World Population Awareness

Tragedy of the Commons

By Richard Grossman - First published in the Durango Herald

"In every deliberation, we must consider the impact on the seventh generation…." Great Law of the Iroquois

"They know that they shouldn't fish closer than 500 meters from the coast, but I've seen these boats with their nets out just 200 or 300 meters offshore. The officials don't enforce the laws."

We were visiting the Greek island of Mykonos while on tour with the Durango Choral Society. We walked along the harbor with our guide, David, admiring the many small fishing boats. He explained facets of the failing Greek economy as well as the ancient and modern sites on this beautiful island. The Aegean Sea around Mykonos was so overfished, David said, that there were few fish left to catch.

We found proof that David was correct when we sat down to eat. Restaurants, even those overlooking the beautiful blue Aegean, had menus that listed few seafood dishes. Any seafood was prohibitively expensive since it had been caught in distant seas.

The situation that we encountered in Greece is a good illustration of the "tragedy of the commons". That tragedy can occur when a limited resource is open to uncontrolled use by many people. Any one user may think he can benefit from taking as much of the resource as possible. This behavior is rational only in the narrow sense of self-interest. Regrettably, unbridled use of a resource is likely to lead to its depletion.

The term "commons" referred to pastureland that was available for everyone to graze his sheep in old England. Now it includes many different vital resources such as the air we breathe, the water we drink and the fish in the Aegean.

Most of us learned to share in kindergarten. Unfortunately, some adults never mastered that lesson or have forgotten it. When there are many people using the same resource, any person who takes more than his share may deprive others of their fair share. Even worse, selfish people can deplete the resource, so eventually no one benefits from it.

In the case of fishing off Mykonos, there had been plenty of seafood for centuries. In the past the boats and fishing techniques only allowed small, sustainable catches, so the small proportion of sea life that ended up in nets was quickly replaced. Now, with more fishermen and more effective fishing techniques and many more mouths to feed, the fish supply has been exhausted. The Greek government has tried to prevent depletion by having a "no fish" zone, with poor results. People don't seem to pay attention to the law, or the reason that it is needed.

Human population growth is one factor leading to the tragedy of the commons: more people using the same resource means less for all.

Ironically, some of the pollutants we have unintentionally added to drinking water may serve as a feedback mechanism to slow human population growth. Endocrine disruptors are chemicals that have unintended hormonal effects. They are found in much of our country's drinking water. Some come from insecticides and other agricultural chemicals. Many plastics contain BPA, which has undesirable effects. Another source is the waste of women taking hormones. These chemicals have been shown to produce fish and other animals with sexual aberrations. It is possible that endocrine disruptors will lead to decreased human fertility.

The amount of fresh water on the planet is limited and, in some cases, is very slow to be replenished. The Ogallala aquifer is an example of a resource that is being used in an unsustainable manner. Much of the food grown in our country's midwestern breadbasket depends on water from this aquifer. Tragically, there are some places in eastern Colorado (and in other states) that rely on the Ogallala where the water table has dropped 40 feet in just 15 years!

As our human population has grown, the apparent size of the commons has shrunk. Although the first few wells in the Ogallala made little difference to the water table, now we seem to be sucking it dry. Dumping waste into a river or the atmosphere made little difference with few people and fewer factories, but these resources have become toxic in our populous, industrialized nation. We are learning the problems that can be caused by abusing the commons. The people who will suffer the most may be those who come after us, the "seventh generation" in the Iroquois law. Unless we think and plan ahead, our progeny will not have the use of many of the resources that we have enjoyed.

Vallentyne was Right - Part 3: Things Are Getting Worse

By Bill Ryerson, Population Media Center and Population Institute

In September 2011, the Population Institute (PI) issued a landmark report ‘From 6 billion to 7 billion: how population growth is changing and challenging our world' that showed how many trends in per capita resource availability at the time of the world's population reaching 6 billion in 1999 had reversed in deleterious directions by the arrival at 7 billion in 2011. As the report stated (PI 2011, p. 2):

When world population crossed the 6.0 billion mark in October of 1999, there was little apparent reason to believe that the march of human progress would be slowed any time soon by population growth. Indeed, chronic hunger and severe poverty were in a prolonged decline, and despite an accelerated rate of resource consumption, commodity prices for minerals and fossil fuels — measured in constant dollars — were at or near historic lows. A rising middle class in Asia spurred hopes that the advance of industrialization would bring prosperity to all. And while there were concerns even then about issues like water scarcity, climate change, biodiversity, and environmental degradation, they were tempered by a widely held belief that technology and human know-how could overcome all obstacles. Moreover, there was a strong conviction that fertility rates would continue a steady descent, and that population growth would level off and decline before these environmental problems could reach a crisis stage.

