Population and Sustainability: Understanding Population, Environment, and Development Linkages

Daniel C. Clay and Thomas Reardon

No 57055, Food Security Collaborative Working Papers from Michigan State University, Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics

Abstract: The triple challenge of rapid population growth, declining agricultural productivity, and natural resource degradation are not isolated from one another; they are intimately related. However, strategic planning and development programming tend to focus on individual sectors such as the environment, agriculture, and population; they do not explicitly take into account the compatibilities and inconsistencies among them. Farm households and their livelihood strategies are at the core of the intersectoral linkages approach advocated in this chapter. Three key aspects of the population-environment-development debate are discussed: first, the finding that inconsistencies between public and individual household behavior regarding childbearing and family planning constitute a veritable "demographic tragedy of the commons;" second, the tendency to conceptualize population variables as "unmanageable," and exogenous to environmental and economic change; third, the importance of land markets and land tenure as critical population-sustainability policy issues.

Keywords: Agricultural and Food Policy; Community/Rural/Urban Development; Consumer/Household Economics; Environmental Economics and Policy; Food Security and Poverty; International Development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 26
Date: 1998
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:midcwp:57055

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.57055

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