The accelerating loss of the world's forests presents one of the major environmental challenges of the next century. The growth of human population-from a few million people in prehistory to 6 billion today-looms large among the factors contributing to this loss. Yet many analyses of forest decline despair that population growth is an inevitable force that must be reckoned with but cannot be influenced. This publication challenges that view. Its purpose is not only to examine population's role in forest loss, but also to highlight the value of population policies that simultaneously improve human well-being and brighten the prospects for conserving the world's remaining forests.

In recent years, dozens of environmental and development projects in developing countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia have attempted to integrate or otherwise link community-based activities related both to natural resources and to reproductive health. This publication profiles 42 such projects for which Population Action International (PAI) was able to document both natural resource conservation and reproductive health activities that included improved access to family planning services.

Paying their Fair Share - Donor Countries and International Population Assistance outlines the need for more financial support from donor countries to improve reproductive health while slowing population growth.

The world has made remarkable progress towards expanding access to education over the past several decades, a formidable achievement given the growth of the school age population during this period. Historically, girls have lagged behind boys in school enrollment; women represent two-thirds of almost one billion illiterate adults worldwide. Although school enrollment rates have increased for both sexes, in many countries girls still lack equal access to education.

This report is the fourth in a series, including studies on China, India and Pakistan, which examines family planning and other reproductive health services in the developing world. The report highlights the progress countries in sub-Saharan Africa have made towards expanding access to these services and the key challenges they face, drawing on research by and interviews with experts on Africa, and information the authors gathered during visits to African countries.

Profiles in Carbon highlights the neglected linkage of population and climate, and illustrates the contribution that sound population policies could make to international efforts to slow climate change.

Revised Data for the Population Action International Report, Sustaining Water: Population and the Future of Renewable Water Supplies

For more than a decade, since the 1986 release of a seminal report by the U.S. National Research Council, discussion of the impact of population growth on economic change in developing countries has languished within both the demographic and economic fields. While the linkage between demographic and economic dynamics is undeniably complex, some recent findings stand out. Despite lack of clear evidence for this relationship in previous decades, new data make clear that during the 1980s, on average, population growth dampened the growth of per capita gross domestic product, the primary measuring unit of economic growth. The negative effects of rapid population growth appear to have weighed most heavily on the poorest group of countries in the developing world during the 1980s and also throughout the two previous decades.

Population growth around the world affects Americans through its impact on the economy, the environment, and safety and health, and the habitability of the world our children will inherit. While tracing cause and effect is difficult the evidence is accumulating that current rates of population growth pose significant and interacting risks to human well-being and are a legitimate concern for Americans.