As per the current estimates India hosts 18% of the global population on 2.4% of the world’s land area. India is only next to China which has 20% of the global population. According to UN projections, the population of India is expected to touch 1.5 billion and supercede that of China by 2025.

The Indian Health and Family Welfare Minister and Chair, Partners in Population Development (PPD) Ghulam Nabi Azad on Tuesday addressed the opening session of the International Conference on “Population Dynamics, Climate Change and Sustainable Development” in Pretoria, South Africa. He emphasized that the route to a climate sustainable human population, to a certain extent, lies in the removal of barriers to use of family planning and the rights-based population policies envisioned by the International Conference of Population and Development (ICPD) participants in Cairo in 1994.

“Empirical evidence indicates that population dynamics will play a key role in efforts to mitigate and adapt to the effects of changes in the climate system. Universal access to reproductive health will ultimately contribute to declines in fertility. These fertility declines would lead to population levels below those projected in most greenhouse-gas emission scenarios developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change” Azad said.

The opening session of the conference was attended by Minister for Social Development, and Board Member, PPD, Government of the Republic of South Africa, Ms. Bathabile Dlamini, PPD Board Members and other subject experts.

Azad invited attention of the gathering to the fact that human consumption was depleting the Earth’s natural resources and impairing the capacity of life-supporting ecosystems. He said scientific evidence has pointed out that the epidemiological impact of climate change on disease patterns would be profound worldwide, especially in developing countries where health systems were still vulnerable and vast majority of population remains underserved. He emphasized that it was this marginalized and underserved population which was most at risk and will be the hardest hit due to climate change – inducing migration, destroying livelihoods, disrupting economies, undermining development and exacerbating inequities between sexes.

Estimates suggest that 150 million environmental refugees will exist by 2050; one in six countries could face food shortage each year due to severe drought; It is also being said that average global temperatures could rise by as much as 6.4 degrees Celsius by the end of this century destroying as much as 30% of plant and species.

The Indian Minister said “some key activities that we could begin to address the challenge include - advocacy to reduce restrictions on access to family planning information and services, including for young people and the unmarried, advocacy for the financial and human resources necessary to strengthen family planning and related reproductive health services, including programs that address the HIV/AIDS, supporting access to all methods of family planning including the safe abortion services that are essential to reproductive health and childbearing choices, advocacy for reduction in consumption of critical natural resources and the resulting waste and pollution and advocacy for education and empowerment of girls and women in order to encourage women to participate in socio-economic development, slower population growth, raise the age at first birth, prevent unintended pregnancies and deaths associated with high fertility.”

Azad also said that an institution like PPD has a major role to play in addressing the issue of unintended pregnancies, which are a major factor in continued population growth that is most amenable to program and policy intervention.

He congratulated the winning countries for their bold initiatives. He informed that Bangladesh, South Africa and India have received the UN Millennium Development Goal Awards for their significant achievements in 2010. Bangladesh received this award for attaining the Millennium Development Goal 4- Reduction of Child Mortality Rate while India and South Africa’s Facility for Poverty and Hunger Alleviation (IBSA Fund) received the 2010 UN Millennium Development Goals (MDG) Award for South-South Cooperation. Bangladesh and Senegal also received the South-South Award 2011 at the United Nations General Assembly this year.

At the opening session, Azad also launched a publication on “Innovative Experiences in Addressing Population and Reproductive Health Challenges in PPD Member States”. He said the experience of sharing case studies would be beneficial not only in promoting population stabilization and reproductive health agenda in general but also in fast tracking achievement of MDGs and ICPD goals in developing countries.

India has been the chair of the PPD Board for the last 3 years. PPD is an inter-governmental initiative which was launched in 1994 for the purpose of expanding and improving South-South Collaboration in the fields of reproductive health, population and development following the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD).