PARIS, November 18, 2009 (AFP) – Braking the rise in Earth’s population would be a major help in the fight against global warming, according to an unprecedented UN report published Wednesday that draws a link between demographic pressure and climate change.
“Slower population growth… would help build social resilience to climate change’s impacts and would contribute to a reduction of greenhouse-gas emissions in the future,” the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) says.
Its 104-page document emphasises that population policies be driven by support for women, access to family planning, reproductive health and other voluntary measures.
“It really is the first time that a United Nations agency has looked hard at the connections between population and climate change,” lead researcher Bob Engelman, vice president for programmes at the green group Worldwatch Institute, told AFP.
“People are at the root of the problem and at the solution of it, and empowerment of women is the key.”
The report, the 2009 State of World Population, paints a grim tableau of the peril of climate change and the likely impact on humans, in terms of floods, drought, storms and homelessness.
But it notably puts distance between a decades-long tradition in the UN arena whereby population growth and its part in environmental destruction were rarely — if ever — evoked.
“Fear of appearing supportive of population control has until recently held back any mention of ‘population’ in the climate debate,” the document admits.
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