The original version of this article, by Cat Lazaroff, appeared on Resource Media.

What does family planning have to do with Earth Day? More than you might think. Family planning gives women and families the tools they need to decide whether and when to have children – and that, quite literally, can mean the world.

A well-known Chinese proverb describing the relationship between the central government in Beijing and its people says, “Heaven is high and the emperor is far away” (天高皇帝远, tian gao, huang di yuan). It’s not too far of a stretch to apply the same proverb to the current state of China’s environment sector, where relatively strong pollution control laws are poorly enforced on the ground.

While it can be convenient to think of human health and the environment as unrelated silos, they are in fact closely related. The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) recently released a report underscoring this point especially for Africa, where large numbers of people are directly reliant on natural resources for their livelihoods.

Fifty years after independence, Uganda has one of the highest population growth rates in the world at 3.3 percent – a rate which puts the country on track to nearly double in population over the next two decades. More than 50 percent of the population is under the age of 18. This large youth cohort will ensure that the country continues to grow for decades to come, even if couples choose – and are able – to have smaller families. And according to the State of Uganda Population Report 2011, “with more than one million people added to the population every year, the quality of [health] service delivery will suffer.”

The future is urban – but is it sustainable?

For decades – centuries, really – warnings have been issued: The burgeoning human population will outgrow the planet’s capacity to sustain us. The formula seems simple. More people equals fewer resources and greater environmental damage.

The original version of this article, by Autumn Spanne, appeared on The Daily Climate.

Five hours by truck and mule from the nearest town, a rumbling generator cuts through the silent night to power large spotlights as botanists crouch and kneel on large blue tarps spread across a cow pasture. It’s nearly midnight, and the team works urgently to describe every detail of the dozens of colorful orchids, ferns, and other exotic plants they have collected that day in Las Orquídeas National Park, one of the single most biologically diverse places on the planet.

People don’t often think of gender issues when they think of the environment, but in fact sustainable development in many of the world’s most bio-diverse regions has a lot to do with women’s health and well-being.

At this year’s World Conservation Congress, where the theme was improving the inherent resilience of nature, ECSP’s Sandeep Bathala presented alongside Blue Ventures’ Gildas Andriamalala about the connections between women’s health and the environment – specifically on the potential of population, health, and environment (PHE) approaches as an effective sustainable development strategy.

Five million people die each year due to climate- or carbon-related causes, and total mortality by 2030 could total 100 million people, according to new report from DARA, a nonprofit organization that works to improve aid to those affected by conflict and climate change and quantify the global cost of climate change and carbon use. But the report has drawn some fire for being too alarmist.