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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 August 2009
Representatives of national academies of science from throughout the world met in New Delhi, India, from 24 to 27 October 1993, in a ‘Science Summit’ on World Population. The conference grew out of two earlier meetings—one of the Royal Society of London and the United States National Academy of Sciences, and the other being an international conference organized by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Statements published by both groups expressed a sense of urgent concern about the expansion of the world's population and concluded that if current predictions of population growth prove accurate and patterns of human activity on the planet remain unchanged, science and technology may not be able to prevent irreversible degradation of the natural environment and continued poverty for much of the world.
* Population Growth, Resource Consumption, and a Sustainable World, a joint statement by the officers of the Royal Society of London and the US National Academy of Sciences, 1992; Statement Issued by the International Conference on Population, Natural Resources, and Development, organized by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Swedish Council for Planning and Coordination of Research, Stockholm, Sweden, 30 September-3 October 1991; An Agenda of Science for Environment and Development into the 21 st Century, based on a conference convened by the International Council of Scientific Unions in Vienna, Austria, in November 1991, Cambridge University Press, 1992, and World Scientists' Warning to Humanity, statement signed by 1,600 scientists, Union of Concerned Scientists, 1992.
** Namely the African Academy of Sciences, Australian Academy of Sciences, Brazilian Academy of Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Federation of Asian Scientific Academies and Societies, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Indian National Science Academy, Mexican Academy of Sciences, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, Pakistan Academy of Sciences, Royal Society of London, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Russian Academy of Sciences, Third World Academy of Sciences, and US National Academy of Sciences.
§ For this crucial occasion our Foundation for Environmental Conservation and the Environment & Energy Society of Pakistan have in press an Environmental Paperback entitled Population and Global Security.—Ed.
† See, for example, Dr Norman Myers' paper entitled ‘Population, Environment, and Development’, published on pp. 205–16 of our preceding issue, and his Guest Editorial entitled ‘The Population Summit’ on pp. 291–2 of this issue.—Ed.
* Cf. Population Reference Bureau, The UN Long-Range Population Projections: What They Tell Us: Washington, DC, USA, 1992.
* Also, we must add, by coverage of more and more of often the best agricultural land by modem buildings and storage facilities, waste-dumps and reservoirs, playing-fields and other sporting facilities, highways and runways, and other monuments of modem overdevelopment.—Ed.
