Why doesn't Friends of the Earth campaign on population?

12 September 2013

Friends of the Earth will actively support rights-based NGOs, such as Marie Stopes International and the Population and Sustainability Network, who are seeking to achieve:

• Secondary education for girls everywhere and expanded tertiary education
• Universal access to sexual and reproductive health services, including voluntary family planning services that respect and protect human rights
• Gender equality
• Economic models that rely on a pathway to sustainable consumption, and not unsustainable consumption, especially in energy production and diets.

We will campaign with others on consumption issues such as:

• The consumption of fossil fuels which is driving climate change. Per capita fossil fuel consumption is closely aligned with wealth rather than population growth.
• The consumption of resources by extractive industries which drives biodiversity loss, climate change and pollution.
• The consumption of intensively-produced meat which is driving forest destruction and climate change. Currently individuals in rich countries eat far more meat than individuals in poor countries. The planet can feed 9 billion people, but not with the current western diet and not with intensively-produced meat. See our briefing Eating the planet, produced in partnership with Compassion in World Farming.

For more information, see Friends of the Earth's briefing Global population, consumption and rights.

Even if the world's population stopped growing today it would not, at current consumption rates, remove pressures on the environment.