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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.

Women, Reproductive Health and Climate Change Adaptation

Because we've not yet been able to get global greenhouse gas emissions under control, communities around the world will have to figure out how to adapt to changes that are already "locked in" the climate system - more severe floods, droughts, extreme weather, declining agricultural production.

We already know that universal access to family planning and reproductive health services - a goal embodied in the Millennium Development Goals - would greatly improve maternal and child health. What is less appreciated is that meeting this goal would also have the serendipitous effect of strengthening our abilities to adapt to these impacts of climate change.

Women are disproportionately vulnerable to climate change. For example, shifting temperature and precipitation patterns are affecting water supplies and agricultural production in many parts of the world. When water is scarce, women spend more time each day collecting it for themselves and their families, adding to the burden of physical labor. Decreased crop yields mean that more women go hungry, as they feed their families first.

In their roles as providers of food, water, and fuel, women are instrumental in determining a family's ability to survive and effectively cope with the impacts of climate change. When women are empowered to manage the timing of their own child-bearing and the size of their families, they can be more powerful agents in negotiating the unpredictable impacts of climate change, and ensuring the survival of their families.

A woman with access to reproductive health services is healthier and has healthier children, an important foundation for effectively coping with sudden and short-term stresses. She has greater opportunities to diversify income sources, which can be critical in areas where climate change will undermine primary economic activities like agriculture or fishing. And she is more likely to be able safeguard herself and her family in the event of disaster. All of these things contribute to resilience in the face of the impacts of climate change.

Reproductive Health, Population and Greenhouse Gases

Access to reproductive health is an important part of strengthening women's capacity as leaders in adaptation to the impacts of climate change. In addition, access to reproductive health can contribute to another critical aspect of addressing climate change: it can slow population growth, creating brighter prospects for reducing greenhouse gas emissions over the long-term.

In a climate-challenged world, truly sustainable development - that is, the creation of a future we all can envision in which people are healthy and no one lives in poverty - requires bold strategies to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels by tapping into cleaner energy sources like wind, solar, and geothermal. We need to develop and spread technologies that will help us meet our needs - and allow for continued economic development in the poorest countries of the world - while using less energy. We need to better protect and manage forests to store carbon dioxide, and find additional ways to lock up carbon dioxide.

And we need to address population growth. Not because ending population growth alone can solve our climate challenges, but because addressing our climate challenges will be a lot harder if we continue to grow at our present pace.

The most recent population projections from the United Nations indicate a wide range of possible outcomes for the size of the world's population in 2050. We often hear that the world's population will grow from today's 6.8 billion to 9.2 billion in 2050, which is the medium fertility variant. What we don't often hear is that to reach 9.2 billion, average global fertility would need to fall below two children per woman, which would require expanded access to and use of family planning.

A recent study by the Futures Group demonstrates that meeting women's stated desires to limit or space births would have a significant effect on fertility, and would be likely to bring world population below the medium fertility variant by 2050. An estimated 215 million women around the world would like to avoid pregnancy, but don't have meaningful access to contraceptives.

Meeting the family planning and reproductive health needs of these 215 million women will yield positive outcomes that are almost too numerous to count. The benefits to women have ripple effects throughout society, including strengthening our resilience to the impacts of climate change and bolstering our efforts to restore the atmosphere.

My climate policy friend from the Senate has thought long and hard about fixes for the climate challenge - how to create incentives for renewable energy here in the U.S., and how to support low-carbon development in the developing world. But many of the policy-makers embroiled in climate change decision-making in the U.S. and around the world are only just beginning to consider how investments in the social sector relate to climate change solutions.

The time is ripe to demonstrate how reproductive health goals can contribute to efforts to address climate change. Connecting these dots to reveal low-cost, win-win strategies requires persistence and a willingness to step out of the comfort of our sector-specific silos. But the potential rewards for doing so are immense: a healthier, more resilient population; a recovered climate system; and the hope for a truly sustainable future.

Kathleen Mogelgaard is senior advisor for population, gender and climate at Population Action International.