Showing posts from category UN.
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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. -
UNHCR Report on East African Environmental Migrants: Long on Anecdotes, Short on Data
›July 6, 2012 // By Graham NorwoodAs part of the recently-concluded Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) presented a new report last week, titled Climate Change, Vulnerability, and Human Mobility: Perspectives of Refugees From the East and Horn of Africa. The report was created in order to “understand the extent to which refugees and IDPs (internally displaced persons) in the East and Horn of Africa have perceived, experienced, and responded to climatic events and trends in recent years.”
In order to achieve this goal, UNHCR and its collaborators (including the United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human Security, the London School of Economics, and the University of Bonn) interviewed approximately 150 refugees and IDPs in parts of Ethiopia and Uganda.
While the narrative is more anecdotal than data-driven, it nevertheless identifies several apparent trends in climate-related migration:Overwhelmingly, stories of mobility associated with moving away from worsening impacts associated with climate variability followed a specific pattern. That is, where movement related to climatic stressors did occur, such movement was taken as a last resort (only after all efforts to remain and adopt other methods of adaptation had been exhausted), particularly where the land being left was self-owned and only after all efforts to remain and try a number of alternative forms of adaptation had failed. Where movement occurred, in most cases it was likely to be internal, circular, and temporary rather than cross-border and permanent.
Stories of international migration were rare, and generally occurred either because migrants already lived near a border and were familiar with the area, or because they had encountered violent conflict (often of a political nature) during an earlier intra-state relocation.
The report also mentions that a majority of those interviewed claimed to have noticed significant changes in weather patterns over a 10- to 15-year period. In fact, many interviewees frequently claimed to be able to distinguish “normal” climate variability from more “permanent” changes.
Significantly, Climate Change, Vulnerability, and Human Mobility highlights several ongoing sources of debate and controversy regarding the issue of climate-induced migration as well.
The links between climate change, migration, and violent conflict are not well understood. And the question of whether climate change precipitates conflict or merely exacerbates it is still unresolved, though research on the subject is ongoing.
The terminology used to describe climate migrants remains a hotly-contested issue as well. While terms like “environmental refugee” and the especially popular “climate refugee” can make for good headlines, the UNHCR report strongly disapproves of such terms, given that the word “refugee” has a very specific legal definition.
Indeed, there is still much debate over how to classify climate migrants. It has been pointed out, for instance, that it is virtually impossible to separate out the various factors that induce migration, and questions as to whether migration is forced or voluntary also persist. For the most part, the UNHCR report shies away from such contentious questions, aiming instead to present a general and “human” narrative designed to call attention to the plight of climate migrants.
Definitional debates aside, the issue of climate-induced migration has been in headlines recently. The Asian Development Bank reported in March that 42 million people were displaced in the region during the last two years due to storms, floods, and other extreme weather events. And Israel signaled a tougher stance on immigration by deporting South Sudanese refugees in the wake of a major Israeli Ministry of Environmental Protection report warning of future climate-induced migration.
The particular vulnerability of women too is drawing increased interest. An article in Environmental Research Letters points out that “women tend to be poorer, less educated, have a lower health status, and have limited direct access to or ownership of natural resources,” and will therefore be disproportionately affected by climate change. Gender disparities must be accounted for in policymaking then, to ensure that future climate migration policies are equitable and inclusive, the author, Namrata Chindarkar, argues.
The challenges of defining and measuring the phenomenon remain – the UN Environment Program’s 2006 prediction of 50 million climate migrants by 2010 has not come true, and has even been a source of some embarrassment for the organization – but the recent UNHCR report is a timely reminder that climate-induced migration remains a major issue with tremendous long-term implications.
Sources: Asian Development Bank, Environmental Research Letters, Human Rights Education Association (HREA), The Jerusalem Post, The New Republic, National Geographic, OECD, Scientific American, Der Spiegel, UNHCR, The Washington Post.
