Population and Strategies for National Sustainable Development

Understanding the links between population dynamics and sustainable development is crucial in achieving the latter. This handbook, prepared by the World Conservation Union and the UN Fund for Population Activities, explains the connections in ways which will enable planners and policy makers to build them into their strategies for National Sustainable Development. The authors show how population and environmental issues are linked, and also why it has been difficult to generalize about the linkages, offering solutions and proposing a strategy to build Population Environment Networks. The explain the main population issues, of mortality, fertility, migration, urbanization and the demographic transition; they set out the conditions which define population problems and the ways in which they can be measured and quantitative models applied. The importance of adapting policies to local conditions is shown to be crucial. This study will be invaluable for those professionally involved, for a wide range of practitioners in the voluntary sector, and for researchers and students, in understanding and tackling the questions