Sri Lanka is currently experiencing major population changes including significant transformations in its age structure associated with the youth bulge as well as population ageing. These novel population trends create many developmental challenges as well as opportunities that have crucial implications for social, economic and environmental development. These emerging population trends shape and are shaped by public policy in the form of policies and related programmes that are being used to balance population change, economic growth, social transformation and environmental sustainability. These population dynamics impact development at the national and sub-national levels. Therefore, the challenge of this century is to unravel the problem of meeting the growing needs and expectations of different population groups while at the same
time adjusting the current production and consumption patterns to accomplish a more sustainable development model and address the links between sustainable development and population dynamics resulting from age-sex structure changes of the population.