Population and the environment

Sustainable livelihoods (SL) provide an appropriate approach to conceptualising the relationship between climate (environmental) change and human adaptation strategies. In China, however, there is little research into the relationship between livelihood assets and adaptation behaviour in response to climate change from a micro (household) perspective. This study develops a two-stage conceptual framework based on an SL approach. The study examines how, and to what extent, the livelihood assets of rural households influence four major agro-ecological domains (agricultural production, land area, water supply, and soil fertility) of livelihoods, and subsequently influence their decisions on adaptation strategies to climate change. A two-stage regression procedure is used to analyse primary data collected from 304 households in Xiji county. Results show that responses to climate change at the household level are significantly influenced by five dimensions of livelihood assets – natural, financial, physical, human and social capital. Both in-situ adaptation and migration policies that aim to address poverty and environmental stresses in the area need to focus on diverse income resources, accessibility of agricultural techniques and facilities, education, ethnic equity and social networks of the households affected by climate change.

The concept of environmentally-induced migration is closely connected to its theoretical origin of ‘forced migration.' While the legal definition of environmental migrants remains widely debated, classifying environmentally-induced migration has become a necessary first step to the understanding of needs and magnitude of such migrants. This study aims to formulate a new typology of environmentally-induced migration based on different time duration and settlement characteristics. Environmentally motivated migrants category contains those who exercise their relatively maximum and genuine freedom of choice to move, primarily due to the potential environment changes. The second category of environmental displacees includes those who are forced to leave, because people’s livelihoods and welfare have been at risk as a result of adverse environmental processes. With respect to the migration urgency, two subcategories can be further distinguished as slow-onset environmental displacees and rapid-onset environmental displacees. Lastly, those who are intentionally resettled due to a planned land-use change are referred to as development displacees. The cause is anthropogenic in nature. International sporting events and wildlife conservation projects may also result in development displacees.

Mexico is particularly vulnerable to the impact of natural phenomenons and, consequently, to negative effects on household’s well-being. The impact of a phenomenon of considerable dimensions alters the population’s environmental, social, and economic conditions, which are translated in the loss of livelihood, personal assets, and even human lives. In this research project we ask ourselves about the households affected by natural disaster’s sociodemographic profile in Mexico and if they adjust their labor participation as a strategy that faces the damages caused by natural phenomenon. Using longitudinal data from the Mexican Family Life Survey, a panel was built in order to analyze how did the Mexican’s household’s labor participation changed between 2002 and 2005 upon the occurrence of natural disasters in 2003 and 2004. The article suggests that the household’s victims of a catastrophic event had certain sociodemographic features that made them especially vulnerable. The results of a multinomial logistic regression model show that natural disasters have differentiated effects upon the labor participation that depend on the magnitude of the disaster and the characteristics of the household.

This study is aimed first to identify whose livelihood is vulnerable to what specific causes of salinity intrusion and second to identify the underlying factors that govern the adaptation preference of the coastal population. The study was conducted in a coastal district of south-west region of Bangladesh which is under tidal influence of the Bay of Bengal, flanked by the world famous mangrove forest- Sundarbans and prone to multiple hydro-meteorological disasters including SLR induced events. Findings reveal that people’s livelihood insecurity are related to i) severe loss of crop agriculture, ii) shrinking income from other non-crop agriculture, iii) severe damage of fresh-water fishing, iv) severe damage of settlements and housing, v) severe damage of other infrastructure. Therefore, salinity induced by both natural events and human intervention (i.e. on purposes ingression for saline water shrimp culture) affects the livelihood security of significant proportion of the population in the study area. The policy implication of the finding is, this would help designing separate sets of intervention for coastal population who have different structural characteristics and are susceptible to unique sets of dynamic impacts of salinity. Such measure would encounter the impacts of salinity on coastal landscape and livelihood.

Man is a user of the environment for his developmental activities & always disrupts this natural system and creates a background for environmental degradation. The entire aspect of planning the environment has a social dimension just because man is at the core of the problem. Human interference – due to excessive population growth – is fast extending in Darjeeling Himalaya, leading to degradation of mountain environment.
This paper attempt to identify the nature of population growth in this mountain region & its impact on environment & their future prospect. It reveals from the study that the mountain environment of Darjeeling Himalaya is visibly deteriorating at a rapid pace. The trend is now increasingly that of its beautiful blend of mountain vistas, sylvan landscapes and a unique living heritage of beautiful buildings, facades & settings giving way to a sprawling slum of ugly and faceless box like structures, blighted neighborhoods, noisy surroundings, polluted air & water, vehicular congestion, compounded by decay, impoverishment, & day to day hardship.
Thus the demographic planning for the region must include both population limitation and migration control, through a combination of socio-economic incentives and legal controls.