Indeed, as the report summarizes, in 1999, oil prices were at $10 USD barrel−1, and the Economist magazine speculated they could fall to $5 USD barrel−1. The report continues, ‘The International Energy Agency (IEA) projected that oil prices would remain essentially flat, at $21 USD barrel−1, until 2010 and then rise steadily to $28 USD barrel−1 through 2020.' As a result of cheap oil, food prices in 1999 were at or near record lows. The PI (2011, p. 4) report continues:

Looking ahead to 2020, the International Food Policy and Research Institute's (IFPRI) 1999 report [Pinstrup-Andersen et al. 1999] predicted that food prices would ‘remain steady or fall slightly.' While forecasting a ‘continued slowdown in crop yield increases,' IFPRI indicated that real cereal prices would increase only slightly through 2010, and that after 2010 declining population growth and other factors would ‘reduce demand growth enough to cause cereal prices to resume their long-term downward trend.

The PI (2011) report summarizes the low prices of many minerals and metals in 1999 and the efforts made by the world community to address global warming. By 2011, many of these optimistic trends had reversed. As noted by the report (PI 2011, p. 5):

In 2010, the world produced 87.4 million barrels per day (mb d−1) of oil, sharply lower than the 96 mb d−1 forecast in 1999. Much of the increased production came from tar sands and other unconventional oil sources rather than conventional crude oil. In a sharp reversal from earlier forecasts, the International Energy Agency last year projected that crude oil out- put would reach ‘an undulating plateau' of around 68 to 69 mb d−1 by 2020, but it would never again regain ‘its all-time peak of 70 mb d−1 reached in 2006.

The US Energy Information Agency (EIA) earlier this year projected that the average price of imported low-sulfur, light crude oil will rise from an average of $83 USD barrel−1 in 2011 to $100 USD barrel−1 in 2017 and $125 USD barrel−1 by 2035 (EIA 2011).

When asked to comment on the global energy situation, Fatih Birol, Chief Economist of the International Energy Agency, said in a BBC interview (One Planet, ‘Peak Oil and Happy Cows' broadcast 5 September 2010; www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/ p009hq8g#synopsis ), ‘It is definitely depressing, more than depressing, I would say alarming...'

As a result of higher energy prices, the global food markets have driven food prices to near record levels. In turn, many more people around the planet have become impoverished, and about a billion people were chronically hungry. As stated in the PI (2011, p. 5) report:

On average, the prices of basic food commodities have more than doubled in recent years. In February of 2011 the Food and Agricultural Organization's (FAO) Food Price Index of basic food commodities (grains, meat, dairy, sugars, oils and fats) reached a record high of 238 (2002 to 2004 = 100). The FAO's latest report, issued in September, showed only slight moderation in food prices. The index for August stood at 231, just below the record.

There is a growing consensus that food prices will trend even higher in the years ahead. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)-FAO's ‘Agricultural Outlook 2011-2020' reports that, ‘A period of high volatility in agricultural commodity markets has entered its fifth successive year. High and volatile commodity prices and their implications for food insecurity are clearly among the important issues facing governments today.

In June of 2011, Oxfam International released a research report, and predicting that the price of key food staples could increase ‘120% to 180% by 2030' warning that ‘This will prove disastrous for food importing poor countries, and raises the prospect of a wholesale reversal in human development.' (Oxfam International 2011, p. 7)

The Oxfam International (2011) report summarized the near record levels of various commodity prices on the world market, including fertilizers, metals and minerals, and non-food agricultural products like cotton, timber and rubber. It also summarized the state of paralysis of the global community with regard to taking meaningful action to stop climate change and the threat accelerating climate change has for global food security.

