People: The Third World, Poverty and the Environment

By Chris Nasveschuck

The evolution of humans and their behavioral patterns have developed over hundreds of thousands of years. Traditionally a nomadic species, humans migrated with and preyed off of different herds of animals. Approximately 12,000 years ago agriculture emerged which stimulated the formation of the first known settlements. As a result, humans became sedentary, forming villages and settlements along the Nile, Tigris and Euphrates rivers circa 3,000 B.C. Agricultural surpluses were used to feed domesticated livestock and expand the population. An expanded population allowed for more workers to help improve irrigation and other forms of infrastructure. By the second century a major urban city such as Rome had emerged on nearly every continent. This was due impart to increased job availability, better living conditions, increased levels of production in the areas surrounding cities and a higher rate of information and idea exchange.¹

Presently urbanization is viewed as a global process fueled by the perceptions of individuals of cities as "islands of privilege". This view is supported by the fact that since WWII cities have offered lower child mortality rates, larger income opportunities, less frequent and severe famines and more access to public entitlements. However, during the past decade, cities have witnessed a decline in the standard of living relative to residents of small cities and towns. This "collapse" has been experienced by the "mega cities" of the Third World such as Lagos, Bombay and Cairo.² Inhabitants of Third World cities often do not receive basic necessities and are thrust into poverty and starvation. However, there are certain demographic characteristics that are identified as a fundamental cause for a decline in the living standard of Third World cities when compared do cities of developed countries. The root cause of their decline is that rapid and intense urbanization is an exacerbating factor in the cause for environmental degradation.

Urbanization is defined as the population in cities over the total population of a country. It stems from a positive feedback loop that can be viewed in early 19^th century in developing western Europe and the United States of America. As cities began to develop agriculture became much more efficient to provide food stuffs and industrial raw materials. Cities began to replace the traditionally homemade goods with cheap industrial goods allowing for more time to be spent on increasing agricultural production. As technology, machinery and farming techniques became more efficient, a surplus of workers was created. Searching for employment opportunities these people migrated to cities. People most often found employment in steel factories or some other form of factory production. At the turn of the century the U.S. produced 10,352,000 metric tons of crude steel, while Britain and France were producing more than 1,500,000 metric tons of crude steel annually.³

Although Britain, the U.S. and France were rapidly urbanizing, they witnessed different patterns of urbanization that effected each in ultimately the same ways. Britain had the highest degree of urbanization at 78 percent by 1900. The U.S. was 40 percent urbanized. Urbanization, in Britain, was largely focused around London, however, the U.S. observed a large increase in populations of towns less than 25,000 and less urbanization in towns larger than 100,000 people.³ As the population intensified in cities and grew faster than the caring capacity, poverty, overcrowding and health hazards became apparent. The environmental consequences became more of a focus than economic growth and policy reflected that sentiment.³

Present day developing countries such as sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean and Asia have experienced less economic growth than the western European countries and U.S., but have different reasons for massive urbanization. The apparent lack of economic development in developing countries stems from the fact that they were exploited by western developed colonizing countries as economic mines for natural resources including farmland, minerals, coal, timber, firs etc. With colonization came medicines that helped to reduce mortality. Also a job market was created to harvest natural resources and subsequently cities were formed as centers to process the raw materials. Due to city land restrictions to farmers most of the population remained in the rural areas as farmers. Economic development brought with it, disease control and an increased standard of living that, in combination with decreased mortality rates, allowed for a large rate of natural increase in the population.³

The rate of natural increase is not accounted for solely by decreased mortality rates, fertility played an important role also. While the U.S. and other European countries experience fertility rates at the replacement level, developing countries’ populations are booming with fertility rates that vary between 3 and 7 children per family. This phenomenon is also due to the social consequences of the developing countries’ economic relationship with the developed countries. In developed countries families of increasing affluence exhibit better family planning and produce a smaller amount of children. This is because the cost of raising a child in a developed country is increased relative to the price of other goods and education for higher skilled job opportunities takes a priority. In contrast, children in developing countries in rural areas are a means of production and provide more income for the family. Savings and investment rates are also low for families in developing countries and, as a result, children are expected to provide for their parents in old age. Thus, parents produce many children in hopes that they will raise the standard of living for the family and provide for the them in retirement, which creates the expectation in the child that this is an acceptable practice and the process continues from generation to generation.³ This process creates a greater population with the ability to urbanize.

