Poster session on Population and the environment

Majuli, the world’s largest inhabited river island has been shrinking in size over the years due primarily to the phenomenon of river bank erosion leaving only 421.65 sq.km of the island by the year 2001 rendering hundreds homeless especially during floods. An important dimension of the problem relates to redistribution of people on account of the loss of villages, agricultural land and other economic support base. The present study aims at assessing the magnitude of the problem of redistribution in the island both within and without. Using data available from successive census enumeration at the village level; from the year 1971 till 2001, the study measures the extent of population redistribution through an analysis of changes in the number and size of settlements, changes in settlement structure and changes in population distribution, density patterns and growth of population. It is hypothesized that the rate of shrinkage in the size of the island is directly related to an accentuation in the process of internal redistribution of population and/or out-migration of people and changes in settlement structure leading to greater proportion of large sized villages.

The relationship of poverty, household environment and health is complex and context specific. There are a few studies that explore the linkages of poverty, household environment and health in urban India. Using the unit data from Indian Human Development Survey (IHDS), 2004-05 that covered over 40,000 households, this paper examines the linkages of poverty, environmental deprivations and short term morbidities (fever, cough and diarrhoea) in urban India. Poverty is measured in a multidimensional framework by incorporating dimensions of knowledge, income and employment, while environmental deprivation is measured using basic sanitation, cooking fuel and drinking water. A composite index combining multidimensional poverty and environmental deprivation is computed and classified as; multidimensional poor and poor environment, multidimensional poor and good environment, multidimensional non-poor and poor environment, and multidimensional non-poor and good environment. Controlling for socio-economic covariates, compared to those who are multidimensional non-poor and living in good environment, the odds ratio of having fever was 1.44 [CI: 1.34-1.56] among those multidimensional poor and poor environment, 1.33 [CI: 1.20-1.47] among those multidimensional non-poor but living in poor environment and similar for cough and diarrhoea.

Egypt is one of the potential vulnerable countries to the effect of climate warming. The negative consequences of climate warming are Sea Level Rise (SLR), water scarcity, agriculture and food insufficiency, and pressures on population dynamics and dimensions. The most probably impacts of climate change are: migration of part of the Egyptian population, increase in population density, adverse impacts on human health (crowding and tropical diseases), exaggerated the problem of water supply and demand, food insufficiency, and contamination of fresh ground water. Climate change will affect all economic activities in Egypt with different levels. Agriculture sector will be the mostly severely impacted flowed by the industrial sector and tourism sector. Fisheries and tourism are likely to be the most impacted jobs by climate change. International conflicts could arise over rights to shared Nile River as a result of climate change, in addition to the population growth and development pressures. Concrete sea walls to protect the beaches along the Mediterranean, reducing the population growth to the replacement level, and producing 20% of total energy from renewable and clean sources are the most important strategies to confront the problem.

Water-born and poor sanitation related diseases still account for much of the morbidity and mortality in India. Out of the 300 million urban dwellers in India 23% live in slums. This paper aims to examine the sanitation conditions of slums in Mumbai. 6.9 million Slum dwellers are residing in almost 2000 slum pockets in Mumbai, which constitutes 54% of the population of the city. Most of the slum households depend on inadequate public toilet facilities of very poor quality. Efforts and investments in sanitation have failed to alleviate the situation, as the local population has not been involved. Only recently a demand driven approach has been applied largely inspired by experiences in rural sanitation programmes. Still supply-driven initiatives by short-term political interests are, to some extent, eroding the resources available for sanitation. However, experiences from the last decade locally and globally, reveal that the demand-driven model is a way forward.

Land use and land cover changes are local and place specific, occurring incrementally in ways that often escape our attention. This study sought to detect changes in land cover in the Tema Metropolis of Ghana from 1990 to 2010. Multispectral Landsat Thematic Mapper data sets of 1990, 2000 and 2007 were acquired, pre-processed and enhanced. Unsupervised classification of the images was performed and six land cover classes (water, wetlands, closed vegetation, open vegetation, cropped lands, and built-up) were derived. The post-classification change detection technique was performed to derive the changes in land cover and their corresponding change matrices. Between 1990 and 2010, built-up areas expanded steadily to become the most prevalent land cover type in the metropolis, reducing vegetation cover dramatically. High population growth with its attendant rise in the demand for housing, and increasing commercial activities, were found to have influenced land cover changes over the period.

Important demographic regularities between fertility and child mortality rates in Indian states are strong positive correlation and roughly parallel decline over time. This suggests developing a dynamic relationship between them by using National Family Health Survey (NFHS) data. Vector Auto regressions (VAR) with exogenous variable methodology are employed to estimate their relationship. Our model estimated a fertility equation in which child mortality rate is an endogenous variable in simultaneous equations system and vice versa. The model yields implication for the number of children born per thousand reproductive periods of women and died before reaching age five per thousand live births during a particular period of time. In order to evaluate the accuracy of estimates, we compare our estimates with observed estimates which provide consistent result.

The negative association between air pollution and human life expectancy is well established. Short episodes as well as continued exposure to high concentrations of sulphur dioxide (SO2) or nitrogen dioxide (NO2) are connected with increased mortality mainly from circulatory and respiratory diseases. East Germans before reunifcation suffered from consistently high levels of air pollution which dropped dramatically after the fall of the iron curtain. At the same time mortality declined and eventually converged to the West German level. This study seeks to quantify the impact of dropping SO2 and NO2 concentrations on all-cause, circulatory and respiratory mortality as well as mortality from neoplasms and its contribution to converging life expectancy between East and West Germany.