Renewable resources and population growth: Past experiences and future prospects

The links between population growth, resource use, and environmental quality are too complex to permit straightforward generalizations about direct causal relationships. Rapid population growth, however, has increased the number of poor people in developing countries, thus contributing to the degradation of the environment and the renewable resources of land, water, and nonhuman species on which humans depend. Demands of the rich industrial countries have also generated environmental pressures and have been foremost in the consumption of the so-called nonrenewable resources: fossil fuels, metals, and minerals. On the other hand, population and economic growth have also stimulated technological and management changes that help supply and use resources more effectively. Wide variations in the possible ultimate size of world population and technological change make future interrelationships of population, resources, and the environment uncertain as well as complex. But those interrelationships are mediated largely by government policies. Responsible governments can bring about a sustainable balance in the population/resource/environment equation by adopting population and development policies that experience has shown could reduce future population numbers in developing countries below the additional five billion indicated in current United Nations medium projections, coupled with proven management programs in both developing and developed countries that could brake and reverse the depletion and degradation of natural resources.This article is adapted from: Robert Repetto, "Population, Resources, Environment; An Uncertain Future,"Population Bulletin, Vol. 42, No. 2 (Washington, D.C.: Population Reference Bureau, 1987).