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WASHINGTON, May 5 (OneWorld.net) - Positive initiatives to slow global population growth -- such as empowering women and girls -- can play a significant role in addressing rising pollution levels worldwide, says population and climate change expert Kathleen Mogelgaard.

• In a health center waiting room in Tanzania. © Gregory Di Cresce/IRIN"Slower population growth would have significant benefits in addressing climate change," writes Mogelgaard, senior program manager for population and climate change at the research institute Population Action International. These include a reduction in fossil fuel-related emissions and reduced stress on forests and other natural resources that absorb carbon dioxide. And we already know of positive interventions to bring down birth rates around the world, continues Mogelgaard: "expanding education, especially for the world's girls; enhancing economic opportunities for women; and providing access to voluntary reproductive health and family planning services, so that women and men can freely decide the number and timing of their children."

• In addition to alleviating pressures on the environment, slowing population growth is key to mitigating poverty, writes environmental expert Lester Brown. In an article entitled, "Moving to a Stable World Population," the founder and president of the Earth Policy Institute cites the Iranian government's national family planning efforts, which effectively slowed a population growth rate burdening both the economy and environment. "Enabling people to have fewer children contributes to upward mobility and helps to stimulate development," states the United Nations Population Fund, adding that "the countries where poverty levels are the highest are generally those that have the most rapid increases in population and the highest fertility levels." Nonetheless, global population is expected to climb to 9.1 billion by 2050. The majority of these new births will occur in developing countries.

• In his book about achieving an environmentally sustainable population, Robert Engelman maintains that, "what women want" is not "more children, but more for their children." Indeed, in countries where reproductive health and family planning options are easily accessible to all, women have two children or fewer on average, notes Engelman, president of the environmental think tank Worldwatch Institute.

Population: An Overlooked Factor in Climate Change Solutions

From: Population Action International

Addressing global population growth can benefit people and the climate

by Kathleen Mogelgaard

First published in the Winter 2009 Issue of Outdoor America Magazine.

A Fragile Interconnected System

I've always loved being outdoors. As a kid growing up in rural New York, I spent hours roaming the woods around my family's house. Our vacations involved hiking, camping, and swimming in freshwater lakes. In college, I was delighted to find an internship at New Mexico's Carlsbad Caverns National Park. I was intrigued by the geological mysteries of cave formation, and became enamored with the Mexican free-tailed bats that were struggling to survive in a nursery colony there. As I studied the natural history of the cave and its inhabitants, I came to see how fragile the entire system was: how the touch of our hands could change a cave formation forever; how the very flow of air in and out of the cave could make or break the habitat for bats; how things that happened on the surface of the earth-seemingly mundane decisions about elevator shafts, garbage disposal, and plumbing-always left their mark in some way, even 700 feet underground.

The more I studied the more I understood that our whole planet-like Carlsbad Caverns-is a fragile, connected system. The quality of water in one community is affected by agricultural practices far upstream; sulfur and nitrogen from a smokestack in one state can travel to another and kill its trees; an innocent release of ballast water from a ship can inadvertently introduce a species from a different continent that will completely alter a lake's ecosystem and, by extension, the economic foundation of surrounding towns.

Much of the destruction of the natural world has occurred because we don't understand these intimate connections between human and natural systems, or because we begin to understand them only after we observe the damage of our actions. We're lucky that the natural world is often resilient and forgiving-that we've been given a second chance to get things right after we mess them up, as we did with acid rain, the depletion of the ozone layer, and the use of harmful chemicals like DDT.

But how often will we get second chances? What happens when the actions we take today-like burning huge quantities of fossil fuel-produce consequences that we don't fully grasp because they will be felt by people separated from us by space and time? The broad, sweeping consequences of unabated global warming-more intense hurricanes and typhoons, rising sea levels, species extinctions, drought, heat waves, major disruptions to agriculture-would be felt most keenly by a generation with very little responsibility for creating them. Will they get a second chance?

The Climate Challenge Requires A Comprehensive Set of Solutions

At the most basic level, we understand the global trends that have contributed to the problem of climate change. The most immediate and obvious cause is the build-up of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere. What are the driving forces behind this build-up? The world's population has grown dramatically over the last 200 years, and along with it has come a rapid expansion of economic activity and energy use.

We have taken huge quantities of coal and oil-substances created and accumulated by Mother Nature over millennia-and burned them up in the briefest of moments. We have upset the natural carbon balance so significantly that we are beginning to alter the entire global climate system. The models that predict just how far we could go with this unprecedented global experiment are truly frightening, and we are only beginning to understand that the solutions will require entirely new relationships between the world's human and natural systems.

The vast scale of the climate change challenge requires a comprehensive set of solutions that can address each of the forces that contribute to the build-up of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere. We need bold strategies to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels by tapping into cleaner energy sources like wind, solar, and geothermal. We need to develop and spread technologies that will help us meet our needs-and allow for continued economic development in the poorest countries of the world-while using less energy. We need to better protect and manage forests to store carbon dioxide, and find additional ways to lock up excess greenhouse gases.