Sympathetically, fertility in urban areas are similar to that of rural areas in developing countries. Different forces push household decisions in the same direction as rural household decisions. In urban areas of developing countries poverty forces families to build their own homes. This has the effect of not physically constraining the size of the household and more children are easily accommodated and are expected to increase family income and provide for their parents in old age.³

Due to colonization and a rapid rate of natural increase in urban areas, developing countries have a large rural population with the capability to urbanize. Demographers project that the world’s population will approach 10 billion due to the fertility trends of rural and urban citizens throughout the world. Since 1950 Latin America, China, Africa, and South Asia have experienced massive increases, 20 percent or more, in the population living in urban areas. In the future migration to cities and population momentum will double the urban population within the next 28 years and approximately nine-tenths of this expansion will happen in the Third World.¹

That kind of massive demographic shift cannot happen without some consequences. The two main consequences economists and demographers most commonly associate with this kind of demographic shift are poverty and environmental degradation. Both poverty and environmental degradation display a cause and effect relationship between each other, that is to say that poverty degrades the environment and a poor environment causes poverty.

The first and foremost problem in this relationship is the shift of people. With such a large increase in urban population a city will have problems supplying jobs to its citizens. As the result of a plentiful labor supply the wage rate will drop and since people will have less money to spend on food, fuel, water and other necessities, the standard of living will also fall.

An appropriate way to illustrate a decline in urban living standards is to compare urban areas with rural areas. In the Third World, specifically Latin America, the Caribbean, sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa/ Near East have all experienced declines in infant mortality. However, in cities where the population was greater than 1 million, the decline was significantly smaller, approximately 20 percent smaller than when the population of the city was less than 1 million.²

The standard of living will also fall as an urban population exceeds the city’s capacity to provide services for its occupants. Large cities provide economies of scale for economic and industrial development, however the infrastructure investments are a smaller piece of the money pie.¹ Inadequate city planning largely contributes to the strain on city budgets in its attempt to provide housing, transportation, water, food, fuel, and education services. National and city budgets also often focus on creating a capital intensive market rather than labor intensive market, which exacerbates the problems of the individual and household in the Third World.¹ Because if these inefficiencies the overall productivity of the city falls. This discrepancy is most apparent in Mexico City and Alexandria, Egypt. Mexico City has a population of nearly 15 million and small tin and tarpaper shacks are erected in the alleys between skyscraping office buildings that are capital intensive investments. In Alexandria, the city budget was not appropriately prioritized and as its population increased from 1 to 4 million and some parts of the city became subject to flooding by raw sewerage.¹

Another major problem that urban areas possess are disposal of wastes. Cities are traditionally places of industrial advancement and production, however, poor regulation threatens city populations, agriculture and resources. For example, Peking, China, is the home to nearly 9.3 million people and a ton of water costs less than a popsicle.¹ There is currently little regulation on the disposal of industrial wastes and it is threatening the city’s fresh and clean water supply.

Mexico City also inefficiently allocates resources. The city is in an elevated area, which means enormous amounts of energy are expended on transporting water. In fact, the annual consumption of water is so large and the amount of energy used to transport the water is so great that it would take six 1,000-megawatt power plants to accomplish the task.¹ This becomes an even larger issue due to increases in the cost of fossil fuels as they become a more and more scarce resource.

Improper allocation of funds not only causes environmental damage and poverty for citizens of Third World countries but is changing the Earth’s ecosystem as well. Projections of greenhouse gas emissions predict that the average temperature of the earth will increase dramatically over the course of the next century. Consumer tastes have a large effect on this situation. The demand for automobiles, heating and other basic uses for energy are fossil fuel intensive.¹ Often times moving to the city, purchasing a house, expensive car and other gadgets are a symbol of success and as living standards rise demand for these goods will rise also.

Population momentum, as estimated by UN demographers, will increase the world’s population to approximately 10 billion people. Given the rate of urbanization in the Third World an increasing percentage of these people will be living in poverty and hazardous health environments. Policy and spending allocation must be changed to meet the future needs of the present and future populations. The development of appropriate infrastructure in England, France and the U.S. lagged their population boom by approximately 100 years.³ At the current pace, urbanization will exceed economic development for a considerable amount of time. Maybe a solution is to implement human relocation strategies to cities of lesser population and higher job availability. Another strategy could be to change regulations as to attract foreign investment to prime locations under environmental and infrastructure stipulations offering initial lower wage rates than in their respective countries. Either way, intense urbanization exacerbates fundamental factors that degrade the environment, living standards and the utility of a city’s population.

References:

Lester R. Brown and Jodi L. Jacobsen, "The Future of Urbanization: Facing Ecological and Economic Constraints", in Population and Environment , D. Heddy (editor), 1995, Ch. 10, pp.132-149.
Martin Brockerhoff and Ellen Brennan, "The Poverty of Cities in Developing Regions" in Population and Development Review, Vol. 24, No. 1, March 1998, pp. 75-114.
Bryan R. Roberts, "Urbanization and the Environment in Developing Countries, in Population and Environment , D. Heddy (editor), 1995, Chapter 10, pp. 303-336.