Showing posts from category video.
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In Mongolia, Climate Change and Mining Boom Threaten National Identity
›July 23, 2012 // By Kate Diamond
Mongolia, a vast, sparsely populated country almost as large as Western Europe, is at once strikingly poor and strikingly rich. Its GDP per capita falls just below that of war-torn Iraq, and Ulan Bator has some of the worst air pollution ever recorded in a capital city. At the same time, Mongolia sits atop some of the world’s largest mineral reserves, worth trillions of dollars, and its economy, already one of the world’s fastest growing, could expand by a factor of six by the end of the decade as those reserves are developed.
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Center for American Progress Takes on Climate Change, Migration, and Why They Matter to U.S. National Security
›July 19, 2012 // By Kayly OberIn early 2012, the Center for American Progress (CAP) released Climate Change, Migration, and Conflict: Addressing Complex Crisis Scenarios in the 21st Century. Although generally in line with climate-migration pieces before it (“It is difficult to fully understand the detailed causes of migration and economic and political instability, but the growing evidence of links between climate change, migration, and conflict raise plenty of reasons for concern”), the report strays from the usual by focusing on U.S. national security interests and four particular sub-regions of concern.
Northwest Africa
The first region examined – and the one perhaps most on the radar of security analysts at the moment – is Northwest Africa. Here the already-tenuous political stability left in the wake of the Arab Spring will most certainly be exacerbated by climate change, authors Michael Werz and Laura Conley write. “Northwest Africa is crisscrossed with climate, migration, and security challenges…rising coastal sea level, desertification, drought, and the numerous other potential effects of climate change have the potential to increase the numbers of migrants.” All of these factors combine to create what Werz and Conley define as an “arc of tension,” that will strengthen organizations that thrive on chaos, like Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, which has already taken advantage of the regional power vacuum left by Muammar Gaddafi’s ouster.
CAP investigates this arc of tension more fully in a more focused, separate brief on Northwest Africa, drilling down on Nigeria, Niger, Algeria, and Morocco. They find that these countries already grapple with a complex set of issues, including population pressures, drought, land degradation, large-scale migration, and natural resource conflicts. Climate change exacerbates all of these. Particularly worrying is the threat it poses to traditional pastoral and agricultural livelihoods, which could translate into “increasing numbers of disenfranchised youth, who security experts believe are more easily recruited to assist [terrorist groups] in return for money and food.”But environmental pressures and related conflict are not new in these areas, so how do we parse out the slow-onset climate change factors from the usual variety? That question is left unanswered and remains an open – and hotly debated – problem for researchers. The multi-faceted nature of migration, in particular, makes it hard to define the exact causes of movement.
On a larger scale, flagging the environment as the principal reason for migration has its problems, especially under the umbrella of “refugee” status. According to respected migration experts, using the term “refugee” in the case of environmental or climate scenarios is incorrect, since the environment is often simply one “push” factor, while economic opportunities make for a heavier “pull.” Furthermore, applying the term refugee in this case, they say, is misleading and undermines true political refugees.
CAP uses the less polarizing term “climate migrants” in their paper, saying “no universally accepted concepts, much less legal categories, exist to describe or define climate migrants. There is agreement, however, that factors such as drought, flooding, severe weather, and environmental degradation can cause human mobility in large numbers that are certain to increase in the near future.”
South Asia
In a case like Bangladesh and India, the second sub-region to be examined, the international community is preoccupied with rising sea levels, which is considered a more concrete example of climate change affecting migration. Ultimately, as CAP notes, it’s also a security issue:In December 2008 the National Defense University in Washington, D.C., ran an exercise that explored the impact of a flood that sent hundreds of thousands of refugees into neighboring India. The result: the exercise predicted a new wave of migration would touch off religious conflicts, encourage the spread of contagious diseases, and cause vast damage to infrastructure.
While true that India is “not in a position to absorb climate-induced pressures,” as Werz and Conley write, it’s not quite true that “foreign climate migrants” would be necessarily be an immediate problem, as they suggest.
India has a history of taking in Bangladeshi migration, with an estimated 10 to 20 million illegal Bangladeshis currently living in India, according to the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, an Indian think tank. Traditionally, Bangladeshis have migrated for a myriad of socioeconomic reasons, but most alluring are land availability and a stronger Indian economy. In any case, Bangladesh-India migration would not be new phenomenon.
