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Over the next 20 years, most low-income countries will, for the first time, become more urban than rural. Understanding demographic trends in the cities of the developing world is critical to those countries - their societies, economies, and environments. The benefits from urbanization cannot be overlooked, but the speed and sheer scale of this transformation presents many challenges. In this uniquely thorough and authoritative volume, 16 of the world's leading scholars on urban population and development have worked together to produce the most comprehensive and detailed analysis of the changes taking place in cities and their implications and impacts. They focus on population dynamics, social and economic differentiation, fertility and reproductive health, mortality and morbidity, labor force, and urban governance. As many national governments decentralize and devolve their functions, the nature of urban management and governance is undergoing fundamental transformation, with programs in poverty alleviation, health, education, and public services increasingly being deposited in the hands of untested municipal and regional governments."Cities Transformed" identifies a new class of policy maker emerging to take up the growing responsibilities. Drawing from a wide variety of data sources, many of them previously inaccessible, this essential text will become the benchmark for all involved in city-level research, policy, planning, and investment decisions. The National Research Council is a private, non-profit institution based in Washington, DC, providing services to the US government, the public, and the scientific and engineering communities. The editors are members of the Council's Panel on Urban Population Dynamics. ... Read more

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Does rapid population growth diminish countries' economic development prospects? Do policies aimed at reducing high fertility help families escape poverty? These questions have been at the heart of policy debates since the time of Malthus, and have been particularly heated during the last half-century of explosive Third World population growth. In this carefully constructed collection of recent studies and analyses, the authors offer a nuanced, yet clear and positive answer to these questions---a refreshing step forward from the ambiguous conclusions of much of the literature of the 1970s and 1980s. ... Read more

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Written specifically for classroom and student use, with over 35 tables and figures, this book sets out the political demographics of the Arab countries. In this revised and expanded second edition, the author updates all the data; adds analysis on North African countries; and discusses the phenomenon of intra-Arab labour migration and its socioeconomic-political impacts. ... Read more

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Examines the impact of human population growth, discussing the origins of the human species, the rise of cities, migration to the new world, population trends, and the scarcity of natural resources. ... Read more

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Are humans too good at adapting to the earth’s natural environment? Every day, there is a net gain of more than 200,000 people on the planet—that’s 146 a minute. Has our explosive population growth led to the mass extinction of countless species in the earth’s plant and animal communities?

Jeffrey K. McKee contends it has. The more people there are, the more we push aside wild plants and animals. In Sparing Nature, he explores the cause-and-effect relationship between these two trends, demonstrating that nature is too sparing to accommodate both a richly diverse living world and a rapidly expanding number of people. The author probes the past to find that humans and their ancestors have had negative impacts on species biodiversity for nearly two million years, and that extinction rates have accelerated since the origins of agriculture. Today entire ecosystems are in peril due to the relentless growth of the human population.

McKee gives a guided tour of the interconnections within the living world to reveal the meaning and value of biodiversity, making the maze of technical research and scientific debates accessible to the general reader. Because it is clear that conservation cannot be left to the whims of changing human priorities, McKee takes the unabashedly neo-Malthusian position that the most effective measure to save earth’s biodiversity is to slow the growth of human populations. By conscientiously becoming more responsible about our reproductive habits and our impact on other living beings, we can ensure that nature’s resources will make our lives not only supportable, but also sustainable for this century and beyond. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Won't you not be...my neighbor?
"And without trees for shade, it would be pretty darned hot on this planet." No, that is not a quote from the late Mister Rogers; welcome to Mister McKee's neighborhood. Shunning traditional bar charts, McKee, begins his book by comparing relative quantities of biodiversity found in his neighborhood to a nearby nature park using contrasting silhouettes of a squirrel, a tree, a bird, and...you guessed it, a bee. The point: biodiversity decreases as human numbers increase. At first, it was unsettling to me that a book about biodiversity loss was being written by a guy who didn't know a termite when he saw one and as soon as it was identified for him, he immediately called the exterminator-it having been found in his yard. However, this is not a book about sustainable lifestyles, it is about overpopulation and its effect on biodiversity. You might not have guessed it, judging from my excessively critical remarks, but this book is a good read. McKee proves to be a gentle and persuasive writer.

