Jag hånar dig med mina apbyxor.
What I'm looking at today: susta inable popul ation.
Towards sustainable and optimum populations
- Assuming the global biocapacity and average footprint [F1] remain stable at the 2003 level, then, to become sustainable, the world population needs to contract to a maximum of 5.1 billion.
- For a "modest" world footprint of 3.3 gha/cap (without allowances for biodiversity or change of biocapacity), the sustainable population is 3.4 billion.
- For a "modest" world footprint of 3.3 gha/cap, plus a 12% allowance for biodiversity (but none for attrition of biocapacity), the sustainable population is 3.0 billion.
- For a "modest" world footprint of 3.3 gha/cap, plus a 20% margin for biodiversity and attrition of biocapacity then the sustainable population is 2.7 billion.
To summarize this brief essay, determination of an "optimum" world population size involves social decisions about the life styles to be lived and the distribution of those life styles among individuals in the population. To us it seems reasonable to assume that, until cultures and technology change radically, the optimum number of people to exist simultaneously km in the vicinity of 1.5 to 2 billion people. That number, if achieved reasonably soon, would also likely permit the maximum number of Homo sapiens to live a good life over the long run. But suppose we have underestimated the optimum and it actually is 4 billion? Since the present population is over 5.5 billion and growing rapidly, the policy implications of our conclusions are still clear.
Sustainable Population Levels Using Footprint Data
The UN currently projects the world's population at 2050 to be between nine and ten billion. In order for that population to be sustainable, Table 3 indicates that the highest sustainable average living standard would be approximately 0.8, about the living standard and FP of Ethiopia today. This is a difficult and harsh standard of living that all nations have struggled for centuries to move away from —approximately one-third the current world average standard of living. The scientists mentioned in the opening second paragraph concluded that approximately 2 billion inhabitants is the maximum sustainable population level. Table 3 illustrates the approximate living standard that the population level could support under average circumstances as determined by Wackernagel and Rees. Thus, the 2 billion maximum stated by other scientists is consistent with the work of Wackernagel and Rees.
U.S. 304,020,129
World 6,665,953,880
18:27 GMT (EST+5) May 06, 2008
Tagged: Environment, Things of Interest
Skrivet av alphanum3r1c, 2008-05-06 20:29
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