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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. |
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