Population dynamics and environmental linkages

The primary objective of this research is to examine the determinants of two important aspects of change occurring in indigenous populations: the adoption of non-farm employment (often referred to as livelihood diversification) and out-migration. Non-farm employment and out-migration may have unforeseen impacts, both positive and negative, on families, communities, and resource management institutions, and as such on the well-being of indigenous people and their lands. This research addresses the question, “What are the individual, household, and contextual factors that lead indigenous households to decide to diversify livelihoods and participate in non-farm employment, or to have a member of the household move away temporarily or permanently?” The research draws upon livelihoods and migration theories to examine population mobility among the indigenous. Household and community survey data and multi-level models are employed to make inferences about determinants of these important behaviors and their link to future resource use and livelihoods in the Amazon.

Lake Victoria is the world’s second largest freshwater lake, and the lake and its surrounding watershed are a critical resource and for millions of people spread across five countries: Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Burundi, and Rwanda. The interconnection and interdependence between human activities and the environment call for a regional, integrated response to properly manage existing and emerging threats to the Lake Victoria Basin. Regional bodies tasked with cooperative governance on environment and development issues, however, do not have even basic demographic or health information for the Basin. The lack of this data is in part due to the challenges of matching a geographically designated watershed with the different administrative boundaries for which data are available from five different countries. This research will show how spatially derived data, census data, and survey data can be combined to increase access to data atthe geographic scale that matters for regional environment and development planners and will illustrate how this data can be used in the Lake Victoria Basin for project planning, communications, and advocacy.

A new set of alternative socioeconomic scenarios for climate change researches – the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) - include for the first time a more comprehensive set of socioeconomic conditions on population, GDP, urbanization, education, institutions, and other aspects of society. It can facilitate better analyses of mitigation and adaptation, but also raises new questions about the internal consistency of assumptions about different socioeconomic trends within each SSP for different regions. In this paper, we use urbanization as a starting point and assess the various patterns of interactions between urbanization and other elements assumed in the SSPs. We use historical statistics and data on future projections from the SSP database to study their relationship in the past, analyze the implied trends in each of the elements and their relationships assumed in the SSPs, and make recommendations on how to use urbanization projections in the socioeconomic scenarios of climate change research.

Unprecedented population growth attended equally unprecedented land use and land cover changes in Latin America during the second half of the twentieth century, affecting the food security of thousands of agriculturally based communities. The more than doubling of the population of Latin America was accompanied by rural migration to urban areas, and extensification of agricultural land at the expense of forest and natural environments (Carr, Lopez, and Bilsborrow 2009). As population growth continues and the most suitable potential agricultural land diminishes, has intensification followed on the heels of extensification and, if so, has production risen concomitantly? We use data from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations’ (FAO) to examine trends in population, agricultural intensification and food production Latin America from 1961-2011. Results indicate rising population (with slowing growth rates) accompanied by soaring intensification in the form of increased fertilizer and mechanization. However, there is no linear relationship between agricultural input and output. Rather, the results point to a Malthusian pattern: inputs increasing exponentially, while outputs increase at best arithmetically.

Demographic responses to environmental pressures have long been hypothesized in classic population theory, though empirical analyses remain scarce and traditionally focus on aggregate units of analysis. In this paper we test the hypothesis that land degradation since the 1980s led to marriage postponement and fertility reduction in eight sub-Saharan West African countries in the early 2000s. Using georeferenced data from multiple Demographic and Health Surveys, combined with remotely sensed data on land degradation, we examine proximate determinants of fertility among rural women in response to decline or fluctuation in net primary productivity (NPP) over time. Results consistently show little to no effect of environmental determinants, particularly long-term land degradation, on a set of fertility related outcomes. This is in sharp contrast to the negative association between land degradation and fertility found at the aggregate level. However, recent fluctuations in NPP are negatively associated with age at first marriage, suggesting that early marriage among women may reflect household decisions to diversify and reduce risk. These results call into question the spatial and temporal scales at which demographic responses to environmental pressures occur, and the extent to which these are confounded by economic development.

