In the News, March 2026
Written by Olivia Nater, Communications Manager | Published: March 9, 2026
UN report highlights need to tackle overpopulation and overconsumption
A recent report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is surprisingly honest regarding the fundamental drivers of our planetary crises — population growth, overconsumption, and growth-dependent, extractivist systems — and the urgent need to profoundly transform our economies and societies.
The Global Environment Outlook, Seventh Edition: A Future We Choose (GEO-7) is a whopper of a report — 1,242 pages long and produced by 287 scientists from 82 countries. It is arguably the most important UN report in recent years, providing the latest detailed information on the state of air, land and soils, oceans and coasts, and fresh water, and on all environmental crises, as well as their interconnections.
GEO-7 notes that the majority of the world is likely overpopulated, and that projected population decline in countries with high consumption rates creates “a natural and social ‘depopulation dividend’ — provided that unsustainable consumption does not increase simultaneously.”
Alongside laying out detailed “solution pathways” for transforming energy, food, financial, material, and environmental management systems, the report states that removing barriers to contraception and encouraging smaller family sizes (through media outreach as well as tax and benefits policies) are “a moral duty that also yield environmental benefits for both nature and people.”
The usual process for major reports like this is to publish an accompanying summary for policymakers — a brief document outlining key conclusions and recommendations. The content of this summary document, however, has to be approved by UN member state representatives. Unfortunately, there was so much resistance to the findings by some countries that no agreement could be reached.
The state of global fresh water reserves: from “crisis” to “bankruptcy”
Another UN report, this one by the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment, and Health (UNU-INWEH), warns that the world has entered a state of “water bankruptcy.” Overextraction of fresh water has reached such severe levels that past hydrological and ecological baselines cannot realistically be restored. This irreversible damage to water sources, including rivers, lakes, aquifers, wetlands, soils, and glaciers, differentiates water bankruptcy from a water “crisis,” which suggests a temporary emergency followed by a return to normal through mitigation efforts.
The state of water bankruptcy is a result of governments failing to act on water overuse for too long. Three-quarters of the world’s population lives in countries classified as water-insecure or critically water-insecure, while almost half the population is now experiencing severe water scarcity for at least one month a year. The authors state that water bankruptcy management requires preventing further irreversible damage while adapting systems to a smaller hydrological budget.
The report notes, “Population growth, urbanization, and economic expansion have increased water demand for agriculture, industry, energy, and cities.” Agricultural use alone accounts for 70% of all fresh water withdrawals.
Dr. Jonathan Paul, a geoscientist at Royal Holloway, University of London, told The Guardian,
“The elephant in the room, which is mentioned explicitly only once, is the role of massive and unequal population growth in driving so many of the manifestations of water bankruptcy. Addressing this growth would be more useful than tinkering with outdated, non-inclusive, and top-down water resource management frameworks.”
Trump administration restores suspended Title X funding
The Trump administration has quietly restored federal family planning funding to Planned Parenthood clinics under the Title X program, which provides grants to help low-income Americans access essential reproductive health services, including contraception and cancer screening. The funds had been unlawfully suspended since last spring, with the clinics accused of “possible violations” of Trump’s executive orders condemning diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sued the US Department of Health and Human Services following the funding freeze, which had left approximately 865 family planning clinics across the country unable to provide Title X-funded services to around 842,000 patients.
The ACLU dropped the lawsuit following the Title X funding restoration, but the fight is far from over. Planned Parenthood had already lost the majority of its funding following the passage of a law in Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which blocks Medicaid payments to reproductive health care entities that provide abortion.
China taxes family planning in bid to boost births
The Chinese government has placed a new 13% value-added tax (VAT) on contraceptive drugs and condoms, a move widely interpreted as another misguided attempt to increase the country’s birth rate.
Official government data released in January revealed that China’s birth rate dropped to 5.63 births per 1,000 people in 2025 — the lowest level on record since the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949. The country’s population peaked in 2021 at 1.4 billion and has since been slowly shrinking. In 2025, 7.92 million babies were born in China, down from 9.54 million in 2024.
Pronatalist policies so far have included baby bonuses, tax incentives for larger families, and controversial campaigns to encourage women to return to more traditional childrearing roles.
Rather absurdly, instead of scrapping all coercive policies altogether, the government replaced its previous one- and then two-child limit with a three-child policy in 2021. China’s total fertility rate remains well below that, at just 1.0 birth per woman.