Deforestation and world population sustainability: a quantitative analysis

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Bologna, Mauro and Aquino, Gerardo. 2020. Deforestation and world population sustainability: a quantitative analysis. Scientific Reports, 10, 7631. ISSN 2045-2322 [Article]

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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-63657-6

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In this paper we afford a quantitative analysis of the sustainability of current world population growth in relation to the parallel deforestation process adopting a statistical point of view. We consider a simplified model based on a stochastic growth process driven by a continuous time random walk, which depicts the technological evolution of human kind, in conjunction with a deterministic generalised logistic model for humans-forest interaction and we evaluate the probability of avoiding the self-destruction of our civilisation. Based on the current resource consumption rates and best estimate of technological rate growth our study shows that we have very low probability, less than 10% in most optimistic estimate, to survive without facing a catastrophic collapse.

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https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-63657-6