It’s a simple problem, the world can feed X number of people comfortably, and we have X+Y number of people trying to eat. World population growth—a trend intrinsically linked to issues of poverty, development, equity, and the environment—remains a taboo subject in many circles and is conspicuously absent from the public discourse. So how do we solve this problem? Do we hold a world wide lotery and randomly kill a percentage of the worlds population? No, even the most grizzled madman would never abide by such a plan? Do we make a mandatory one child per family rule like in China, as we have seen that brings it’s own perils. Contraceptive in the water supply? Genetic modification? All of these sound too crazy to even consider. A special issue of World Watch magazine focused on population reveals that empowering women to make their own family size choices through education, economic opportunity, and family planning services is the best strategy to tackle population growth and the many problems connected to it.

“The planet faces a range of grave and interlinked challenges. None of these problems becomes more tractable if population is ignored,” says World Watch Editor Tom Prugh. “Fortunately, a goal that is valid on its moral merits—fairness to women—also turns out to be pragmatic.”

According to recent United Nations figures, over 1 billion people worldwide live on less than US$1 per day. Such grinding poverty is associated with higher rates of fertility, and the vast majority of the world’s near-term population growth is anticipated in the most disadvantaged regions, writes Lori Hunter, author of “Population, Health, and Environment Through a ‘Gendered Lens.’”

Growing populations also contribute to deteriorating environmental conditions, such as water and food shortages and human-induced climate change. As the effects of climate change begin to take hold, the number of environmental refugees is expected to grow. One estimate cited by Elizabeth Leahy and Sean Peoples in “Population and Security” estimates that 200 million people will be displaced by the impacts of climate change by 2050. Imagine a country nearly the size of America on the move because of climate change.

Recent data have shown that women with at least a secondary level of education eventually give birth to one-third to one-half as many children as women with no formal education. Hunter points to countries like Ethiopia where women with no education have an average of 6.1 children while women with secondary or higher education average just 2.0 children, a figure slightly below replacement-level fertility.

Despite these and similar studies, attitudes on population remain mixed at best. Although 60 percent of Americans aged 18–24 understand that there is a strong link between a growing global population and climate change, only 35 percent believe that having fewer children themselves would help protect the environment. Public opinion is further confused by countries that are concerned with their own populations’ aging and decline. Some governments in Europe and East Asia have recently offered prospective parents incentives such as financial bonuses and subsidized daycare to encourage childbearing.

Currently estimated at 6.7 billion, the global population is expected to grow to over 9 billion by 2050. In an excerpt from his new book More: Population, Nature, and What Women Want, Robert Engelman discusses what lies ahead for an expanding human race:

“Unless governments focus on creating the conditions by which births result from the conscious decisions of women and their partners to parent a child, there’s no reason to be confident that global family size will fall to a two-child average. Even if it does, the grand, one-time-only experiment—how many of us can the Earth and we ourselves sustain?—will continue, for a few decades at least, in the only available laboratory, the only available home.”