The environment has also been a part of the equation, but in the case of large-scale sea level rise, its effect on migration can be a bit more nuanced. As the International Food Policy Research Institute noted in its study “Environmental Migrants: A Myth?,” Bangladeshis often have “risk-sharing and informal lending arrangements” to deal with idiosyncratic shocks, which include flooding. Instead, crop failure actually has the strongest effect on mobility. This suggests that it’s not just sea level rise that observers worried about environmentally-driven migration need to track in Bangladesh, but also drought and rain-induced flooding.
The Andes
The third region, the Andes of South America, also suffers from a slightly myopic security lens. Here, it’s all about melting glaciers and snowcaps. Retreating glaciers would spell disaster for countries which rely heavily on seasonal melt for agriculture and hydroelectric power. Most vulnerable are those with weak governance systems and infrastructure like Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Colombia. For reference, hydropower supplies a whopping 80 percent of Peru’s electricity. However, there are more subtle impacts that could portend bigger trouble for the region.
Regional security experts concede that higher temperatures are already affecting crop production in rural Colombia, harming the ability to consolidate the security gains made by Plan Colombia over the last decade, for example. And a recent report from EUROCLIMA, the European Union’s program on climate change in Latin America, paints an even bleaker picture for agricultural production in the face of desertification and drought:Natural ecosystems, agriculture, water resources, and human health in Latin America have been impacted by unusual extreme weather events reported in the past years. For example, droughts related to El Niño impacts on the flows of the Colombia Andean region basins (particularly in the Cauca river basin), are causing a 30 percent reduction in the mean flow, with a maximum of 80 percent loss in some tributaries. Consequently, soil moisture, and vegetation activity are strongly reduced.
Perhaps more worrying is the impact on the biodiversity in the region. Considering that Latin America represents 16 percent of the world’s surface but 40 percent of its biodiversity this could have serious implications for the biomedical field and others. In a recent Nature study, scientists discovered that in situations where glacial coverage is reduced to the point where it only covers 30 to 50 percent of the drainage basin, several species begin to disappear. They calculated that the entire melting of the glaciers in these areas would result in a huge loss of biodiversity, where between 11 and 38 percent of animal and plant species could go extinct, including many of endemic species that can be found only in these areas.
China and the Third Pole
Finally, China is now in its fourth decade of ever-growing internal migration, some of it driven in recent years by environmental change. Today, across its vast territory, China continues to experience the full spectrum of climate change-related consequences that have the potential to drive migration. CAP finds that the consequences of climate change and continued internal migration in China include “water stress; increased droughts, flooding, or other severe events; increased coastal erosion and saltwater inundation; glacial melt in the Himalayas that could affect hundreds of millions; and shifting agricultural zones” – all of which will affect food supplies and the country’s seemingly relentless pace of development. Still, the most unique factor of migration in China is the power of the central government to be the main “push factor,” as in the case of the Three Gorges Dam.
Agreeing to Agree
Though they might sacrifice some nuance in the regional breakdowns, the core of CAP’s argument for why climate migration matters to U.S. national security is solid. The United States has a “vested interest in helping ensure that areas with weak or absent governance structures – where poverty, environmental degradation, and grievances over central governments and energy production coincide – do not become future recruiting grounds for extremists,” write Werz and Conley. “The possible impacts of climate-related migration in such fragile situations could be destabilizing.” Invest in people rather than just military might; invest in poverty reduction, economic development, and alternative livelihoods.Jon Barnett on migration as adaptation
In the context of climate change, this means accepting that migration is a form of adaptation. As Jon Barnett notes in an interview with ECSP:In some circumstances it might be appropriate to [invest in traditional adaptation projects like] infrastructure and hard options where we’re very certain about the nature of the risk…but in other cases, expanding the range of choices and freedoms and opportunities that people have to deal with climate change in the future is perhaps the better strategy.
This requires higher-level thinking by states to concede that migration will happen and it isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Migration bolsters origin communities through remittances and education and technology sharing. But this thinking has yet to permeate policymaking, with obvious political reasons. Until then, states that are committed to preventing migration are actually cutting off important community responses.
Ultimately, what we consider adaptation and development needs to evolve. By investing in an integrated, multi-sector development approach, we can prevent violent responses to migration at the source rather than relying on reactionary and military solutions. Or, as CAP’s Michael Werz and Laura Conley put it more boldly, “our security can no longer be guaranteed by military strength or economic clout alone, but only by our ability to compel collective action.”
