Population and the environment

In the agricultural frontier, land fragmentation has the potential to reduce property sizes, change the demographic characteristics of rural populations and influence decision making on land use-cover change. The study objective is to explore the connection between fragmentation and population mobility from the household and land unit perspective. We aim towards a better understanding of land fragmentation process and discuss its implications on land use-cover change in two distinct contexts: Santarém city in the Brazilian Amazon and the Sierra del Lacandón National Park (SLNP) in Guatemala. Based on survey data incorporating sociodemographic and environmental information, the analysis will compare the role of household demographic factors such as the out-migration of the second generation in influencing property fragmentation. In Santarém, 311 properties were sampled in 2003 and 2009; in the SLNP 186 properties were sampled in 1998 and 2009. The comparison between the areas informs how the two contexts can lead to similar changes. Fragmentation is not a simple, one-dimensional process: its location and setting have an important role in impacting household livelihoods and land use outcomes. Improving knowledge about this phenomenon will assist in policy creation related to rural population, food security and forest conservation

Child mortality rate in Nigeria is one of the highest in the world. Environmental issues like poor housing and non-improved drinking water source are major challenges to improved child health outcomes.
The main objective of this study is to examine the relationship between housing type, household drinking water and child morbidity in Nigeria.
The study will employ secondary data. Secondary data for the study will be extracted from the 2008 Nigeria Demographic and Health survey (NDHS). Data on ever married women aged 15-49 years that have had at least a child within the last five years will be extracted for 33,385 women sampled from the NDHS (2008). Data will be analyzed using appropriate descriptive and inferential statistics.
It is expected that there will be relationship between housing type, source of drinking water and incidence of childhood diseases. Also, it is expected that there will be association between housing type and treatment of childhood diseases.
The findings from the study are expected to give more insight to the influence of the environmental factors (housing and water) on child heath outcomes. The study will also document areas of priorities for achieving improved child health

In recent decades, environmental concerns have evolved considerably before the multiplicity of aspects which are now incorporated in this theme. Likewise, the idea of ​​environmental impact matured, no longer just limited to physical consequences of human activity, incorporating the social, economic and cultural analysis at various scales. The concept of environment is multifaceted and, increasingly, has been seized from different perspectives. In the universe of interdisciplinary approaches, demographics has increased its participation in discussions on environmental issues by offering new tools and new questions for the theme. In a world seemingly free of population explosion, this study seeks to reflect on the major concerns of demography in relation to contemporary environmental impacts. If the rate of population growth has been slowed by the demographic transition, environmental problems in the world does no longer exist and have built a new range of issues. If nothing else the sheer volume of accumulated environmental problems that need to be solved, the world must prepare for the new challenges arising from increased levels of development and consumption in capitalist societies.

Climatic events can have disastrous consequences on rural livelihoods where economic activities mainly rely on agriculture and natural resources. The impacts of the natural disasters however are not distributed evenly. They vary considerably with demographic and socio-economic characteristics of a given area. Based on the Thai government surveys of living conditions and life quality for the years 2009 and 2011 of 68,695 villages, this paper aims to assess the impacts of natural disasters on community welfare and investigate the role of education as a buffer to livelihood and climate shocks. This study use five items as an indicator of welfare, namely, food expenditure, non-food expenditure, productive expenditure on agriculture, expenditure on education and income. Although we find that rural communities are able to smooth consumption such that droughts and floods do not produce a negative effect on food and non-food expenditure nor spending on agriculture and education, there is significant variation in consumption smoothing by community’s educational attainment level. Communities with higher proportion of members with at least secondary education enjoy the increase in income and consequently consumption. This finding shed light on positive externalities of education in overcoming hardship during weather shocks.

