Population, territory and sustainable development: Summary

As requested by the countries, the Latin American and Caribbean Demographic Centre (CELADE)-Population Division of ECLAC has drafted this document as a summary, with its own emphasis and approach, of a more extensive and detailed report to be presented and discussed at the 2012 meeting of the ECLAC Ad Hoc Committee on Population and Development. The purpose hereof is to provide an overview of current trends, contexts and issues in the spheres of population, territory and sustainable development and examine their public policy implications. Three themes run through the report. The first two are laid out int the empirical chapters (III through X); the thrid is taken up in the closing chapter. Using the most recent data available (including censuses conducted in the 2010s), the first theme describes and tracks location and spatial mobility patterns for the population of Latin America, focusing on certain kinds of territory. The second explores the linkages between these patterns and sustainable development in different kinds of territory in Latin America and the Caribbean. The third offers considerations and policy proposals for fostering a consistent, synergistic relationship between population location and spatial mobility, on the one hand, and sustainable development, on the other, in the kinds of territory studied.