Photo credit: “Villagers going to the local market in Bogoro walk past a Bangladeshi patrol unit of the United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC) as the country prepares for the second round of elections. 12/Oct/2006. UN Photo/Martine Perret,” courtesy of United Nations Photo Flickr.
Sources: Center for American Progress, Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, Inter-American Development Bank, International Food Policy Research Institute, Nature, The World Bank.
Video Credit: “The Nexus of Climate Change, Migration and Security,” courtesy of the Center for American Progress. Image: “The Arc of Tension,” courtesy of the Center for American Progress. -
‘Motherland Afghanistan’ Shows Maternal Mortality Not Just A Health Issue
›Afghanistan has one of the highest rates of maternal mortality in the world: 327 out of every 100,000 women who give birth die during childbirth. Despite some recent improvements, political, social, cultural, and economic factors present enormous challenges. Last month, the Center for Population and Development Activities hosted an online viewing and dialogue discussion of the PBS Independent Lens film Motherland Afghanistan, which follows Afghan-American filmmaker Sedika Mojadidi and her father, Dr. Qudrat Mojadid, as they return to their home country and visit the Laura Bush Maternity Ward in Kabul. The conditions they find are devastating and underscore not only the need for greater commitment to reproductive health services, but also the advancement of women’s and girl’s access to education, security, and political participation.
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Pop at Rio+20: Despite Failure Narrative, Progress Made at Rio on Gender, Health, Environment Links
›July 13, 2012 // By Sandeep BathalaA month ago this weekend I boarded a plane to Rio de Janeiro for the UN Conference on Sustainable Development. Over the past few weeks, I have had some time to reflect on the amazing (and exhausting) experience afforded to me. Unfortunately, the final Rio+20 outcome document (considered by some to be misnamed as “The Future We Want”) failed to recognize the connections between reproductive rights and sustainability. However, since I returned I’ve also found myself in conversations with colleagues eager to celebrate the successes of the conference.
Jason Bremner, program director at Population Reference Bureau, reminds me that the initial “zero draft document” that was circulated prior to Rio had absolutely no mention of reproductive health, family planning, or population. “Though the ultimate conference document wasn’t a success by many measures, I commend the efforts of the many advocacy organizations that resulted in the inclusion of reproductive health and family planning as a key aspect of sustainable development,” he said.
Other wins were recognized at Rio as well. On a panel organized by the International Planned Parenthood Federation, Brazilian Minister of Policies for Women Eleonora Menicucci de Oliveira pointed out that the presence of women this year was much stronger than at the 1992 conference. And she stressed that the overall importance placed on the reduction of poverty will have a big impact for women.
Though the official language was weakened in the final outcome document, there was much more support expressed at side events and off the record conversations. Speaking at the same event as Oliveira, Christian Friis Bach, Minister for Development Cooperation in Denmark, said that “one leader after another has stood up for reproductive rights, and we’ve started a campaign which will go on until ICPD+20.”
In fact, as the Wilson Center’s Brazil Institute Director Paulo Sotero points out, there was a great deal of progress made by non-government representatives alongside the main conference:I left Rio more hopeful about the future than the official part of Rio+20 would allow. As governments clearly fumbled in the face of the complex challenges of imagining and building a more equitable and sustainable economic growth model in the decades ahead, I saw senior business executives and leaders of civil society engaged in intelligent and productive dialogue about difficult issues at hundreds of thematic panels held at the Corporate Sustainability Forum and other sessions held in Rio.
I felt the same energy. And many groups there seemed to already be planning for next steps.
On the first day of side events I attended, members of the Population and Climate Change Alliance discussed strategies to ensure that in the post-2015 (i.e. post-Millennium Development Goals) international development agenda sexual and reproductive health and rights are explicitly recognized as core to sustainable development. The panel included Mialy Andriamahefazafy of Blue Ventures Madagascar, Joan Castro of PATH Foundation Philippines, Inc., and Negash Teklu of PHE Ethiopia Consortium, who all shared examples of efforts in their countries to integrate reproductive health with other sustainable development programs.Joan Castro on PATH Foundation’s work in the Philippines
The Rio+20 conference was, at the very least, a re-affirmation of the tenets set down by the ‘92 Earth Summit – that is, that there is middle ground between full-tilt economic development and uncompromising environmentalism, called “sustainable development,” and we ought to be moving towards it. It was also a fantastic gathering place for disparate groups of people to come together on to similar issues and to build momentum and networks on their issues.
