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Like Daniel Noin, with whom he has collaborated for many years, the author has long had an interest in the relationships between population and environment, especially in arid regions. His early researches on nomadic migrations in Tunisia during the early 1950s demonstrated the influence of regional imbalance. Although the population of the arid world, now 15 per cent of the world total on 37 per cent of the earth's surface, is growing rapidly, population pressure is not always the prime factor in the phenomenon of desertification, which varies greatly in time and space. Population distribution is increasingly concentrated in cities localised in small areas of arid countries, which, as in the case of Jordan, are beginning to introduce policies for the sustainable development of their arid regions., La population des déserts. Comme Daniel Noin, avec lequel il a collaboré pendant des années, l'auteur s'est intéressé longtemps aux relations entre population et environnement, particulièrement dans les régions arides. Ses premières recherches sur les migrations des nomades en Tunisie au début des années cinquante ont démontré l'influence d'un déséquilibre régional. Bien que la population des zones arides (15 % de la population du monde sur 37 % de sa superficie) augmente rapidement, la pression démographique ne joue pas toujours un rôle essentiel dans le phénomène de désertification qui varie beaucoup dans l'espace et dans le temps. La population se concentre de plus en plus dans les villes des Etats qui, à l'exemple de la Jordanie commencent à édicter des politiques de développement durable de leurs régions arides., Clarke John I. People in Deserts . In: Espace, populations, sociétés, 1996-1. Hommage à Daniel Noin. pp. 23-28.

Attention is focused worldwide on the overlapping concerns of population growth, environmental change, inequalities in development, and political instability. There is awareness that the earth is one unit of interrelated activity, which can disrupt the single fragile ecosystem. A diverse set of explanations for these interrelationships is offered. Ehrlich and Ehrlich propose that population growth is a driving force that must be reckoned with for a sustainable planet. Both Simon and Kahn and Boserup suggest that human ingenuity is a viable solution for overcoming environmental challenges. The Commoner thesis is that social, economic, technological, and political factors are important intervening factors between the environment and population views. Now the focus is on research. Researching the interrelationships is a complex operation of multiple major, minor, and intervening factors, which may be approached at a local, national, regional, or world scale. Comparisons between scales is difficult. The primary policy question is how does population increase impact locally on the environment. The examination of this policy issue is dependent on human perceptions and values. Who is blameworthy and the bridging of economic gaps between rich and poor nations is now important. The world's population is becoming increasingly more urbanized, which lessons the impact on the environment, but the problem remains of how to adjust to rapid population growth. The goal of sustainable development for the present and future generations is important conceptually. Sustainable development implies that population activities must be integrated with environmental awareness, changes must be made in lifestyles and consumption, land tenure and use must be reformed, and poverty alleviated. The UN Population Fund directs activity toward reordering priorities and emphasizes greater energy efficiency and resource conservation, poverty alleviation, and reduced population growth. Population education is slowly gaining in respectability as is environmental education, both of which are policy- and problem-oriented. Population-environmental education is best linked with human geography syllabuses, which pertain to multiple levels and periods of analysis and are sensitive to the great diversity of cultures, economies, politics, and environments.

Impact of natural disasters on the population of Japan, Takeshi Mizutani and Takamasa Nakano The consequences of the 1972 earthquake on the urban structure and population distribution of Managua, Jurgen Bahr Friuli - ten years after the earthquake of 6 May 1972, Robert Geipel The impact of the disaster in Mexico City, September 1985, Maria Teresa Gutierrez de MacGregor Population displacement due to riverbank erosion of the Jamuna in Bangladesh, K. Maudood Elahi The hazard potential of drought for the population of the Sahel, C.R. de Freitas The 1984 drought and settler migration in Ethiopia, Aynalem Adugna The indirect effects of famine on population - case studies from the Republic of Sudan, A. Trilsbach Chine - the demographic disaster of 1958-61, A.J. Jowett Paradise delayed - epidemics of infectious disease in the industrialized world, Peter Curson Disasters and diseases as they affect the growth and distribution of the population of Uganda, Hans K. Hecklau The disaster life cycle and human adjustments - lessons from Three-Mile Island and Chernobyl, Chris C. Park The Bhopal disaster, S.L. Kayastha and P. Nag Wars-mortality-poverty, Stanislaw Otok Was the Spanish Civil War, 1936-39, a demographic disaster?, Maria Carmen Faus Pujol Population, war and politics - a case study of Gaza Strip, Ahmed Said Dahlan The disaster of apartheid forced removals, C. M. Rogerson A simulation study of population and social disturbance in Japan, Koichiro Takahashi.

