Global Population and the Environment
The Population-Environment Connection
What's Happening Now?
You Can Make a Difference!
Additional Information
The Sierra Club's Global Population and Environment Program seeks to protect the global environment and preserve natural resources for future generations by slowing population growth and reducing wasteful consumption.
The program seeks to accomplish this mission by:
- Promoting voluntary domestic and international family planning programs and reproductive health services
- Encouraging the public to support providing women and girls access to basic rights, including healthcare and education
- Encouraging people to reduce excessive consumption and live in ways that have less impact on the earth's resources
Population-Environment Connection
The Earth is now home to more than 6 billion people. With almost one-half of the global population under age 25, the choices people make today will have a tremendous impact on the future.
Rapid population growth puts enormous pressure on the environment while the rate we consume and degrade natural resources jeopardizes the health of the planet and threatens the availability of clean water and air for generations to come.
- With increasing numbers of people, the amount of fresh water available to each person decreases. Currently, 1 billion people consume unclean water while more than 90% of sewage and 70% of industrial wastes are dumped untreated into surface waters.
- We have decreased the planet's forest cover by almost one-half and increased carbon dioxide emissions by over 30% to the highest levels the planet has ever seen.
What's Happening Now?
The Sierra Club's Global Population and Environment Program advocates for increased access to voluntary family planning both at home and beyond our borders. Find out more about the programs and policies we support.
What's Happening Internationally?
What's Happening in the U.S.?
What's Happening in Minnesota?
You Can Make a Difference!
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens
can change the world: indeed it is the only thing that ever has."
-Margaret Mead, Anthropologist
Here are some ways you can help make a difference.
- Talk to your friends, family and community about the link between population and the environment.
- Send a message to a decision-maker in your community or state. Tell them as an environmentalist, you support family planning programs.
- Come to a Chapter Population Committee Meeting - see the calendar above for the time and location.
- Sign up to participate in the Sierra Club's Global Population and Environment Program by logging on to www.sierraclub.org/population.
Additional Information
Interested in learning more about the Sierra Club's Global Population and Environment Program?
- Contact
- Come to a Population Committee Meeting (see the calendar above for time and location).
- Check out the national Sierra Club's population web site.
- Click here for a 2007 UCSF study: Family Planning and Reproductive Health - The Link to Environmental Preservation (pdf)