This paper documents the current locations of urban-dwellers in Asia of ecologically delineated zones that are expected to experience the full force of climate change: the low-elevation coastal zones, areas susceptible to inland flooding (apart from coastal sources), and the arid regions known to ecologists as drylands. Low-lying cities and towns near the coast will most probably face increased risks from storm surges and flooding; those in drylands are expected to experience increased water stress and episodes of extreme heat, as well as flash flooding. It is especially important to quantify the exposure of urban residents in low-elevation coastal zones, and to understand the likely implications for their health. While potential coastal flooding in cities has received attention, in part because the long-term implications of rising
sea-levels and change coastal zones, increasing precipitation, in general, and more extreme weather events will also lead to greater flood risks to city-dwellers from in-land water sources. In this paper, flood exposures
from in-land water sources are also estimated, not only because some coastal cities are also at risk of flooding from in-land waterway

Child health is a key indicator of the quality of life in developing countries and also it is a global burning issue. Healthy children contribute to the security, economic growth and civic stability of nations. Child health status is considered to be very sensitive indicators of human development. Fishing is one of the oldest means of subsistence of mankind. It has acquired such importance in the modern world that the survival of human race demands adequate attention on it. The objective of the study is understand the association between SES, hygiene and sanitation practices with child health in the fishing community and to understand the occupational pattern and time spent on employment and child care in the selected study area. Data is used purely primary that is focus group discussions (FGD) in the selected state, West Bengal and Orissa. This FGD is conducted in the fishing community.

This research investigates the household level relationship between human capital and access to safe water and examines how different degrees of urbanisation affect this association. Previous evidence showed that education has a positive impact on health outcomes; however little attention has been paid to understanding the role of human capital on households’ access to safe drinking water particularly in the context of urbanization. Multilevel regression analysis is carried out using household level data from 35 Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) to examine the association between human capital and access to safe drinking water, adjusting for relevant predictors including contextual/structural variables. The main predictors include household human capital measured in terms of weighted average of years of schooling of the household members in working ages (18-65), and indicators that represent household conditions. The results confirm significant positive influence of human capital on access to safe water with differential effect of urban residence. While overall urban residence and macro-level urban growth have a positive effect on this association, the study finds that the impact of these indicators varies depending on the countries’ level of development.

Research evidence around the world suggests clear linkages between social-determinants and child health and/or survival. Improving daily-living conditions as suggested by the Commission on Social Determinants of Health (2008) becomes a key to make much of the desired progress in achieving child-health equity in a single generation. The present paper reviews the evidence of socially determined effects on infant mortality in the nine states of India that register high rates for fertility and infant mortality. Infant mortality statistics are collated from the first round of Annual Health Survey (2010-11), while indicators for social determinants are based on National Census 2011 and Reproductive and Child Health Survey 3rd Round 2007-08. The district level variations in infant mortality rate are explained through multiple linear regression model, having considered social-explanatory factors grouped in three major domains, i.e., household physical environment, access to social services and built capabilities among mothers. The most critical task becomes creating an enabling environment for building capabilities among mothers, if to achieve equity in child survival in these selected states of India.

This paper examines the extent to which migration has been used as an adaptation strategy in response to climatic-related events in the forest-savannah transition zone of Ghana. Using a mix method approach with data from the Climate Change Collective Learning and Observatory Network Ghana (CCLONG) project, the paper employed a descriptive method approach to examine how migration has been used as a livelihood strategy in response to climate-related environmental events. The results indicate previous experience of drought and floods did not trigger out-migration from the study communities. However, the gradual decline in the fertility of the soil coupled with the erratic rainfall is pushing families to opt for something different from farming as their main source of livelihood by encouraging the youth to migrate to cities for alternative jobs. The study concludes that sudden environmental events like flooding may not necessarily trigger out-migration but slow changes such as desertification and decline in soil fertility could lead to mass migration if people reach a point where their coping strategies are not able to help them cope with the situation.

Rural households in developing countries rely heavily on biomass fuels to provide energy for cooking. While biomass supplies have traditionally been sourced from proximate forests, rapid population growth and high rates of deforestation and degradation are changing the quantity, type and source of fuels households use. We use data from a panel household survey in Uganda to examine the influence of rapid land use change on fuel use. We then explore the effect of biomass fuels of different types and from different sources on the incidence of acute respiratory infection (ARI) for a sample of 1100 women and children. We find that rapid land use change is altering the characteristics of fuel use portfolios. We observe marked differences in how households are responding to land use change across income groups. We estimate a series of probit regression models to understand the influence of biomass fuel portfolios on health outcomes, including models that take into account the joint determination of health outcomes and fuel choices. We find a negative association between fuel harvested from forests and ARI, and a positive association between fuel harvested from non-forest areas and ARI. Our findings have implications for targeting supply side interventions that mitigate the influence of land use change on fuel supplies.