is provided by the traditional sources, such as
agricultural residue, fuelwood and animal dung. Particulate concentration from indoor cooking is
also very high. In the absence of any measures of this we do not know the extent of the pollution.
Vehicular and industrial emissions are the main sources of urban outdoor air pollution in
Bangladesh. Vehicular exhausts appear to be a major contributor to SPM levels. A survey done by
the Department of Environment shows that emissions from 86 percent of the vehicles in Dhaka
city exceeded the acceptable level of emission in terms of Bangladesh standard and 77 percent of
them were found to be highly polluting (DOE, 1990).
Biodiversity Loss
Most of the environmental problems discussed above such as water pollution, salinization,
deforestation and overfishing are threatening the biological diversity. The Royal Bengal Tiger,
Gangetice Dolphin, elephant, leopard and White Wined Duck face the danger of extinction. The
loss of biodiversity is related to activities like clearing and burning forests, conversion of natural
ecosystems for agriculture, desertification of natural grasslands, reclamation of wetlands and
illegal harvesting of animal and plants. Mono-cropping practices in agriculture and animal
husbandry can result in genetic erosion.

On the other hand, increased population can indirectly enhance output and productivity
(Thirwall, 1986), and, therefore, it could be that the sustainable development explains
some pessimism as it does not capture the complex interactions that exist between
population growth, technology and productivity. More people may bring higher number
of entrepreneurs. Also there may be a pressure for more efficient provision of
infrastructure for bigger population (Simon, 1986).
Conclusion
Rapid population growth continues to be a matter of concern for the country as it has manifold
effects, one of the most important being environment degradation. The outcomes of excessive
population are industrialization and urbanization. The study reveals that rapid population growth
has led to the overexploitation of natural resources. The deforestation has led to the shrinking of
forest cover, which eventually affects human health. The considerable magnitude of air pollution
in the country also pulls up the number of people suffering from respiratory diseases and many a
times leading to deaths and serious health hazards. The situation is also similar for water pollution,
as both ground water and surface water contamination leads to various water borne diseases. From
the various effects of environmental degradation on human beings, discussed in this paper, it
appears that if human beings want to exist on earth, there is now high time to give top priority to
control pollution of all types for a healthy living. It can be said that even after fifty years of
independence, Bangladesh is unable to achieve the desirable standards of health for its population
as consequences of environment degradation. What are desired are the will of the people as well
as the cooperation of the Government to promote family planning methods.
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