Archive for: Climate Change

Population and Environment

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The interactions between human population dynamics and the environment have often been viewed mechanistically. This review elucidates the complexities and contextual specificities of population environment relationships in a number of domains. It explores the ways in which demographers and other social scientists have sought to understand the relationships among a full range of population dynamics (e.g., population size, growth, density, age and sex composition, migration, urbanization, vital rates) and environmental changes. It then briefly reviews a number of the theories for understanding population and the environment and provides a state-of-the-art review of studies that have examined population dynamics and their relationship to five environmental issue areas. The review concludes by relating population-environment research to emerging work on human-environment systems.

Year: 2007

Source: Annual Review of Environment and Resources

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    Climate Change

    Coastal

    Environment

    Population

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    Population and Climate Change

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    People are part of both the problem of climate change and the solution. The challenge is to quantify that statement. This article reviews some of what has been learned so far. In addition to numbers of people, population includes demographic attributes like age, sex, education, health, and familial status; demographic processes like birth, death, migration, the formation of unions and families, and their dissolution; and the spatial distribution of people by geographic regions and size of settlements, from rural to urban. This paper reviews what demographers expect of the human population from now to 2050, then describes how people collectively affect climate and how climate affects the human population. The focus is on the available quantitative information, its implications, and its limitations. Finally, the paper offers some recommendations for action.

    Year: 2010

    Source: Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society

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      Climate Change

      Population

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      Modeling Climate Change, Food Security, and Population: Pilot-Testing the Model in Ethiopia

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      This document describes a computer simulation model that can clarify the dynamic relationships between climate change, food security, and population growth. It is designed to be simple enough to adapt to individual countries to introduce population issues into policy dialogues on adaptation to climate change in the context of food security. The model links a population projection, which takes account of the effects of climate change on agriculture, with a food requirements model that uses Food and Agricultural Organization formulas. Piloted in Ethiopia, the model shows that the food security gap in Ethiopia is expected to be greater with climate change than the food security gap without climate change. It also shows the potential of family planning to address this gap. The report concludes that the model can serve as a starting point for a dialogue about the importance of taking into account population factors when adapting to climate change with regard to food security.

      Year: 2012

      Source: MEASURE Evaluation

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        Climate Change

        Food Security

        Population

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        Mapping Population and Climate Change

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        These maps by Population Action International shows how climate change and population dynamics will change the world over time. Country profiles of Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Nepal, and Peru are included with maps, graphs, videos, and additional resources on population, gender, and climate change trends. Interactive maps illustrate how climate change impacts, demographic trends, and the need for contraception are likely to affect countries’ abilities to adapt to climate change. The maps also identify 26 population and climate change hotspots. In many countries, a high proportion of women lack access to reproductive health services and contraceptives. Investments in family planning programs in these hotspots could improve health and well-being, slow population growth, and reduce vulnerability to climate change impacts.

        Year: 2011

        Source: PAI

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          Climate Change

          Population

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          Making the Connection: Population Dynamics and Climate Compatible Development

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          With support from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Population Reference Bureau and Worldwatch Institute assembled a working group of experts from the climate change, family planning, and development assistance communities to examine the complex relationships between population dynamics and climate compatible development. The group’s goal was to identify approaches and opportunities to advance policy dialogue and policy action to include population dynamics, with an emphasis on family planning, into climate compatible development. The action opportunities fall under four strategic approaches which provide a path forward for groups interested in connecting these issues and ensuring that increasing access to family planning is part of efforts to achieve climate compatible development. Linking population, family planning, and climate change is unconventional for many policymakers. Cross-sectoral initiatives that highlight and integrate synergies in development plans and climate finance programs could reap enormous benefits as we tackle climate change.

