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Faster population growth aggravates climate change because more people mean more green house gas emissions, according to the UN Population Fund’s (UNFPA) State of World Population Report 2009 which was released yesterday.

As population increases, the study said, economies and consumption outpace the earth’s capacity to adjust, making climate change effects more extreme.

"Green house gas emissions would not be accumulating so hazardously had the number of earth’s inhabitants not increased so rapidly, but remained at 300 million people, the world population of 1,000 years ago, compared with 6.8 billion today," the report said.

The report said gross domestic product per capita and population growth are the main drivers of the increase in global emissions in the last three decades.

"Population growth has been a smaller but consistent contributor to growth in energy-related carbon dioxide emissions," it said.

Most of the past population growth has been responsible for between 40 percent to 60 percent of emissions growth, the report said.

If the world would grow by 8 billion by 2050, "it might result in 1 billion fewer tons of carbon emissions than if the medium-growth scenario -- a little more than 9 billion people by 2050 -- materializes," the report noted.

"Slower population growth in developed and developing countries would help ease the task of bringing global emissions into balance with the atmosphere in the long run and enabling more immediate adaptation to change already under way," the report said.

It said that household composition affects the amount of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere; changes in age structure and geographic distribution, like the trend toward living in cities, affect emissions growth.

"Population dynamics are likely to influence green house gas emissions in the long run… population dynamics would affect countries’ capacities to adapt to the impacts of climate change," the report said.

With the Philippines high population growth rate, the government is urged by UNFPA to adopt reproductive health and family planning policies to counter population growth.

UNFPA Representative Sunneeta Mukherjee said the Philippines must have a better understanding of population dynamics, gender and reproductive health, climate change and environmental discussions at all levels.

The Philippines has a population of 92 million, which is projected to boom at 146.2 million in 2050. The country’s average population growth rate, UNFPA said, is 1.8 percent.

Mukherjee said the government must fully fund family planning services and contraceptive supplies within the framework of reproductive health and rights, and assure that low income is no barrier to access.

"Efforts at the community and global levels to address climate change and its impacts will meet greater challenges in the face of the high fertility that results from poor access to voluntary family planning. Research and experience suggest that individual interest in family planning may be heightened by the impacts of climate change, as natural resource scarcity and economic stress have done in the past," UNFPA said.

This could be done by passing the reproductive health bill pending in the House of Representatives.

Rep. Edcel Lagman said every $6 spent for family planning and reproductive health is more effective in adapting to climate change than the $33 spent in green technologies used in reducing green house gas emissions.

Mukherjee said government should prioritize research and date collection to improve the understanding of gender and population dynamics in climate change mitigation and adaptation.

"Improve the sex-disaggregation of data related to migration flows that are influenced by environmental factors and prepare now for increases in population movements," she said.

The report said that "climate change is projected to affect the most vulnerable in society: female-headed households, children, marginalized minorities, indigenous peoples, disabled, ill, elderly and poor.

"Assuring equal protection of the law, opportunities to engage in the formal economic sector, and access to reproductive health not only build gender equality but contribute to societies’ resilience in the face of all kinds of rapid change, of which climate change is perhaps the most hazardous," the report said.

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