Population and the environment

The Vale do Paraíba, Litoral Norte and Serra da Mantiqueira Metropolitan Region – RMVPLNSM was created in 2012 and is composed by 39 municipalities that gathered in 2010, according to 2010 Brazilian Demographic Census, 2.340.891 inhabitants. During the last years the region is facing significant and increasing challenges related with demographic and environmental issues, most of them related with the accelerated economic growth and development processes that are taking place in the region during the last ten years, especially the ones related with the substantial investments that are being made by State and Federal governments into the infrastructure facilities needed to exploit oil and natural gas from the Pre-Salt basin in Caraguatatuba, Jambeiro, Paraibuna, Jacareí, São José dos Campos and Taubaté municipalities that, together with the modernization and upgrading of São Sebastião Seaport and road transportation infrastructure in the region, shall get more than R$ 140 billion (about US$ 70 billion) during 2010’s decade. The main objective of this paper is to identify, to evaluate and to discuss the role the so-called infrastructure megaprojects and the demographic dynamics will play in the future planned scenarios for the region.

Natural resources have in many cases been found to be a curse to some nations that possess it instead of being a blessing. Environmental and health hazards have resulted in many resource-rich developing economies. This study explores how some mining communities have experienced detrimental effects of possession of natural resources. Situated in the intepretivist philosophy, this case study research employed in-depth interviews, focus group discussions and observations to collect data from the residents in Odumase and Teberebie communities in the Tarkwa-Nsuaem Municipality, in the Western Region of Ghana. Purposive and snowball sampling techniques were used to select seventy-seven respondents for the study. Data collected was transcribed, coded into themes and manually analysed. The study found that the mining communities are confronted with environmental management challenges including pollution, abandoned mine pits, and dumping of rock waste on fertile agricultural lands. Residents have become vulnerable as it is difficult to access potable drinking water, agricultural lands and inability to come out of poverty due to the difficulty of maintaining sustainable livelihoods. The study recommended that collaborative efforts be adopted by various stakeholders to sustainably manage the exploitation of mineral resources.

Growing populations exert added pressure to their immediate environs and such equations are far more intense in developing country contents. The urban center of Guwahati is the only million city with a hinterland of 255,000 km2 in north east India. Its growing population pressure has had effects not merely within its city limits but in its surrounding areas as well. The Rani-Garbhanga (RG) reserve forests (RFs) on the southern fringe of the city has been one such victim. The city’s spillover population and forest extraction effects are assessed in terms of their effects on the RG forest landscape during 1991-2011. The losses in forest cover, vegetation greenness and quantum of fragmentation are quantified using Landsat data and Fragstats (McGarial et al.,2012) based landscape metrics. A decline of the forest landscape of RG, evidenced by declines in normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) values along with an increasingly fragmented forest landscape has occurred with several ramifications. Low levels of governance has enabled illegal tree felling to flourish and certain parties profit from the forests. Protection of scarce resources has not received much priority in this region, its status as one of India’s two biodiversity hotspots notwithstanding.

Background: Heat waves are known to be associated with increases in mortality and the burden of heat-related illness in population. However, there is limited regional information available to guide the public health adaptation plan. Therefore, regional health vulnerability of heat waves is assessed.

Methods: Vulnerability index (VRI) are calculated and mapped for Korean peninsula from 2000s to 2100s, applying SRES A1B scenario. The contribution analyses of VRI were performed to grasp attributable variables.

Results: Climate change vulnerabilities related to heat waves showed large regional variations. Contribution of three components, climate change exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity, were 0.28, 0.28 and 0.33, respectively. Overall vulnerability is predicted to be increasing over time. It varies by regions, however currently vulnerable areas appear to stay or be more vulnerable in the future. Vulnerable areas are mostly distributed southern part of Korea in 2000s, and tend to be gradually moving northward in the future.

Conclusions: Mapping of VRI visualizes the locations of relatively vulnerable regions for better monitoring of climate impact, sensitive socio-demographic characteristics subpopulations, and adaptive capacity such as healthcare access conditions.

Environmental pollution is a global problem. In India, it has assumed threatening proportions mainly due to poverty, continuing forest devastation, the negative impact of economic development, and sheer greed. Since independence in 1947, the Indian ecosystem has received some major setbacks as a result of haphazard industrial and urban development. Of the country's 304 million hectares 50% are subject to ecological degradation. About 80 % of the population lives under substandard conditions. The 14 major rivers, including the Ganga, which provide nearly 85% of the country's drinking water, are all polluted. City dwellers breathe clean air for about 2 hours in the morning. Human diseases caused by contaminated or substandard food have doubled during the last 30 years. Over 80 % of all hospital patients are the victims of environmental pollution.

