Written evidence submitted by the Population
and Sustainability Network (PSN), and Marie Stopes International
Population and Sustainability Network has been
established to clarify and communicate the importance for sustainability
of both population and consumption factors. It aims to bring together
development, environment and reproductive health NGOs, government
departments, academics and others, to increase leverage on population
issues.
Marie Stopes International works through a partnership
of agencies in 40 different countries working to improve sexual
and reproductive health. Together, the partnership has almost
30 years experience of providing maternal health services in developing
countries across four continents.
This paper reflects the joint position of both
organsiations. We welcome this inquiry as an important opportunity
to highlight the role of population growth issues and include
them into the discourse and policy response to climate change.
I. EXECUTIVE
SUMMARY
I.I This paper aims to provide an overview
of the ways in which demographic trends interface with climate
change, in both impacts and drivers.
I.II It explores the ways that rapid population
growth and high fertility exacerbate vulnerabilities to the impacts
of climate change. It seeks to illustrate with the use of examples,
how high population growth, high fertility and poor sexual and
reproductive health in Less Developed Countries (LDCs) undermine
coping capacity on two levels:
1. By compromising robust environmental systems
upon which many people depend for their livelihoods and survival.
2. By impacting on human well-being and human
capital thus sustaining vulnerability.
I.III While adaptation is at the heart of
this discussion, we also explore some of the research about how
population growth is understood to impact on GHG emissions and
to what extent population growth should be considered in climate
change mitigation policy.
I.IV A key resource for this paper is a
series of reports entitled National Adaptation Programmes of Action
(NAPA), submitted by 38 of the least developed country governments
outlining their country specific priorities for climate change
adaptation. The NAPAs were submitted to the UNFCCC, and are valuable
for the contribution they make to improving local stakeholder
participation, as they were intentionally developed in a consultative
way to include the voices of the poorest and most local groups.
Many identify rapid population growth as an issue that exacerbates
the impacts of climate change.
I.V The policy recommendations for this
paper are as follows:
1. LDCs characterised by rapid population growth
should be supported to integrate family planning into their programmes
of adaptation to climate change.
2. In this context family planning should not
be perceived as inherently driven by "population targets",
but as a beneficial, relatively inexpensive policy intervention
in its own right with likely ensuring favourable effects on demographic
trends.
3. The Department for International Development
should coordinate their policy response to climate change in such
a way that fully integrates all development sectors, including
the sexual and reproductive health department. A coherent policy
response that combines harmonised efforts and a horizontal approach
would have reinforcing benefits, for both mitigation and adaptation
to climate change.
1. CLIMATE CHANGE,
THE ENVIRONMENT
AND POPULATION
GROWTH
1.1 Climate change as an internationally
recognised phenomenon is happening beyond all reasonable scientific
doubt. The earth is warming as a result of anthropogenic activity,
which is impacting on the earth's natural systems of positive
and negative feedback processes, causing dramatic alterations
to the global ecosystem. During this period it is predicted that
we will see a period of unprecedented environmental change, including
increased frequency of floods and droughts, storms and cyclones,
pests and diseases, sea level rise, land use changes and loss
of biodiversity, to name but a few.
1.2 The case to be made here is not how, why
or whether climate change will impact on the environment and human
populations; for the purposes of this paper this has been taken
as a given. Instead, the aim is to show how population growth
as it happens in the Least Developed Countries asserts an additional
pressure on top of these changes and also contributes to them.
1.3 According to the UN 2006 Revision of
the World Population Prospects, world population is likely to
increase from the current 6.7 billion to 9.2 billion in 2050.
This increase is equivalent to the total number of people living
in the world in 1950 and it will be absorbed mostly by the less
developed regions, where population is projected to rise from
5.4 billion in 2007 to 7.9 billion in 2050. There are numerous
ways in which population growth is relevant to climate change
policy planning. However so far the phenomenon of population change
and demographics has largely been absent from the international
climate change discourse.
1.4 Three likely reasons why population
does not feature as in climate change policy planning have been
advanced by John Bongaarts, a leading demographer at the Population
Council and Brian O'Neill, a climate scientist at the National
Centre for Atmospheric Research. These reasons are that (1) the
real problem is consumption, (2) not much can be done about population
and (3) strengthening population policies leads to coercion (Leiwan
Jiang 2008).
