London - A slowdown in global population growth through contraception could help alleviate the rapid pace of climate change, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) said in a report Wednesday. The 94-page State of the World Population Report 2009, launched in London, urged world leaders to take into account the improved access to family planning services and contraception in any future discussions such as the forthcoming UN climate change summit in Copenhagen.
"There is still time for the negotiators about to gather in Copenhagen to think creatively about population, reproductive health and gender equality and how these might contribute to a just and environmentally sustainable world," said the report.
UNFPA executive director Thoraya Ahmed Obaid said future international agreements on climate change should take into account "individuals' power to reverse the warming" of global warming.
Any treaty emerging from the December conference in Copenhagen "that helps people adapt to climate change and that harnesses women's and men's power to reverse the warming of the earth's atmosphere would launch a genuinely effective long-term global strategy to deal with climate change," said Obaid.
While climate change would affect women, men, boys and girls differently around the world, "individual behaviour can undermine and contribute to the global effort to cool our warming world," Obaid said in London.
However, the report also acknowledged that UNFPA had no proof of the effectiveness of population control with regards to climate change.
"The linkages between population and climate change are in most cases complex and indirect," it said.
The report stated that, overall, women in developing countries were likely to be most vulnerable to the effects of climate change as they were trapped in a "cycle of deprivation" dictated by natural disasters, lack of mobility and a lack of earning opportunities.