Photo Credit: Displaced Somalis, courtesy of UNHCR. -
Hania Zlotnik Discusses Changes to Latest UN Population Projections
›Former UN Population Division Director Hania Zlotnik spoke recently at the Wilson Center discussing last year’s highly-publicized UN world population projections and explaining the methodology behind the figures. “The latest projections are very special,” she said, adding that “we think that this methodology is a lot better than what we had before.”
What accounts for such improvement? Zlotnik said it has a lot to do with greater availability of data. “The UN has been…mandated by governments to produce population estimates since the 1950s,” she stated, and they have refined their projections process over the years based on an increasing record of data and identification of some “patterns that can inform the future.”Former UN Population Division Director Hania Zlotnik spoke recently at the Wilson Center discussing last year’s highly-publicized UN world population projections and explaining the methodology behind the figures. “The latest projections are very special,” she said, adding that “we think that this methodology is a lot better than what we had before.”
What accounts for such improvement? Zlotnik said it has a lot to do with greater availability of data. “The UN has been…mandated by governments to produce population estimates since the 1950s,” she stated, and they have refined their projections process over the years based on an increasing record of data and identification of some “patterns that can inform the future.”
The increasingly large dataset accumulated during this process is particularly important because of what Zlotnik called “inertia” in population change. “There’s something called ‘population momentum,’ where the population changes on the basis of how many people have already been accumulated on the planet,” she explained, pointing out that many of the people included in the UN’s population projections for 2050 have already been born.
This inertia helps make population projections fairly accurate, but last year’s projections differed from previous efforts in two significant ways.
First, the UN Population Division provided projections not just to 2050 but also to 2100. These more long-term projections estimated an end-of-century population of more than 10 billion – notably higher than previous reports, which had predicted that population would stabilize mid-century at around nine billion.
Second, the underlying methodology used shifted from a deterministic to a probabilistic approach that, according to Zlotnik, does a better job capturing variability in each country’s fertility rate over the next century. “Essentially,” she explained, “a model was developed for every country that takes into account the past path of fertility change [and] also takes into account changes that have happened in other countries…Then [it] does a simulation for the future for every country, in which 100,000 paths are projected, essentially by throwing dice, and then the central path of those 100,000 is used to project the future.”
Zlotnik cautioned that projecting so far into the future is an inexact – albeit necessary – science: “Of course, as we go further into the future, the numbers are more subject to uncertainty. But [the long-term projections] help us give people a better feeling of how important it is to change trends from here to 2050, so that we ensure that, at the end of the century, the number of people on the planet is sustainable.”
“In order to make sure that the population projections made by the United Nations [are realized],” Zlotnik said, “it’s very important that fertility continues to decline, and especially that fertility decline happens in the countries that still have very high fertility.”
“Fertility decline happens in many ways,” she continued, “but the immediate reason why fertility can be reduced is that more people use modern methods of contraception.” -
Population Projections: Breaking Down the Assumptions
›“The seventh billion [person] was added in 12 years, and that could be the story for the eighth billion – and that gets people who think that growth has stopped,” said Carl Haub, senior demographer at the Population Reference Bureau. Haub was joined by Hania Zlotnik, former director of the UN Population Division, and Rachel Nugent of the University of Washington’s Department of Global Health on June 5 to speak about the assumptions behind the UN population projections. While each of the panelists noted the utility of projections, they also cautioned against seeing them as inevitable. [Video Below]
Meeting the Projections
As a former top official in the UN’s Population Division, Zlotnik spoke about how much is riding on the projections. “The experts tell me that to feed nine billion people, living better than the standards of living that we have today, one needs to increase agricultural production or all the production of food by about 70 percent and that is a challenge, but it might be feasible. But if the numbers go higher…I think it’s impossible,” she said.
The medium variant projection by the UN that gets the world to that nine billion figure is not a given – it builds in expected action on and improvement of many demographic indicators. Zlotnik pointed to the global unmet need for family planning, for example, which “is especially high in the high fertility countries,” and suggested that the current rate of increase in contraceptive use is insufficient.
