Relations entre croissance démographique et environnement

Abstract

This work provides a brief review of changing attitudes toward population growth, the environment, and economic development, and summarizes the major theoretical doctrines concerning the interrelations between rapid population growth and environmental damage and results of research on the topic. The general optimism about the prospects for progress in the Southern hemisphere of the 1950s and 1960s gave way to greater skepticism and recognition of problems in the 1970s. The creation of the UN Population Fund in 1969 and the UN Environmental Program in 1972 reflected increasing concern in the international community about demographic growth and environmental degradation in the south. Economic and social conditions appeared to worsen in the 1980s, with the recession and structural adjustment programs having a disproportionate impact on the most destitute. New integrating concepts and paradigms including that of sustainable development arose in this context of profound crisis in many Third World economics and societies. The most widely accepted position on the connection between population growth and environmental degradation since the late 1970s has been a nuanced neo-Malthusian approach which sees demographic pressure not as the direct cause of environmental problems, but as an aggravating factor. The slowing of population growth is viewed as 1 element in an overall strategy that also includes encouragement of development and elimination of poverty. The extreme positions that rapid population growth is the major cause of environmental degeneration or that population growth has little actual effect on the environment have been largely abandoned. The impact of population growth on the environment can be analyzed at the global, regional, or local level. On the global level, there is agreement that 2 major factors responsible for environmental deterioration are the model of economic development followed in the Northern countries and the poverty of much of the population in the Southern countries. Quantitative studies have been unable to demonstrate at the global level that demographic growth has a primordial effect on the environment. The ecological consequences of poverty cannot be reduced without attacking poverty itself, of which high fertility is but 1 aspect. A growing but still insufficient number of smaller scale studies suggest that demographic growth is not always the major element in environmental damage or in preventable exhaustion of resources. Specific studies are needed on well-defined populations in order to unravel the effects of population growth and other factors. The approach should be systemic and transdisciplinary, depending on a less fragmented vision of reality than that reflected in traditional disciplinary boundaries.