This is the story of a powerful historical pathway of structural transformation that is experienced by all successful developing countries; of highly important and diverse approaches to coping with the political pressures generated along that pathway; and of policy mechanisms available to keep the poor from falling off the pathway altogether.  This structural transformation involves four main features: a falling share of agriculture in economic output and employment, a rising share of urban economic activity in industry and modern services, migration of rural workers to urban settings, and a demographic transition in birth and death rates that always leads to a spurt in population growth before a new equilibrium is reached.

At one level, the story is easy to tell because the statistical picture presented, both graphically and econometrically, is, well, telling.  In their broad sweep and relevance, these are very robust results that have very deep historical roots.  Challenging them is like challenging the tides.

At another level, the complexity of national diversity asserts itself in very important ways.  This finding does not alter the pathways themselves, but rather their consequences for income distribution and the gap in labor productivity between urban and rural economies.  We learn a lot about the possibilities for narrowing this gap during the process of structural transformation by comparing the historical experience of rapidly growing Asia with the rest of the world.  Individual country experience is revealing as well.  The stress placed on this productivity gap, how it changes during the structural transformation, and potential policy interventions to narrow it, is the major contribution of this monograph.

Making sure the poor are connected to both the structural transformation and to the policy initiatives designed to ameliorate the distributional consequences of rapid transformation has turned out to be a major challenge for policy makers over the past half century.  There are successes and failures, and the historical record illuminates what works and what does not.  Trying to stop the structural transformation does not work, at least for the poor.  Investing in the capacity of the poor to cope with change and to participate in its benefits through better education and health does seem to work.  Such investments typically require significant public sector resources and policy support, and thus depend on political processes that are themselves conditioned by the pressures generated by the structural transformation.

Kosrae, Federated States of Micronesia, is a prototype of an island economy prone to economic crowding. Average family size is large, the habitable land area is small, economic activity is limited, and household dependence on natural resources for fuel and food is high. We analyze how economic crowding - and its mitigation through trade and migration policies - affects mangrove resource use. A comparison of household survey data from 1996 and 2000 indicates that despite decreases in US aid and public-sector jobs, average household consumption of mangrove resources has not increased. Migration and remittances have allowed the purchase of imported fuel and building materials substituting for mangrove wood. Despite changing preferences and shifts toward import consumption, population growth and further declines in US financial support will likely cause aggregate demand for mangrove and upland wood to rise. Moreover, continued emigration may accelerate the export of mangrove crabs to off-island Kosraeans.

All too often, researchers in the academic world find themselves cut off from their colleagues in other disciplines by the level of specialization required in their own fields. The gap between the social and physical sciences, in particular, seems unbridgeable to many scholars. Yet many of the problems confronting the world today demand an integrated approach.

The vast issue of global change -- encompassing changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide and the possibility of global warming, or the dramatic increases in world population and consequent increased pressures on land use and on political systems -- demands a problem-solving approach that integrates our knowledge about the nature of human interaction and activity with the scientific knowledge we have gained on atmospheric, oceanic, and terrestrial patterns of interaction.

Ecological and Social Dimensions of Global Change, published by the Institute of International Studies as part of its "Insights in International Affairs" series, is a collection of lectures by leading physical and social scientists and international legal experts on the implications of global changes in climate and in population, migration, and land use. (See the Table of Contents.) These lectures also examine the responses of the international legal and political communities to these complex changes.

The volume is composed of thirteen talks from an interdisciplinary graduate seminar conducted at the University of California at Berkeley in the fall of 1992. The evolution of this seminar provides a cogent example of how research from a specific field, brought into an interdisciplinary teaching arena, becomes enriched by the input from researchers in other fields. The seminar as originally conceived focused primarily on the ecological dimensions of global change, but the numerous and fundamental links of any given ecological issue to its surrounding social circumstances persuaded the organizers to expand the focus to include the social dimensions of these problems as well. Both the physical and social scientists involved in the seminar subsequently incorporated knowledge gained from their colleagues into their own fields of study. In addition, seminar participants in the fields of legal and political policy-making were able to integrate each discipline's contributions into the prescriptions that they offered for the problem of global change. During the course of the development of this book from the lecture series, commentaries by scholars from a different academic field were added to a few of the original lectures, further broadening the focus.

Following each of the lectures is a transcription of the discussion from the classes which deepen and elaborate some of the key theoretical, methodological, and policy questions raised by the lecturer. In addition, a short bibliography and further questions for class discussion are suggested, making this an ideal text for coursework on the subject of global change. Each section of the book -- the ecological dimensions, the social dimensions, and policy and legal responses -- is preceded by a short introduction to the central ideas encompassed by the contributors to that section.