The Emerging Population Increase and Its Environmental Challenges and Remedies in Iringa Municipal, Tanzania

Abstract

The study has shown that the environmental challenges encountered in Iringa and most other urban areas in Africa are due to the anthropogenic activities arising from the influxes of migrants from rural areas. The urban areas are continuing to receive mostly rural migrants beyond their demographic carrying capacities, hence suffering from the environmental degradations arising from the living activities of their increasing populations/overpopulations on struggle to make livelihoods attainable. The aim of this study is to show the link between the influxes of migrants and environmental degradation in the Iringa municipality of the Southern highlands of Tanzania. Household surveys, informative interviews, physical observations, group discussions and literature reviews were employed in the data collection and crosschecking. The SPSS v. 20, Microsoft excel and themes content methods of data analysis were also used. The results show that poverty and population increase are the root causes contributing about 90% of environmental degradation. In addition, food and energy requirements, and inadequate awareness on the issues of environmental management were found to be obstacles in the addressing of the problem. Deforestation, monoculture, poor waste management, and pollution of heavy metals (especially lead, copper and arsenic) are some of the anthropogenic activities creating environmental degradations in the Iringa municipality. These anthropogenic activities increase the emission of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O), which are some of the greenhouse gases that cause some of the very harmful climate change going on in the world. The study also revealed that, the existing relationship between man and environment is parasitic and asymmetric, and that, there is more environmental degradation than conservation. Therefore, recommends that proper agronomic practices and alternative energy sources should be employed to enhance crops yield and environmental goods and services as well.