Jakarta is An Overpopulated City

Jakarta is An Overpopulated City

Jakarta is the capital of Indonesia. The total population of Jakarta and its suburbs around 12 million people. The population of Jakarta consist of many ethnic groups in Indonesia, and the foreigners who are came from many states.

Definition

• A city is a place where you live, work, go to school and play. A city is a place where you carry on your day-to-day life.
• Overpopulation is the condition where the number of organisms exceeds the carrying capacity of their habitat.

We are facing the effects of overpopulation in our daily lives. Overpopulation has impacted the life of common man and has proved to be one of the gravest difficulties that have to be fought. Overpopulation implies scarcity of resources and economic inflation; these are the monsters which can make life miserable. Living through the negative effects of overpopulation have made us realize serious problems associated with it. It is high time we wake up and find the causes of overpopulation and work on them.

The Causes of Overpopulation

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1. The Height of Birth Rate :

Thanks to the new discoveries in nutritional science, we have been able to bring in increase in the fertility rates of human beings. Medicines of today can boost the reproductive rate in human beings. There are medicines and treatments, which can help in conception. Thus, science has led to an increase in birth rate. This is certainly a reason to be proud and happy but advances in medicine have also become a cause of overpopulation.

2. The Descent of  the Death Rate:

The fall in death rates that is decline in mortality rate is one fundamental causes of overpopulation. Owing to the advancements in medicine, man has found cures to the previously fatal diseases. The new inventions in medicine have brought in treatments for most of the dreadful diseases. This has resulted in an increase in the life expectancy of individuals. Mortality rate has declined leading to an increase in population. Owing to modern medications and improved treatments to various illnesses, the overall death rate has gone down. The brighter side of it is that we have been able to fight many diseases and prevent deaths. On the other hand, the medical boon has brought with it, the curse of overpopulation.

3. Migration:

Immigration is a problem in some parts of the world. If the inhabitants of various countries migrate to a particular part of the world and settle over there, the area is bound to suffer from the ill effects of overpopulation. If the rates of emigration from a certain nation do not match the rates of immigration to that country, overpopulation makes its way. The country becomes overly populated. Crowding of immigrants in certain parts of the world, results in an imbalance in the density of population.

4. Lack of Education:

Illiteracy is another important cause of overpopulation. Those  lacking education fail to understand the need to prevent excessive growth of population. They are unable to understand the harmful effects that overpopulation has. They are unaware of the ways to control population. Lack of family planning is commonly seen in the illiterate lot of the world. This is one of the major factors leading to overpopulation. Due to ignorance, they do not take to family planning measures, thus contributing to a rise in population.

The Effects of overpopulation

1. Inadequate fresh water for drinking water use as well as sewage treatment and effluent discharge. Some countries, like Saudi Arabia, use energy-expensive desalination to solve the problem of water shortages.^[211][212]
2. Depletion of natural resources, especially fossil fuels. world energy consumption & predictions, 1970-2025.
3. Increased levels of air pollution, water pollution, soil contamination and noise pollution. Once a country has industrialized and become wealthy, a combination of government regulation and technological innovation causes pollution to decline substantially, even as the population continues to grow.
4. Deforestation and loss of ecosystems that sustain global atmospheric oxygen and carbon dioxide balance; about eight million hectares of forest are lost each year.
5. Changes the atmospheric composition and consequent global warming.
6. Irreversible loss of arable land and increases in desertification Deforestation and desertification can be reversed by adopting property rights, and this policy is successful even while the human population continues to grow
7. Mass species extinctions from reduced habitat in tropical forests due to slash-and-burn techniques that sometimes are practiced by shifting cultivators, especially in countries with rapidly expanding rural populations; present extinction rates may be as high as 140,000 species lost per year. As of February 2011, the IUCN Red List lists a total of 801 animal species having gone extinct during recorded human history.
8. High infant and child mortality.

High rates of infant mortality are caused by poverty. Rich countries with high population densities have low rates of infant mortality.

9.  Intensive factory farming to support large populations.

 It results in human threats including the evolution and spread of antibiotic resistant bacteria diseases, excessive air and water pollution, and new viruses that infect humans.

10.  Increased chance of the emergence of new epidemics and pandemics.

For many environmental and social reasons, including overcrowded living conditions, malnutrition and inadequate, inaccessible, or non-existent health care, the poor are more likely to be exposed to infectious diseases Starvation, malnutrition or poor diet with ill health and diet-deficiency diseases (e.g. rickets). However, rich countries with high population densities do not have famine

11. Poverty coupled with inflation in some regions and a resulting low level of capital formation.

Poverty and inflation are aggravated by bad government and bad economic policies. Many countries with high population densities have eliminated absolute poverty and keep their inflation rates very low. Low life expectancy in countries with fastest growing populations. Unhygienic living conditions for many based upon water resource depletion, discharge of raw sewage and solid waste disposal. However, this problem can be reduced with the adoption of sewers. For example, after Karachi, Pakistan installed sewers, its infant mortality rate fell substantially.

12. Elevated crime rate due to drug cartels and increased theft by people stealing resources to survive
13. Less Personal Freedom / More Restrictive Laws.

Laws regulate interactions between humans. Law "serves as a primary social mediator of relations between people." The higher the population density, the more frequent such interactions become, and thus there develops a need for more laws and/or more restrictive laws to regulate these interactions. It was even speculated by Aldous Huxley in 1958 that democracy is threatened due to overpopulation, and could give rise to totalitarian style governments.

14. Some economists, such as Thomas Sowel and Walter E. Williams argue that third world poverty and famine are caused in part by bad government and bad economic policies. Most biologists and sociologists see overpopulation as a serious threat to the quality of human life.

Solution

In order to minimize current and future population growth, a global effort will have to be undertaken by the countries who can afford to do so. This means educating those in less affluent countries regarding the function and usage of various birth control methods in addition to an understanding of the broader scope of the causes and problems of population growth. It is important to realize that many places of the world are still without technologies such as Internet and television, or may not have access to educational resources. Education is the first key step in a solution to population growth, because choices regarding reproduction are unlikely to be altered without an awareness of population problems. People need to have fewer children in order to slow population growth.