For those hoping to see a stronger link recognized between reproductive rights, population, and the environment, the good news is that elsewhere, awareness and momentum seems to be growing. Just this week, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation joined the United Kingdom, United States, France, Germany, the Netherlands, South Korea, Norway, Sweden, and Australia to pledge more than $2.6 billion towards meeting global unmet for contraceptives. And the connection to development was explicit: “Contraceptives are one of the best investments a country can make in its future,” reads the summit website.
Coincidence to have followed so closely behind a “disappointing” Rio outcome? Perhaps not.
Sources: The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Estado, UN Conference on Sustainable Development.
Photo Credit: “UN Women Leaders Forum at Rio+20,” courtesy of UN Women. -
Gates Foundation Spearheads London Summit on Family Planning
›July 12, 2012 // By Carolyn Lamere“Given the option, [women in developing countries] will have fewer children,” said Melinda Gates in a TEDxChange talk in April. “The question is: are we going to commit to helping them get what they want now? Or are we going to condemn them to some century-long struggle, as if this were still revolutionary France and the best method was still coitus interruptus?”
Wednesday, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation followed through on Gates’ pledge, helping to raise more than $2.6 billion at the London Summit on Family Planning as part of an ambitious goal of helping 120 million additional women in developing countries gain access to contraception by 2020. The summit was co-hosted by the UK Department for International Development and garnered support from other foundations and governments, including the United States, France, Germany, the Netherlands, South Korea, Norway, Sweden, and Australia.
To quote the Population Institute’s Robert Walker on Dot Earth, this is a big deal:Many of the challenges that we face (hunger, severe poverty, energy, food, carbon emissions) are seemingly intractable. Population growth, which is a challenge multiplier, is not intractable. Far from it. There are proven highly cost-effective means of lowering fertility rates: providing access to contraceptives, keeping girls in school, ending child marriage practices, and changing social norms (including attitudes toward women and desired family size) through entertainment media.
The focus on family planning for the Gates Foundation – one of the largest philanthropic organizations in the world – is relatively new (though their commitment to global health and development is not). Melinda Gates announced a commitment to maternal health in 2010, and the foundation first issued a family planning strategy in April of this year.
The move has been unwelcome by some, particularly some Catholic institutions who object to family planning. But Gates has been adamant that contraceptives “should be a completely non-controversial topic.” She argues that 90 percent of Americans find contraceptives “morally acceptable,” including herself and many other Catholics, so there is no reason for the taboo around international aid for family planning to continue.
“We’re not going to agree about everything, but that’s OK,” said Gates in a recent interview with CNN.
In the TEDxChange talk, which helped launch this year’s push, she credits her upbringing for instilling a strong sense of social justice. During her travels with the Gates Foundation, one woman from a slum in Nairobi told her, “I want to bring every good thing to this child before I have another.” That statement resonated with Gates: “We all want to bring every good thing to our children,” she said. “But what’s not universal is our ability to provide every good thing for our children.” Gates pointed to contraception as a way for families to plan for their future and manage their resources. She recognized the controversial history of family planning as population control, but argued that this new initiative is about providing choices to individuals, not imposing values.
Gates remains confident that as long as the foundation makes its mission clear, people will rally behind the cause.
“We’re not talking about abortion. We’re not talking about population control. What I’m talking about is giving women the power to save their own lives, to save their children’s lives, and to give their families the best possible future.”
Sources: BBC, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, CNN, Catholic Family and Humans Rights Institute, Catholics For Choice, Dot Earth.
Video Credit: TEDxChange. -
Geoff Dabelko at the Aspen Environment Forum: “We Have to Find Ways to Do Things Differently”
›July 9, 2012 // By Graham NorwoodECSP Director Geoff Dabelko was in Colorado last month to participate in the fifth annual Aspen Environment Forum, a three-day series of discussions about some of the world’s most vexing environmental concerns, hosted jointly by the Aspen Institute and National Geographic. Dabelko took part in two panel discussions, considering recent efforts to “green” the U.S. military in one and addressing the nexus of climate change and conflict in the other.
