Outline

Lecture 2; MrL

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Human population in the worldHuman population in BangladeshSustainability and sustainable

developmentMillennium Development Goals Carrying capacityEcological footprint

Human population in the world

Figure. Long-term world population growth, 1750-2050. Source: United Nations Population Division

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• Human population has grown about ten-fold over the past 300 years

• Nearly four-fold in just the last century

Lecture 2; MrL

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Human population in Bangladesh3

More population means more interactions with environment; means more impacts on environment

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Sustainability and sustainable development4

Sustainability means capability of being maintained over the long term.

• More specifically – Sustainability is "meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (United Nation 1987).

Sustainable development refers to the "Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (United Nation 1987).

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Sustainability and sustainable development5

Dimensions/components of sustainability/sustainable development

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Millennium Development Goals 6

Millennium Development Goals by 2015:

1. To eradicate extreme poverty and hunger2. To achieve universal primary education3. To promote gender equality and empower women4. To reduce child mortality5. To improve maternal health6. To combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases7. To ensure environmental sustainability8. To develop a global partnership for development

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Carrying capacity – what is it?7

The carrying capacity is the maximum population size of the species that the environment can sustain indefinitely, given the food, habitat, water and other necessities available in the environment.

The carrying capacity is the number of individuals an environment can support without significant negative impacts to the given organism and its environment.

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Carrying capacity –characteristics and facts

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Below carrying capacity - populations increase Above carrying capacity - populations decrease The carrying capacity of an environment may

vary for different species and may change over time due to a variety of factors, including: food availability, water supply, environmental conditions and living space.

At the global scale, scientific data now indicates that humans are living beyond the carrying capacity of planet Earth and that this cannot continue indefinitely (according to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment of the UN, 2005).

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Ecological footprint9

The Ecological footprint measures human consumption in terms of the biologically productive land needed to provide the resources and absorb the wastes of the average global citizen.

In 2008 it required 2.7 global hectares per person, 30% more than the natural biological capacity of 2.1 global hectares (World Wide Fund for Nature, 2008).

The resulting ecological deficit must be met from unsustainable extra sources such as taken from the past (e.g. fossil fuels); or borrowed from the future as unsustainable resource usage (e.g. by over exploiting forests and fisheries).

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Figure below examines sustainability at the scale of individual countries by contrasting their Ecological

Footprint with their UN Human Development Index (a measure of standard of living).

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References for today’s lecture

http://www.eoearth.org/view/article/153596/http://www.tradingeconomics.com/

bangladesh/population http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainability http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

Carrying_capacity

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Lecture 2; MrL

Any question?

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