1.5 This paper seeks to illustrate why these
three barriers to including population issues into climate change
dialogue are unfounded. These are as follows: (1) the case to
include population issues into climate change policy is not to
divert attention from the immediate and urgent necessary reductions
in GHG emissions from energy intensive consumption, mainly in
the minority and rich world, but to perceive it as a synergistic
intervention with virtues in its own right. (2) Population growth
projections are often based on assumptions that fertility decline
to date will continue. In many places the family planning programmes
that have been responsible for this decline are crumbling, due
to decreased investment over the past 15 years. (3) Population
policies have led to cases of coercion in the past which means
today every effort must be made to upholding the highest quality
of woman centered service delivery offering a wide range of culturally
acceptable, non-coercive and temporary forms of contraception.
2. ADAPTATION
AND DEFINITIONS
OF VULNERABILITY
2.1 A useful understanding of "vulnerability"
is offered by the UN Environment Programme in their 4th Global
Environment Outlook report:
"[Vulnerability] is defined here as a function
of exposure, sensitivity to impacts and the ability or lack of
ability to cope or adapt." (UNEP 2007)
2.2 Vulnerability might be an exposure to
changes in the natural environment, disrupting the way people
use or depend on it, which is a primary concern in the context
of climate change. Also important to note is exposure to forces
like extreme price fluctuations, underlying socio-economic, institutional
and environmental conditions.
2.3 "Vulnerability is useful to describe
places, people and ecosystems that suffer the most from changes
in environmental and/or human induced variability or change, and
identifies the underlying causes." (UNEP 2007)
2.4 The precursors of vulnerability are
most often linked to instances of poverty in as much as this reduces
people's capacity to adapt to or cope with sudden or unexpected
changes. In this respect it is crucial that all sectors of development
programmes are streamlined with climate change adaptation policies.
At the very least it demands that the programmers and policy makers
are well versed in the new dynamics expected to arise due to climate
change.
2.5 It is well known by now that while the
majority of the activity driving the causes of climate change
stems from the rich north while the people that will be disproportionately
affected by climate change will be in the global south.
2.6 The world's poorest are the most vulnerable
to climate change for more than one reason. While at times the
existing and often difficult climatic conditions of a developing
country may be exacerbated by further temperature increases and
weather variability, the people in developing countries often
depend more acutely and directly on the natural environment for
subsistence and livelihood. This relationship is further compounded
by numerous ancillary stressors and low adaptive capacity, often
characterised by poverty, underdeveloped economies, poor health,
and limited scientific and technological capabilities (IPCC 2007).
2.7 The purpose of this paper is to illustrate
some of the ways that population growth interfaces with climate
change. Here we look at how population growth, characterised by
high fertility acts as an extra stressor exacerbating capacity
to cope or adapt to climate change and weather variability. Additionally
this paper explores work already completed around the relationship
of population growth to future emissions scenarios.
2.8 Our key conclusion is that increased
investment in voluntary family planning services can make a significant
contribution to both adaptation and mitigation strategies and
programmes.
3. POPULATION
GROWTH AND
VULNERABILITY
Two kinds of coping capacity:
3.1 The relationship between high population
growth and its impact on the environment is not undocumented.
What is less apparent is the way that population growth, characterised
in developing countries by high fertility and very often accompanied
by poverty, affects coping capacity to climate change or human
induced environmental changes. In this case we are concerned with
two kinds of coping capacity:
1. Robust and healthy environmental systems (eg
agriculture, biodiversity hot spots, fisheries and forests,) that
are resilient against increased weather variability predicted
from climate change.
2. Human well being; the coping capacity of people
and communities is characterised by good health, secure and adequate
livelihoods, personal security and good information and knowledge
about the expected direct and indirect impacts of climate change.
3.2 The causal chain by which high population
growth interacts with these two kinds of vulnerability follows
different pathways.
3.3 In relation to point one; UNEP, in their
4th Global Environmental Outlook Report (2007) use the drivers-
pressures-state-impacts-responses (DPSIR) framework in analysing
the interaction of environmental change. At a local level population
growth is identified as a key driver of environmental degradation.
