London: The battle against global warming
could be helped if the world slowed population growth by
making free condoms and family planning advice more widely
available, the UN Population Fund said today.
The agency did not recommend countries set limits on how
many children people should have, but said: "Women with access
to reproductive health services ... have lower fertility rates
that contribute to slower growth in greenhouse gas
emissions."
"As the growth of population, economies and consumption
outpaces the Earth's capacity to adjust, climate change could
become much more extreme and conceivably catastrophic," the
report said.
The world's population will likely rise from the current
6.7 billion to 9.2 billion in 2050, with most of the growth in
less developed regions, according to a 2006 report by the
United Nations.
The UN Population Fund acknowledged it had no proof of
the effect that population control would have on climate
change. "The linkages between population and climate change
are in most cases complex and indirect," the report said.
It also said that while there is no doubt that "people
cause climate change", the developing world has been
responsible for a much smaller share of world's greenhouse gas
emissions than developed countries.
Bureau Report
First Published: Wednesday, November 18, 2009, 20:29