I gleaned several pearls from Sparing Nature. I learned that Ohio once harbored a wetland the size of Connecticut called the "Black Swamp." It was drained before the turn of the century. We are told that McKee's brother-a botanist-had located one of the last remaining bogs in Ohio, and in the name of conservation, the McKee family had chipped in to buy it

McKee talked about the loopholes in laws that allow developers to drain and fill wetlands as long as they create new ones someplace else. His point, "One simply cannot transplant an ecosystem." In terms of biodiversity, the artificial wetlands bear little resemblance to the ones that were destroyed. These laws are trading ancient wetlands for duck ponds. Extinction of a complex ecosystem is analogous to the extinction of a life form and just as permanent.

Rush Limbaugh-not generally known for his intellectual acuity-is mentioned along with his propensity to confuse population density with overpopulation. Apparently, Limbaugh uses the fact that every person on Earth could fit into the state of Texas as proof that overpopulation is a myth propagated by environmentalist wackos.

McKee makes a stronger than usual argument that humankind was responsible for the extinction of the large mammals that once roamed Europe, Australia, and the Americas. Those animals had survived multiple global warming trends. The only thing new with the last warming trend was a human population expansion of hunters with Clovis tipped spears. These creatures were surviving in shrunken habitats when man came along and administered a lethal blow. He reinforces this argument by noting that large animals are the first to be driven to extinction when humans colonize islands. Creatures without effective defense mechanisms against humans are history, literally.

He defines a keystone species and suggests that because of their extinction, many other life forms that depended on them were also driven to extinction. Although not mentioned in the book, the California condor comes to my mind. They evolved to feed on the carcasses of large mammals. They were hanging in there along with their keystone species the bison. The end of the bison herds doomed these birds. The fact that we have, over the course of thirty years and after having spent millions of dollars, managed to multiply the last twelve condors into a few hundred is largely irrelevant. Without human intervention-feeding, monitoring, and protection-the California condor would go extinct within a few years because the world they evolved to live in is gone. McKee ties into this concept the fact that the extinction of a species lags behind the eradication of its environment. This implies that the extinction of many species is already in the pipeline. Our zoos are filling with animals that are or will soon be extinct in the wild because their habitats are gone.

The next climatic shift will be the final straw for thousands of species that have survived humankind's onslaught because they have no place to weather the change. McKee considers the plight of orangutans. If a change in rain patterns causes their remaining habitat to dry out there will not be remnant populations surviving in pockets of wet jungles waiting to repopulate. There are people in those places now, billions, and billions of them.

Sparing Nature is unique in that it bypasses the usual debates about the causes of hunger, war, and poverty, and instead, focuses on the devastation being wrought on biodiversity, the cause of which is undeniable. There is something fundamentally wrong with today's contraceptive technologies when you consider that even here in the US over half of all pregnancies are unplanned. This statistic strongly suggests room for improvement. Halting our growth at something like 7.5 billion instead of 9.5 would prove critical to preventing the extinction of many thousands of species.

Although fertility rates are falling, world population is still growing rapidly. This falling fertility rate reinforces all of our hopes that when our growth finally does stop-as the laws of physics say it must-it will be the result of low birth rates instead of high death rates. At that point, the struggle to slow our growth will be won and will then be replaced by the struggle to allow our numbers to decline. While humanity will continue to fight over this and millions of other issues, quietly, in the background, the remnants of our planet's biodiversity will continue the struggle for existence.

Russ Finley, Author of "Poison Darts-Protecting the biodiversity of our world."

Dare to spare, else irreversibly impair
I am doubly familiar with this book because, in addition to reading the published version, I served as one of eight evaluators who provided feedback in the latter stages of manuscript preparation.

In chapter one the author points out that he had two meanings in mind when he chose "Sparing Nature" as a title.The first echoes a warning from Malthus that nature has generously distributed the seeds of life, "...but has been comparatively sparing in the room and nourishment necessary to rear them."

The second meaning comes straight from Prof. McKee.To secure our own future and that of our planet, we must spare nature from the devastation human overpopulation can and will wreak if we don't voluntarily act to limit it.In a country like America the problem is particularly insidious because we don't feel personally crowded, having had plenty of exposure to seemingly endless open spaces.We take the food that crams our markets for granted, as if it grew in the backs of trucks.We have little sense of the contiguous ranges that wild creatures need to survive, or of the degree to which forests, trees, plants, people, animals, insects and microbes are interdependent.The aim of "Sparing Nature" is to gently but firmly raise our consciousness on all these issues in an entertaining and edifying way.As a scientist the author would rather persuade than simply preach, and therein lies the strength of the book.

