POLICIES ON POPULATION, LAND-USE, AND ENVIRONMENT IN RWANDA

The paper first describes the interactions between population growth, land use, and environment in Rwanda, a small, densely populated landlo cked nation in the East-African Great Lakes region. These interactions are modelled using a conceptual framework applied to the neighboring Kivu region in Zaire, but adapted to the Rwandan case study. Second, t he paper contends that the emphasis put on increasing agricultural pro duction, mostly through the use of marginal land, as well as the lack of a timely implementation of a family planning program and a national population policy, have led to a worsening of the interactions betwee n population growth, land use, and environment. In an attempt to demon strate this hypothesis, demography-driven projection scenarios are app lied to the agricultural colonization and intensification processes.