State of world population 2009: facing a changing world - women, population and climate

This report explores the critical connections among population dynamics, reproductive health, women’s lives and climate change as they relate to greenhouse-gas emissions and societies’ resilience against the impacts of climate change. The report describes what can be done to slow down—and possibly roll back—climate change and what must be done to help the poor adapt to the climate change that is already under way.

This report aims to remind the international community that climate change is more than an issue of energy efficiency or industrial carbon emissions; it is also about people and where and how they live, what they consume and the rights and opportunities available to them.

The report is being released in the lead-up to the 15th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, where delegates from around the world are expected to endorse a new treaty to limit the warming of the earth’s atmosphere. A treaty that helps people adapt to climate change and harnesses women’s and men’s power to reverse the warming of the earth’s atmosphere would launch a genuinely effective long-term global strategy to deal with climate change.