SAFEGUARDING THE ENVIRONMENT

The link between population growth and the environment is complex. More people, bigger cities, and heavier resource use combine to put enormous pressure on the environment.

When couples have access to family planning services, they tend to choose to have smaller, healthier families. This can ease the demand for water and arable land, preserve biodiversity and vital habitat, and limit pollution.

HERE ARE THE FACTS:

§         More than 90% of all population growth is occurring in the developing world. Rising demand for natural resources is putting tremendous stress on the environment.

§         Most developing countries are already farming nearly all arable land. Growing populations press marginal lands into use. This destroys wildlife habitat and biodiversity, and crop yields decline.

§         More forest has been cleared since 1850 than in all of human history, mostly in the developing world--not just for fire and fuel but to meet the industrial world’s demand for paper products.

§         The world’s high-income countries have 20% of world population but consume 84% of all paper and generate 75 percent of all pollutants and waste.

§         Motor vehicles produce more air pollution than any other human activity: nearly half of global carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxide emissions.

§         More than 100 million married women of reproductive age in developing nations say they want to postpone childbearing but do not use contraception, according to Johns Hopkins University.

§         Wild species are becoming extinct 50 to 100 times faster than they naturally would.

§         One in every four vertebrate species is extinct or on the verge of extinction. Currently threatened are 25% of mammals, 11% of birds, 20% of reptiles, 25% of amphibians and 34% of fishes.

§         Water consumption rates are rising twice as fast as world population. At least 300 million people live in regions that already have severe water shortages. By 2025, the number could be 3 billion.

§         Some 20 countries already suffer from water stress, and water’s global availability has dropped from 17,000 cubic metres per capita a year in 1950 to 7,000 in 1998.

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Resources: Johns Hopkins University Center for Communications Programs, Why Family Planning Matters, Population Reports, Series J, No. 49, Baltimore, MD, July 1999 (www.jhuccp.org/pr/j49edsum.stm); National Audubon Society, Population and Habitat in the New Millennium, Boulder, CO, 1998 (www.earthnet.net/~popnet/); Population Action International, Forest Futures, Washington, DC, 1999 (www.populationaction.org); Population Action International, Nature’s Place: Human Population and the Future of Biological Diversity, Washington, DC January 2000; United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 1998, New York, 1998 (www.undp.org); Worldwatch Institute, Earth Day Report Card, Washington, DC, March 2000 (www.worldwatch.org); World Resources Institute: A Guide to the Global Environment: 2000.