Natural birth control could significantly "offer a solution" to reduce the impact of climate change to global food supply, said one of the Catholic Church's senior cardinals. “More mouths to feed” could contribute to the global challenge of climate change with the production and distribution of food.

Cardinal Peter Turkson, the Pope's leading adviser on climate issues, told the BBC that natural birth control “can offer a solution" to problems on global food supply. The United Nations predicts that the current global population of 7 billion might grow to 9.6 billion by 2050.

A growing population will increase the demand of food around the world, which may be hard for producers to meet due to impacts of climate change in food-producing areas, such as droughts and other unforeseen extreme weather conditions affecting lands and crops.

"Having more mouths to feed is a challenge for us to be productive also, which is one of the key issues being treated over here; the cultivation and production of food, and its distribution,” Turkson said. "So yes it engages us in food security management, so we can ensure that everybody is fed and all of that.”

“The amount of population that is critical for the realisation of this is still something we need to discover, yet the Holy Father has also called for a certain amount of control of birth," he added. The cardinal stressed that the church still does not endorse artificial birth control methods like the contraceptive pill for the growing population.

"You don't deal with one good with another evil: the Church wants people to be fed, so let's do what the Church feels is not right? That is a kind of sophistry that the church would not go for," he said.

Speaking in Paris, Turkson said that the strong agreement to fight climate change by world leaders would protect the most vulnerable nations.

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