strategy

Building demographic factors into national policies for sustainable development

Synonyms:

Developing human resources to build demographic factors into local sustainable development programmes
Assessing costs and financing to build demographic factors into national sustainable development policies

Description:

Demographic trends and factors are taken into account when formulating integrated national policies for environment and development.

Context:

Sustainability with respect to natural resource management has a solid economic underpinning. It implies maintaining the productivity of the resource base. In fact, it implies more. In precisely those countries where populations are rising more rapidly, the poorest, the relative importance of natural resources in total productive capital is greatest. If those larger populations are to be enabled to improve their standards of consumption, the productivity of the asset base must increase. Yet, in these same countries and others, a wide range of natural resources are becoming less productive through depletion and deterioration. There is also an issue of intergenerational equity. Is it fair to leave for a population that will inevitably be much larger (whatever to be much better off) a natural resource base that has been depleted and rendered significantly less productive than it is today?

This strategy features in the framework of Agenda 21 as formulated at UNCED (Rio de Janeiro, 1992), now coordinated by the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development and implemented through national and local authorities. International and regional scientific institutions would, on request, assist governments to include concerns for population/environment interactions at global, ecosystem and micro-levels in the training of demographers and population and environment specialists. Training would include research on links and ways to design integrated strategies.

Implementation:

The building by governments of demographic factors into national sustainable development policies will require at least US$ 90 million annually from international sources.

Claim:

Workshops should be conducted to help programme and projects managers to link population programmes to other development and environmental goals.

Broader:

Developing policy
Financing development
Managing demographic change
Training in population and development
Developing sustainable population policy
Developing sustainable population policy
Supporting demographic changes for sustainable development
Articulating development policies for resource-based economies
Using research results to assess sustainable development issues
Raising awareness of demography in sustainable development planning

Narrower:

Preparing training manuals on population and sustainable development
Integrating population programmes in environment and development plans
Including resource needs, waste management and conservation in settlement policy
Strengthening capacity to build demographic factors into national sustainable development policies

Facilitates:

Promoting small-scale human society
Reducing ecological impact of overpopulation
Balancing depletion and replacement rates of natural resources
Developing special programmes on migration causing or caused by environmental change
Including demographic concerns in international programmes for sustainable development

Facilitated by:

Documenting population trends
Expanding environmental management education and training
Advocating intergenerational equity
Planning development of human resources
Improving regional demographic information
Promoting paternal involvement in child rearing
Assessing links between demographic factors and sustainability
Giving special attention to informing women on demographic impacts
Training demographers and ecologists in population-environment links

Problems:

Economic underdevelopment