Impact of Population on Environment

The term population indicates the number of people living in a defined area or territory. Demography, from the Greek word demos meaning people, is a specialised study dealing with population in terms of births, deaths, diseases, etc. Populations are fundamental units in ecology, as important to the ecologist as are tissues and organs to the anatomist and physiologist. A population is a group of living individuals set in a frame that is limited and defined in respect of both time and space.
Impact of population growth on ecosystem
Natural populations often exhibit a dynamic tendency, rising and falling in response to many factors. In one sense, a pattern of population fluctuation such as that normally exhibited by most species, may be considered continuos series of growth and decline sequences.
In general, throughout India, as in most of the world, the primate populations is declining due to habit detoriation(cutting of forest, overgrazing of savannah land etc.), human competition (where native people shoot monkeys for food), and high rates of trapping for commercial trades.
The long-term population trends of many animals, especially wild vertebrate animals, are downward. Since 1600 A.D., 120 species of birds and mammals have become extinct, a number several times greater than the natural rate of extinction. Throughout the world the basic causes of extinction are habitat deterioration, poaching, poisoning, and direct or indirect competition with man. From the ecological standpoint, some extinction is an inevitable evolutionary process, but it is serious disruption of biotic communities and ecosystems that matters. Each extinction lessens species diversity, and thereby reduces ecosystem stability. Each extinction also represents the irreparable loss of unique biological material.
Impact of population growth on human settlements
Literal meaning of settlement is a place where people have come to live and have built home. We know that trends of increase in population of the world and that of India and the problems it has brought about.
Only one in ten people lived in cities when the 20th century began, more than half were by the country's end. Today the vast bulk of urban poplation growth occurs in developing countries like India. The population of the Third World cities, now doubling every 10 - 15 years, overwhelms goverment's attempts to provide house, clean water, sewage, adequate transport and other basic services.
Populatin in the twentieth century exploded, particularly in the developing countries. In fact, before 1800, no country was predominantly urban. Rural areas are depopulated, while urban areas like towns, cities and urban zones become more densely populated. Since most of the towns and cities are growing in an unplanned way, there arise a number of problems. Most predominant among them are lack of space for housing, lack of open green spaces and unplanned land distribution. Indian cities are growing both vertically(multistorey building culture) and horizontally(invasion of the peripheries). In spite of cities' expansion, there is growing shortage of houses, growth of slums and squatter settlements, creating inter-personal and inter-city imbalances, breaking down services and accentuation of the problem of urban renewal. This in turn imbalances the ecosystem.

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