And we need to address population growth. Not because ending population growth alone can solve the climate crisis, but because solving the climate crisis will be a lot harder if we continue to grow at our present pace.

We Know How to Encourage Slower Population Growth

We haven't fully grasped how quickly our planet has become crowded-and how our needs and desires have increased along with our numbers. When my grandmother was born in Michigan in 1915, the U.S. population was about 99 million people and the world population was around 2 billion. Today, both the U.S. and the world populations have more than tripled. This growth has brought with it an even greater expansion of the economy and energy use. And we continue to grow. Each year, the world's population increases by about 78 million people-equivalent to the combined populations of New York, California, and Florida.

More of us means more people driving cars, more wildlife habitat overtaken by subdivisions, more land needed to grow food, and more water drawn from our lakes and aquifers.

Research suggests that, globally, for every 1 percent increase in population size, there is a 1 percent increase in greenhouse gas emissions (controlling for economic growth and technological factors). These relationships are not simple, of course. Population is growing fastest in parts of the world where an individual's environmental impact is relatively low. Ethiopia, for example, has a very high population growth rate-and if their current growth rate continues, Ethiopia's population would double from today's 80 million to 160 million in about thirty years. However, for every 1,000 people in Ethiopia, there are only two motorized vehicles (compared to 787 motorized vehicles per 1,000 Americans). The average American emits about two hundred times more carbon dioxide than the average Ethiopian.

But as developing countries continue on a path of economic growth and industrialization, their per capita carbon dioxide emissions will increase. Last January, Tata Motors in India introduced the "world's cheapest car"-the $2,500 Nano-in an effort to extend the dream of car ownership to more than 1 billion Indians (currently, there are about 18 motorized vehicles for every 1,000 people in India). Can we blame Indians or Ethiopians for striving for a standard of living that we take for granted?

Far from being an inevitable force, the extent of future population growth is shrouded in uncertainty. United Nations demographers estimate that the world's population will grow from today's 6.7 billion people to somewhere between 7.8 billion and 10.8 billion by 2050. That's a very wide range, and the path of our growth will be responsive to policies and programs that are put into place now.

The good news is that we know how to encourage slower population growth. There are three significant interventions, each desirable in their own right, that have been clearly linked to lower birth rates in many parts of the world. These include expanding education, especially for the world's girls; enhancing economic opportunities for women; and providing access to voluntary reproductive health and family planning services, so that women and men can freely decide the number and timing of their children.

These are interventions that require investment. Unfortunately, our investment as a nation, particularly in the area of reproductive health, has declined over the past decade. The United States was once a world leader in providing information, services, and support to developing country governments that wanted to expand health services to their populations. Our commitment to this work has faltered, even as the number of women around the world who would like to plan their families has increased. Studies show that more than 200 million women in the developing world prefer to delay or end childbearing but don't have meaningful access to modern contraceptives-something we take for granted in the United States. Addressing this unmet need for family planning services around the world would have multiple benefits, such as reducing maternal and infant death, preventing unintended pregnancies, and slowing population growth.

Slower population growth would have significant benefits in addressing climate change. When combined with effective renewable energy and energy efficiency technology, slower population growth would help to put the brakes on fossil fuel-related emissions growth, relieve pressure on forests and other natural resources that absorb carbon dioxide, buy time for the spread of green technology, and reduce the scale of human vulnerability to climate change impacts.

Win-Win Solutions

Separately, both population growth and climate change can be seen as big, scary problems due to their scale and potential for changing the world as we know it. Each of these challenges involves complicated, politically charged issues-things like sex education, contraception, soaring energy costs, and international cooperation.

But when we are able to look at these challenges as component parts of a single, larger system, solutions that produce positive outcomes in more than one area begin to emerge. These win-win solutions-like slowing population growth through addressing unmet needs for family planning around the world-are powerful. They have the potential to build unique partnerships that can mobilize people and resources behind them. These are the solutions that carry the greatest hope for creating a more sustainable future.

I sometimes wonder how many kids today can run around in wilderness like I did when I was growing up. When I recently visited my childhood home, I was dismayed to see that much of the woods had given way to subdivisions. That is one of the consequences, I suppose, of a growing population. But a recent visit to Carlsbad Caverns was inspiring. The desert and caves were still beautiful and fascinating, and the Mexican free-tailed bats were no longer struggling, thanks to reductions in the use of DDT in Mexico where the bats spend the winter months. I believe our understanding of both natural and human systems is improving, and our will to act when we find win-win solutions is growing. Perhaps it has been a long time coming, but I have faith we are moving in the right direction. And none too soon, because with a challenge as immense as climate change, we won't get any second chances.

-Kathleen Mogelgaard is senior program manager for population and climate change at Population Action International, one of the Izaak Walton League's partners in the Population and Environment Coalition.

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