Eminently Eve
One of the things that Mother nature’s system dictates is that no population will continue to grow exponentially and not eventually reach a point of collapse. A couple of things I’ve found worrisome over the past decades is firstly how our population in Zimbabwe (& so many other countries) is rapidly growing exponentially. Exponential growth is when a population continues to grow without reaching a point of stability. For example, in the year 2000, Zimbabwe’s total population was sitting at 11.83 million, in 2010 it was 12.84 million and now 2023 we are over 16 million.
This is an issue of concern because whether we like it or not we ultimately are governed by Mother Nature and she does not allow exceptions for any species including the human species. This is because as the population continues to grow, resources such as land/space are not expanding and as a result we will reach our country’s “carrying capacity”. Carrying capacity of a country (or any environment in reference to a species occupying this environment) is the maximum population that the country/environment can support based on the resources that it has. The quantity of these resources can not be changed and these resources include land/space, water, food, among others.
I know one might want to argue that food produced can always be increased but that is not entirely true because it still relies on the available land. Now a conversation that many are not ready to have is how we always talk about the overpopulation of elephants and other species. Meanwhile, statistics show that these other species have actually significantly dropped over the past decades and continue to drop to date except for one species which is exponentially growing and that is the human species.
I remember one time while travelling in one of the residential areas in Mutare and there was a huge piece of land which was untouched and I overheard people talking about how that piece of land would be perfect as a residential area as it was close to the Central Business District of the city. Just like many cities and towns in Zimbabwe, the populations have grown so much that there has been a lot of expansion of the cities, particularly residential areas (areas we popularly refer to as “new stands”). I was not a part of that conversation so I didn’t say anything but in my mind I just thought, “well it is a wetland which is serving a lot of purposes including the control of floods and droughts so it would be a terrible idea to try turning that land into a residential area”.
Guess what, as I type this today, that piece of land is a residential area and unfortunately every single year when there is the normal amount of rain, the people in that area always get affected by flooding. Children and some adults even end up dying from drowning. The reason these people would rather stay in a wetland is because it is closer to the Central Business District (CBD) where their livelihoods can be “supported”. However, this means that the carrying capacity of the land that can be safely turned into residential areas close to the CBD has been surpassed and so people are resorting to unsafe spaces. One might argue that it is the bad economy or other reasons but unfortunately nature does not care about that. Our reality is that the present resources we have do not support our ever growing population and that is what Mother Nature uses to measure our country’s carrying capacity, not the potential of what our economy could become.
Which brings me to my other point that if we do not want to control our population, mother nature does not dread to control it for us and her methods unfortunately are not very kind. They are harsh and always deadly. Some of these ways include:
a) diseases like cholera, typhoid – these diseases spread like veld fire in high populated areas which also do not have proper or efficient sanitation for the population. In 2008 – 2009; Zimbabwe experienced its worst cholera epidemic which affected 98585 people and killed 4287, making it the deadliest in the history of the country. I remember this one so vividly even though I was only a teenager because I lost so many people that I knew. We would always get news at home that someone was diagnosed with cholera and within hours we would receive followup news that that person had passed on.
b) Natural disasters like flooding – while natural disasters are not strictly influenced by how big a population is as they just start due to factors independent of population size, there are many incidents where population size plays a role as far as the devastating effects go. For example, when people are wanting to live close to the CBD as that is the only place where resources to make an income are concentrated. As a result of the safe areas close to the CBD being fully occupied, alternatives which are not safe end up being sought for i.e wetlands, dam vicinities and other water bodies and also mountains especially those in the Eastern Highlands which are at a high risk of landslides.
In 2019 we sadly lost so many lives to cyclone Idai. In Chimanimani for example the people that were the most affected had their houses on the mountains and hills in Ngango which were prone to landslides due to the soil type and ground water level capacity. One of the reasons such unsafe areas are turned into residential areas is because the safe areas close to the CBDs have reached their maximum carrying capacity and the unsafe areas seem to be the only alternative.
c) Among others.
Unfortunately if we do not base our economic planning, family planning or any other form of planning as individuals and as a country on Science and Mother Nature we are doomed to fail and die painful deaths in our hundreds or thousands as a species.
Remember to always have a little intimacy in your life & as always I’m talking about Intimacy with Nature.