Finally, the Oxfam International (2011) report pointed out that previous population projections had been far too optimistic and that 2050 projections had been raised numerous times during the last decade by the United Nations (UN) Population Division. There is little capacity to convert remaining forest land to agricultural production, and what is converted threatens significant loss of the biodiversity that makes the planet inhabitable and accelerates climate change as large amounts of carbon stored in trees are released.

Countries such as China and Saudi Arabia are buying and leasing large tracts of farmland in Africa and elsewhere to feed their own populations as water tables at home are depleted. Combined with falling agricultural and family planning aid from debt-ridden Western countries, the prognosis for the 1.2 billion people living on less than $1 USD d−1 is potentially catastrophic.

The continued loss of biodiversity is summarized by the report (Oxfam International 2011). Biodiversity is not just critical to the maintenance of a healthy ecosystem. According to the Convention on Biological Diversity, an estimated 40% of the global economy and 80% of the needs of the poor are supported by biological resources. Millennium Development Goal 7 sought to achieve a significant reduction in the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010 (United Nations 2000), but the Convention on Biological Diversity's ‘Global Biodiversity Outlook 3' found, on the whole, that there was ‘no indication of a significant reduction in the rate of decline in biodiversity' (SCBD 2010, p. 17). It warned (p. 5) that ‘the principal pressures leading to biodiversity loss are not just constant but are, in some cases, intensifying.' The report indicated that 42% of all amphibian species and 40% of bird species are declining in population. It concluded (p. 10) that ‘There is a high risk of dramatic biodiversity loss and accompanying degradation of a broad range of ecosystem services.'

Despite the authoritative warnings from the scientific community and blue ribbon panels, political leaders have managed to avoid dealing with the very serious threats to sustainability of the human population and the loss of the biodiversity that makes the planet inhabitable by all species.

This makes efforts like those of Vallentyne even more important in giving the scientific community ways to measure environmental impact of human activities and to help the general public prepare for the coming crises. Without political leadership, it will be up to each individual and community to find ways to achieve resilience in the coming decades. Whether that happens will depend on many factors, one of which is having a clear understanding of the situation we face.

Crowded Out

By Hania Zlotnik (Mexico) - director of the Population Division of the United Nations, Chandran Nair - founder of the Global Institute For Tomorrow and author of Consumptionomics, and Fred Pearce - British science writer and the author of Peoplequake.

The world population has gone from 1.6 billion in 1900 to 7 billion in October 2011, and the U.N. projects that it will reach 9.3 billion by 2050, and over 10 billion by 2100.

We may not agree on how many is too many, but it's hard to deny that most of the great challenges we and our planet face -- global warming, biodiversity, energy, food and water supplies, migration, development, war, peace -- all stem, to some degree, from the enormous growth in population over the past century.

ZLOTNIK: There is still a fair chance that the population in 2100 might be even higher than the 10 billion projected in the medium variant of the U.N. projections. The U.N. projections assume that fertility would decline in most regions of the world. In the 1970s, we predicted that fertility would decline earlier and significantly in Asia and in Latin America, but that it would decline later in Africa. Those predictions have generally come to pass. Now we ask whether Africa will soon experience the fairly rapid decline in fertility that the other regions have experienced. If not, future population increases may end up being higher than 9.3 billion by 2050 and over 10 billion by 2100.

NAIR: The population is going to reach 9 or 10 billion by 2050 despite all the best efforts in the world. If Asia continues to embrace the current consumption-driven economic model, it must accept limits to growth due to resource constraints; resources need to be priced to reflect their true cost; and the economy needs to be subservient to maintaining the vitality of the resource base; not the other way around, as it is now.

If China, India and other developing countries achieve American levels of car ownership, there could be three billion cars in the world within four decades. We will need Draconian rules to restrict certain types of consumption , which would fly in the face of mainstream Western liberal capitalism and democratic systems. In this part of the world (Asia), which will have 60% of the world's population, we will have to reject Western consumption-led economic models.

PEARCE: We are in a danger zone, given our consumption patterns, and the way that we produce what we consume. Back in the 1960s and '70s, increases in human numbers were very directly driving most of the environmental threats to the planet. But now we can see a peak in population as a prospect within a few decades, given the very fast falls in fertility rates that we have seen around the world.

We talk often in apocalyptic terms about population growth while, in reality, fertility rates around the world have halved in the last 40-50 years. The average fertility rate is 2.5 children per woman, which is getting very close to replacement level, which, as a global average, is about 2.3. In much of Asia they're now well below replacement levels. If Africa follows in that path, we can look forward to population peaking at about nine billion.

Ehrlich concluded back in the '60s that billions of people would die in famines by the 1980s. Well, that didn't happen, and the reason it didn't is because we did double food production. I think we are defusing the population bomb, but we haven't really begun to defuse the consumption bomb, and it is that which ultimately threatens us.

NAIR: There is a very important imperative for Asian governments to tell their people to restrain their consumption this very quickly. If they don't, we'll get much wider gaps between the wealthy and the have-nots, and then major social disruptions, because the have-nots will be the vast majority as the resource base is stripped.

ZLOTNIK: We thought 20 years ago that countries in Africa, and also several countries in Asia and a few in Latin America -- countries that still have high fertility -- were going to see their fertility rates fall as rapidly as they had fallen in other countries. But the decline they have experienced so far is slower than had been expected.

More than that, we are hearing more often from the governments of high-fertility countries, especially those in Africa, that their countries need a larger population to have the market size needed to spur development. In these countries there is still little recognition that higher population growth is associated with lower per capita incomes and that markets can also grow by increasing incomes and standards of living, a task that is easier when the speed of population growth declines.

We must recognize that the increase in the world population has been very marked. It has almost tripled since 1950. With the great uncertainty surrounds future fertility levels, the continued rapid growth of the population is not yet totally outside the realm of possibility.

ZLOTNIK: It is not racist to discuss overpopulation in Africa, It is not only the "West" preaching about numbers of people. Fertility decline has major advantages for women and children. It is better for women to have fewer pregnancies, because their risks of dying or suffering serious side effects from pregnancy are lowered. It is also good for women and their children to increase the intervals between pregnancies. There is strong evidence that when children are born very close together, their risks of dying are higher. When people have fewer children, they can invest more on each child.

Let me note that I do not consider myself "Western." I am from a developing country, Mexico, and I do not see the United Nations as a part of "the West." Our task at the U.N. is to provide governments with unbiased and objective information to guide their policies. Furthermore, the West has not maintained a consistent position with respect to population. For instance, the United States under some administrations has reduced multilateral support for family planning and has favored abstinence over modern methods of contraception in countries receiving its assistance.

NAIR: I believe the West cannot reduce its level of consumption because its political systems are weak, and because the Western experience of the last century has been one of entitlement. I hope the West can, but the rest of the world should not hold their breath. In Asia, governments need to reject the notion promoted by Western capitalism that we can aspire to have everything, because the majority is disenfranchised and this is simply not possible. It is not about the right to a car but about the basic right to live, and governments should ensure safe and secure food, water and sanitation, housing, public health, and education.

PEARCE: Urbanization is part of the solution to the problem, because as soon as people move into cities, children cease being an economic asset. They become an economic liability — or, at any rate, a problem. They have to get educated, which can be expensive, before they can get paid employment. Urbanization is certainly happening quite fast. That creates its own problems, but it does mean that fertility rates are going to start coming down in Africa quite fast in the next one or two decades.

SCHMEMANN (the interviewer): Maybe Malthus was right - if you get too many people, they will starve. In Africa, at this stage, people need more children, and they will have more children. When they move to cities, they will have fewer children. This is not a process that can be managed or regulated. You can add a dollop of education. You can provide advice on contraception, but ultimately the whole process is self-controlled, there is really little you can do from the outside.

NAIR: I refuse to accept that we can't do anything about population. We should be doing all we can and much is being done. We need to be building institutions around what the 21st century will look like given resource constraints. That is where we are failing and I do not think any human rights are being contravened if car ownership for example is restricted to enable energy and other resources to be used to meet basic needs.

ZLOTNIK: I think the first line of attack is to start thinking about food production, which is the basis for life. At this moment there's a lot of food produced that is not necessarily used for feeding people. One of the most immediate actions a government could take is to better distribute available food.

Growing livestock for meat is not the most efficient or equitable — or necessarily healthy — use of grain or other agricultural resources. We need to start thinking in terms of what has to change in order for people to increase their well-being, to consume what they ought to consume and not overconsume, and to get a more equitable distribution of available food.

PEARCE: I agree very much. In simple terms, we already produce enough food in the world today to feed 10 billion people — the population we might expect by the end of the century. The problem is that almost half of the grain that we produce is not fed to people.

