Last week, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) released its annual assessment of the planet’s population, “The State of World Population 2001: Footprints and Milestones: Population and Environmental Change.” The report’s findings are not encouraging.
Among its findings, the UN Population Fund report points out that human activity is altering the planet on an unprecedented scale. The report also found people, more than ever before, are using more resources with more intensity and, therefore, are leaving a bigger “footprint” on the earth’s air, soil and sea.
The UN’s report also revealed that global poverty couldn’t be alleviated without reversing the environmental damage caused by both rising affluence and consumption and by growing populations. The UN report calls for increased attention and resources to balance human needs with the demands of an increasingly stressed world environment.
World population, now 6.1 billion, has doubled since 1960 and is projected to grow by half, to 9.3 billion, by 2050. Some 2 billion people already lack food security, and water supplies and agricultural lands are under increased stress. The world’s demand for water has risen six-fold over the past 70 years; by 2050, 4.2 billion people will be living in countries that cannot meet people’s daily basic needs. Unclean water and poor sanitation kill over 12 million people each year; air pollution kills nearly 3 million.
The report examines the close links between environmental conditions, population trends, and prospects for alleviating poverty in developing countries. It finds that expanding women’s opportunities and ensuring their reproductive health and rights are critically important, both to improve the well being of growing human populations and to protect the natural world.
The UN report’s major findings include:
• Empowering women and enabling them to have only the number of children they want would lead to smaller families and slower population growth, easing pressure on the environment and buying time to make crucial decisions about the future.
• Internationally agreed-upon actions to reduce poverty, empower women and promote social development need to be implemented and adequately funded to ensure the well being of growing human populations while protecting the natural world.
• Next year’s meeting in Johannesburg to review the 1992 Earth Summit agreement will present an opportunity to incorporate this integrated social agenda — including education for all and universal access to reproductive health care and family planning-into initiatives to promote sustainable development.
Key facts:
• All of the projected growth in world population will take place in today’s developing countries. The 49 least-developed countries will nearly triple in size in 50 years, from 668 million to 1.86 billion people.
• To accommodate the nearly 8 billion people expected on earth by 2025 and improve their diets, the world will have to double food production and improve distribution.
• The world’s richest countries, with 20 percent of global population, account for 86 percent of private consumption; the poorest 20 percent account for just 1.3 percent. A child born today in an industrialized country will add more to consumption and pollution over his or her lifetime than 30 to 50 children born in developing countries.
• Nearly 60 percent of people in developing countries lack basic sanitation, a third do not have access to clean water, one quarter lack adequate housing, 20 percent do not have access to modern health services, and 20 percent of children do not attend school through grade five.
• Support from international donors for reproductive health and population programs is less than half the amount required to meet basic needs.
The United Nations Population Fund is the world’s largest multilateral source of population assistance. Since 1969, when it was founded, the Fund has provided more than $5 billion to developing countries to meet reproductive health needs and support sustainable development efforts.