McKee's case is built on three theses:

1. Human population growth has had a long-standing causal relationship with loss of biodiversity.In other words we have, deliberatelyor not, acted from the very beginning to reduce the variety of living things on Earth.

2. The most effective measure available to combat further loss of biodiversity in our late-stage predicament is proactive slowing, halting or reversing of net population increase.

3. Conservation of nature's variety is vital to the health of our planet and therefore equally vital to our own self-interest.

To succeed the author mustconvince us that theses (1) and (3) are true, and that thesis (2) is not only correct but presents a clear and present danger if not heeded.Hence he is invested in an advocacy position and wants to enlist the reader as both believer and activist.This is a tall order, far more difficult than simply identifying and elucidating a problem.

Since the themes implicit in the theses are both historical and global, the reservoir of possible talking points is enormous.McKee chooses well and constructs a cogent set of chapter topics and subtopics designed to progress logically and incrementally to the appropriate conclusions.His initial strategy is to define the nature and extent of plant/animal biodiversity, and to trace its evolutionary development together with that of early and modern humans.The results reveal an inexorable Homo sapiens "wedge" steadily forcing other species into extinction and thus indicating that thesis (1) is true.Additional evidence connecting biodiversity loss to harmful trends such as disease-prone monocrops, erosion-driven soil depletion, eutrophication of water habitats, thermal pollution, desertification and vanishing potable water sources supports the conclusion that thesis (3) is also true.

To establish the danger of ignoring thesis (2), the author argues strongly that neither resource rationing (i.e. conservation) nor improved technology, no matter how conscientiously pursued, can keep up with an essentially unregulated exponential population growth in the long run.Further, we are a lot closer to the long run than the perennial "eco-optimists" realize.On this point McKee is an unapologetic neo-Malthusian, and justifiably so because he shows quantitatively that Earth's usable land per person is already in the scary zone.The finiteness of our planet and the mathematics of human reproduction (six billion and counting) virtually mandate an accelerating slide toward disaster if we don't voluntarily curb our built-in urge to procreate.In the final analysis, a worldwide policy of self-motivated population control is the ONLY humane and practical measure available to sustain Earth in an ecologically viable equilibrium with nature.

Deadly serious as these matters are, reading "Sparing Nature" is by no means a depressing experience, nor is its tone even remotely overbearing or coercive.McKee approaches the reader in a relaxed and friendly fashion,using the recurring theme of his outdoor "office" on the banks of the Olentangy River in central Ohio to personalize his view of nature, family and the good things in life.The book opens with an informalsurvey contrasting creature variety in the author's suburban yard with that in a nearby patch of woods, and readers are encouraged to see for themselves what a toll human incursion exacts on biodiversity.As in his previous book, "The Riddled Chain," McKee sometimes underscores points by referencing his extensive anthropological field work in South Africa.

Greatly to the author's credit is his refusal to oversimplify or resort to hand waving.The many difficult aspects of determining the true extent of biodiversity, estimating rates of loss, and assigning causes are not minimized. For anyone interested in delving deeper, the chapter notes provide a comprehensive list of source material.Although it wasn't much fun to see the spread of humanity likened to proliferating weeds and cancer cells, I could not fault McKee's reasons for doing so, and he is clear about taking no pleasure in using the metaphors.Reading "Sparing Nature" will prove more than worthwhile for anyone with an open mind -- and a little time to spare.

Sparing Nature
Jeff McKee has written an excellent and important book on the topic of global biodiversity loss. By drawing on his experience as professor and nature enthusiast, he provides an overview of the issues in an easy to read writing style. He takes the reader from the soil in their backyard to the biodiversity trends in countries around the world while maintaining a positive spin on things. This book is highly recommended for anyone interested in the current and possible future state of the earth's biosphere. ... Read more