It either goes to livestock — which is a very inefficient way of feeding people — or to produce biofuels. We also waste a huge amount of food. And we also use quite a lot of our agricultural land for growing non-food crops, such as cotton, rubber and various other things.

Fertility rates in China really are down now to about 1.2, 1.3 — almost at the intended level. China's population is going to peak very soon, and it's aging very fast, and aging is going to be a major problem in coming decades. Some people believe that aging will very soon shut off the economic revolution in China simply because as its population ages, the dynamism of a predominately young, adult population will diminish. You can expect that as societies age, they will lose that economic dynamism.

ZLOTNIK: I don't see the risk that the population might plunge too precipitously as too likely at this moment, although there is a projection variant (the low variant) that yields a 2100 population similar in size to that at the beginning of this century. The problem is that if a population maintains low fertility for a long time, the exponential decline of the population eventually accelerates. In order to put the brakes on the momentum, it's necessary for fertility to drop below replacement level everywhere, and, as Fred is saying, the decline of fertility to below-replacement level in developing countries has been and must continue to be faster than it was in the developed world. Population in the developing world is going to age a lot faster than the population of the developed world did and, consequently, developing countries will have to adjust to an older population over a shorter period. Developed countries had around 130 years, with a baby boom in the middle of the period, to adapt to an older population. Developing countries will have to adapt during half that time.

PEARCE: As we age as a society, we may become less consumerist, less concerned with economic growth, more concerned about well-being and happiness and living environmentally sustainable lives.

ZLOTNIK: The chance of achieving a stable population is much better today than it was 50 years ago. Populations have grown enormously and yet the world has not collapsed, although we haven't paid for everything that we have used. The payment will have to be made by future generations and it is important that the changes in population growth achieved so far continue in the same direction so that young people today and in the future have more degrees of freedom in tackling the problems that they will face.

As Global Population Surpasses 7 Billion, Two Clear Strategies for a Sustainable Future

About 4.5 billion people have been added to the world population in just the last 60 years, according to UN. Humans interact with their surroundings far more intensely than any other species and use vast amounts of carbon, nitrogen, water, and other resources, resulting in changes to the global climate, depletion of essential energy and other natural resources and wiping out thousands of plant and animal species.

Some of these outcomes are now unavoidable; we'll have to adapt to them. But to avoid catastrophe, we need to work simultaneously on two programs: 1) influence the future path of population and 2) address the environmental and social impacts that continued population growth will have.

Worldwatch President Robert Engelman, an expert on global population said: "It is precisely because the human population is so large and is growing so fast that we must care how much we as individuals—and nations—are increasingly out of sync with environmental sustainability." ... "The challenge becomes even more with each generation. Fortunately there are ways to practically and humanely both slow population growth and reduce the impacts associated with the growth that occurs."

7 Billion Actions is a campaign launched by the UN to highlight innovations by individuals and organizations addressing global development challenges. The campaign aims to foster communication and collaboration as the planet becomes more populated and increasingly interdependent.

"Addressing global population growth is not the same thing as ‘controlling population'," Engelman said. We need to empower women to make their own decisions about childbearing. More than two in five pregnancies worldwide are unintended by the women who experience them, and half or more of these pregnancies result in births that spur continued population growth.

Engelman has calculated that if all women had the capacity to decide for themselves when to become pregnant, average global childbearing would immediately fall below the "replacement fertility" value of slightly more than two children per woman. On this path population growth could peak and reverse before 2050. Women must be able to make their own decisions about childbearing free from fear of coercion or pressure from partners, family, and society. And they must have easy access to a range of safe, effective, and affordable contraceptive methods and the information and counseling needed to use them.

At the same time, we need to rapidly transform our energy, water, and materials consumption through greater use of conservation, efficiency, and green technologies. Humans use 24% to 40% of the photosynthetic output of the planet for food and other purposes, and more than half of the planet's accessible renewable freshwater runoff. Humans waste large quantities of food every year, wasting 222 million tons of food annually, according to FAO. If fewer resources and less food were wasted, the world would be able to feed more people and use fewer resources. There are early 1 billon hungry people worldwide.

