At the empirical level linking population and environment is quite problematic because both population and environment refer to vectors of different conditions and complex processes. Population variables refer to size, growth rate, composition, structure, fertility, mortality, migration, etc. Environment factors refer to quality of air, water, soil, sound, minerals, agricultural and forest produce, and various types of pollutants with ill defined levels of permissible toxicity. Obviously, the effect of size of population on proximate variables of development may quantitatively and qualitatively differ from effect of aging on the same. Similarly the effect of climatic change on birth rate will be different from its effect on migration and occupational mobility.

In this lecture we focus more on the connection between population processes and sustainable development. It may be noted that the concept of sustainable development combines the concept of development as well as environmental quality.

WHAT IS SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT?

The idea of sustainable development is simple. All of us want development. There is no doubt about that. Yet, we also want that development should be sustained and the fruits of development should be available to all including the most vulnerable sections of society and the next generations. Development with benefits confined to some and to members of the present generation only, may be called development but not sustainable development. In this framework, development needs to be re-examined in the framework of theories of sustainable development, and they have to go beyond the effect of population growth on savings, capital and growth rate of income.

Yet the term social development has been used in multivocal sense having multiple meanings. Sustainability has been conceptualized in several ways. The dictionary meaning of the word “sustainable” is that it is a thing that can be kept up, maintained or prolonged. Thus sustainable development may be defined as that process of development which can last. The State of World Population 1992, the report prepared by United Nations Population Fund quotes the following definitions of sustainable development: