tcwd summary

• Before the start of the demographic transition


  • Life was short, births were many, growth was slow and the population was young
• Famine mortality was reduced


  By improvements in storage and transportation
• Secular increases in incomes

  Led to improved nutrition in childhood and throughout life
• Reduction in mortality


  Due to reductions in chronic and degenerative diseases, improved personal hygiene and preventive medicine
• The global demographic transition


  • Has brought momentous changes: reshaping the economic and demographic life cycles of individuals and restructuring populations
• The Chinese economic hub currently has 24.2 million of population. Authorities just put a plan in place to cap the permanent population at 25 million
• China similarly hopes to cap the permanent population of Beijing at 23 million and Shanghai at 24.2 million
• A research fellow at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences predicts that the poor will bear the brunt of the new population limit the most because the government will begin tearing down cheap housing now in existence, per the Global Times
• Nearly 60% of residents in Shanghai expressed a preference for having only one (1) child
• Shanghai saw its population fall in 2022
• The State Council, which refers to all of the above as "big city disease" the maladies common to major cities are: environmental pollution, gridlock traffic, and a decline in the quality of public services such as medical care and education, also will limit the amount of land made available for development in the coming years
• The demographic transition


  • Began in 1800 with declining mortality in Europe, and it has now spread to all parts of the world and is projected to be completed by 2100
• The THREE centuries of demographic transition from 1800 to 2100


  • Will reshape the world's population in a number of ways. The obvious changes are the rise in total population from 1 billion in 1800 to perhaps 9.5 billion in 2100
• Migration


  Tends to be regarded as problematic. It has to be controlled and curbed, for it may bring unpredictable changes. Its decisions are made NOT just by individuals; they often represent family strategies to maximize income and survival chances
• The significance of migration


  • Lies in the fact that it is concentrated in certain countries and regions. Migration needs to take place in an orderly way to safeguard the human rights of migrants
• Causes of migration


  • Employment
  • Disparity in levels of income
  • Social well-being
• Neoclassical economic theory


  The main cause of migration is individuals's efforts to maximize their income by moving from low-wage to high-wage economies
• Many scholars argue that internal and international migration are part of the same processes and should be analyzed together
• International migrants remain a fairly small minority, while internal migration, conversely, is much larger
• Types of migrants


  • Temporary Labor Migrants
  • Irregular Migrants
  • Highly-skilled migrants
  • Refugees
  • Asylum seekers
• In 2016, the Distribution of OFWs in Asia was 85.0%
• Australia and Africa have the same percentage distributions of OFWs in 2016
• Hong Kong and Singapore have the same percent distribution of OFWs
• Saudi Arabia is the top destination of OFWs in Asia
• Top 3 destinations of OFWs in 2016

  • Asia
  • North
  • Europe
• Country 1-5: OFW destinations

  • Saudi
  • Qatar
  • UAE
  • Kuwait
  • Bahrain
• In 2020, the top continental destinations for Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) were predominantly in Asia
• Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Singapore, Hong Kong, and Qatar are the top 5 destination countries. While Europe was the least favored region by OFWs
• India and China are the fastest growing countries in the Asian region
• In Asia, a large number of small farmers in countries like Cambodia, Laos, the Philippines, Bangladesh, and Nepal continue to suffer from weak access to land and tenure insecurity, in the wider context of weak governance institutions, poor law enforcement, and endemic corruption
• Sustainability perspectives started to be visible not only in the environmental area but also on the theme of overpopulation
• As of 2023, only 12% of the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) targets are on track to be achieved by 2030
• Bruntland Report (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987)


  'development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs' deserves the label of sustainability
• Modern debate on sustainability focused mainly on environmental questions
• Symptoms of the crisis around the globe

  • collapsing financial markets
  • rising unemployment
  • deeper inequalities
  • shrinking middle class
  • extreme indebtedness
  • inability of governments to force through reforms
• New Growth Theory


  Proposed by Paul Romer and Robert Lucas in 1980's, where endogenous factors like human capital and education were recognized as crucial for growth
• New ideas in technology and organization made it possible to overtake the steady state of zero growth and induce development without increasing resources
• The global electricity access rate increased from 87% in 2015 to 91% in 2021, serving close to an additional 800 million people
• The United States and Brazil are the world's largest bioethanol producing countries
• In the next four decades or so, average global temperature will rise by 2-3 degrees Celsius