Today is World Population Day. Perhaps you didn't know. Or perhaps you accord it the same degree of importance as Penguin Awareness Day (January 20th) or National Pickle Day (November 14th).
But this one is worth your attention - if you care about the well-being of the world's women, or about the global environment. Rapid population growth magnifies the environmental challenges before us, and the best way to slow growth is by bolstering women's health and rights. We can start by restoring U.S. leadership in support of family planning around the world.
You might assume the "population bomb" has long been defused. But while the rate of population growth has slowed in most parts of the world, rapid growth is hardly a thing of the past. Our numbers still increase by 75-80 million every year, the equivalent of adding another U.S. to the world every four years.
In fact, we are now at a pivotal moment for world population. While a certain amount of future growth is inevitable, choices made today will determine whether human numbers -- now at 6.8 billion -- climb to anywhere between eight and 11 billion by mid-century.
The difference between eight and 11 billion is not insignificant - especially for the environment. Of course, human environmental impact is shaped by many factors -- including technology, consumption patterns, economic policies and political choices. And some people have much greater impact than others: we in the U.S. comprise just 5% of the world's population, but consume 30% of all resources and produce 30% of all wastes.
Still, while there are great disparities in environmental impact among the world's citizens, everyone has some impact. We all share an inalienable right to food, water, shelter and the makings of a good life. If we take seriously the twin imperatives of sustainability and equity, it becomes clear that it would be easier to provide a good life - at less environmental cost - for eight rather than 11 billion people.
Take climate change, for example. A recent analysis of climate studies by Brian O'Neill at the National Center for Atmospheric Research shows that slower population growth is likely to mean lower greenhouse gas emissions over the long term, making the climate problem easier to solve.
Of course, slowing population growth is not all we must do. Continued reliance on fossil fuels could easily overwhelm the carbon reductions from slower growth. Rapacious consumption in the affluent countries drives environmental destruction worldwide; changing our systems of production and consumption must be the top priority if we are to preserve a habitable planet.
But slower population growth could help give us a fighting chance to meet these challenges. It could reduce pressure on natural systems that are reeling from stress. And it could help give families and nations a chance to make essential investments in education, health care and sustainable economic development.
The good news is that the best ways to slow population growth are all things we should be doing anyway.
Fifteen years ago, at the U.N. International Conference on Population and Development, in Cairo, the world's nations agreed that the best way to slow population growth is not with top-down "population control," but by ensuring that all women can choose whether and when to bear a child. That means universal access to voluntary family planning and other reproductive health services. It also means education and employment opportunities. And it means tackling the deep inequities - gender and economic - that prevent women from making real choices about their lives.
Unfortunately, we have made little progress towards these goals. U.S. funding for family planning has fallen since the mid-1990s, while the need for those services has grown exponentially. Partly as a result, some 200 million women worldwide lack access to contraception. Access can be a matter of life and death: every year, pregnancy-related complications kill half a million women, one every minute. Many of those deaths could be averted if women were able to delay or limit childbearing.
Now we have an extraordinary opportunity to protect women's lives and health - and preserve the planet for current and future generations. We now have a President who understands the importance of family planning. A large coalition of groups that care about the environment, health and poverty are joining together to ask the U.S. government to spend $1 billion annually on international family planning assistance. That's just five percent of the amount the bankers on Wall Street gave themselves in bonuses last year.
World Population Day is the perfect time to join this effort, and help build a world that is sustainable and just. Because (not to diminish the importance of penguins and pickles) this one really matters.
Laurie Mazur is the editor of A Pivotal Moment: Population, Justice and the Environmental Challenge (Island Press: October, 2009).