The U.S. Department of Defense is currently pursuing an ambitious strategy to minimize its dependence on oil, aiming to produce 25 percent of its power from renewable energy sources by 2025. During the 75-minute “Is the Military a Model?” panel, Dabelko joined Sharon Burke of the Department of Defense, Sherri Goodman of CNA, and U.S. Army Major General Joseph Anderson to discuss the extent to which the military’s embrace of more efficient and alternative technologies can spur wider innovation and adoption. Many have previously cited the military’s role in developing technologies like the Global Positioning System and the internet as a reason for optimism in this regard.
The “Climate and Conflict” panel, meanwhile, addressed how and to what degree climate change might affect future conflicts. According to Scientific American, “the consensus was that climate change per se will not cause conflict, armed or otherwise, but will exacerbate existing conflicts and instabilities.”
This was Dabelko’s third trip to the Aspen Environment Forum, and he spoke enthusiastically about the event in a brief interview with genConnect, which was covering the event. “The experience has been excellent,” he remarked, highlighting the diversity of participants as one of the forum’s greatest strengths.Dabelko acknowledged that much work remains to be done to achieve environmental and energy-related goals, but praised the realistic and grounded approach of attendees: “We have a tremendous set of challenges, and we’re not yet really succeeding in addressing them. So there’s a self-reflection that what we’ve been doing isn’t necessarily getting us where we want to get, and so we have to find ways to do things differently.”
One way to improve, according to Dabelko, is to work on communications. “[We need to have] conversations about complex issues, [and we] need to understand how to make them more accessible and more simple. But ‘simple’ does not mean ‘dumb’ or ‘incorrect’…we need to get smarter about how to have these conversations with wider and [more] diverse audiences.”
Photo Credit: Geoff Dabelko, courtesy of the Aspen Institute. Video: genConnect. -
USAID Turns to Crowdsourcing to Map Loan Data
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The original version of this article, by Aaron Lovell, appeared on the Wilson Center’s Science and Technology Innovation Program Commons Lab blog.
On June 28, officials from USAID met at the Wilson Center to discuss a recent experiment in using crowdsourcing to help clean up and map data on development loans. The agency had 117,000 records on private loans made possible by their Development Credit Authority, which theoretically could be mapped and made available to the public. The problem? Location data for the loans was not standard and was difficult to parse. USAID decided to turn to “the crowd” and recruit interested volunteers from the Standby Task Force and GISCorps – two online volunteer communities – to help clean the data, making it available for additional analysis.
Shadrock Roberts, Stephanie Grosser, and D. Ben Swartley – all with USAID – discussed the results of the project. They were able to clean up the information at virtually no cost to the government, noting that they hope it will be an example for further collaboration between government and engaged volunteers.
“Our hope is that the case study will provide others in government with information and guidance to move forward with their own crowdsourcing projects. Whether the intent is opening data, increased engagement, or improved services, agencies must embrace new technologies that can bring citizens closer to their government,” the officials wrote in a recently released case study focused on the exercise. While the exercise resulted in high-quality output, Roberts et al. did provide advice for other agencies considering similar work. Grosser stressed the need to “crawl, walk, [then] run” – that is, start small with a few hundred records and then expand on that, as the system is refined.
But USAID sees crowdsourcing becoming a key part of improving government data. “We need to be working as hard to release relevant data we already have as we are to create it,” Roberts concluded, when discussing how the experience could apply more generally. “The crowd is willing to do research, data mining, and data cleanup.”
Sources: USAID. -
IPPF and Partners Connect Reproductive Rights With the Environment and Development
›A new framework for sexual and reproductive health is needed, argued panelists in a recent event at the Wilson Center, and the Rio+20 conference on sustainable development would have been the place to start. An international consensus around women’s human rights was developed at the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo in 1994, but Carmen Barroso, director of the International Planned Parenthood Federation’s Western Hemisphere Region, said there has been slow implementation, little funding, and furthermore the world has changed significantly since then.
Barroso was joined by Latanya Mapp Frett, vice president of Planned Parenthood Global, as well as two representatives of Planned Parenthood partner organizations, Marco Cerezo of FUNDAECO and Ben Haggai of Carolina for Kibera.