          Year: 2014

          Source: Population Reference Bureau | Worldwatch Institute

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            Climate Change

            Economic Development

            Family Planning

            Population

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            Linking Population, Fertility and Family Planning with Adaptation to Climate Change: Views from Ethiopia

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            The effects of global climate change are being felt disproportionately in the world’s poorest countries, where people are the least able to cope. As climate change adaptation strategies gain international attention, it is important to show how people are dealing with the effects of climate change, how they could become more resilient to these effects, and how people and communities can adapt to climate change. Using qualitative methods, PAI, in collaboration with Miz-Hsab Research Center and the Joint Global Change Research Institute, explored how Ethiopian communities react to and cope with climate variation, which groups are the most vulnerable, what resources communities need to adapt to climate change, and the role of family planning and reproductive health in increasing resilience to climate change impacts. This study was one of the first to explore the linkages of population, fertility and family size with aspects of vulnerability and resilience to climate change.

            Year: 2009

            Source: PAI

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              Adaptation

              Climate Change

              Family Planning

              Resilience

              Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights

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              Improving Access to Family Planning Can Promote Food Security in a Changing Climate

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              A growing body of evidence indicates that climate change is decreasing the productivity of many crops around the world, thus exacerbating existing food security challenges. Ensuring sufficient food for a growing world population in the context of climate change will require innovative technologies and strategies to boost agricultural yields and improve access to nutritious foods for the world’s poorest people. This brief summarizes new research that demonstrates that slower population growth, achievable by addressing women’s existing needs for family planning, can also play a significant role in promoting future food security in a climate-altered world. The study focused on climate change impacts, food security challenges, and population growth in Ethiopia, and results suggest that meeting women’s existing needs for family planning should be considered in broader strategies for adapting to the impacts of climate change on agriculture.

              Year: 2012

              Source: MEASURE Evaluation

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                Climate Change

                Family Planning

                Food Security

                Population

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                Human Population as a Dynamic Factor in Environmental Degradation

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                The environmental consequences of increasing human population size are dynamic and nonlinear, not passive and linear. The role of feedbacks, thresholds, and synergies in the interaction of population size and the environment are reviewed here, with examples drawn from climate change, acid deposition, land use, soil degradation, and other global and regional environmental issues. The widely assumed notion that environmental degradation grows in proportion to population size, assuming fixed per capita consumption and fixed modes of production, is shown to be overly optimistic. In particular, feedbacks, thresholds, and synergies generally amplify risk, causing degradation to grow disproportionally faster than growth in population size.

                Year: 2017

                Source: Population and Environment

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                  Climate Change

                  Environment

                  Population

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                  Human Health, Biodiversity, and Ecosystem Services: The Intertwined Challenging Future

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                  The maintenance of biodiversity and ecosystem services in critical to human health and welfare. The climate change wild card adds insecurity regarding what biotic resources may be needed for human adaptation to food supply disruptions, ecosystem alterations, shifting disease patterns, and other health threats. This document explores the effects of biodiversity on four major determinants of human health and well-being: ecosystem services, constraints of infectious disease, medicinal resources, and quality of life. It points out the strengths and shortcomings of integrated science and notes future research needs.

                  Year: 2008

                  Source: Island Press

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                    Biodiversity

                    Climate Change

                    Integration

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                    Global Warming Policy: Is Population Left Out in the Cold?

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                    Many nongovernmental organizations undertake climate- and population-related activities, and national adaptation plans for most of the least-developed countries recognize population dynamics as an important component of vulnerability to climate impacts. But despite this evidence, much of the climate community, notably the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the primary source of scientific information for the international climate change policy process, is largely silent about the relationship between population dynamics and risks from global warming. Though the latest IPCC report includes an assessment of technical aspects of ways in which population and climate change influence each other, the assessment does not extend to population policy as part of a wide range of potential adaptation and mitigation responses. We suggest that four misperceptions by many in the climate change community play a substantial role in neglect of this topic, and propose remedies for the IPCC as it prepares for the sixth cycle of its multiyear assessment process.

                    Year: 2018

                    Source: Science

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                      Climate Change

                      Population

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