The official response to the centuries’ old land concentration problem in Brazil has been the colonization of new areas, most notably in the Amazon region. Nonetheless, the so called “Amazonia Legal” also encompasses biomes other than tropical forests, including patches of savannas. This is the case of Central Roraima, where colonization projects have been created in savanna areas, where agriculture is much harder to sustain without the appropriate tools and techniques, and where natural resources are more scant than those found in forested areas. The colonization project Nova Amazônia, located in the municipality of Boa Vista is emblematic. The project was created in 2003 and after ten years of existence it experiences high abandonment rates and a significant re-functionalization, as most plots sold by peasants to upper middle class urban workers of Boa Vista have been converted into weekend homes. A sample of 200 colonists was recorded in Nova Amazônia and migration histories, agricultural experience and practices, and settlers’ relationship with the local environment were explored. Results indicate among the causes of land abandonment colonists’ lack of previous experience in savanna environments, as most settlers came either from urban areas, the semi-arid Northeast or the Pampa areas of South Brazil.

This paper seeks to improve the understanding of the household-level dynamics (life-cycle) and its relationship to agricultural practices, land use & environmental perception focusing on long-settled communities in the Andes.
A primary data generation (the 3-Paute survey) has been carried out obtaining 239 surveyed households. Gathered data have been analyzed by the Factor Analysis for Mixed Data (FMDA), the Hierarchical Clustering on Principal Components (HCPC); as well as Chi2 (test of independence), ANOVA & Kruskal-Wallis tests.
The presented findings advance our understanding of the complex dynamics in long-settled communities in the Andes region in five ways: 1) some household life-cycle variables influence the availability of the household labor force, that may impact the diversification of economic activities and cropping, the type of agriculture, and the use of intensive and/or extensive agriculture; 2) gender roles are well defined in function of the production scale; 3) we argue that household access to hired labor and focus on profit beyond subsistence; 4) migration plays an important role on the different dynamics under study mainly on wealthy households; and 5) the local livelihoods, adaptations, and environmental outcomes extend beyond a focus on macro-level to those operating at the household life-cycle level.

Given growing evidence in population studies that education is a key driver in providing positive social and demographic outcomes, this paper further argues that education can act as a protective factor for natural hazards and climate risks. Using the Indian Ocean Earthquakes on 11 April 2012 as a case study, this paper analyses how households living along Thailand’s Andaman coast reacted to tsunami warnings and how this disaster preparedness varies by education both at the individual- and community-level. Based on multilevel analysis of the survey carried out on April-May 2012 on 557 individuals living in tsunami high-risk areas, we find that education – measured at individual-, household- and village-levels – has positive significant relationships with disaster preparedness controlling for relevant demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of the individuals, households and villages. There is significant village variation in the likelihood of adopting preparation measures which can be partially explained by differences in educational distribution between villages.

Indigenous population live in their remote inaccessible abode and are being deprived of the fruits of development. They belong to lower strata of the society at large and their socio-cultural practices make them vulnerable to health risk particularly of child health. As a result ensuring health of indigenous people still remains an elusive goal even today. This paper attempts to examine the relevance of socio-cultural and environmental factors in explaining morbidity and nutritional status among indigenous children in North Eastern States of India which is considered one of the most inaccessible and diverse region with high concentration of tribal people. Analysis of data from Indian National Family Health Survey-3 (2005-06) reveals that households without windows, house structure, electricity, wealth index and place of residence have important bearing in moulding child health. Affluent neighbourhood are found to be key determinants of child health (p<.001). For indigenous people, the broader approach must complement the existing emphasis on risk factors, life style or behaviours because of the financial barriers and inaccessibility to health facilities which adds the burden of the morbidity and out of which children becomes the victim.

The adverse effects of dust storms on health have been major issue in several countries. However, the results of the studies on the association between dust storms and mortality are inconsistent. Thus, this study aims to explore the effect of Asian dust storms on daily mortality in Korea.
We used Generalized additive model with Quasi-Poisson regressions. We considered the lag effect of dust and controlled for temperature, humidity, air pressure, seasons and time trends. Also, we performed additional analyses which adjusted for SO2, NO2, and PM10 respectively. We performed a meta-analysis of seven metropolitan cities in Korea to estimate the pooled effects. we found significant positive associations between Asian dust storms and mortality at lag 0 (cardiovascular: 2.91%; 95% CI:0.13, 5.77, male: 2.74%; 95% CI: 0.74, 4.77 and <65 years: 2.52%; 95% CI: 0.06, 5.04), at lag 2 (male 2.4%;95% CI: 0.43, 4.4 and <65 years: 2.49%; 95% CI: 0.07, 4.97), at lag 3 (total non-accidental: 1.57%; 95% CI: 0.11, 3.06, male: 2.24%; 95% CI: 0.28, 4.25 and <65 years: 2.43%; 95% CI: 0.01, 4.91) and at lag 5 (cardiovascular: 3.7%; 95% CI: 0.93, 6.54 and male: 2.04%, 95 CI: 0.08, 4.04) in the NO2-adjusted model.
This study first shows the significant relationship between ADS and mortality in Korea. .