Food Security for 7 Billion

by Dr. Nafis Sadik, Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund from 1987-2000

As we pass the 7 billion milestone, and go on to 9 billion or more by 2050, we face a 'perfect storm' of future needs for food, energy and water. There are already 600 million people today who can't count on eating tomorrow. And tomorrow there will be a lot more faces around the table.

The most important resource to weather this perfect storm is the world's women.

I am not calling for so-called 'population control' or anything like that. Birth rates in many countries have been falling for many years. Families in Mexico, for example, are half the size they were in 1980, because women have decided they want smaller families than their mothers. That decision is a fundamental freedom for women - a basic human right.

11 Challenges Facing 7 Billion Super-Consumers

An excellent article giving an overview of overpopulation. Please follow the link in the headline to read it.

A World Too Full of People

Politicians of western countries avoid talking about population control, but if we invest in family planning we might just save our planet.

A 60-year-old Bolivian woman, mother of eight, was born and raised in a mountain community in Bolivia. High above her home, a glacier is retreating three times as fast as predicted ten years ago. All but one of her children have already migrated to other parts of the country. Because of the dwindling water supply, she must spend hours hauling water and the fodder for her llamas and sheep is more difficult to find, with some of her llamas starving to death.

She and women like her are on the front line of the struggle against climate change. But her plight as a mother dramatizes an issue that was largely ignored at the UN summit last December and is missing from the agenda of the UN summit in Mexico (COP16), scheduled for late this year. It is the problem of human numbers. rw

Population Explosion Scrutinised as Scientists Urge Politicians to Act

Britain's premier scientific organisation, The Optimum Population Trust, has launched a two-year study into global population levels. A growing body of scientists believe the time has come for politicians to confront the problems posed by the future increase in human numbers.

The Royal Society has established a working group of leading experts to draw up a set of recommendations on human population that could set the agenda for tackling the environmental stress caused by billions of extra people on the planet.

We really do have to look at where we are going in relation to population. If we don't do it, we may survive but we won't flourish. We will be examining the extent to which population is a significant factor in the challenge of securing global sustainable development, considering not just the scientific elements but encompassing the wider issues including culture, gender, economics and law.

The planet's population stands at 6.8 billion and although fertility rates in most countries are falling, the number of young people alive now who are destined to become parents in the future suggests that this figure could rise to 8.3 billion by 2030 and 9.2 billion by 2050.

Human numbers have shot up since the Industrial Revolution. In 1800, there were about a billion people, and by 1900 the figure was 1.7 billion. It then multiplied four-fold to six billion within a century, powered by advances in medicine and public health, cheap fossil fuels and a technical revolution in food production.

Much of the coming increase in human numbers will be in the poorest developing countries, notably in sub-Saharan Africa, where the population is set to rise by about 50% over the coming decades. Scientists estimate that food and energy production will have to increase by 50% and water availability by 30% to meet the demand caused by the extra 1.5 billion people living on Earth in the next two decades - an increase of nearly 10,000 people per hour.

Many countries have already exceeded their capacity to be self-sustainable without having to import resources. 77 out of 130 countries that have been studied can be classified as "overpopulated" based on the fact they are consuming more natural resources than they are producing. Britain's "ecological footprint" shows that it comes 17th in the table of overpopulated nations, which are dominated by the high-consuming countries of the Middle East and Europe.

If Britain had to rely on its biological resources, its sustainable population would be about 15 million rather than the present 60 million.

"Overpopulation is a much used and abuse word, but we believe the index helps to anchor it firmly in the realm of sustainability; of people living within the limits of the place they inhabit."

The "ecological footprint" was developed more than 15 years ago. It is a measure of the demand placed on the biosphere by human activity, calculating the amount of biologically productive land and water area required to produce all the resources that an individual, population or activity consumes, and also to absorb the waste they generate, given prevailing technology and resource management. The "footprint" is measured in global hectares, or average world productivity, allowing one area or population to be compared with another. rw

The Gendered Face of Climate Change

A new report from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) says that women, who make up a large share of the agricultural work force, are most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, but are also key players in mitigating its effects on humanity.

Women also manage households and care for family members, which restricts their mobility, so they often lack the social capital necessary to deal effectively with climate change.

On the other hand, woman often desire to reduce the number of children they might have, which would, in turn, reduce population growth, contributing to a reduction of greenhouse gas-emissions in the future.