She calculated the number of years it would take many of these countries to meet their unmet need at their current rate of uptake and found “the number of years for a lot of these poorer countries that have high fertility would be very long – 40 years, some of them, 80 years, 100 years – because the increased contraceptive prevalence has been so small.” At that rate, population growth in these countries will far surpass the UN medium variant.
The perception that population growth is no longer an issue contributes to the problem, Zlotnik said. People see that only 18 percent of the world population lives in countries with high population growth and assume “there’s no longer a population problem.” But she emphasized the power of exponential growth, arguing that even a small proportion growing at a rapid rate can have a large impact.
Questioning Assumptions
Haub pointed out several instances where assumptions in the methodology behind the projections create uncertainty.
For example, there is a lack of data in many low-income countries. “A date, let’s say 2000, 2005 – it’s the past, but it may be a projection. It may be based on a census in 1990,” he said. If it’s wrong, that error may not be corrected until another census, but it will still be relied on for country-level projections.
He also noted that certain assumptions about desired family size sometimes do not bear out on the ground. One of the key methods to slowing population growth is to provide women and couples with the means to choose how many children they wish to bear. But in many fast-growing countries, women wish to have large numbers of children. In Niger, for example, women say their ideal family size is over nine children. Such women are less likely to use contraception, no matter how accessible it is, as they value larger families.
“It has been – I guess conventional is a good word – to assume that birth rates are going to come down the way they did in the rich countries,” Haub noted. But there has been a “stall” for many developing countries, which he suggests is caused by fast initial uptake from urban women followed by much slower uptake by rural women. These dynamics, however, are relatively new and therefore are not always well incorporated into current projections.
The Economic Impact of Population Changes
While Haub and Zlotnik looked at the assumptions made before the projections are made and the importance and means to reach these projections, Nugent focused on the economic implications of lower fertility and the demographic transition.
She suggested that increased control over fertility can positively impact a country’s economy. Women are given the opportunity to “invest their time in acquiring skills and investing time in the labor market and that affects their earnings…[and] their ability to control resources and make decisions within the household” as they spend less time caring for children, she said.
The labor market changes as well, as fewer children are born into a given generation. This can reduce “demand on economic resources [and] demand on environmental resources,” and the increased investment in human capital allowed by smaller family sizes can lead to a healthier population.
Nugent concluded by pointing out key areas of intervention most likely to decrease both fertility and mortality and allow countries to reap the positive economic benefits of fertility decline. She suggested a focus on “complementary investments in education and health,” especially with regard to “poor and marginalized populations,” which can in fact impact the country as a whole. Finally, she recommended focusing on proven “evidence-based programs [and] service-delivery programs.”
Educating Policymakers
Each of the panelists cautioned against relying on population projections without taking action to make them come true.
“Maybe the best thing to do if you’re giving a presentation is to show the UN’s constant fertility variant first and scare people half to death and then say, ‘but if 117,000 things go right, [the medium variant projection] is what will happen,” said Haub, addressing the common tendency to view the UN projections as destiny.
Similarly, Nugent warned against viewing the demographic transition as inevitable. “There’s a certain sense…that [the demographic dividend] is kind of an automatic thing that happens, and that really has to be addressed,” she said, adding that “it’d be quite interesting to show some scenarios of what would need to be done…in order to get some benefits from that dividend.” (See also Elizabeth Leahy Madsen’s recent article on achieving the dividend.)
Zlotnik reiterated that the UN does not in fact know what the future will bring. “It’s not that we know what the world is going to do, but we hope that [the projections] will get the message out – if this doesn’t happen, you’re in trouble.”
