World Wildlife Fund

In the Spiny Forest of Madagascar communities rely on tubers and other foods from the forest when crops fail.
© WWF / Cara Honzak

In the second half of the twentieth century the world’s human population doubled, from under three billion to over six billion. By 2050, the United Nations' medium estimate is that it could increase to 9.1 billion. More than 90 percent of this growth will be concentrated in the poorest developing countries, where many of the world’s remaining wild places are found and where governments have the lowest capacity to respond to rapid changes in population and the environment.

Although population has stopped growing in most developed countries, per capita consumption is very high in those countries and is rising fast in emerging markets like India and China . Meanwhile the world’s poor population – seventy percent of which is directly dependent on land for survival – is struggling to maintain basic levels of subsistence with low per capita resource consumption. 

In many parts of the developing world where WWF works, population growth driven by high fertility and migration is affecting key landscapes and the people that live in them.  High population growth rates combine with global market forces and weak local governance of natural resources to create a vicious cycle where nature's supply is unable to meet increasing local and global demand. The result is the declining health of people and environments, with the most marginalized populations such as the poor, women, and indigenous peoples being the worst affected – many of whom are also stewards of the world’s wild places.

Much of WWF’s work focuses on reducing the environmental impacts of high per-capita consumption in the developed world, but we also work with local communities in developing countries to improve livelihoods and health, and reduce population pressures on nature. We do this by reducing the adverse environmental impacts of migration; promoting access to health and voluntary family planning services; improving water supplies and sanitation; improving food security; and promoting new livelihood activities.

In the coming years we will expand our population, health and environment (PHE) program to accomplish greater success for people and conservation. We will:

• Map population trends in our priority places to identify places with migration flows affecting biodiversity and with unmet need for health and family planning services.
• Scale up our work on integrating health and family planning into conservation projects, working with government and non-governmental health, development and conservation partners to reach more remote communities with poor access to health services.
• Produce and promote a manual for conservation practitioners on how to integrate health and family planning into conservation projects, based on lessons learned from our pilot projects in nine countries.
• Develop and test approaches to reduce the impacts of migration on biodiversity.