Deforestation and world population sustainability: a quantitative analysis

In this paper we afford a quantitative analysis of the sustainability of current world population growth in relation to the parallel deforestation process adopting a statistical point of view. We consider a simplified model based on a stochastic growth process driven by a continuous time random walk...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inScientific reports Vol. 10; no. 1; p. 7631
Main Authors Bologna, Mauro, Aquino, Gerardo
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published London Nature Publishing Group UK 06.05.2020
Nature Publishing Group
Subjects
631/158/1745
639/705/1041
639/766/530
704/844/4081
Deforestation
Humanities and Social Sciences
multidisciplinary
Population growth
Quantitative analysis
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Stochasticity
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Summary:In this paper we afford a quantitative analysis of the sustainability of current world population growth in relation to the parallel deforestation process adopting a statistical point of view. We consider a simplified model based on a stochastic growth process driven by a continuous time random walk, which depicts the technological evolution of human kind, in conjunction with a deterministic generalised logistic model for humans-forest interaction and we evaluate the probability of avoiding the self-destruction of our civilisation. Based on the current resource consumption rates and best estimate of technological rate growth our study shows that we have very low probability, less than 10% in most optimistic estimate, to survive without facing a catastrophic collapse.
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ISSN:2045-2322
2045-2322
DOI:10.1038/s41598-020-63657-6