New challenges to the reproduce rights landscape include the rapid spread of HIV/AIDS and decreased funding for international programs. But new opportunities include rapid dissemination provided by the internet and globalization and a subsequent mobilization of youth. “Young people are the largest cohort in history,” Barroso said in an interview with ECSP, both in absolute numbers and in percent of the population. “We have a historical opportunity [to incorporate] them in these decision-making processes.” Additionally, gender and health issues are incresaingly seen by many as linked with the environment and development.
Intersection of Health and the Environment
Marco Cerezo’s FUNDAECO (Foundation for Ecodevelopment and Conservation) is an example of Planned Parenthood’s partnership with other organizations. Based, in rural Guatemala, they shifted from primarily focusing on conservation and sustainable development to incorporating women’s health after finding a vicious cycle of poverty, high fertility, and environmental degradation in the places they worked.
Women’s health was so dire it was holding development back, Cerezo said. “Sustainable community development will not be possible without the education, empowerment, and support to rural women,” they write in their mission statement.
FUNDAECO now acts as a model for the intersection between reproductive health and the environment. Cerezo reported that once women are healthy and empowered through clinics established by FUNDAECO, they become more active in all aspects of the community, including ecological preservation.
Building Healthy Communities
Ben Haggai, who works in Nairobi’s biggest slum, Kibera, further reiterated the need for integrated programs. Carolina for Kibera has a number of programs to improve the quality of life for residents, he said, and has a particular focus on youth with sports associations and education programs.
Youth are the best reproductive health educators, Haggai said, as they are able to talk frankly with their peers. The NGO trains peer youth educators to reach out to community members about reproductive health and other issues like substance abuse. Since the young people work as volunteers, Haggai said, they are motivated only by a desire to improve their communities.
A Natural Intersection
Latanya Mapp Frett agreed that sexual and reproductive health aligns quite naturally with issues of sustainability. “We try to work in the countries overseas in Latin America and Africa where we focus particularly on non-traditional health sectors,” she said in an interview with ECSP following the panel. “One of those sectors is the environment.”
While emphasizing that contraceptive use is a cost-effective way to ensure sustainable development, Mapp Frett cautioned against framing sexual and reproductive health only in the context of reducing fertility. While this may have been common in the past, she noted, it’s important to ensure that women have the right to make childbearing choices for themselves.
Mapp Frett also urged policymakers in the United States to look to developing countries for intersections between development, the environment, and reproductive health. She said that Planned Parenthood’s partner organizations, including FUNDAECO and Carolina for Kibera, have found these connections and successfully partnered with already existing networks like churches to more effectively reach the community.
Translating Into Effective Action
Each member of the panel spoke about the challenge of articulating the need for sexual and reproductive health programs to people outside the field. Barroso mentioned research conducted by Brian O’Neill which found that meeting the current unmet need for contraception would slow population growth enough to reduce emissions by 17 percent.
Cerezo emphasized the importance of consensus among the staff of a given organization, saying it is difficult to make a case to agronomists and farmers if a culture clash exists within the institution. Haggai agreed, adding that focusing on reproductive issues is an important measure of prevention which helps protect both the environment and the health of women in a community.
For Mapp Frett, women’s reproductive and sexual health is indivisible from other aspects of development. “As you talk about sustainable development, you talk about ensuring that women are empowered to make sure that our earth is sustainable,” she said.
Assessing Rio+20
The panel took place before the UN Conference on Sustainable Development got underway in Rio. Participants had high hopes for a renewed focus on gender and reproductive rights at the conference. Unfortunately, language on reproductive rights was first weakened and then omitted entirely from the final outcome document (see the account written by ECSP’s Sandeep Bathala at Rio for more on the conference).
While pressure from the Vatican and the G-77 kept reproductive health out of the outcome document, it was not entirely forgotten at the conference. A number of side events highlighted the importance of reproductive rights, especially in the context of the environment and development.
Hillary Clinton also re-affirmed U.S. commitment to access to contraception and reproductive health care. “Women must be empowered to make decisions about whether and when to have children,” she said at the conference on Friday. “And the United States will continue to work to ensure that those rights are respected in international agreements.”
Clinton shared the urgency expressed by the panelists at the Wilson Center. “There is just too much at stake, too much still to be done,” she said. “We simply cannot afford to fail.”
Event Resources:Sources: FUNDAECO, UN Conference on Sustainable Development, U.S. Department of State.
Photo Credit: Sean Peoples/Wilson Center.
