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Abstract
The triple challenge of rapid population growth, declining agricultural productivity, and natural
resource degradation are not isolated from one another; they are intimately related. However,
strategic planning and development programming tend to focus on individual sectors such as the
environment, agriculture, and population; they do not explicitly take into account the
compatibilities and inconsistencies among them. Farm households and their livelihood strategies
are at the core of the intersectoral linkages approach advocated in this chapter. Three key aspects of the population-environment-development debate are discussed: first, the finding that
inconsistencies between public and individual household behavior regarding childbearing and family planning constitute a veritable "demographic tragedy of the commons;" second, the tendency to conceptualize population variables as "unmanageable," and exogenous to
environmental and economic change; third, the importance of land markets and land tenure as critical population-sustainability policy issues.