3.4 Degradation means that environmental
systems are weakened to the possible impacts of climate change,
hence compromising their capacity to cope and increasing not only
their vulnerability but also that of the people that depend on
them. Other key drivers are consumption and production patterns,
scientific and technological innovation, economic demand, markets
and trade (UNEP 2007). "Demographics" most often meaning
high population growth but also spatial distribution patterns
and migration, asserts pressure on water resources, land use practices,
biodiversity, fishery management and forests.
3.5 This model is further supported by analysis
carried out on the National Adaptation Programmes of Action reports
(NAPA). These are reports submitted by the governments of 38 of
the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) to the UNFCCC. NAPA reports
provide a process for LDCs to identify priority activities that
respond to their urgent and immediate needs with regard to adaptation
to climate change. The NAPA reports take into account existing
coping strategies at the grassroots level, and builds upon these
to identify priority activities. In the NAPA process, prominence
is given to community-level input as an important source of information,
recognizing that grassroots communities are the main stakeholders.
While their shortcomings have been identified these relate to
the functionalities between countries and implementing agencies,
for instance the difficulties with affecting follow up activities
and securing funding (Ayers 2008). They are however hugely valuable
for the purpose of this argument due to the input from the local
stakeholders themselves.
3.6 A large majority of the 38 NAPA reports
identify rapid population growth as a factor that exacerbates
the detrimental impacts of climate change. Over half of NAPA reports
cite population growth as a main driver for environmental damage,
land degradation and soil erosion; thereby sustaining food insecurity
and poor agricultural yields. Just under half of reports cited
population growth as a key driver of some of the key consequences
of climate change, including fresh water shortages, loss of biodiversity,
deforestation, and shortages of grazing land per capita. The key
implication here is that the governments of many LDCs believe
that the harmful affects of climate change can be better mitigated
by addressing rapid population growth as a component of the overall
programme to adapt to the affects of changing climatic conditions.
This is perhaps an unsurprising finding given that the population
growth rate of many LDCs exceeds 2% a year and hence will lead
to a doubling or tripling of their populations by 2050.
3.7 Five of the most frequently mentioned
factors that the country reports show to worsen synergistically
due to high population growth and climate change are:
— Population pressure on fresh water
availability
National studies have shown that soil moisture would
decline under future climate change. When coupled with high consumption,
increased population growth, high variation in rainfall and high
rate of evaporation, a looming water crisis appears likely.
— Population affecting soil degradation/
erosion- implications for agriculture
Loss of biodiversity, herbal plants, life and
physical injuries are most prominent in the highland areas. This
is mainly die to high population density leading to pressure for
arable land (over cultivation), deforestation and soil degradation
resulting in frequent landslides.
— Shortage of land per capita/ over
grazing
"Vulnerable regions receive more and more
migrating populations from regions with high density of population
and where natural resources have reached a critical level of degradation."
"..many gazetted/ closed high forest and
mangroves are threatened by deforestation, the major causes being
encroachment due to high population pressure and over- utilization."
Sierra Leone. p. 78. 2007
— High population density/ migration
to coastal areas
A doubling of the coastal population is expected
in as little as 12 years.. coastal areas are most vulnerable to
climate change due to the anticipated rise in sea level, floods
and other consequences. Unfortunately, the effect of sea level
rise is already being experienced in Coast region, in Bagamoyo
District. In this region sea level rise has resulted into inundation
of some traditional water sources. This process has resulted into
salinization of shallow water wells, the only source of domestic
water supply.
Looking at this trend, there is an immediate
need to take action to curb the situation, otherwise if unchecked;
people living along the coast will be forced to migrate to other
areas, something which may cause social conflicts and other environmental
degradation due to overpopulation and utilization of resources.
3.8 "Population pressure" in this
context should be understood as a phenomenon that compounds human
vulnerability to climate change, and exacerbates pressures on
the environment exerted by a rapidly changing climate system.
At the same time, it also significantly compromises the aspirations
of LDC governments to feed, clothe, house and educate their populations.
3.9 Conversely, however, traditional adaptation
efforts have been criticized as being dominated by "technical"
sector responses often overlooking more "people focused"
aspects of human vulnerability. The NAPA reports, for example
reflect this sectoral, and largely technical area of focus as
they tend to emphasise agricultural or other technical adaptation
responses. Reforestation, education programs, drought resistant
crop varieties and seasonal climate forecasts are frequently mentioned
adaptation strategies.
