Short Essay Question

Short Essay Question

One of the earliest attempts to describe the role of multiple factors in determining environmental degradation was the IPAT equation. It describes the multiplicative contribution of population (P), affluence (A) and technology (T) to environmental impact (I). Environmental impact (I) may be expressed in terms of resource depletion or waste accumulation; population (P) refers to the size of the human population; affluence (A) refers to the level of consumption by that population; and technology (T) refers to the processes used to obtain resources and transform them into useful goods and wastes. The formula was originally used to emphasize the contribution of a growing global population on the environment, at a time when world population was roughly half of what it is now. It continues to be used with reference to population policy.

 

New Insights

In addition to highlighting the contribution of population to environmental problems, IPAT made two other significant contributions. It drew attention to the fact that environmental problems involved more than pollution, and that they were driven by multiple factors acting together to produce a compounding effect. Subsequent research using IPAT indicates that the assumption of a simple multiplicative relationship among the main factors generally does not hold - doubling population, for example, does not necessarily lead to a doubling of impact. Approaches which allow for different weighting to be assigned to each factor have been more successful in accounting for impact.

Attempts to strengthen the predictive power of the equation have been made in terms of incorporating a variety of social, political and technical factors. Some of these studies enhance the equation's usefulness for policy development by indicating the variable contribution of different factors, who is responsible for various factors and therefore where resources might best be directed to reduce impact most effectively. However, making the ...