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Most of Earth's biodiversity is found in 36 biodiversity hotspots, yet less than 10% natural intact vegetation remains. We calculated models projecting the future state of most of these hotspots for the year 2050, based on future climatic and agroeconomic pressure. Our models project an increasing demand for agricultural land resulting in the conversion of >50% of remaining natural intact vegetation in about one third of all hotspots, and in 2–6 hotspots resulting from climatic pressure. This confirms that, in the short term, habitat loss is of greater concern than climate change for hotspots and their biodiversity. Hotspots are most severely threatened in tropical Africa and parts of Asia, where demographic pressure and the demand for agricultural land is highest. The speed and magnitude of pristine habitat loss is, according to our models, much greater than previously shown when combining both scenarios on future climatic and agroeconomic pressure.

The long-term expansion and the evolution of town planning of a contemporary European metropolis (Athens, Greece) has been analysed in this study in order to evaluate how sustainable urban growth has been taken into account in sequential strategic master plans. During the last decades, the mostly unplanned urban growth and massive housing construction have favoured a slow evolution towards a less compact and mono-centric spatial asset, typical of several Mediterranean cities. Despite efforts to guide urban growth, a series of structural challenges have remained: (i) a gap between planning and implementation; (ii) a gap between spatial planning and socio-economic planning; (iii) a relevant pressure on natural environment; (iv) a lack of participatory planning. In order to face these problems, current strategies for the city of Athens try to foster city resilience providing guidelines for more sustainable management of the built and natural landscape. In particular, the Resilience Strategy for 2030 proposes a list of actions to improve the well-being of citizens and to increase sustainability at the urban and territorial levels. A major role was given to the enhancement of the environmental quality of the metropolitan area and to the involvement of inhabitants in the various phases of decision-making.

BackgroundIn England, rises in healthcare expenditure consistently outpace growth in both GDP and total public expenditure. To ensure the National Health Service (NHS) remains financially sustainable, relevant data on healthcare expenditure are needed to inform decisions about which services should be delivered, by whom and in which settings.MethodsWe analyse routine data on NHS expenditure in England over 9 years (2008/09 to 2016/17). To quantify the relative contribution of the different care settings to overall healthcare expenditure, we analyse trends in 14 healthcare settings under three broad categories: Hospital Based Care (HBC), Diagnostics and Therapeutics (D&T) and Community Care (CC). We exclude primary care and community mental health services settings due to a lack of consistent data. We employ a set of indices to aggregate diverse outputs and to disentangle growth in healthcare expenditure that is driven by activity from that due to cost pressures. We identify potential drivers of the observed trends from published studies.ResultsOver the 9-year study period, combined NHS expenditure on HBC, D&T and CC rose by 50.2%. Expenditure on HBC rose by 54.1%, corresponding to increases in both activity (29.2%) and cost (15.7%). Rises in expenditure in inpatient (38.5%), outpatient (57.2%), and A&E (59.5%) settings were driven predominately by higher activity. Emergency admissions rose for both short-stay (45.6%) and long-stay cases (26.2%). There was a switch away from inpatient elective care (which fell by 5.1%) and towards day case care (34.8% rise), likely reflecting financial incentives for same-day discharges. Growth in expenditure on D&T (155.2%) was driven by rises in the volume of high cost drugs (270.5%) and chemotherapy (110.2%). Community prescribing grew by 45.2%, with costs falling by 24.4%. Evidence on the relationship between new technologies and healthcare expenditure is mixed, but the fall in drug costs could reflect low generic prices, and the use of health technology assessment or commercial arrangements to inform pricing of new medicines.ConclusionsAggregate trends in HCE mask enormous variation across healthcare settings. Understanding variation in activity and cost across settings is an important initial step towards ensuring the long-term sustainability of the NHS.

