[Comments on population and ecology]. / Comentarios sobre poblacion y ecologia.

PIP: Concern about the condition of the environment and about rapid population growth has a long history. The breadth and magnitude of present day concern may perhaps represent a new development even though the topics themselves are not new. There is almost no country or society that has not manifested disquiet about 1 or the other. Ecology in the strict sense is defined as the relationship between organisms and their environment. In recent decades ecology has come to understood as the manner of avoiding or slowing environmental deterioration or even as the correct and prudent administration of natural resources. The boundaries of the discipline have expanded until today it is concerned with various spheres of the natural and social sciences. The transformations wrought by human beings have been dramatic, both because the use of tools had increased the power of human modification of the environment and because the human population is large and spread over the whole world. Human beings have been responsible for some ecologic disasters, some unintentional like the Exxon Valdez and Chernobyl accidents and others the perhaps unforseen results of deliberate actions, as the contamination of the atmosphere with gas emissions. Environmental deterioration can result from numerous causes, as with the "greenhouse effect" caused by a range of factors including classical contamination and deforestation. Deforestation in developing countries is a response to the combination of poverty and rapid population growth, and is 1 evidence of the close and direct link between population growth and the condition of the environment. The optimism felt during the 1970s about the prospects of bringing world population growth under control has given way to a more realistic and sobering assessment. Many factors including widespread economic difficulties have impeded the progress of family planning programs. It is urgent that efforts to curb rapid population increase be intensified. 1 important means will be by improving the educational and social status of women so that they will have improving the educational and social status of women so that they will have other means of personal development besides maternity. Bringing population growth under control now will result in improved prospects for survival and comfort of future generation.^ieng