POPULATION GROWTH FINALLY MAKES THE TABLE IN ECO DEBATE
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 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 says.
Its 104-page document emphasizes 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 programs 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.
Things, though, are starting to change. More than three dozen developing countries have already included population issues in national plans on climate, it says. . .
Today, the world's population stands at around 6.8 billion. By mid-century, it will range between 7.959 billion to 10.461 billion, with a mid-estimate of 9.15 billion, according to UN calculations.
The difference between eight billion and nine billion is between one and two billion tons of carbon per year, according to research cited in the report.
That would be comparable to savings in emissions by 2050 if all new buildings were constructed to the highest energy-efficiency standards and if two million one-gigawatt wind turbines were built to replace today's coal-fired power plants. . .
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