The main goal of this paper is to discuss the relationship between population growth, rising living standards, food consumption patterns, urbanization and the trends in the use of water in the two most populous countries in Latin America: Brazil and Mexico. Although it only comprises 8% of the global population, Latin America constitutes an ideal case to observe population changes, with 79.1% of the population is living in cities (UN, 2011). Cities in this continent show a rate of expansion surpassing the rate of population growth; and the trend is projected to continue in the coming decades, which will increase competition for land, water and other natural resources. Besides, significant changes in consumption patterns have been observed over the last decades, along with the growth of the middle class in many countries across the region. By 2050 population growth and the increasing living standards in much of the world will contribute to increasing food demand by 70%. Latin American countries are most likely going to play a vital role in food production and need to asses important natural resources trade-offs.

Household energy consumption has increased in Mexican urban areas over the last 20 years. Explanations point, on the one hand, to changes on household wealth and, on the other hand, to life style transformations towards more energy intense everyday practices. We argue that disentangle these effects requires a cohort-period analysis since it is necessary to separate increments on income at older ages from those increases related to country wealth (period) and generational differences in consumption patterns. To examine these effects, we pooled multiple years of the Income and Expenditure Household Surveys (1992-2008), and we build synthetic cohorts to implement a hierarchical age-period-cohort analysis (HAPC) of household energy consumption in urban Mexico. After documenting the presence of cohort differences in energy consumption (Sanchez y Jasso 2012), this paper examines a) if changes Mexico´s economic wealth impacts household energy consumption, and b) whether such adjustment differs across cohorts.

The paper outlines regional population growth and its linkages with changes in agricultural landscape, particularly of commercial crops and its impact on food security in Meghalaya. Traditionally the tribal people in the Northeast including those in Meghalaya practiced shifting cultivation in the hill slopes and settled cultivation in the river valleys. With relatively low density of population and long Jhum (shifting cultivation) cycles, these communities could manage their livelihood. The situation changed drastically over the years due largely to phenomenal increase in population in the wake of substantive improvement in health infrastructure and declining mortality. This has made the traditional agricultural practices unviable and unsustainable. Search for alternative livelihood became inevitable. Traditional practice of Jhum is no more adequate to support a large number of people due to progressive decline in the Jhum cycle that had debilitating effects on land quality. Land degradation, soil erosion, declining fertility and harvests have a cumulative effect on the lives and livelihoods of the people. The change however has been felt by people as one of the coping strategies. The study underscores the interconnectedness of population dynamics, changes in agricultural landscape, local food systems and food security.

In the aftermath of the year 2012 floods, Nigeria’s poor management of disasters once again played out. The Nigerian government declared about 25 percent of the country’s population displaced. Hundreds drowned in the floods. Persons displaced by flood are camped in thousands of improvised camps under very deplorable conditions. Many of the camps are overcrowded and disease-ridden. At the last count, 22 persons have died in the camps and 27 births have taken place. This study has the aim of finding out the actual situation of mortality and morbidity among the persons displaced by the floods of year 2012 in Nigeria with a view to improve management of displaced persons. This involved visits to affected areas and refugee camps and interviews of 240 selected victims and some care providers in four, out of 30, affected Nigerian States. Responses have been analysed using descriptive statistical techniques and results show that death and diseases are common attributes of the flood incidents in many parts of the country and this owes to failures of management system adopted by the country, poor contingency planning, poor social protection financing and lack of infrastructure.

Keywords: Nigeria, displaced persons, floods, mortality, morbidity.

The paper has as objective to contribute to demonstrate the importance of population's studies and environment, to achieve that in all strategy and projection of the development politicians in the Caribbean have to be applied the holistic conception of the environment, the importance of the environmental knowledge and of the population like object of the development. It is fundamental to carry out the public politicians to face to the challenges of the environmental and sociodemographic vulnerabilities and the climatic change.
This investigation project, action and combined training of Population's Net and Environment of Population's Latin American Association and the Caribbean Studies Center University of Havana. The research of the perspective of the relationship population and environment was doing with like an holistic optics of the relationship university-society-nature for the local development. Were using system of methods of studies of compared cases of interrelating the vulnerabilities sociodemographic and environmental using systems of geographical information in the Caribbean as forms of adaptation to the impacts of the global climatic change. The results contribute to the formulation of recommendations of cooperation between actors and institutions involved in population and environment