Während Industrieländer vor dem Problem schrumpfender Gesellschaften stehen, sind Entwicklungsländer mit den Folgen von Urbanisierung, Migration und Bevölkerungswachstum konfrontiert. Welche Auswirkungen hat diese Entwicklung auf die Versorgung mit Wasser, Nahrung und anderen Ressourcen? Die Autorinnen und Autoren untersuchen Entwicklungen in Afrika, Asien, dem Nahen Osten und Deutschland und zeigen, wie Versorgungssysteme an demografische Veränderungen angepasst werden können.

Dr. Diana Hummel ist Leiterin eines Projekts am Frankfurter Institut für sozial-ökologische Forschung (ISOE) zur Versorgung der Bevölkerung.

Every society must deal with the challenge of providing its members with appropriate goods and services in such a way that basic human needs are satisfied and a reasonable quality of life is ensured while at the same time preserving the natural bases of life. Supplying the population with adequate food, water, housing, energy, transport systems, education and health services is of utmost importance to a society. It is essential to a society's reproduction and capacity to maintain its potential for further development, and hence critical for sustainable development. This book is an introduction to a social-ecological perspective on population dynamics, focusing on demographic changes and supply systems, and their interdependencies. As will be demonstrated, population dynamics is of great importance for the provisioning of basic goods and services: the question of how many people live where, now and in the future, and which needs and requirements they possess is a fundamental issue for all societies. Yet, 'demographic changes' encompass a whole range of phenomena, of both a quantitative and a qualitative nature, including population growth or decline, age distribution, household structures, migratory movements and many more. Particular population changes and their impacts on provisioning vary in different regions of the world. However, since many goods and services rely on natural resources such as land or water, one fundamental common pattern of demographic changes is that they are associated with social-ecological problems, that is, problems arising when social activities and ecological effects are so tightly intertwined that the boundaries between 'nature' and 'society' increasingly disappear (Becker and Jahn 2006). Social-ecological problems are interdependent, difficult to predict and are not isolated in particular sectors; rather they unfold simultaneously along various temporal, spatial and social scales, from local to global, from present events to far-reaching consequences, from actions taking place within the context of everyday life to those occurring within multilateral political regimes. Within social-ecological problem situations ecological threats and environmental degradation are connected with deficits in information and knowledge or in economic or technical means, with subjective restrictions on behavior, with inequality and with limited steering capacities. With respect to the provisioning of the population with basic goods such as water, energy, or food, these problems may result in an insecurity of supply or an impairment of ecosystem services to such a degree that a supply system breaks down, and this could lead possibly to the collapse of an entire society (cf. Diamond 2005). The authors of the present volume will examine forms of crisis-prone developments in detail and will specify conditions for a more sustainable development. As far as population dynamics and its connection to sustainable development is concerned, the knowledge base needed for analysis and action is badly fragmented. Scientific knowledge is dispersed over a broad spectrum of disciplines, different theoretical concepts and methodological orientations. Normally, studies about population issues analyze demographic developments and their impacts on either society (e.g. economic development, social systems, labor market), or the environment (e.g. use of natural resources, biodiversity, emissions). The connection between demography and sustainable (or non-sustainable) development, however, is still a matter of dispute, both within science as well as society. The approach presented in this volume is innovative in that it develops a new object of research: population dynamics is systematically related to supply systems. This allows structuring the nexus of population, environment and society in theoretically and methodologically new ways. Based on the assumption that the associated problems are complex, making it difficult to distinguish between cause and effect, the study emphasizes structural relationships and mutual interactions among specific demographic changes and transformations of supply systems. In doing so, the focus is on social-ecological problems arising in connection with water and food supply. At the center of the study are separate problems in different regions of the world that display a common pattern, with the specific triggers for social-ecological transformations also being identified. This approach contains a specific normative view: what is most important is not 'sustainable demographic development'; rather, the non-sustainability of supply systems defines the focus of research. Of central interest are the regulation problems arising from supply systems, and the latter's adaptive capacity for dealing with demographic changes.

Preface Introduction: Supplying the population as societal and scientific challenge Diana Hummel Part A: The analytical framework Diana Hummel, Christine Hertler, Steffen Niemann, Alexandra Lux, Cedric Janowicz 1 The demographic background Changes in the discursive scenery 11 - The growing asynchronal development of global demographic changes 13 - Demographic transitions 19 - Impacts of demographic changes on society and environment 21 - Population dynamics as subject of scientific disciplines 25 - Demography and the population-environment-nexus 28 2 The central analytical concept: Supply systems The basis of sustainable development 38 - The dynamics of societal relations to nature 40 - Social-ecological systems 43 - Conceptual model of supply systems 47 - Social-ecological problem complexes within supply systems 51 - Peculiarities of, and linkages between, water and food supply systems 55 - Social-ecological transformations 57 3 Research object: Interactions between demographic processes and transformations of supply systems Demographic factors relevant to supply systems 59 - Modeling related problems 62 - Problems related to the dynamics of demographic processes 63 - Regulation related problems 66 - Case studies 68 Part B: Case studies Christine Hertler 1 Modeling food supply and demography in prehistoric human populations A challenge: Reconstructing prehistoric populations 74 - Hominins as users in supply systems 76 - Habitats and resource dynamics 83 - Early hominins in their habitats 87 - Hominin migrations 92 - Conclusions 98 Steffen Niemann 2 Spatial aspects of supply: Migration, water transfer, and IWRM The densely populated north of Namibia 103 - Migration and resource-distant population concentration 105 - IWRM and its specific spatial conception 113 - ''Area of alimentation'' and ''area of consumption'' 118 - Conclusion 124 Cedric Janowicz 3 The world goes urban: Food supply systems and urbanization processes in Africa Global hunger and the Malthusian legacy 131 - The world goes urban: Urbanization processes in the 21st century 136 - Feeding African cities: Accra as case study 140 - Conclusions 158 Alexandra Lux 4 Shrinking cities and water supply Facets of demographic shrinkage 162 - Effects of demographic trends on water consumption 164 - Consequences for water supply?learning from eastern Germany 171 - Impulses for future decision-making: Uncertainty and adaptability 174 - Conclusions: Designing infrastructure using the concept of supply systems 178 Diana Hummel 5 Population changes, water conflicts, and governance in the Middle East Resource scarcity, population dynamics and conflict 183 - Population dynamics the Jordan River Basin 185 - Water supply systems in the Jordan River Basin 194 - Potentials and risks of a virtual water strategy 202 - Conclusion 209 Part C: Synthesis Diana Hummel, Christine Hertler, Cedric Janowicz, Alexandra Lux, Steffen Niemann 1 Synopsis of case study results Summary and discussion of case study results 213 - Demographic changes examined in the case studies and their relevance for supply systems 221 - Interactions among population dynamics and supply systems 226 2 Building sustainable supply systems: Requirements and prerequisites Social-ecological transformation and regulation of supply systems 234 - Challenges for the future regulation of supply systems 236 - Adaptivity and regulation capabilities of supply systems 242 3 Conclusions and perspectives References List of figures and tables About the authors

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