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Fifty years to prove Malthus right

  • A major question confronting sustainability research today is to what extent our planet, with a finite environmental resource base, can accommodate the faster than exponentially growing human population. Although these concerns are generally attributed to Malthus (1766–1834), early attempts to estimate the maximum sustainable population (ergo, the carrying capacity K) were reported by van Leeuwenhoek (1632–1723) to be at 13 billion people (1). Since then, the concept of carrying capacity has evolved to accommodate many resource limitations originating from available water, energy, and other ecosystem goods and services (1, 2). In PNAS, Suweis et al.(3) apply the concept of carrying capacity using fresh water availability on a national scale as the limiting resource to infer the global K. They estimate a decline in global human population by the middle of this century. We ask to what extent models that are …

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Metadaten
Document Type:Article
Language:English
Author(s):Lynn KaackORCiD, Gabriel Katul
Parent Title (English):Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Publication year:2013
Publishing Institution:Hertie School
Related URL:https://www.pnas.org/content/110/11/4161
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1301246110
Release Date:2021/10/07
Licence of document (German):Metadaten / metadata
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