Event ResourcesPhoto Credit: Sean Peoples/Wilson Center. -
Pop at Rio+20: Reproductive Rights Missing From Outcome Document – Assessing the Disappointment
›June 22, 2012 // By Sandeep BathalaAs heads of state get ready to sign on to the outcome document here in Rio, all eyes are on next steps – especially for the reproductive health and integrated development communities, which have seen their hopes of mainstreaming their issues with the sustainable development agenda dashed.
The final outcome document can be found here. USA Today reports that opposition from a group of countries in the 11th hour stripped the text of critical reproductive rights language:An initial draft of this conference’s outcome document stated, “We are committed to ensure the equal access of women and girls to education, basic services, economic opportunities, and health care services, including addressing women’s sexual and reproductive health and their reproductive rights.”
Absent entirely is any explicit connection between reproductive rights, population dynamics, and sustainable development.
In the final draft, the stronger wording “We are committed to ensure the equal access” was switched to the weaker “We are committed to promote the equal access.” The reference to reproductive rights was deleted altogether, after opposition from the G-77, a negotiating bloc of developing countries at the United Nations, and the Holy See.
But others, as we have heard repeatedly throughout the conference, insist that gender issues and reproductive rights have a strong and vital connection to sustainable development. Yesterday, USAID, the Aspen Institute, and the Center for Environment and Population held a discussion in the U.S. tent on this very issue, titled “Making Population Matter: The Demographic Dividend and Sustainable Development.”
As Vicky Markham of the Center for Environment and Population reports on RH Reality Check, the side-event aimed to demonstrate the effects of population dynamics, both positive and negative:We have the largest youth demographic ever in the history of the world, and most developing nations have a “youth bulge.” This can be seen as a challenge, or opportunity, particularly if the focus is on providing development programs for child survival, family planning, reproductive health, and education. The importance of women’s empowerment was also central. But it’s not a given; it’s an opportunity only if we pay attention to these issues to increase the benefits of the “demographic dividend.”
The demographic dividend, as described by USAID Deputy Administrator and panelist Donald Steinberg in blog post earlier this week, “is an opportunity that arises when a country transitions from high to low rates of fertility and child and infant mortality.” But it’s not just about ensuring access to family planning and reproductive health; youth-focused economic and education policies are also needed: “Maximizing the dividend requires social and economic policies that reinforce inclusion, equity, and opportunity across the entire population,” he writes. USAID is making a point of creating youth-focused policies for this reason, he said in Rio.
Carmen Barroso, regional director of the International Planned Parenthood Federation’s Western Hemisphere Region, pointed out that Latin American countries could not take advantage of the demographic dividend before recent societal changes occurred, including decreased fertility, increased urbanization (which leads to smaller families), and greater schooling and employment of women.
Seventy percent of world population growth is likely to be generated by Africa this century, said Eliya Msiyaphazi Zulu, executive director of the African Institute for Development Policy – and it is the only continent projected to continue to grow in the next century, he said. He called for redefining growth as more than GDP as that measure does not consider environmental degradation and its costs: “We must have other means to measure development.”
As heads of state and negotiators consider their positions at this conference – which many were hoping would make a much stronger statement – they might do well to ponder today’s comments from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton:While I am very pleased that this year’s outcome document endorses sexual and reproductive health and universal access to family planning, to reach our goals in sustainable development we also have to ensure women’s reproductive rights. Women must be empowered to make decisions about whether and when to have children. And the United States will continue to work to ensure that those rights are respected in international agreements.
Sources: RH Reality Check, UN, U.S. Department of State, USA Today, USAID.
Now none of this is an abstract discussion. There is just too much at stake, too much still to be done. And many of you visited the U.S. Center here in Rio and saw practical solutions related to some of the work I’ve discussed and other goals we hold in common. We believe solutions require action by all of us. Governments, yes; let’s do our part. Let’s do more than our part.
Photo Credit: YouthPolicy.org. -
Pop at Rio+20: Text Finalized, Population-Sustainable Development Links Left Out?
