World population Monitoring 2001: Population Environment and Development

The present report has been prepared in response to Economic and Social Council resolution 1995/55 of 28 July 1995,in which the Council endorsed the terms of reference and the topic-oriented and prioritized multi-year work programme proposed by the Commission on Population and Development at its twenty-eight session. According to the multi-year work programme, which was to serve as a framework for the assessment of the progress achieved in the implementation of the programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development, a new series of reports on a special set of the themes would be prepared annually. The Commission, in its decisions 1999/1 and 2000/1, decided that the special theme for the year 2001 should be population, environment and development, which is the topic of the present report.The general trends of rapid population growth sustained but uneven economic improvement and environmental degradation are generally well accepted. However, how population size and growth, environmental change and development interact on each other is not well established. This report views what is known about this interrelationships. The report analyses recent information and policy perspectives on population environment and development. The topics investigated in this report include: the evolution of population and the environment at major united nations conferences;temporal trends in population environment and development;government views and policies concerning population, environment and development;population size and growth, environment and development;migration, population change and the rural environment;health, mortality, fertility and the environment;and population, environment and development in urban settings. The presentation of these topics is followed by conclusions thereon. Annex I deals with the availability and quality of data;and annex II deals with theories and frameworks for modelling the impact of population growth on the physical environment. As requested by the Economic and Social Council, the Population Division, Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat, annually prepares the world population monitoring report on the topic of that year's session of the Commission. The full report is accompanied by a summarized version, the "concise report" (E/CN.9/2001/2). Each of these reports is presented and discussed at the Commission and then revised for publication. Presented here is the revised version of the full report on the theme "Population, environment and development". The report was prepared by the Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations. The Population Division gratefully acknowledges Professor Richard Bilsborrow of the University of North Carolina for this work on chapter V on migration, population change and the rural environment. The population Division is also grateful to the United Nations Statistics Division for the preparation of the annex on data availability and data quality.