The Serra do Mar State Park forms a green corridor that connects significant remnants of the Atlantic Forest in Brazil, a region that presents great biodiversity. However, the mounting pressure exerted on it by disorderly urban expansion around conservation unit areas is a cause for concern. Thereby, this paper aims to analyze a geographical and demographic characterization of Serra do Mar State Park and its buffer zone in order to identify regions under the greatest pressure and provide subsidies for developing public policies. The study is based on a cartographic representation using a geographic information system associated with the 2010 Census demographic data, which has been conducted by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE in Portuguese acronym). The study area covers the territory of 32 municipalities and it was found that almost 25,000 inhabitants live inside the park while approximately 712,000 residents live inside its buffer zone.

Feeding the booming human population and at the same time conserving biodiversity is a global challenge. Yet, it is particularly acute in developing countries where biodiversity is high and food-security low. There is an ongoing debate whether land for nature and for agriculture should be segregated (land sparing) or integrated (land sharing). While these strategies still need unambiguous empirical validation, we here illustrate the real-word complexity of this issue by focusing on the case of Kenya, hosting one of the fastest growing populations in the world. We discuss historical effects and those arising from recent demographic pressure, and integrate these with biotic and abiotic constraints (soil fertility and climate) that additionally challenge land sparing and sharing strategies for biodiversity conservation. Generically, our contribution stresses the importance of recognising the specific context in which land-use strategies are to be applied, and underline the need of a deeper understanding of local conditions. This work goes beyond the current theoretical and highly abstract land-use debate that has been published in high impact journals but which may be less efficient on solving local conflicts.

Awareness of the risks imposed by the ongoing process of climate change has led to progressive efforts at coordination at the global level, highlighting the need for shared efforts to achieve common goals. This study provides a contribution to the discussion through an analysis of the human contribution to climate change, highlighting the complexity of policy measures and the long amount of time required to reduce, or at least contain, the ongoing process of climate change. Our results remark the key role played by demographic pressure and the limited contribution that technological progress can provide to contain climate change. Overall, the core socio-economic and political paradigms on which current lifestyle is predominantly based are put under the spotlight. The results of the analysis question the very basis of economic growth and modern lifestyle and raise the prospect of some difficult but necessary behavioural changes.

Nos adentramos en el estudio de un despoblado de época andalusí situado en término de Coín, en el que se describen algunas estructuras halladas en sus espacios domésticos y productivos, a la vez que se sugieren algunas hipótesis de estudio sobre las repercusiones demográficas y socioeconómicas del avance cristiano. Desde un enfoque histórico y arqueológico, se percibe un proceso de concentración poblacional durante los siglos XIII y XIV, detonante del crecimiento económico y base del bienestar social en nuestro ámbito de estudio. This object of this article is to study the deserted settlement of Andalusi origin located in the town of Coín’s hinterland. We will identify certain structures found in both domestic and productive spaces, as well as advance some hypotheses concerning the demographic and socio-economic impact of the Christian conquest. Using both an historical and archaeological approach, we will examine the process of demographic concentration during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, triggered by economic growth and social welfare in this geographical area.

The article presents the current demographic pressures that affect forecasting depending on environmental sustainability, increasing resource demand, resources management, the uneven distribution of waters, climate changes, the natural environment - pollution, the use of nuclear energy, etc. The article takes into account foreseeing the future of mankind meaning care for future generations, with reference to the ways in which the management of national natural resources is realized. The sustainable use of natural resources raises a series of challenges at a global level and this responsibility is reflected in several international environment protection agreements. In conclusion, the future of humankind is a process threatened by natural, economic, social, technological, epidemiological risks, and the developed countries can no longer maintain their advantages if not pushing forward for developing countries, including through environmental and natural resource policies.

The world is in the midst of a major demographic transition. This paper examines the implications of such transition over the next 80 years for Japan, the United States, other industrial countries, and the developing regions of the world using a dynamic intertemporal general equilibrium four-country model containing demographics calibrated to the \"medium variant\" of the United Nations population projections. We find that population aging in industrial countries will reduce aggregate growth in these regions over time, but should boost growth in developing countries over the next 20-30 years, as the relative size of their workingage populations increases. Demographic change will also affect saving, investment, and capital flows, implying changes in global trade balances and asset prices. We also explore the sensitivity of the results to assumptions about future productivity growth and country external risk for the developing country region.