Is fertility the nexus between SRHR, population growth, and climate change?  Will increasing access to voluntary family planning that respects individual rights contribute to slowed population growth and eventual population stabilization?  Local communities may not understand climate change, but they do understand environmental degradation.  When examining or calculating our ecological footprint, population is a multiplier. Framing the population and climate change debate is relevant to a multitude of lenses: justice and equity, health, poverty, urbanization, migration, disaster relief, gender, ethics, security, youth, deforestation, food security, and many more. What are the ethical implications of linking population and environment? We are ethically obligated to acknowledge the role of consumption in climate change – but to what extent, given that our organizational mandates are SRHR (including voluntary family planning) and population?

Under current population growth conditions in many poor countries, governments have to run very fast just to stand still in terms of meeting people’s needs. Do all of the components of SRHR link with climate change or just family planning? Much more research and analysis is needed. Did you know that Hungary now has an ombudsman for future generations? Do reproductive health services or demographic change itself impact a community’s resilience to the effects of climate change? The term “overpopulation” is based on perception. Are the terms demographic dynamics or population stabilization better to promote dialogue on the issue?  Is the principle of subsidiarity applicable to this debate – where decisions should be made at the lowest possible level at which they can be effectively made and by those who suffer the consequences of an action? When we leave the debate unframed, we leave space for harmful discourse to take center stage.

As you can see, we perhaps raised more questions than we answered. However, we all agreed that the links between population, climate change and environmental degradation are complex, involve ethical considerations, must be approached through different lenses, need more attention and analysis and are difficult to talk about. We also agreed that individuals and couples deserve universal access to family planning and reproductive health, provided in a way that respects their rights to determine how many children they have and when.   That will help people and countries and, hopefully, the planet.
 

Carolyn Vogel, Vice President of Programs
Karen Hardee, Vice President for Research

Photo of Manjula Lusti-Narasimhan (WHO, Geneva) and Karen Hardee (PAI) taken by Carolyn Vogel (PAI).