| S09 | Population and
environment – Global - Population et environnement - au niveau global |
| Organiser: | O'Neill Brian Watson Institute for International Studies, Brown University, Box 1831, Providence, RI 02912, USA Tel: +401-863-9916 Fax: +401-863-2192 Email: bconeill@brown.edu |
| Outline: | This session will examine links
between demographic factors and environmental issues that have global impacts, such as
climate change or ozone depletion, or local or regional impacts that are widespread enough
to be of global concern, such as biodiversity loss, deforestation or nitrogen pollution.
Population-related variables such as size, growth rate, age structure and distribution can
play important roles not only as driving forces of environmental change, but also as
factors in the vulnerability of societies to environmental stress and their ability to
respond to it. Areas of interest include, but are not limited to, links between ageing and
the environment through household-level, macro-economic or cultural effects; links between
population-related policies and global environmental issues or between demographic
variables and environmental policies; environmental implications of rapid urbanisation, in
particular in coastal regions; and methodological approaches to integrating demographic
factors into assessments of global issues. Because the effects of demographic variables can be mediated through various combinations of economics, technology, culture and institutions, individual case studies have tended to produce a variety of results. While such studies are of fundamental importance to advancing understanding, papers that attempt to draw methodological lessons or substantive conclusions of a more general nature will be favoured over those focused exclusively on reporting the results of case studies themselves. |