People, Population, and Climate Change: Opportunities for Advancing Climate Resilience and Reproductive Rights

by Sarah Fisher and Karen Newman, Population and Sustainability Network

Introduction

The relationship between population and climate change raises a number of complexities and sensitivities, which mean that linking the issues is associated with much controversy, and is often shied away from. In this article we explore the many critical links between population, sexual reproductive health and rights and climate change, the significance of which is all too important to ignore. Not least, this is because a focus on the connections between population dynamics and climate change offers considerable opportunities to increase the capacity of the countries most vulnerable to climate change to adapt to its impacts, at the same time as advancing sexual and reproductive health and rights.

Global population growth and unmet need for family planning

According to the latest UN population projections, the world population which was set to reach 7 billion this year, is now expected to exceed 9 billion by 2050 and to surpass 10 billion by the end of the century. The vast majority of this growth will take place in developing countries, particularly in many of the poorest nations of the world, including Sub-Saharan African countries. The rate of population growth in these countries is so high that the population of the 58 nations classified as ‘high fertility’ countries by the UN is set to more than triple between now and 2100, along with the entire population of Africa. With these countries already struggling to lift millions out of poverty, such rapid population growth will place even greater constraints on development, at the same time as these countries face the challenges of adapting to climate change.

Worldwide there is a vast unmet need for contraception, which as for population growth is concentrated in the poorest countries of the world, a point which is of course not unrelated. An estimated 215 million women in developing countries have an unmet need for contraception, meaning that they are at risk of pregnancy and say they do not want to have a child during the next two years, but are not using contraception. The reality of this situation is that women in developing countries are not able to choose to plan and space their children. While the scale and rate of population growth projected by the UN for this century is alone a cause for concern, even more worryingly the projections are based on the assumption that future fertility in the high-fertility countries will drop significantly: from the current 4.9 children per woman to 2.1 by the end of the century. To achieve such reductions, it is essential that access to family planning expands, yet since the mid-to-late 1990s, donor investment in family planning has decreased dramatically in absolute terms. As a result many countries where women have a high unmet need for contraception have experienced considerable declines in family planning assistance, at the same time that demand is increasing. more on >>

Source: http://www.rhrealitycheck.org