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Population and Environment
Published in: Population and Environment 4/2021

23-03-2021 | Review Article

Population responses to environmental change: looking back, looking forward

Author: Barbara Entwisle

Published in: Population and Environment | Issue 4/2021

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Abstract

Over the past two decades, population researchers have engaged in a far-reaching and productive program of research on demographic responses to changes in the natural environment. This essay “looks back” to the origins of these developments, identifying pivotal agenda-setting moments in the 1990s and tracing the impact on contemporary research. The essay also “looks forward” to identify critical gaps and challenges that remain to be addressed and to set an agenda for future research on population responses to environmental change. It recommends that the multidimensionality of environmental contexts and change be fully embraced, long run as well as short term effects be investigated, variability in the effects of environmental change in relation to social institutions, policy implementation, and environmental context be examined, movement between contexts as well as change in situ as sources of environmental change be considered, and interconnections among demographic processes in response to environmental change be explored. Taking these steps will position demographers to contribute significantly to a larger and deeper understanding of environmental change and its consequences, locally, regionally, and globally.
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Footnotes
1
Evans had had success using grants programs to jump-start research areas before, notably, in the areas of teen pregnancy, immigration, and family demography.
 
2
Evans pointed to this, along with the National Academy of Sciences workshop on population and land use (Jolly & Torrey, 1993) and some interest by NIEHS as key to NICHD’s approval of the RFA and grants program.
 
3
Incorporating measures of the social and natural environment may require demographers to consider potentially cross-cutting contexts, e.g., when policy-relevant units such as counties or states do not correspond to environmentally-relevant units such as watersheds.
 
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Metadata
Title
Population responses to environmental change: looking back, looking forward
Author
Barbara Entwisle
Publication date
23-03-2021
Publisher
Springer Netherlands
Published in
Population and Environment / Issue 4/2021
Print ISSN: 0199-0039
Electronic ISSN: 1573-7810
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11111-021-00382-w

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