The population of Europe has long comprised relatively more elderly people than any other continent, a fact largely caused by prolonged fertility decline. The overall average of those aged 65 and over is 13 per cent, so there are more than 64 million in this age group; in Northern Europe they constitute 15 per cent and in Western Europe 14 per cent. Until the 1960s France had a higher proportion of elderly than any other major country, but since then it has been rapidly overtaken by many other European countries headed by Sweden but including the United Kingdom. An analysis of ageing in the 21 Council of Europe countries reveals trends and characteristics., Le vieillissement en Europe : quelques Depuis longtemps la population de l'Europe comprend plus de personnes âgées, relativement, que celles des autres continents; la cause majeure en est le déclin prolongé de la fécondité. 13 % de la population de l'ensemble des pays européens ont 65 ans ou plus; ce groupe d'âge compte plus de 64 millions de personnes. En Europe du nord, il constitue 15 °7o de la population et en Europe occidentale 14 %. Jusqu'aux années soixante, la France avait une proportion plus forte de personnes âgées qu'aucun autre pays mais, maintenant, beaucoup d'autres pays européens, surtout la Suède mais aussi le Royaume- Uni, en ont des proportions plus élevées. Une analyse du vieillissement dans les 21 pays du Conseil d'Europe en révèle les tendances et les caractéristiques., Clarke John I. Ageing in Europe: Introductory Remarks . In: Espace, populations, sociétés, 1987-1. Personnes âgées et vieillissement - Elderly people and ageing - Londres, juillet 1986. pp. 23-28.

Geography of population, an international perspective. The author draws an international picture of geography of population and of the recent influences which exerted on this discipline. The variety of types of research is mainly due to the availability of data, the training of geographers, the spreading of applied geography and the degree of interest in cultural phenomena., L'auteur dresse un tableau international de la vitalité de cette discipline et des séries d'influences récentes qui la traversent. La diversité des types de recherches tient surtout à la disponibilité des données, à la formation des géographes de la population, à la diffusion de la géographie appliquée et à l'intérêt porté aux phénomènes culturels., Clarke John I. La géographie de la population. Une vue internationale. In: Espace, populations, sociétés, 1984-2. La démogéographie en question. pp. 59-63.

Although population growth in Africa is faster than anywhere else in the world development is not nearly as rapid as hoped. In order to understand the relationship between population growth and development one must look at the demographic background to development. A significant feature is the small population size of a large number of African countries. Nearly 1/4 have less than 1000000 inhabitants each while Nigeria and Egypt account for about 1/4 of the total population of the continent. Sharp contrasts also exist between the relatively prosperous coastal countries and the poorer countries of the interior. Africa has 1 of the lowest proportions of populations living in urban areas but the highest rate of growth of this population. Still Africas rural population has been growing steadily. The prevailing patterns of population distribution and migration in Africa have been influenced by historical and demographic factors physical and ecological considerations and the process of economic development. Urban areas have become industrial commerical and administrative centers attracting migrants from the poor rural areas. The high degree of population concentration in Africas cities is especially noticeable in Malawi Kenya Zimbabwe Guinea and Sierra Leone. The high primacy of capital cities the rapid growth rate of urban areas and the extreme dispersion of population distribution in general and in rural areas in particular have been identified as major spatial distribution problems in Africa. It has become increasingly difficult to provide adequate social services to the widely scattered settlements as is the situation in Sudan Mozambique Zambia and Libya. A few countries that experience high urban unemployment have established special youth camps as in Somalia and Zambia. It is now realized that to be successful population redistribution policies should be multidimensional taking into consideration all redistributional processes and broadly reflecting overall national policies. Research requires better data than are currently available in African countries. Cooperation is vital between researchers and government statistical services.

