Basic Vocab and Information For Human Population Dynamics

Vocab

• Demographics: study of dynamics of population change

• Crude Birth Rate: The number of live births per 1,000 people per year.

• Crude Death Rate: The number of deaths per 1,000 people per year.

• Natural Increase Rate: The rate of population growth, calculated as ((CBR-CDR)/10)

• Doubling Time: The number of years it takes for a population to double in size, calculated using the rule of 70 (70 / NIR).

• Total Fertility Rate: The average number of children a woman is expected to have during her lifetime.

• The average number of children a woman is expected to have during her lifetime.

More Economically Developed Countries (MEDCs)

• Examples: Europe, North America, South Africa, Israel, Japan

Characteristics:

• High GDP per capita

• Higher standards of living

• Access to better healthcare and education

• Low population growth rates due to low CBR and CDR

• High ecological footprints

Less Economically Developed Countries (LEDCs)

• Examples: Sub-Saharan Africa, many parts of Asia, South America

  Characteristics:

  • Lower GDP per capita

  • Higher levels of poverty

  • Higher population growth rates due to higher CBR and declining CDR

  • Lower ecological footprints

Human Adaptability and Carrying Capacity

• Flexibility:

  • Importing food and resources

  • Reducing family size through family planning

  • Adaptation and mitigation strategies such as education, healthcare improvement, and income enhancement

  • Changes in dietary choices

Reasons for large families

• High infant mortality rate

• Security in old age

• Economic assets: agriculture

• Status of women

• Contraceptives

Demographic Transition Model

Stages

1. High Stationary: High birth and death rates due to limited birth control, high infant mortality, and little medical advancement.

2. Early Expanding: Death rates drop due to improved healthcare and sanitation, birth rates remain high, leading to rapid population growth.

3. Late Expanding: Birth rates start to decline due to increased use of contraceptives, better education, and women's empowerment.

4. Low Stationary: Both birth and death rates are low, stabilizing the population.

5. Declining: Birth rates fall below death rates, leading to an aging population and potential population decline.

Limitations

• Initial model didn’t have 5th stage - only recently countries have become part of this(Germany, Sweden)

• Fall in death rate hasn’t been as steep

• Death from AIDS-related diseases can affect this

• Assumptions about contraceptive availability and societal changes that may not hold true everywhere.

• Assumes increasing education and literacy for women (not always the case)

Theories of Population Growth

Malthusian Theory

• Food supply was a limit to population growth.

• Population can never increase beyond food supplies necessary to support it.

• Too simplistic.

• Ignore reality (only the poor go hungry).

• Did not account for technological advancements or distribution inequalities.

Boserup Theory

• Technological advancements can increase food production.

• Population growth leads to development

• Assumes closed communities, not accounting for migration and external factors.

• Migration happens in overpopulated areas

• Overpopulation can lead to bad farming

Basic Vocab and Information for Resource Use in Society

Vocabulary

• Renewable Natural Capital: Resources that can regenerate or be replaced (e.g., forests, solar energy).

• Non-Renewable Natural Capital: Resources that are finite and cannot be replaced on a human timescale (e.g., fossil fuels, minerals).

• Natural Capital: Resources that provide economic, ecological, and intrinsic value to humans.

• Capital includes:

  • Natural sources with value (trees, water)

  • Natural sources that provides services (flood protection)

  • Processes (water cycle)

Renewable Capital

• Living species and ecosystems using solar energy and photosynthesis.

• Groundwater, if managed sustainably.

• The ozone layer.

Non-Renewable Natural Capital

• Fossil fuels, minerals

• Finite amounts: not renewed/replaced after they’ve been used/depleted

• Alternatives need to be found

Arctic

• Mineral riches surrounding Arctic Ocean (hydrocarbons)

• Climate change causing it to warm up (more ice-free days)

• Canada, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Russia, US have Arctic Ocean coastlines

• They are jostling for ownership of the region's frozen seas.

Antarctic

• 98% covered in ice and snow

• Humans exploit it through tourism, fishing and whaling

• Nobody owns it but seven have staked territorial claims via “The Antarctic Treaty”

Changing value of natural capital

• Cork forests

  • Previously used to seal wine bottles

  • Being replaced by screw top bottles and plastic corks

  • Forests losing value due to not being used as natural capital to humans

  • Not a good thing because they are not biodegradable

• Lithium

  • More than half of lithium reserves are under a desert salt plain in Bolivia

  • Lithium production not enough to power electric cars if they were to replace cars with petrol engines

Valuing Natural Capital

• Use Valuation - use natural capital we can put prices on

  • Economic price of marketable goods

  • Recreational functions (tourism)

• Non-use Valuation - natural capital that it is impossible to put a price on

  • If it has intrinsic value (right to exist)

  • If it has future uses we aren’t aware of (Science, Medicine)

  • If it has existential value (Amazon rainforest)

Solid Domestic Waste

• Trash, garbage, rubbish

• Something is waste when there is no value for the producer

Linear model of producing: take, make, dump

The circular economy aims to:

• Be restorative of the environment

• Use renewable energy source

• Eliminate or reduce toxic wastes

• Eradicate waste through careful design

Strategies to minimize waste

• Reduce

  • Change shopping habits, buy things that will last

  • Buy energy efficient, recyclable goods

• Reuse

  • Compost food waste

  • Use old clothes as cleaning rags

  • Read E Books

• Recycle

Strategies for waste disposal

• Landfills

  • Cheap initial cost

  • Away from highly populated area

  • Lined with special plastic liners to prevent liquid waste from leaving the area+

  • Methane used to generate electricity

  • Issues with leaking gases

  • Contaminate groundwater & crops

  • Cause health problems

• Incinerators

  • Burning waste causes air pollution (release harmful gases)

  • Expensive

  • Need a lot of waste to use this (does not discourage waste reduction)

  • Generates steam and powers heat powered buildings nearby

  • Ash can be used in road building

  • Space taken up is smaller than landfills

• Anaerobic digestion: biodegradable matter broken down by microorganisms in theabsence of oxygen

  • Renewable

  • Methane used as fuel and waste used as fertilizer

  • HIgh set up cost

  • Feasible for large farms mainly

• Domestic Organic Waste: can be composted or put into anaerobic bio-digesters

  • Eco-friendly and methane produced can be used as fuel, improve soil health

  • Takes up space, only organic matter can be used, health and safety concerns (smell)

Human Systems and Resource Use

Carrying Capacity:

• The maximum population size an environment can sustainably support.

• Measurement challenges due to variable resource use, technology, and importation of resources.

Difficulties in measuring human carrying capacity

• Greater range of resources used

• Substitution of resources if others run out

• Resource use varies person to person

• Import resources from outside our immediate environment

• Developments in technology

• Importing resources —> increases carrying capacity for local population (no influence on globalcarrying capacity)

Ways to change human carrying capacity

• Ecocentric

  • Try to reduce their use of non-renewable resources

  • Use solar cells for electricity and rain water for water supply

• Technocentric

  • HCC can be expanded through technological innovation

  • Reuse, recycle and remanufacturing

Ecological footprint: area of land and water required to support a defined human population ata given standard of living

• The model estimates demands that human population place on the environment

• Vary country to country (due to lifestyle choices)

• 2012: EF of all people was equivalent to 1.5 Earths

Factors

• Area of land needed to absorb wastes (water, sewage, CO2)

• Population size

• Cropland to grow food

• World carrying capacity does not change but local does.