Poster session on Population and the environment

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.

Puerto Rico is a tropical Island located in the eastern part of the Caribbean basin. Since 1950’s, industrialization has caused some abandonment of agricultural land and the beginning of the natural reforestation in the watersheds. The aim of this study was to examine the role played by demographic changes in the land use patterns at “Cuenca del Río Grande de Añasco”. ArcGIS 10 program was used to visualize the information in spatial mode. Land use data was analyzed for 1977 and 2006; considering agriculture, forest, urban and water. Population data was obtained from the 1980 and 2010 U.S. Census. During 1970-1980 the area showed considerable population growth, increase in population density and positive migration. This area was mainly used in 1977 for agriculture purposes, decreasing this sector in 2006. The forest proportion presented an increment and urban percentage of land decreased by a small number. Results show a pattern that requires a better land use development plan that does not interfere with natural resources. The observed patterns could affect the “Reserva Marina Tres Palma”, which has Elkhorn coral and Staghorn coral that are in the list of threatened species that may be affected due to human activities.

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.

Education is a major catalyst for human development, and regarded as the key to ensuring environmental sustainability. Existing studies suggest that education and family planning services correlate with each other in affecting fertility and population growth and composition which has important implications on climate change mitigation options and adaptation responses. The paper uses the IIASA multistate human capital projection model to simulate the Indian population growth under different education scenarios, and compare the outputs with the results of population projections under the scenarios of preventing unwanted fertility of Indian women through providing family planning and reproductive health services. Based on statistical analysis of national household survey data, we explore the different income and consumption patterns among Indian population by different education categories and by other demographic characteristics, such as age and household size. Adopting the NCAR integrated assessment model PET and use the results from previous two parts as input, we simulate future energy consumption and carbon emissions under different education scenarios and decompose the overall effects of education in India on emissions into the impacts through affecting population growth, economic growth, or consumption preferences.

Les tumeurs malignes représentent la deuxième cause de mortalité chez l’enfant en Argentine (DIES, 2010). Malgré les progrès réalisés dans le traitement de cette maladie, les connaissances concernant ses facteurs de risque restent limitées. Cette étude a pour objectif la recherche de clusters spatiaux-temporaux d’incidence de cancer chez l’enfant dans la province de Córdoba -Argentine- et sa possible relation avec certains déterminants sociaux-démographiques et environnementaux. Nous utilisons l’information provenant du registre de tumeurs de la province de Córdoba correspondant à la période 2003-2010. L'analyse, réalisée avec le logiciel SatScan, signale un cluster spatial de taux élevés d’incidence du cancer chez l’enfant. L’étude des variables sociales, économiques, démographique et environnementales permettront d’entrevoir un début d’explication à l’existence du cluster observé.

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

In the last decades disasters related to natural events, especially climatic events like hurricanes, droughts and floods have increased almost all around the world, causing great human economic, social and environmental damages mostly in the poor and very populous countries. The relationship between ‘natural disasters’ and migration or displacement has become an important issue in the population studies and public policies agenda. In Latin America where around 80% of the population live in cities the problem with urban water and disaster has become a critical issue for the local and national governments. In large metropolitan areas in Brazil one of the measures adopted by the governments to deal with people affected by disasters is the resettlement in new peripheral areas, usually with poor infrastructure. Given this context the article aims at analyzing the relationship between disasters related to natural events and displacement. The research consists in a case study in Belo Horizonte Metropoltian Area, Brazil that compares two vulnerable populations affected by disasters, one of which has been resettled by the local government. The method chosen is social network analysis which seeks to identify and analyze how the displacement has altered the structure of the social ties of these populations.

Title: The relationship between population growth rate and climate change in Kibuku District-Uganda.

Objective: To establish the relationship between population growth and climate change in Kibuku District, Eastern Uganda.

Results: 1352 respondents (902 Female, 450 Male).1002 people said that the area is commonly faced with famine with longer dry seasons. Most of them attributed the change in climate to over deforestation that was carried out in search for fuel that is charcoal and firewood which is 99% of the fuel types commonly used. 163 said that the increased pressure on the same piece of land has destroyed the ecological system leading to poor yields, famine and some common diseases.187 people said that it was change in God’s plan. 67% of the respondents said that the if the government can work with them to reduce on the population growth rate and thus reduce pressure on natural resources and most of them recommended the safer family planning services.
Methodology: Focus group discussions, observation, interviews, storytelling were the methods.
Conclusion: There is need to get an alternative fuel source especially in the rural settings other than firewood and charcoal in the urban centers to reduce on tree exploitation.
Recommendations: developing countries should encourage voluntary family planning

Patterns of mortality and morbidity can be affected by climate changes: floods, droughts, heat waves and wildfires affect the incidence of waterborne diseases; exposure to high concentrations of gaseous pollutants is associated with respiratory diseases; frosts, storms, droughts and floods threaten food production which can increase the rates of malnutrition. Effect of climate change can be more accentuated among individuals living in poor socioeconomic conditions. Poverty increases vulnerability of individuals to extreme temperatures and precipitation. The aim of this paper is to estimate the effect of climate change on population health in Minas Gerais, Brazil. The analysis is performed by regions of the state, which is very heterogeneous regarding its socioeconomic and epidemiological characteristics. The disparities are observed at both regional and individual levels. Preliminary findings show a significant effect of climate change on dengue and hospitalization rates for infectious and respiratory diseases. Increases in temperature between 2010 and 2040 will contribute to increase the prevalence of diseases. The increases in the morbidity rates will be higher for dengue and in the following regions: northwest, north and Minas Gerais triangle. North and northwest of Minas Gerais are among the poorest regions of the state.