Sunday, January 25, 2015

Climate and Population Are Linked — but Maybe Not the Way You Thought

World out of people (Credit: Shutterstock) Click to Enlarge.
It’s not a topic that comes up in high-level international negotiations on climate change.  Yet who would disagree that when individuals and couples use modern contraception to plan childbearing according to a schedule that suits them, they tend to have fewer children than they would otherwise?  Could it be that this aspect of family planning, multiplied hundreds of millions of times, might lessen the severity of human-caused climate change and boost societies’ capacity to adapt to it?

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, after all, recently noted that population and economic growth “continue to be the most important drivers of increases in CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion.”  Not many analysts see “win-win” opportunities in reining in economic growth.  Population growth, by contrast, might be slowed as a side effect of efforts that have multiple other benefits — such as education, empowerment of women, and the provision of reproductive health services including safe and effective contraception.  And there’s reason to believe that slower population growth also makes societies more resilient to the impacts of climate change already upon us or on the way.
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A group of experts in the reproductive health and climate fields dealt with these concerns elegantly in a statement released by the Population Reference Bureau and Worldwatch Institute in December.  The 13-member group, which was sponsored by the two organizations and met virtually and in-person over a year and a half, represents diverse gender and regional perspectives — a majority of the members are women and a majority come from developing countries.  The group based its work on the shared principle that both climate-compatible development and individual decision making on childbearing are human rights.

“Achieving universal access to family planning throughout the world would result in fewer unintended pregnancies, improve the health and well-being of women and their families, and slow population growth — all benefits to climate-compatible development,” the group concluded.  “We recommend including improved access to family planning among the comprehensive and synergistic efforts to achieve development compatible with addressing climate change.”

Read more at Climate and Population Are Linked — but Maybe Not the Way You Thought

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