Introduction

"Population" Overview
Population Action International

The world’s human population currently numbers about 6.1 billion people, and the figure grows by nearly 90 million people each year, or around 240,000 each day. This annual addition to population is greater than ever before in history prior to the 1980s. It stems in large part from the unprecedented size of current population. The growth rate itself has actually declined since 1970, from about 2 percent to about 1.5 percent today. However, because this rate is applied to a much larger population than in 1970—when world population stood at 3.7 billion people—the added yearly increments are larger. If the population growth rate is not reduced further, world population will double by the year 2040. This growing global population affects the welfare of communities and ecosystems around the world.

In our lifetimes, humanity has become a force on the planet that rivals nature. The reasons for this are complex and linked to changes not only in human population but in technology, consumption patterns, unequal distribution of wealth and the choices made by people, businesses and governments. Research on these issues is far from complete. At some point, however, the cumulative weight of the evidence argues for prudent efforts that will contribute to a stable world population within at least the lifetimes or our children. The need is not to control population growth. Governments cannot control childbearing and attempts to do so have sometimes led to coercive approaches to reproduction that violate human rights. The need is rather to expand the power individuals have over their own lives, especially by enabling them to choose how many children to have and when to have them.

The rate of world population growth is beginning to decline, but the total number of people could still double or even triple from today’s 6.2 billion before stabilizing a century or more from now. Women in most countries are still having more than the two-child average consistent with a stable population size. Moreover, so many young people are now entering or moving through their childbearing years that even a two-child average would still boost population size for a few decades until the momentum of past growth subsides. Yet there is reason for optimism. The combination of access to family planning and other reproductive health services, education for girls and economic opportunity for women could lower birthrates enough to stabilize world population well before a doubling of today’s total.



"Population Issues Overview"
United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)

Extreme poverty subjects women and men to a lack of real choices, opportunities and basic services to improve their situations. Due to inequality and discrimination, women suffer the most. One fourth of all women in developing countries are adversely affected at some point in their lives by a lack of proper maternal health care. Every minute, one woman dies during pregnancy and birth because she did not receive adequate care and prompt treatment. This amounts to deadly neglect. By increasing interventions for safe motherhood, especially emergency obstetric care, we can save the lives of half a million women and seven million infants, and prevent millions of women from suffering from infections, injury and disability each year. When women are educated and healthy, their families, communities and nations benefit.

Perhaps nowhere is the need for reproductive health services more urgent than in the fight against HIV/AIDS. Every day, 14,000 people are newly infected and half are young people under the age of 25. Many know little about the disease and how the virus is transmitted. Of all groups, women and youth are the most vulnerable. In some African countries, teenage girls are six times more likely to be infected with HIV than are boys of the same age. Reproductive health services that empower women and young people with life-saving messages and skills will help stop HIV/AIDS from spreading and reduce further suffering and social and economic disruption.

We must also step up efforts for family planning. Women in the developing world are having half as many children today as they did in the 1960s but fertility remains highest in the poorest countries due to a lack of social services. The last two generations of women have chosen to have smaller families and the next generation will do the same if they have access to education and reproductive health services. However, 350 million couples still do not have access to a range of effective and affordable family planning services and demand for these services is expected to increase by 40 per cent in the next 15 years.

The war on poverty will not be won unless we direct more resources to women and reproductive health. Developing countries that have invested in health and education, enabling women to make their own fertility choices, have registered faster economic growth than those that have not. When couples can choose the number, timing and spacing of their children, they are better able to ensure there are enough resources for each family member to prosper and thrive. Today the greatest deficits in access to health services can be found in the poorest segments of the population. By channeling resources to reproductive healthcare, we can save lives, stabilize population growth, slow the spread of AIDS, reduce poverty and foster gender equality.



"Promoting Safe Motherhood"
United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)

Every minute, another woman dies needlessly in the agony of childbirth. She may leave behind a devastated family, and young children who will fail to thrive. And for every woman who dies, 30 are injured or disabled.

The tragedy is that almost all of these deaths – over 500,000 a year – are preventable, Yet while most other health indicators have improved in the developing world over the last decades, maternal mortality and morbidity continue to take their high toll.



"Family Planning: A Human Right"
United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)

Nearly 230 million women worldwide—roughly one in six women of reproductive age—are still in need of effective family planning methods so they can space their children or limit the size of their families.

More than 50 per cent of women in some countries report that they would have preferred to postpone or avoid their most recent birth.

And more than 50 million of the 190 million women who become pregnant each year have abortions. Many of these are clandestine and performed under unsafe conditions. The international community has agreed that reproductive choice is a basic human right. But without access to relevant information and high-quality services, that right cannot be exercised.


"Population and the Environment"
Population Connection

· A very small proportion of the population consumes the majority of the world's resources. The richest fifth consumes 86% of all goods and services and produces 53% of all carbon dioxide emissions, while the poorest fifth consumes 1.3% of goods and services and accounts for 3% of C02 output. (1)

· Per capita municipal waste grew 30% in developed nations since 1975 and is now two to five times the level in developing nations. (1)

· An average American's environmental impact is 30 to 50 times that of the average citizen of a developing country such as India. (1)

Human action has transformed between one-third and one-half of the entire land surface of the earth. We have lost more than one-quarter of the planet's birds, and two-thirds of the major marine fisheries are fully exploited, over-exploited or depleted. (2)

· Every 20 minutes, the world adds another 3,500 human lives but loses one or more entire species of animal or plant life - at least 27,000 species per year. This is a rate and scale of extinction that has not occurred in 65 million years. (3)

· Spreading deserts and declining water tables in a third of the planet are contributing to famine, social unrest and migration.

· Two thirds of the world's population lives within 100 miles of an ocean, inland sea or freshwater lake: 14 of the world's 15 largest megacities (10 million or more people) are coastal. Their impacts include growing loads of sewage and other waste, the drainage of wetlands and development of beaches, and destruction of prime fish nurseries. (4)

Clearly, the greatest environmental threat comes from both the wealthiest billion people, who consume the most and generate the most waste, and from the poorest billion, who may damage their meager resource base in the daily struggle to avoid starvation. In addition, the billions in between are doing their best to increase their standard of living, in part through increased consumption.

· Although the world's supply of water remains constant, per-capita water consumption is rising twice as fast as world population. Humanity now uses more than half of the available surface fresh water on earth (2); at least 300 million people live in regions that already have severe water shortages. By 2025, the number could be 3 billion. (6)

· The world's forests have shrunk from 11.4 to 7.3 square kilometers per 1,000 people since 1970. The loss is concentrated in developing countries, mostly to meet the demand for wood and paper by the industrialized world. Wild species are becoming extinct 50 to 100 times faster than they naturally would. (1)

· Over the last 50 years, 17% of the planet's soils have been severely degraded. That's nearly 2 billion hectares, the size of China and India combined. (1)

· The global emission of carbon dioxide, a "greenhouse gas" most researchers say causes global warming and disruption in weather patterns, has quadrupled since 1950, largely from deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels. The atmosphere now contains 30% more CO2 than at the beginning of the industrial revolution. (2) Where the industrialized world produces 60% of it today, the developing world will be producing 60% of it by 2015.(1)