Demography's Role in Sustainable Development

Abstract

In preparing for the RIO+20 Earth Summit, the world community must acknowledge that population trends interact strongly with economic development and environmental change at local and global levels. The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) recently convened leading experts to consider how demographic factors promote or impede sustainable development. The panel concluded that human beings—their numbers, distribution, and characteristics—are at the center of concern for sustainable development ([ 1 ][1]). The evidence is clear that demographic differences fundamentally affect people's contribution to environmental burdens, their ability to participate in sustainable development, and their adaptability to a changing environment. The developmental challenges are by far the most significant where population growth and poverty are the highest, education is the lowest, and vulnerabilities to environmental change are the greatest. Within families, women and children are most vulnerable. As members of this panel, we put forward five action implications: (i) Recognize that the numbers, characteristics, and behaviors of people are at the heart of sustainable development challenges and of their solutions. (ii) Identify subpopulations that contribute most to environmental degradation and those that are most vulnerable to its consequences. In poor countries especially, these subpopulations are readily identifiable according to age, gender, level of education, place of residence, and standard of living. (iii) Devise sustainable development policies to treat these subpopulations differently and appropriately, according to their demographic and behavioral characteristics. (iv) Facilitate the inevitable trend of increasing urbanization in ways that ensure that environmental hazards and vulnerabilities are under control. (v) Invest in human capital—people's education and health, including reproductive health—to slow population growth, accelerate the transition to green technologies, and improve people's adaptive capacity to environmental change. 1. [↵][2] IIASA, World Population Program, Demographic Challenges for Sustainable Development ([www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/POP/Laxenburg%20Declaration%20on%20Population%20and%20Development.html][3]). [1]: #ref-1 [2]: #xref-ref-1-1 View reference 1 in text [3]: http://www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/POP/Laxenburg%20Declaration%20on%20Population%20and%20Development.html