5
found that historically transformative human impacts are quite ubiquitous in all
landscapes (Crumley 1998). Importance of human or environmental factors may
differ across time-space framework, as the relationship is always found to be two
ways, as nature and culture are basically indivisible. In addition, the changes in
environment and societies are the result of conflicts between men and environmental actors (Crumley 1994, 1998). Thus, the societies’ relation with their environments has left legacies on their landscapes (Balée 2006; Crumley 1987, 1994;
Crumley and Marquardt 1990). The challenges of global warming, population
explosion, loss of agricultural land, food insecurity, expanding urban sprawl and
various diseases faced by human beings are increasing at a very fast rate which will
have disastrous effects on the future generations, unless properly taken care of right
now. Various threats like drought, flooding, etc., generated by land cover change.
1.3 Human and Environment
There had been efforts to understand the relationship between population dynamics
and environment (Petersen 1972; Cohen 1995), as long back Thomas Malthus studied population in relation to availability of resources to produce his famous in scientific document entitled ‘Essay on the Principle of Population’ (Malthus 1798).
His famous hypothesis mainly advocates that population numbers tend to increase
exponentially while food production increases linearly, thus resulting in natural
‘checks’, such as famine, to further extension in population. While George Perkins
Marsh’s classic ‘Man and Nature’ (1864) focused human-induced soil depletion in
the colonial Africa (Marsh 1864; Tiffen et al. 1994; Lindblade et al. 1998). In 1963,
the U.S. National Academy of Sciences published the report about the consequences
of global population growth (NSI 1963). Paul Ehrlich published ‘The Population
Bomb (1968), which shown study of population growth, food production and environmental status; the ‘Club of Rome’ had published ‘Limits to Growth’ (Huskey
2006) which portrayed the first computer-based population-environment modelling
at global scale (Meadows et al. 1972). Therefore, the efforts to understand the relationship between demographic and environmental changes are rather well-known.
However, it was customary to project environmental change as a mere function of
population growth. Researchers have found that population and consumption are
the two major drivers of humanity’s ecological footprint at the global level (Dietz
et al. 2007). In 1950, 5 years after the founding of the United Nations, world population was estimated to be numbered as c. 2.6 billion persons. It reached 5 billion in
1987 and 6 billion in 1999. In October 2011, the global population was estimated to
include 7 billion persons (UNFPA 2017). A global movement ‘7 Billion Actions’
was launched to mark this milestone (UNDSA 2013), and as of the mid-2015 the
world population reached 7.3 billion, meaning that the world has added approximately one billion people in the span of only 12 years. This dramatic growth has
been possible largely because of increasing numbers of people surviving to reproductive age and has been accompanied by major changes in fertility rates, increasing urbanization and accelerating migration (Sławomir et al. 2015), and this trend
1 Habitat, Ecology and Ekistics: An Overview
found that historically transformative human impacts are quite ubiquitous in all
landscapes (Crumley 1998). Importance of human or environmental factors may
differ across time-space framework, as the relationship is always found to be two
ways, as nature and culture are basically indivisible. In addition, the changes in
environment and societies are the result of conflicts between men and environmental actors (Crumley 1994, 1998). Thus, the societies’ relation with their environments has left legacies on their landscapes (Balée 2006; Crumley 1987, 1994;
Crumley and Marquardt 1990). The challenges of global warming, population
explosion, loss of agricultural land, food insecurity, expanding urban sprawl and
various diseases faced by human beings are increasing at a very fast rate which will
have disastrous effects on the future generations, unless properly taken care of right
now. Various threats like drought, flooding, etc., generated by land cover change.
1.3 Human and Environment
There had been efforts to understand the relationship between population dynamics
and environment (Petersen 1972; Cohen 1995), as long back Thomas Malthus studied population in relation to availability of resources to produce his famous in scientific document entitled ‘Essay on the Principle of Population’ (Malthus 1798).
His famous hypothesis mainly advocates that population numbers tend to increase
exponentially while food production increases linearly, thus resulting in natural
‘checks’, such as famine, to further extension in population. While George Perkins
Marsh’s classic ‘Man and Nature’ (1864) focused human-induced soil depletion in
the colonial Africa (Marsh 1864; Tiffen et al. 1994; Lindblade et al. 1998). In 1963,
the U.S. National Academy of Sciences published the report about the consequences
of global population growth (NSI 1963). Paul Ehrlich published ‘The Population
Bomb (1968), which shown study of population growth, food production and environmental status; the ‘Club of Rome’ had published ‘Limits to Growth’ (Huskey
2006) which portrayed the first computer-based population-environment modelling
at global scale (Meadows et al. 1972). Therefore, the efforts to understand the relationship between demographic and environmental changes are rather well-known.
However, it was customary to project environmental change as a mere function of
population growth. Researchers have found that population and consumption are
the two major drivers of humanity’s ecological footprint at the global level (Dietz
et al. 2007). In 1950, 5 years after the founding of the United Nations, world population was estimated to be numbered as c. 2.6 billion persons. It reached 5 billion in
1987 and 6 billion in 1999. In October 2011, the global population was estimated to
include 7 billion persons (UNFPA 2017). A global movement ‘7 Billion Actions’
was launched to mark this milestone (UNDSA 2013), and as of the mid-2015 the
world population reached 7.3 billion, meaning that the world has added approximately one billion people in the span of only 12 years. This dramatic growth has
been possible largely because of increasing numbers of people surviving to reproductive age and has been accompanied by major changes in fertility rates, increasing urbanization and accelerating migration (Sławomir et al. 2015), and this trend
1 Habitat, Ecology and Ekistics: An Overview