In this paper, there is the introduction of the concept “population activity intensity” which is further illustrated with the examples of energy consumption and carbon emissions to evaluate how much exploration population activities do to the natural resources and how much influence population activities have on the nature and human survival. Population activity intensity refers to that in a certain time period and areas, the extent of natural resources consumption and waste discharge generated by all kinds of human activities .
The carbon emissions produced by the energy consumption of population economic activities is regarded as a variable to calculate population activity intensity. With the application of calculation model recommended by IPCC, combining the statistics of population and areas of land of each province in China, there is the calculation of total carbon emissions, carbon emissions per person and unit area, provincial carbon emissions per person and unit area in China from 1995 to 2010. Moreover, there is a systematic analysis of the items mentioned above and such variable as population and economy to explore the regional differences of population activity intensity.

China’s population structure is undergoing profound changes. Based on the simulation calculation in this paper, the average family scales decrease from 3.10 people in 2010 to 2.44 people in 2030. The number of people in 20-40yrs falls from 473 million to 356 million. And the urbanization rate will be decreasing to 64.1% from 49.95% in 2010. The changes in population structure play a significant role in building demand and relevant energy consumption.
In 2010, the average residential area per person is 32.8 m2, which is close to the level of developed countries in Europe and Japan. If there is a balanced house ownership, present total residences can satisfy residents’ demand. The current problem is there is great difference in house ownership and there is frequent demolishment to increase GDP. If it would go in the current way, by 2030, the average residential area per person would exceed 55 square meters, which is over demand. What is more, the energy consumption of China’s building life cycle will exceed the total social energy consumption in 2010, leading to serious energy waste and environmental pollution.

Fruit & vegetable wastes are important materials for production of compost and bio-fuel .They are known as clean wastes.
The main aim of this study is analysis physical and chemical market wastes and determine its policy implications.
The research methodology is based on field studies and uses a systematic questionnaire which is developed by American society for testing and materials (ASTM).
Sampling technique was random sampling and we selected 8 malls of 36 which were distributed in various areas of Tehran city.
Results average percentage of garbage composition and chemical ingredients of the samples, shown that fruit and vegetable with 84.35%, glass 0.19%, wood 3.85%, paper, cardboard and carton 3.59%, plastic and pot 3.03%, metals 0.19, bone and proteins 1.50%, stale bread 0.40%, textiles 0.50% and the other miscellaneous materials 3.35%. Also, mean of density of wastes is estimated by 283.30 kg/m3. Results of chemical analysis reveled that moisture with 80.94%, salinity (EC) 9.33, acidity (pH) 5.52, saturation percentage (SP) 88.75, decay percentage at 400° (OM) 65.88%, ash at 800 °C (Ash) 29.19%, total nitrogen (N) 1.38%, total phosphor (P) 0.24%, total potassium (K) 1.43%, total sodium (Na) 0.47%, total carbon (OC) 36.32% and C/N ratio 31.30.

This study examines the impacts of extreme weather conditions, such as sustained cold weather or heat waves on population health and mortality. It also examine variations in their impacts on deaths caused by major diseases and among sub-population groups.

To examine these research questions, we use detailed mortality and environmental data collected from HongKong and Taiwan. This includes about five million death records collected over last three decades from the 1970s, daily meteorological data for the same period and daily air quality data for the last 15 years.

We will use the conventional Generalised Additive Model and a method we are now developing to model and study the relationship between daily mortality and a wide range of environmental factors, especially the impact of extreme weather conditions on daily mortality changes. We also examine intra-population variations in such impacts and identify the vulnerable population. Because our mortality and environmental data cover for a long period, we also intend to examine changes in the impact of extreme weather over time.

The study is expected to shed new lights on the environment-mortality relationship in East Asia, and its major research findings will have considerable policy implications and help to improve risk prevention among the vulnerable population.

Using data from the 2011 Revision of the World Urbanization Prospects from the United Nations Population Division, Natural Disaster Hotspots from the World Bank and the Center for International Earth Science Information Network, air pollution database from World Bank and the World Health Organization, and the Global Agro-Ecological Zones developed by Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, this study presents risks of exposures of worlds’ cities to six natural disasters (cyclones, floods, droughts, landslides, earthquakes, and volcanoes) for 633 cities with a population of 750,000 or more in 2011. Our results find that most cities are exposure to areas with a relatively high risk of at least one natural disaster, mainly in Asia. Cities in Asia are most polluted and 18 cities of 63 cities with inhabitants of 5 million or more in 2011 had a worsening trend in air quality in the past decade. Our results further reveal that most cities, especially in Europe and Asia, had an increase in temperature in last forty years. While half of cities had a loss in precipitation, the other half had a gain in rainfalls in last forty years. Cities in Asia and Oceania had a loss in precipitation and cities in Europe and Africa had a gain.