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The core message of this study is that key insights emerge from understanding what determines population growth rate, and that application of the approach will make ecology a more predictive science. What determines where a species lives? And what determines its abundance? Despite great progress in the twentieth century, much more remains to be done before we can provide full answers to these classic questions in ecology. This book takes an original approach by describing and deploying progressive research methods. ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from Canada and the World Backgrounder, published by Taylor Publishing Consultants Ltd. on December 1, 2004. The length of the article is 3046 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Doctor doom: more than 200 years ago, Thomas Malthus wrote an essay in which he put forward the theory that human population growth would outstrip food production, and that this would lead to wars and starvation that would reduce the population to a manageable size.(Population--Thomas Malthus)
Publication: Canada and the World Backgrounder (Magazine/Journal)
Date: December 1, 2004
Publisher: Taylor Publishing Consultants Ltd.
Volume: 70Issue: 3Page: 7(6)

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From classic demographic theory to the best contemporary thinking, this book will fruitfully replace previous ways of looking at population expansion and contraction. Exploiting 50 years of scholarship that covers 2 1/2 millennia, peoples in all parts of the world, and aggregates from hamlets to the global level, this volume shows that populations grow or decline according to six related patterns. Looking at the paths taken by unrestricted population growth, the effects of limited resources, demographic disaster, population explosion, and the implications of stable population theory and demographic transition for numerical trends, Harris reinterprets and insightfully interconnects all of these via six related growth curves, opening the way for a better understanding of how populations expand through changes in births, deaths, and migrations and how they interact with their economic, social, and physical environments. ... Read more

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Written specifically for classroom and student use, with more than 35 tables and figures, this book sets out the political demographic of the Arab countries by: examining the sources for demographic research of the Arab countries; explaining the nature of the population growth in the Arab countries in comparison with other developing countries world-wide; examining the development of structural unemployment in the non oil-based and oil-based Arab countries since the mid-1980s; investigating the natal policies of both the oil and the non-oil Arab countries; and attempting to answer the crucial question of why some Arab countries succeed more than others in implementing fertility decline. A concluding chapter examines the political dilemmas arising from the different demographies and economies in the Arab states. During the 20th century, worldwide population increased more rapidly than ever before, with the world's population amounting to 6.1 billion by the year 2000. The main contributors to the rapid worldwide population growth were the developing countries, including the Arab countries.During the second half of the 20th century, the demographic issue became the most acute socio-economic problem of the non-oil Arab countries, bringing with it a variety of political implications, both internal and external. ... Read more

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In the fall of 1996 the author enrolled in a graduate course at Sacred Heart Major Seminary entitled Method & Pentateuch (course #SS-521). During the course the instructor implied that the Exodus of Israel from Egypt had to be myth because the birth rate of children per woman during Israel stay in Egypt had to be so high (10, 11, 12 children per woman) and this is a unreasonable high birth rate per woman.This book will address the question "Can anyone make the claim that the Exodus of Israel from Egypt is myth based on the singular argument that the birth rate of children per woman during Israel stay in Egypt is so high (10, 11, 12 children per woman) and therefore is unreasonable."The answer begins by asking the question what birth rate of children per woman during Israel stay in Egypt is required to obtain Israel population growth described in Genesis to Exodus. The author examines this question utilizing two methods: a machine design analysis of Israel population growth from Genesis to Exodus and a statistical numerical analysis of Israel population growth from Genesis to Exodus. The machine design analysis requires a birth rate of 3.366 to 4.252 children per woman to obtain Israel population growth from Genesis to Exodus. The statistical numerical analysis requires a birth rate of 3.540 to 4.167 children per woman of to obtain Israel population growth from Genesis to Exodus. The claim that the Exodus of Israel from Egypt is myth based on the singular argument that the birth rate required of children per woman during Israel stay in Egypt is so high (10, 11, 12 children per woman) is mathematically invalid. ... Read more

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Economic Policy in a Demographically Divided World containsthe economicanalysis of the consequences of demographicchange and the divergingpopulation developments in aninterdependent world economy in particular. The globaldivergence in demographic developments gives rise to amyriadof economic and ethical problems. This topic istreated with the help of themathematical apparatus ofneoclassical optimal growth models. The authortries todisentangle the basic policy issues of a demographicallydivided world, such as a selective immigrationpolicy,sustainable patterns of international lending and borrowing,development aid, and dynamic optimal taxation.The mostimportant feature of the book is that it bringstogether information andtheories of fairly recent date toanalyse a practical policy problem, viz.issues related to aworld economy that is characterised by ademographicdivision. This stylised fact is hardly given some attentionin current economic theory and the book contains withrespect to this stylised fact some new results.Customers might benefit from thebook by gaining intuitionconcerning principles of economic policy in a worldcharacterised by demographic change. ... Read more