Population, Development, Environment Modeling Project.

Background to the Project: During the late 1980s in-house discussions between various IIASA projects, as well as extensive discussions with external experts, resulted in the conclusion that the highly complex issues of long-term population-environment interactions can be meaningfully analyzed through a series of case studies. ...studies on Mauritius, Cape Verde and the Yucatan peninsula (Mexico) have been conducted ...During 1997-2000 population-development-environment (PDE) case studies were conducted for Botswana, Namibia and Mozambique...The PDE models are designed to help policy makers, stakeholders, NGOs, researchers, and others to look at possible future development paths which are based on alternative and various development assumptions'.The fundamental understanding is that population and environment are not separate entities that can be seen independently or even in opposition to each other. The population is seen as an integral part of nature...The PDE approach can be compared to the integrated assessment approach. It has the aim not only to analyze the pieces in an isolated way, but to investigate how the various pieces together reveal a picture. The PDE approach shows clearly the strong interrelations and feedback flows between all the sectors'THE WEBSITE contains country briefing data, descriptions of the models, downloadable datasets,