For thousands of years, natural factors like rainfall and temperature helped determine the fate of economies and societies. For thousands of years, humans also engaged in human trafficking and kept one another as enslaved people. But as human prosperity increased exponentially beginning in the 19^th century, it may have seemed that such concerns were relics of the past.

We have all the tools we need for the elimination of cervical cancer, a largely preventable cancer that annually kills more than 300,000 women worldwide—the vast majority in low- and middle-income countries.

 

During the 2010s, the United States was on the verge of permanently losing competitiveness in global nuclear energy markets. This weakness threatened American geopolitical goals, with Russia further extending its nuclear market dominance and China eyeing reactor exports across the Belt and Road.

Under the narrow shade of our umbrellas, a community health worker from a local NGO and I walked along a dirt path to the edge of some paddy fields in a village in Tamil Nadu, South India in the summer of 2015. There we met a group of Dalit (oppressed-caste) women who were squeezed together under a clump of trees on a small strip of raised land between two fields.

The summer of 2015 was one of the hottest on record in South India at that time, with temperatures consistently above 40ºC (104ºF) every day. Rains which should have begun to arrive had not come by mid-July. These women were hoping to be called for daily agricultural wage labor in the fields, and they had taken refuge under the shade while they waited. They had been waiting all morning with no work available; it had been the same for several days because there was a drought and the crops were failing.

The Population Institute’s recent report, Invisible Threads: Addressing the root causes of migration from Guatemala by investing in women and girls, has brought attention to the numerous factors that drive migration in Guatemala. One of the key factors addressed in the report is climate change, which is linked closely to issues concerning land in that country. To this day, multiple generations of indigenous women endure the effects of land displacement and inequities in access to land—as well as related social and economic pressures. In concert with other political, social, and economic problems, this particular challenge has resulted in large outflows of migrants from the region.

Abortion restrictions may create obstacles for legal access, but they do nothing to eliminate the need for life-saving reproductive healthcare. And when there is a lack of licit opportunities to obtain that care, patients find pathways to get it through alternative networks.

For instance, after the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson decision in June 2022 reversed a decades-long precedent protecting the constitutional right to an abortion, social media and online forums were filled with reactions and resources alike. Among these interventions were viral posts circulated offering to host anyone going on a “camping” trip in a state with legally protected reproductive rights. These “camping trip” posts alluded to a willingness to aid and abet individuals traveling for abortions in states with legally-protected access—and they captured the complications and conflicts embedded in these responses to the ruling.

On July 28, 2022 the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) voted—by a count of 161 in favor, with 8 abstentions — that living in a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment is a human right. Building on the similar declaration by the UN Human Rights Council in October 2021, the UNGA has now reinforced the notion that the growing assaults on human health through environmental hazards are transgressions against the basic rights and freedoms of people.

COVID-19 has dealt out a double dose of woe for global maternal health. According to a new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the pandemic saw an increase in maternal deaths and an exacerbation of racial disparities driving this overall morbidity. In addition, childbearing people experienced significant anxiety and depression.