ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the population side of the population-environment interaction. It demonstrates which future population sizes and patterns are at all possible on global and regional scales, and how they could be influenced. The chapter discusses the nature of population dynamics and a distinction between the determinants and the characteristics of changing population patterns. It shows that there are significant uncertainties concerning the future size of the world population, its regional distribution, and its age distribution. When discussing the interactions between changes in population patterns and degradation of the environment, it is useful to distinguish between regional and global environmental changes. Population-environment interactions are clearly very different for different cultures even under identical climate conditions or between primitive subsistence farming in different climatic or geological zones. The alternative population projections show what will happen to world population size under certain trends of fertility and mortality.
