ABSTRACT
This chapter describes household livelihood strategies approach to the subject of sustainability and population growth. Treating population as an exogenous variable is especially problematic in that it obscures the fact that population-environment-development links are highly interactive. Fertility, mortality, and migration patterns can all influence income strategies and the ways in which households manage land and other resources, but these population variables are in turn affected by household income and resource management. Government and donor strategic and program planning needs to mirror the same set of interactions that characterize poor rural households. The chapter reviews the cornerstones of the population-environment-development debate and some of the research literature that has fueled the debate. The population-environment-development debate is important to because it provides a framework for understanding intersectoral linkages, and because it helps define the context and very nature of the individual linkages.
