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Promising Directions and Methods for
Population-Environment Analysis.
Wolfgang Lutz
International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Austria.
The scientific analysis of the interactions between the human population and its natural environment is highly complex and full of traps. Studies in this field often tend to focus on just one specific mechanism by which population changes impact on environmental changes (or vice versa) in very specific settings. Also a broad variety of analytical tools ranging from GIS based studies over qualitative/anthropological research to computer simulation models and the fact that the studies necessarily need to draw an several scientific disciplines tend to make such studies less straight forward than more conventional studies within one discipline. The combination of this analytical complexity with the fact that population-environment interdependencies are often perceived as being of greatest importance for our future makes this field particularly vulnerable to advocacy groups that have another agenda than the scientific one. In this presentation I will try to review the field and summarize the findings of a recent survey of promising methods in population-environment analysis.
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