›June 21, 2012 // By Sandeep BathalaWhile I was visiting with youth peer educators yesterday with the Brazilian Society for Family Welfare in the Cachoeirinha favela (see Vicky Markam’s post for details – we were on the same trip), UN member states reached consensus in the Rio+20 negotiations. But, according to reports, although the outcome document includes some mention of reproductive health, gender equality, and women’s empowerment, it fails to explicitly recognize the link between reproductive rights and sustainable development.
Many women’s rights and health observers have, from the start, encouraged this link.
Karen Newman, speaking to ECSP in April during the Planet Under Pressure conference – a precursor to Rio – said she hoped this week would offer an opportunity to look at “sustainable development in the round” and “re-identify family planning as a core development priority,” given its human rights and health implications and relationship to population growth.
Jenny Shipley (Former Prime Minister of New Zealand) wrote just yesterday on CNN that “we are at a moment in history where we still have time to make a difference. It is essential that the global discussion in Rio not be blind to the potential solutions that access to voluntary family planning could offer to many of the world’s problems.”
“We can no longer afford this outrageous oversight, driven by old-fashioned tradition, discrimination, and pure ignorance,” said Gro Harlem Brundtland (Former Prime Minister of Norway and Former Head of the World Health Organization) at a side event on Monday. “Now is the time to agree to unleash the largest untapped potential for sustainable development and stop all discrimination against women and girls.”
But now that preliminary agreement on the outcome text has been reached, reports have filed in that the connection many were hoping for is absent. Zonibel Woods, blogging on RH Reality Check, wrote:From the start of the negotiations, gender equality and women’s human rights, including reproductive rights, have continuously been challenged by a few governments, claiming that [these] had “nothing to do with sustainable development.”
The lack of consensus among the wider international community may also undercut efforts to highlight reproductive rights in the post-2015 Millennium Development Goals/Sustainable Development Goals framework and as governments ready for the follow-on to the International Conference on Population and Development in 2014. A concrete link to “sustainable development,” whatever form that takes, would help ensure that reproductive health is not side-lined.
This debate continued until the last few hours of the negotiations. In the end, the text includes a re-affirmation of both the Cairo and Beijing agreements, but it falls short by failing to recognize that reproductive rights are also critical to the achievement of sustainable development. If a woman cannot decide if and when to have children and if she is not provided with the reproductive health care that is her human right, it is challenging to contribute to sustainable solutions for the planet.
Immediately following the adoption of the text, women gathered and protested at Rio Centro, the main venue for the conference, and advocacy continues.
Heads of state will in all likelihood sign on to the outcome document by tomorrow (it could technically still be changed, but that appears unlikely). I will keep you posted on the final outcome and will be taking notes at a side-event this afternoon by USAID, the Aspen Institute, and Center for Environment and Population on the demographic dividend and sustainable development, which promises to be spirited given today’s news. You can tune in live to the webcast of that event at 2:30 EST on Ustream.
Sources: AllAfrica, Aspen Institute, CNN, IRIN, RH Reality Check, U.S. Department of State, USAID.
Photo Credit: United Nations Photo. -
Pop at Rio+20: Getting Women’s Rights on the Agenda
›June 19, 2012 // By Sandeep BathalaHere we are on my second day of side events at Rio+20 and the Aspen Institute, International Planned Parenthood Federation, and the United Nations Foundation convened a high-level moderated dialogue this morning to raise the profile of human development, gender, and reproductive health at the main conference.
Rio+20 is an unprecedented opportunity to draw attention to sustainable development and the role women’s rights and voices play in it. The Aspen/IPPF/UN Foundation event was timely as some negotiators are questioning the link between women and sustainable development in the 11th hour instead of reaffirming the commitments made 20 years ago at international conferences in Rio, Cairo, and Beijing.
High-level leaders, including Gro Harlem Brundtland (Former Prime Minister of Norway), Musimbi Kanyoro (President and Chief Executive Office of the Global Fund for Women), Tewodros Melesse (Director General of the International Planned Parenthood Federation), Mary Robinson (Former President of Ireland and President of the Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice), and Tim Wirth (President of the United Nations Foundation), spoke to the role of women’s empowerment and family planning in the global discussion of sustainable development.
