ABSTRACT
Population growth is widely seen as one of the most important factors influencing both economic development and environmental change (Harrison 1993; Preston 1994). Yet the relationships between these factors are highly complex and vary depending on the scale of analysis. This chapter is based on a study of population dynamics at the local scale of people surveyed by the authors in the early 1990s in two parts of the Badia. The Badia, with an average rainfall of less than 150mm, covers 80 per cent of the land area of Jordan, but is home to less than 2.5 per cent of Jordanians (Ministry of Planning 1988).
