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from North to South, by way of both foreign direct invest- way, while limiting the current degradation of the natural
ment and aid for development, is vital to the success of environment.
efforts to alleviate poverty.
We note that halving per capita consumption in advanced
Education, basic health care - including family planning and countries, something that would "presuppose substantial
reproductive health care -- and access to land, credit and structural change amounting to a new pattern of industrial
employment are all important to poverty alleviation and, production and consumption that would be quite different
therefore, crucial in long-term economic and environmen- from the traditional resource-intensive Western industrial
tal sustainability. Above all, however, ensuring sustainability model" while consumption in developing countries rose to
will require people to make changes, in both the way they that level, would still mean a 20% increase in resource ex-
think about their environment and how they live in it. In traction from current levels while CO2 emissions would
particular, the high consumption, high-waste lifestyle of the more than double from current levels, at a time when the
top-earning fifth of the world's population, most of whom world has committed to reducing them to limit climate
live in the North, cannot continue without imperilling the change.
right of the lowest- earning fifth of the world's population
to satisfy their basic needs. Given the technological, practical, political and social im-
pediments to such significant changes in resource use, we
Population Matters welcomes UNEP's International Re- call for such investment to be accompanied by a renewed
source Panel report on decoupling natural resource use and focus on providing universal access to family planning and
environmental impacts. The report notes that the rate of the promotion of smaller families.
resource use has increased tenfold since 1900 and predicts
that we could be consuming resources at three times the "Family planning is a well established technology: it is inex-
current rate by 2050 as a result of population growth and pensive and effective and enjoys widespread acceptance
growing prosperity. and positive side-effects. Doubling annual spend on family
planning to $7 billion or on a combination of family plan-
The report points out that the cost of non-renewable re- ning and maternal and newborn health to $25 billion, as
sources will rise as easily accessible deposits are progres- suggested last year by the UNFPA, is justified, not just for
sively exhausted, putting pressure on living standards and health, women's rights and social development reasons, but
potentially making some resources unavailable for some also as a contribution to sustainable resource use. In devel-
uses. oped countries, governments should be encouraging stable
or declining population numbers to limit the growth in re-
We agree with the report's call for investment in seeking source consumption," Simon Ross, chief executive of Popu-
more efficient uses of limited resources as a contributor to lation Matters commented.
limiting consumption growth in wealthy countries and to
enable other countries to develop in a more sustainable The United Nations again raised its world human popula-
tion projections to reach 10.1 billion human beings within
90 years on this already ecologically devastated planet. Our
species adds another 1.1 billion every 13 years.
Humans drive the "6th Extinction Session" at an astound-
ing rate of 80 to 100 species suffering extinction every 24
hours.(Source: Norman Myers, Oxford University, UK) Over-
population is the cause of environmental misfortune, includ-
ing species extinction, polluted biosphere, toxified oceans,
climate destabilization, melting.
References : References are taken from different
Newspapers,Magazines,websites,Research Articles.
PR COMMUNICATION AGE February 2016 25
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