There can be few literate people today who are unaware of the rapid and accelerating growth of the world’s population. There were about 500 million people on earth in 1650; 1000 million in 1850; 2000 million in 1930, and 3000 million in 1960; and with the current 1.9 per cent annual growth rate by 1975 the world population had risen to 4000 million. About 71 per cent of this enormous total live in the less-developed countries (LDCs) which account also for 86 per cent of present population growth. Thus, by the year 2000 they will contain more than three-quarters of the world’s inhabitants.

List of tables List of figures List of contributors Preface 1. The demographic background to development in Africa Aderanti Adepoju and John I. Clarke 2. Development projects and their demographic impact Leszek A. Kosinski 3. Conceptualisation of the impacts of rural development projects upon population redistribution Abdul Aziz M. Farah, Lufti A. Desougi and Anne M. Lewandowski 4. Capitalism and the population landscape Galal el-Din el-Tayeb 5. Unequal participation of migrant labour in wage employment El Watig Mohamed Kameir and Zeinab B. El Bakri 6. Africa's displaced population: dependency or self-sufficiency? John R. Rogge 7. Population redistribution and agricultural settlement schemes in Ethiopia, 1958-80 Adrian P. Wood 8. Populating Uganda's dry lands John B. Kabera 9. Environmental and agricultural impacts of Tanzania's villagisation programme Michael McCall 10. Development and population redistribution: measuring recent population redistribution in Tanzania Ian Thomas 11. Communal villages and the distribution on the rural population in the People's Republic of Mozambique Manuel G. M. De Araujo 12. A century of development measures and population redistribution along the Upper Zambezi Adrian P. Wood 13. Resettlement and under-development in the Black 'Homelands' of South Africa C. M. Rogerson and E. M. Letsoalo 14. Development programmes and population redistribution in Nigeria Aderanti Adpoju 15. Population, disease and rural development programmes in the Upper East Region of Ghana George Benneh 16. Demographic intermediation between development and population redistribution in Sudan Abdul Aziz M. Farah 17. A typology of mobility transition in developing societies, with application to North and Central Sudan Mohamed el-Hadi Abusin 18. Rural population and water supplies in the Sudan Yagoub Abdalla Mohamed and Mohamed el-Hadi Abusin 19. The impact of the Kenana Project on population redistribution Babiker Abdalla Abdel Rahman and Amna Beshir Homoudi 20. Migrant labour in the New Halfa Scheme Mohammed Osman El Sammani 21. The Gash Delta: labour organisation in pastoral economy versus labour requirements in agricultural production Hassan Mohomed Salih 22. The impact of development projects on population redistribution to Gedaref Town in Eastern Sudan Mahgoub O. Gaafar and K. V. Ramachandran 23. The growth of Juba in Southern Sudan L. R. Mills Index.

The author briefly sketches the main underlying influences which have dominated population changes over the past two centuries and those that are likely to persist over the next fifty years : the peopling of many of the lesser populated areas of the world by Europeans, the massive improvements in human mobility, the division of the world's population into states, the growth of the secondary and tertiary sectors, the widespread and large scale urbanization, growing concentration of population in economic core areas, differential demographic transition, major social changes, the spread of education and the universalization of information flows, the growing influence of governments upon population change., Les changements de la population du monde en un quart de millénaire, 1780-2030. L'auteur passe brièvement en revue les principaux déterminants de la transformation de la population au cours des deux siècles écoulés et ceux qui devraient persister au cours des cinquante prochaines années : le peuplement de nombreuses terres, jusque là peu densément peuplées, par les Européens, l'augmentation rapide de la mobilité des hommes, la division de la population mondiale en États, la croissance des secteurs secondaire et tertiaire, l'accélération et l'ampleur de l'urbanisation, la concentration accrue de la population sur les régions économiquement centrales des pays, les différences dans la transition démographique, les principaux changements sociaux, le développement de l'éducation et l'universalisation des flux d'information, l'influence croissante de l'action des gouvernements sur le changement démographique., Clarke John I. A quarter of a millennium of world population movements, 1780-2030s . In: Espace, populations, sociétés, 1989-3. Spécial numéro vingt - Special twentieth issue. pp. 295-304.