Connecting the Dots
Kathleen Mogelgaard
Shortly before heading to Beijing for an international conference on reproductive health, I had dinner with a friend who works on climate and energy policy in the U.S. Senate. "Beijing - how exciting!" he said. "What will you be doing there?" I described the conference, and told him I was going to give a presentation on how access to voluntary family planning and reproductive health services can contribute to solutions to climate change. Not surprisingly, he looked perplexed. "Give me your one-minute summary," he said.
People engaged in climate change decision-making are not accustomed, generally, to thinking about reproductive health - and most probably have never considered how reproductive health can affect women's empowerment and population growth, and how those things can be meaningful in climate change responses. But connecting those dots reveals a story that is full of good news: investing in women's reproductive health needs can yield big, tangible dividends for people and the planet.
It will do this in two important ways: by empowering women, who are key stakeholders in adaptation to the negative impacts of climate change; and by ultimately slowing population growth, which will ease the challenge of reducing global emissions of the greenhouse gases that cause climate change.
