Population and the Environment

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Chapter 11

• Population and the Environment

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Chapter Outline

• Economic Developmentthe Use And Abuse Of
  Resources
• How Is Population Related To Economic
  Development?
• The Bottom Line For The Future Can Billions More
  People Be Fed?

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Chapter Outline

• By-products Of Development Degradation Of The
  Environment
• Sustainable Developmentpossibility Or Oxymoron?

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Economic Development and Resources

• An increase in well-being typically requires that
  we use more of the earths resources.
• The use of every resource leads to waste
  products.
• Our efficiency in reducing waste influences the
  extent to which we can minimize damage to the
  environment and sustain a larger population.

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GNI Gross National Income

• Most widely used measure of economic well-being
  in the world does not
• Take into account the depletion of natural
  resources.
• Make any deduction for depreciation of
  manufactured assets.
• Measure the value of unpaid domestic labor such.
• Account for regional or national differences in
  purchasing power.

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The 20 Largest Economies of the World, Based on
GNI
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Top 10 Countries in Terms of GNI PPP (US) 2005
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Top 10 Countries in Terms of GNI PPP (US) 2001
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Bottom 10 Countries in Terms of GNI PPP (US) 2001
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Bottom 10 Countries in Termsof GNI PPP (US) 2001
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Countries with High Per Capita Income Tend to
Have Low Rates of Population Growth
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Enough Food

• The United Nations estimates that more than 800
  million people in the world have inadequate
  access to food.
• Every minute, 11 children under the age of five
  will die of diseases related to malnutrition.
• Their places will be more than taken by the 264
  babies who will be born during that same minute.

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Land

• Water covers about 71 of the earths surface.
• Only 11 of the worlds land surface is readily
  suitable for crop production.
• 26 is devoted to permanent pasture.
• Forests and woodlands cover 32.
• The remaining 31 is too hot or too cold for any
  of those things, or is used for other purposes
  (cities and highways).

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Farmland

• In 1860, there were an estimated 572 million
  hectares of land in the world cleared for
  agricultural use.
• There is a total of 1.5 billion hectares of
  farmland in the world todaynearly triple that of
  1860.
• This seems to be the real limit of decent-quality
  farmland.

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Green Revolution

• A term coined by the U.S. Agency for
  International Development back in the 1960s.
• It began in the 1940s in Mexico at the
  Rockefeller Foundations International Maize and
  Wheat Improvement Center.
• The goal was to provide a means to increase grain
  production, and under the direction of Norman
  Borlaug new high-yield varieties (HYV) of wheat
  were developed.

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Green Revolution

• In the mid-1960s, these varieties of wheat were
  introduced into a number of countries with
  spectacular early success.
• In 1962, the Ford Foundation began to research
  rice breeding at the International Rice Research
  Institute in the Philippines.
• In just a few years, a high-yield variety of
  dwarf rice had been developed that dramatically
  raised per-acre yields.
• Rice production increased in India and Pakistan,
  as well as in the Philippines, Indonesia, South
  Vietnam, and several other less-developed
  countries.

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Costs of the Green Revolution

• The plants require fertilizers, pesticides, and
  irrigation in rather large amounts, a problem
  compounded by the fact that fertilizer and
  pesticides are normally petroleum-based and the
  irrigation systems require fuel for pumping.
• These are expensive and demand that large amounts
  of adjacent land be devoted to the same crops and
  methods of farming, which often means using farm
  machinery in place of less-efficient human labor.

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Carrying Capacity

• The carrying capacity is the number of organisms
  that can be sustained indefinitely with
• Resources
• Space to live
• Space to get rid waste products
• If the population exceeds an ecosystems carrying
  capacity we have a situation of overpopulation.

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Environmental Concepts and Definitions

• The world inhabited by humans is known to
  scientists as the biosphere.
• The biosphere consists of three major parts
• troposphere - the first 11 miles or so of the
  atmosphere above the surface of the earth
• hydrosphere - surface and ground water
• lithosphere - the upper part of the earths
  crust containing soils, minerals, and fuels that
  plants and animals require for life.

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Living Organisms in the Biosphere

• All living organisms in the biosphere require
  three basic things
• resources (food, water, and energy)
• space to live
• space to dump waste.

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Damage to the Land Surface

• Types of damage
• Soil erosion
• Soil degradation from excess salts and water
• Desertification
• Deforestation
• Loss of biodiversity
• Strip mining or energy resources
• Dumping hazardous waste

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Damage to the Atmosphere

• The atmosphere is the mixture of gases
  surrounding the planet.
• The ozone in the stratosphere protects us from
  the ultraviolet radiation from the sun.
• The greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide and water,
  ozone, methane, nitrous oxide, and
  chlorofluorocarbons) allow light and infrared
  radiation from the sun to pass through the
  troposphere and warm the earths surface.

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Global Warming

• An increase in the global temperature.
• Global warming has the potential to change
  climatic zones, warm up and expand the oceans,
  and melt ice caps.
• The result is a rise in average sea level,
  inundating coastal areas, and a shift in the
  zones of the world where agriculture is most
  productive.
• The evidence is overwhelming that we have been
  adding to greenhouse gases and that human
  activity is contributing to a rise in global
  temperature (UNIPCC 2007).

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Emissions of Carbon Dioxide by Country
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Emissions of Carbon Dioxide by Country
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Damage to the Hydrosphere Water Supply and Water
Quality

• Water covers 71 of the earths surface.
• About 65 of your weight is water.
• Only 3 Of it is the fresh water that humans,
  other animals, and plants need.
• Most of that 3 is ice in the poles and glaciers
  or in extremely deep groundwater.
• Only about 0.003 of the total volume of water on
  the planet is fresh water available to us in
  lakes, soil moisture, exploitable groundwater,
  atmospheric water vapor, and streams.

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Millennium Development Goals for World Community

• Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger.
• Achieve universal primary education.
• Promote gender equity and empower women.
• Reduce childhood mortality.

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Millennium Development Goals for World Community

• Improve maternal health.
• Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases.
• Ensure environmental sustainability.
• Develop global partnership of development.

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Impact of Each of the Transitions

• Mortality transition
• Declining mortality is associated with healthier
  people who consume more food.
• Fertility transition
• Declining fertility encourages women to delay
  marriage, improve their education, and become
  socially more empowered and economically more
  productive.

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The Impact of Each of the Transitions

• Migration transition
• Migration tends to move people from economically
  less well-off places to better-off places.
• Urban transition
• Can accelerate the process of development, which
  in general is a good thing for the people
  involved, but may not be so good in terms of its
  impact on the environment

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The Impact of Each of the Transitions

• Age transition
• A young age structure leads to a high level of
  dependency, which strains the economys ability
  to generate savings for the investment needed to
  create more jobs.
• Family and household transition
• Diversity of living arrangements may also lead to
  less efficient use of Resources.

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Differences in Per-Person Daily Caloric Intake
Over Time
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Differences in Per-Person Daily Caloric Intake
Over Time
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Ecological Footprints of Nations
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Ecological Footprints of Nations