Balancing demographic pressures and resource consumption: Educational and scientific approaches to sustainable development

¹ Institute of Higher Education of the National Academy of Educational Sciences of Ukraine, Ukraine
² Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Ukraine
³ Khmelnytsky Humanitarian and Pedagogical Academy, Ukraine
⁴ Kuras Institute of Political and Ethnic Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. Ukraine
⁵ Kyiv Institute of Business and Technology, Ukraine
⁶ Kyiv National University of Construction and Architecture, Ukraine
⁷ Institute of Higher Education of the National Academy of Educational Sciences of Ukraine, Ukraine

^* Corresponding author: zinchenko.72@gmail.com

Abstract

The steady demographic growth observed on the planet Earth over the past two centuries is the result of the settlement of mankind for tens and hundreds of thousands of years across the entire planet. Various researchers assess the prospects of maintaining such growth in different ways, placing such growth in dependence on the development of science and technology, as well as on the quantity and quality of human consumption of the planet’s natural resources. The main scenarios of human development from a demographic point of view are restrained development, anticipatory development, reverse development and the destruction of mankind. Each of these scenarios is based on real trends in the development of the economy and politics, science and culture – as well as on real estimates of the exhaustion of the planet Earth’s resources. Although each of these scenarios cannot be the only correct one, the scenario of the anticipatory development of mankind appears to be dominant.