Demographic Trajectories, Migration and Environmental Impacts -- Palawan Province, the Philippines as a Micro-Demographic Laboratory

John Poggie, University of Rhode Island
Michael Rice, University of Rhode Island

A central interest in both demographic and environmental research is the trajectory of population growth and the impacts of growth on land use and settlement patterns. The challenge to fully understanding these interrelated processes is our inability to follow this process from initiation to saturation. This is because demography emerged due to concerns over contemporaneous population growth and, almost by definition; the geographical areas of interest were well advanced towards population saturation and the depletion of environmental resources. This paper examines the case of Palawan Province in the Philippines. Palawan provides a unique opportunity to examine these processes as it was virtually uninhabited as of the 1940's. Since that time the province has seen increases that approximate exponential growth, and extensive alteration of the coastal and inland environment. This paper presents results from ongoing research into the impacts of population growth on environmental use in Palawan from the 1940's on.