Population Dynamics
As of the year 2011, seven billion people now live on Earth. Much has to be done in order to reduce poverty, to provide universal access to health care and family planning, and to decrease our high consumption of resources. This is where DSW steps in with its development programmes and advocacy work.
Many women give birth to more children than they want due to a lack of contraceptives and effective family planning. With the implementation of our Youth-to-Youth Initiative, we are educating thousands of young people in Africa about their sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) and on how to create a healthy and independent future for themselves.
Furthermore, DSW's comprehensive advocacy work is done by talking to and engaging with national, local and international political authorities. In our dialogue we advocate for the necessity of voluntary family planning and reproductive health.
Population and Forests
The rapid population growth poses a serious threat to the world’s forests. Every year, enormous forest areas are cleared to meet the needs of an ever growing number of people for fuel wood, lumber, farmland and pasture and settlement areas.
Between 2000 and 2010, global forest areas were reduced by an annual average of 5.21 million hectares. This means that at present a forest area the size of Costa Rica is disappearing every year. While in industrial countries forest areas are growing slightly, the loss of forests is particularly high in developing countries, with the tropical rainforests being most affected. From 2000 until 2010, more than four million hectares per year of primeval forest were destroyed or dramatically changed. In Africa alone, forest areas shrank by approximately 3.4 million hectares. In South America, the annual loss of forest areas even amounted to 3.9 million hectares.
Demand for fuel wood and farmland increases with population growth
An important reason for the destruction of rainforests is, in addition to the demand of rich industrial nations for tropical timber, land reclamation due to clearing. This is again closely connected to rapid population growth: if the population grows, the demand for fuel wood and farmland grows quickly as well. This trend will not change in the next decades.
Forest area per capita on the decline
Since 1960 the forest area per capita has shrunk by half: to 0.6 hectares today. By 2025, it will probably have decreased to 0.4 hectares per capita - an area not even the size of a soccer pitch. Approximately 2 billion people are living in 64 sparsely wooded countries today. These include ten countries of the world which have no forests at all, and 54 countries whose total area includes only ten per cent forest. This has a negative impact on the sustainable development of these countries.
