Rapid and widespread changes in the world’s human population, coupled with unprecedented levels of consumption present profound challenges to human health and well being, and the natural environment. The report (above) gives an overview of how global population and consumption are linked, and the implications for a finite planet.
Key recommendations include:
1. The international community must bring
the 1.3 billion people living on less than $1.25 per day out of absolute
poverty, and reduce the inequality that persists in the world today. This
will require focused efforts in key policy areas including economic
development, education, family planning and health.
2. The most developed and the emerging
economies must stabilise and then reduce material consumption levels
through: dramatic improvements in resource use efficiency, including: reducing
waste; investment in sustainable resources, technologies and infrastructures;
and systematically decoupling economic activity from environmental impact.
3. Reproductive health and voluntary family
planning programmes urgently require political leadership and financial
commitment, both nationally and internationally. This is needed to
continue the downward trajectory of fertility rates, especially in countries
where the unmet need for contraception is high.
4. Population and the environment should not
be considered as two separate issues. Demographic changes, and the influences
on them, should be factored into economic and environmental debate and planning
at international meetings, such as the Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable
Development and subsequent meetings.
Other recommendations made in the report focus on: the potential for urbanisation to reduce material consumption, removing barriers to achieve high-quality primary and secondary education for all, undertaking more research into the interactions between consumption, demographic change and environmental impact, implementing comprehensive wealth measures, developing new socio-economic systems.
The report goes on to say that the highest fertility rates
are now seen primarily in the least developed countries while the lowest fertility
rates are seen in the more developed countries. This fact has a significant flow-on
effect in the poorer areas, in the ability of families to feed, educate and
provide the basic necessities of life for their off spring.
Developing countries will be building
the equivalent of a city of a million people every five days from now to 2050.
The continuing and rapid growth of the urban population is having a marked
bearing on lifestyle and behaviour: how and what they consume, how many
children they have and the type of employment they undertake. Urban planning is essential to avoid the
spread of slums, which are highly deleterious to the welfare of individuals and
societies.The Royal Society, a fellowship of the worlds most eminent scientists, seek a more equitable future for humanity where consumption levels between developed and developing nations is rebalanced alongside a stabilisation of the worlds population by voluntary methods.
