Green Options

By Lester R. Brown

Some 43 countries around the world now have populations that are either essentially stable or declining slowly. In countries with the lowest fertility rates, including Japan, Russia, Germany, and Italy, populations will likely decline somewhat over the next half-century. A larger group of countries has reduced fertility to the replacement level or just below.

They are headed for population stability after large numbers of young people move through their reproductive years. Included in this group are China and the United States. A third group of countries is projected to more than double their populations by 2050, including Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Uganda.

United Nations projections show world population growth under three different assumptions about fertility levels. The medium projection, the one most commonly used, has world population reaching 9.2 billion by 2050. The high one reaches 10.8 billion. The low projection, which assumes that the world will quickly move below replacement-level fertility to 1.6 children per couple, has population peaking at just under 8 billion in 2041 and then declining. If the goal is to eradicate poverty, hunger, and illiteracy, and lessen pressures on already strained natural resources, we have little choice but to strive for the lower projection.

Slowing world population growth means that all women who want to plan their families should have access to the family planning services they need. Unfortunately, at present 201 million couples cannot obtain the services they need. Former U.S. Agency for International Development official J. Joseph Speidel notes that “if you ask anthropologists who live and work with poor people at the village level…they often say that women live in fear of their next pregnancy. They just do not want to get pregnant.” Filling the family planning gap may be the most urgent item on the global agenda. The benefits are enormous and the costs are minimal.

Note: This post examines Population and Climate Change in honor of World Population Day, Friday, July 11. This post, written by Carolyn Vogel of Population Action International (PAI), originally appeared at RH Reality Check, a daily publication dedicated to news, analysis and commentary on the issues surrounding reproductive health and justice.

Examining linkages between population and climate change through many different frames leads to important research and policy questions — and it also allows the reproductive health community to discuss these linkages in a productive and positive way. If we leave the debate unframed, and the research questions unanswered, we leave space for harmful discourse and inaccurate facts to take center stage. The following series of blog posts, written by staff at Population Action International, will look at population and climate change from different angles, and provide an initial review of some of the broad frames.

Dr. Karen Hardee raises many of the difficult ethical issues that arise when population and climate change are linked. She examines these linkages from a women’s rights and empowerment frame. She encourages people, both those comfortable and uncomfortable with the linkage between population and climate change, to discuss the issue in order to come up with the best solutions and avoid mistakes of the past.