The UNFPA report comes a few weeks before the Copenhagen climate talks and follows just a short time after the release of the World Economic Forum's gender gap index, which ranks India at 114 out of 134 countries, on the basis of economic participation, political participation, education and health.

Burkina Faso: Population Growth Outstrips Economic Gains

Population growth plus a weakened economy in Burkina Faso have sparked calls for a new population control policy.

The population is growing at 3.1% a year, or more than 400,000 people, after factoring in deaths, which have declined over the past decade which requires immediate action. Burkina Faso's population nearly tripled over 30 years to more than 14 million people, cancelling out benefits from the country's 2008 5% economic growth. rw

Population and Environment Go Hand in Hand, Forum Concludes

From a conference at Redlands University in California, with speakers from the Sierra Club, National Wildlife Federation, and the Center for Environmental Studies -- Human population has a direct effect on environmental sustainability. If you look at the health of the planet's ecosystem, you find that humans have done more damage in the last 50 years than in the entirety of human existence, said the director of the Center for Environmental Studies. These things unfold over millennia, which is why politicians and the media don't pay attention. It is encouraging that people are realizing that having more children will limit their economic freedom. If we leave our future generations an impoverished planet, we're in for a lot of trouble. Less than 1% of the world's water is potable, and it is a challenge to walk 8 kilometers to obtain water for a family. Only .14% of the U.S. Federal Budget went to foreign aid. Only $425 million of the $1 billion we've pledged for the UNFPA has been contributed. A lack of family planning in the world was a crime against humanity. Environment and population control go hand-in-hand." rw

Trinidad and Tobago: Very Bad News for a Nice Place

Trinidad and Tobago experienced a loss of natural vegetation equal to 0.8% a year over five years .Only 32.9% of natural vegetation remains. The Environmental Vulnerability Index (EVI) revealed a very nice place without the climatic or geological extremes of other nations. The downside is a small island with a population density of 266 people per sq km. The only reason for the environmental stresses "is us" and we have the capability to reverse these impacts. It was "urgent" that we "adopt specific measures" to deal with these challenges. EVI forms part of an effort by the UN to produce a global EVI spanning 235 countries that highlights the vulnerability of a country's environment in the future based on events from the recent past. Trinidad and Tobago ranked as the country with the eighth-least likely chance of halting "major environmental deterioration over the next several decades": 3,441 forest fires occurred between 1987 and 1992, destroying 46,942 ha ( about 114,538 acres ) of forest cover, but only 167 ha were reforested in that period. Tobago faced serious problems, but emerged a better place to live than Trinidad from an environmental standpoint. Tourism-driven Tobago falls badly with degradation/rate of habitat loss; loss of natural vegetation; water resources; and coastal settlements (stress on coastal ecosystems). The island scores "sixes" for its low percentage area of marine reserves; its hazardous municipal waste and human population density. The only good news was the performance in Trinidad of the Beetham Wastewater Treatment Plant that now treated all the raw sewage that once flowed from Port of Spain and suburbs east and west but it should be pumped by pipeline to Point Lisas for cooling industrial processes. rw

The Weight of Numbers

Population control was a big part of the environmental agenda when Earth Day was established in 1970. The Population Bomb, by Paul and Anne Ehrlich, was a bestseller. The executive director of the Sierra Club at that time, David Brower, said "You don't have a conservation policy unless you have a population policy." President Nixon's Commission on Population Growth and the American Future declared that the U.S. would be unlikely to meet its environmental goals unless its population was stabilized. However, since 1970, over 70 million people have been added to the U.S., an unprecedented increase.

Nearly half the population lives along our coasts where ecosystems are most fragile. Air and water pollution, traffic congestion, habitat destruction and loss of farmland are the consequences. "Sprawl" is treated as if it were separate and divorced from the weight of the extra humanity.

Immigration discussions in environmental groups such as the Sierra Club often lead to divisive internal squabbles. Immigrants seek admittance to the U.S. because of fear of political persecution, war, famine and deteriorating environmental conditions in their home countries, as well as for economic reasons. It would seem that strategic use of American development aid, coupled with family planning support, can help reduce these emigration pressures. Even minor adjustments to immigration levels could have major impact on our environmental stewardship. When we should be protecting our farms and dedicating new open space, we're paving paradise and putting up a parking lot.