Some highlights from the meeting:
Brundtland noted that the next increment of economic growth could come fully from women’s empowerment. Family planning is a cross-cutting and cost-effective way to ensure this possibility.
Kanyoro further emphasized that for development organizations, women, more than any other partner, have the potential to enable sustainable growth.
Melesse discussed the role of addressing the special needs of young women. “If they are not met, we will have failed at sustainable development,” he said.
Robinson argued that family planning must be mainstreamed in international conferences, like Rio+20 and the annual UN climate COPs, as a human rights issue. Women’s issues cannot be add-ons in outcome documents – they have to be front and center. “We know what works,” she said, referring to effective reproductive health efforts and their ability to advance human rights and sustainable development
Wirth spoke passionately about the basic rules of diplomacy: do no harm and no backsliding. He remarked that hard earned gains from previous UN documents, although limited, must not be lost. They must be considered as statements from governments around the world and as resounding affirmation of the rights of women, he said.
For more, see Vicky Markham’s thoughts on the meeting at RH Reality Check too.
Stay tuned to see whether official negotiations in Rio – which start tomorrow – will heed these calls.
Photo Credit: “Etiopía,” courtesy of flickr user subcomandanta. -
Pop at Rio+20: Cairo, Rio, and Beyond
›June 18, 2012 // By Sandeep BathalaGreetings from Rio de Janeiro! I will be blogging from the UN Conference on Sustainable Development throughout the week, tracking the inclusion of reproductive health and rights in the agenda.
Population dynamics have significant influence on sustainable development but the two have not always been seen as connected.
This year’s conference is the follow-on to the original UN Earth Summit held in Rio in 1992 (thus Rio+20). The resulting documents from that conference – Agenda 21, the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, and the Statement of Principles for the Sustainable Management of Forests – were adopted by more than 178 governments and have done much to set the sustainable development agenda over the last two decades. Population dynamics were largely left off the table and instead were taken on separately, and in parallel, at the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo in 1994.
This year, watchers from across the spectrum are eager to see these two issues talked about in a more integrated fashion. The official proceedings don’t start until the 20th, but side events have already begun.
At the first of Population Action International’s side events, appropriately named “From Rio to Cairo to Rio…and Beyond,” Eliya Zulu, executive director of the African Institute for Development Policy, said that virtually all development policies in sub-Saharan Africa cite population growth as an inhibitor to sustainable development and efforts to alleviate poverty, ensure food security, and preserve the environment. Furthermore, climate change is increasingly seen as a major threat to sustainable development in Africa. Policymakers in the region recognize the linkages between population, climate change, and sustainable development; however, little integration of these issues – operationally or conceptually – has been achieved.
Michael Herman, a technical adviser on population and economic development at the United Nations Population Fund, reminded audience members that demographic projections, like those predicting 10 billion by mid-century, are not destiny: population growth or decline is affected by policies, which should include human rights-based access to voluntary family planning.
Doris Mpoumou, an international policy officer at International Planned Parenthood Federation’s Western Hemisphere Regional Office, concluded the event by describing efforts to ensure that the Rio+20 outcome document being negotiated recognizes several key points. First, that population dynamics influence production and consumption rates; second, that population dynamics are relevant to the management of resources and sustainable development planning; and third, that population dynamics should be carefully integrated into development strategies and environmental planning with a focus on human rights.
Stay tuned here for more updates from Rio+20 and follow us on Twitter. I’ll be at every population-environment event I can get to and will also be visiting a favela with IPPF to see first-hand the ways Brazilians cope with the challenges of sustainable development.
Photo Credit: View of Rio de Janeiro from a mountain in Tijuca National Forest, courtesy of Michos Tzovaras/UN Photo.
