Lourdes Arizpe is director of the Institute of Anthropological Research, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and a vice-president of the International Social Science Council. She has authored numerous books and articles on women, development, and migration issues. Her most recent book is La mujer en el desarrollo de México y de América Latina. M. Priscilla Stone is program director for the Africa Program at the Social Science Research Council. She is an anthropologist whose research focuses on agricultural intensification and gender dynamics in West African farming systems. David C. Major, an economist and natural resources planner, is program director for the Program on Global Environmental Change at the Social Science Research Council. His most recent book is Large-Scale Regional Water Resources Planning (with Harry E. Schwarz).

• Preface -- Rethinking the Population-Environment Debate -- Population and Environment: Overviews and Methodologies -- The Social Dimensions of Population -- World Population Trends: Global and Regional Interactions Between Population and Environment -- Women, Poverty and Population: Issues for the Concerned Environmentalist -- The Gender and Environment Debate: Lessons from India -- The Relation Between Population and Deforestation: Methods for Drawing Causal Inferences from Macro and Micro Studies -- Population and Environment: Reviews and Case Studies -- Population Change and Agricultural Intensification in Developing Countries -- The Social Context of Land Degradation (“Desertification”) in Dry Regions -- The Socioeconomic Matrix of Deforestation -- Problems of Population and Environment in Extractive Economies -- Urbanization and the Environment in Developing Countries: Latin America in Comparative Perspective -- Population and Environment: Conclusions -- Conclusions: Rethinking the Population-Environment Debate