AN ICPD +5 ISSUE

CONTENTS

          Chapters
  1. The Importance of Advocacy
  2. Meeting Demand for Family Planning
  3. Saving Women's Lives
  4. Saving Children's Lives
  5. Offering Women Choices
  6. Encouraging Safer Sex
  7. Reaching Out to Youth
  8. Involving Men
  9. Protecting the Environment
  10. Aiding Development
  11. Family Planning for the Future

SUPPLEMENT

"A" Frame for Advocacy

Additional Advocacy Resources

Population Reports is published by the Population Information Program, Center for Communication Programs, The Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, 111 Market Place, Suite 310, Baltimore, Maryland 21202-4012, USA


Volume XXVII, Number 2
July, 1999

Series J, Number 49
 Protecting the Environment
Every country can do something now to assure a liveable environment for generations to come. To varying degrees, all countries can conserve natural resources, use cleaner production technologies, manage resource supply and demand better, and slow population growth.

KEY POINTS
In many developing countries slowing population growth is an important way to protect the environment and preserve natural resources.
1 Supporting family planning programs helps to slow population growth. As more couples plan births, fertility falls and population growth slows, thus easing human pressures on the environment.
2 Slowing population growth relieves pressures on many natural resources. Slower population growth relieves environmental pressures by:
Easing demand for water,
Preserving arable land,
Limiting pollution,
Reducing the burden on cities, and
Averting conflicts over resources.

1
Slowing Population Growth
In any country population size helps determine demand for resources and levels of pollution. The other important factors affecting the environment are consumption levels per capita and technology (32). Industrialized countries consume far more resources per capita than developing countries. Almost all future population growth, however, will occur in developing countries. Rapid increases in population, along with rising per capita demand for natural resources, can put tremendous pressures on the environment (216, 241).

In developing countries family planning programs have played an important role in slowing population growth. Without access to modern contraception most people are unable to space or limit their births effectively. By providing good-quality family planning information and services, programs have helped people have the smaller families they prefer, fertility has fallen, and population growth has slowed (27, 165, 207).

There is no way to predict how large the population could become before it overwhelmed the planet (96), but few people would want to find out the hard way. At current levels of population and technology, human activities are already causing "rapid, novel, and substantial changes" to the environment, biologists Peter Vitousek and colleagues argue. Two basic ways of easing humanity's impact on the environment, they note, are to use resources more efficiently and to slow population growth (252).

Two basic ways of easing humanity's impact on the environment are to use resources more efficiently and to slow population growth.

Peter Vitousek and colleagues, Science (252)

2
Preserving the Environment
Slowing population growth would help ease demand for freshwater supplies and arable land, avoid air and water pollution, lighten the burden on cities, and, by reducing competition for scarce resources, avert conflict and civil strife.

Water
The amount of freshwater on earth is finite. Thus the supply per capita diminishes as population grows. In some areas where water is scarce, population has grown so much that water crises loom or already have occurred (60). A country is considered to face water stress when annual water supplies drop below 1,700 cubic meters per person and water scarcity when annual water supplies are less than 1,000 cubic meters per person (97).

Today, 31 countries face water stress or water scarcity. By 2025 population growth alone is expected to add another 17 countries to the list. Water shortages would then affect 2.8 billion people, or 35% of the world's projected population compared with 8% today (75). Most countries could avoid a crisis, if they could conserve and manage water supplies and demand better, while slowing the growth in demand for freshwater by slowing population growth (97).

Arable Land
Most developing countries are already cultivating virtually all arable land and are bringing ever more marginal land under cultivation. In some countries population growth is outpacing agriculture production; despite increases in food production, food output per person has fallen (229). Between 1985 and 1995, for example, food production lagged behind population growth in 64 of 105 developing countries studied by the UN. The problem is most widespread in Africa, where per capita food production fell in 31 of 46 countries (96, 228).

In countries with rapid population growth and few natural resources, hunger and malnutrition often are serious and growing problems. Each year about 18 million people, mostly children, die from starvation, malnutrition, and related causes. Worldwide, an estimated 2 billion people, disproportionately women and girls, suffer from malnutrition and dietary deficiencies (63, 95, 96).

Today, in some countries farmers already are cultivating areas that are dry, hilly, or rocky or that have thin, weak soils (96). Demanding too much from the soil causes it to lose nutrients and to erode (46, 153, 230), so that its food-producing capacity decreases.

Slowing population growth would buy time to develop and introduce new agricultural technologies (84). It also would allow countries to adopt better land-management and conservation measures that would protect the environment. With a stable population and sustainable agricultural practices, the world might be able to feed itself on a healthy diet for centuries to come (96).

Fill in national data from Table
Measuring Environmental Stress
  Country
Data		 Developing
Country Average
Cropland per Person in 1994   .18
Freshwater per Person in 1995   —
Population density in 1999*   —
*Number of people per square mile

Pollution
Preventing pollution in the first place usually is cheaper than cleaning it up later (45, 84, 270). Nevertheless, in many parts of the world with few environmental safeguards, industrialization and rapid population growth have produced massive amounts of water and air pollution that threaten people's health. About 70% of the world's urban residents breathe air that is unhealthy at least some of the time (268).

In much of the world polluted water, improper waste disposal, and poor water management cause serious public health problems. Such water-related diseases as malaria, cholera, typhoid, and schistosomiasis harm millions of people every year. Some 60% of all infant mortality is linked to infectious and parasitic diseases, most of them water-related (97). Providing clean air and water and ensuring proper sanitation would save millions of lives.

Cities
Already, half the world's people live in cities, and by 2015 about 60% of the world's population will be urban (184). In developing countries cities are growing more rapidly than rural areas because of in-migration combined with the urban birthrate.

Rapid population growth in rural areas forces each generation to subdivide family agricultural plots into smaller and smaller parcels and to expand farming to increasingly marginal lands, eventually making many farmers landless (167). In time, pressures on agricultural land can become so great that many rural families cannot support themselves by farming. Many move to the city in search of jobs.

Urban populations are growing so fast, that city governments often cannot provide decent housing and services for many residents (105). In the 1980s, for example, almost three of every four households established in urban areas of developing countries were in slums (129). Rising population densities also harm city dwellers by damaging their environment (3, 31, 63, 183, 206). Many cities face chronic air and water pollution problems, often reaching dangerous levels that cause many illnesses. While slowing population growth alone cannot solve the problems of urban areas, it would buy time for cities to provide more housing, jobs, and services.

Resource Conflicts
Slowing population growth helps relieve the underlying pressures on natural resources that can lead to civil strife. One common characteristic of societies that are vulnerable to conflict is extreme scarcities of such nonrenewable natural resources as water, farmland, fisheries, and forests (102). As more and more people compete for these resources, some gain more than others, while some people become marginalized, setting the stage for unrest and conflict (59, 78, 101, 102)

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