How do population dynamics affect greenhouse gases and climate change? Will urbanization and an ageing population help or hinder efforts to adapt to a warming world? And could better reproductive health care and improved relations between women and men make a difference in the fight against climate change? Find the answers in the State of World Population 2009. The whole world has been talking about carbon credits, carbon trading and emissions targets. But not enough has been said about the people whose activities contribute to those emissions or about those who will be most affected by climate change, especially women. The climate-change debate needs to be reframed, putting people at the centre. Unless climate policies take people into account, they will fail to mitigate climate change or to shield vulnerable populations from the potentially disastrous impacts.

1. Embargoed for release until 12:00 GMT on 18 November 2009

3. People, after all, cause climate change and will have to live with and adapt to it—some in harsher circumstances than others, despite having contributed much less to the problem.

5. Technology alone cannot solve global climate change.

10. Chapter 3 On the Move Drought, severe weather and sea-level rise may result in large-scale population movements, mostly within national boundaries.Governments need to begin to prepare. Migration is an understandable adaptive response to climate change.

13. Chapter 6 Five steps Back from the brink Improving women’s status relative to men would help unleash the potential of half of humanity to lower emissions and build social resilience to climate change