3.10 Alternative adaptive strategies, to
the sector, impact driven ones as described above might promote
complementary adaptation measures that would centre on personal
well being; both physical and emotional. Fssel and Klein (2006)
describe health measures such as vaccination against climate sensitive
vector born diseases and improving nutritional status as examples
of alternative adaptation strategies. These kind of adaptation
strategies would bolster the second kind of coping capacity described
above; human well being.
3.11 In a case study seeking to include
the voices from those most at risk of climate change, fieldwork
was carried out with communities living and working as pastoralist
herders in the Sahelian zone of Senegal. In a relative degree
of severity they listed factors they considered most aggravating
to daily life so that these could be lineated with those stemming
from climate stress. They listed health as the number one concern
with lack of money and poor quality food coming closely behind
(Tschakert 2007).
3.12 The health impacts of climate change
are compounded by rapid population growth and high population
density. It's possible to see this relationship operating at both
the societal and household scale.
3.13 In an LDC at societal level, a rapidly
growing human population can put enormous stress on an already
struggling healthcare system. Uganda's NAPA report describes where
climate change imposes increased burden on the health services
in Uganda such as floods that lead to increased incidences of
cholera and diarrhoea:
"The high population and growth rate of
Uganda is not matched with growth in health services and wealth|
the high population puts additional stress on the natural resources
and weak health infrastructure."
3.14 At the household level, high fertility
acts as a proxy for rapid population growth. Absent family planning
services and poor sexual and reproductive health result in high
and often risky fertility patterns. The concurrent health impacts
of absent or poor quality family planning and reproductive health
services are numerous. It is estimated that if the needs of the
200 million women who have expressed a desire to either delay
or prevent pregnancy were met with high quality, voluntary family
planning programs then these could prevent 23 million unplanned
births, 22 million induced abortions, 142,000 pregnancy-related
deaths (including 53,000 from unsafe abortions) and 1.4 million
infant deaths a year (UNFPA/ Guttmacher 2004). One third of the
global disease burden amongst women of reproductive age derives
from ill sexual and reproductive health (UNFPA/ Guttmacher 2004).
3.14 High fertility and lack of family planning
also means that a girl is less likely to complete secondary education
or develop her own economic autonomy. In Sub- Saharan Africa,
between 8% and 25% of girls who drop out of school do so because
of an early pregnancy (IPPF written evidence to the APPG hearings).
3.15 Health and education make up the cornerstones
of human capital, which is fundamental for coping capacity and
reducing vulnerability (UNEP 2007). Hence poor or absent family
planning services and sexual health programs significantly disadvantage
many of the world's poorest women facing the growing challenges
of climate change. The cost of providing the voluntary family
planning services that address these problems could be one of
the most significant investments made to improve the wellbeing
of women and girls in the poorest countries.
4. WOMEN'S
VULNERABILITY IS
UNIQUE
4.1 An increasing amount of work is being
completed exploring the gendered dynamics of climate change. In
developing countries women are amongst the most vulnerable groups
to climate change; not only do they account for larger proportions
of the agricultural workforce but they also have fewer alternative
income opportunities, crucial at times when climate variability
affects agricultural yields and food security. Women are responsible
for managing the household and reproductive and care giving duties,
which in turn limits their mobility and renders them vulnerable
to natural disasters and other locally specific sudden changes.
4.2 Dwindling natural resources also disproportionately
affect women, as they have to walk further to find fire-wood and
collect water. Worldwide women and girls spend about 40 billion
hours collecting water- equivalent to a year's labour for the
entire workforce of France (UNDP 2006 p. 312 UNEP), and in some
countries women and girls spend more than two hours a day collecting
water (UNICEF 2004 p.312 UNEP). As water resources become increasingly
unstable with the progression of climate change the demands on
women's time and workloads are likely to increase.
4.3 Efforts, hence, by policy makers and
programmers interested in minimising the adverse impacts of climate
change should ensure that policies address issues of women's empowerment
or at the very least are highly sensitive to the gendered dynamics.
4.4 Many benefits like health and human
capacity, including education, produce wider benefits for a woman's
family and community and are more easily attainable with good
reproductive health. In particular the opportunity for a woman
to space and time her births, and the provision of obstetric and
post natal care, will dramatically improve a woman's health and
resilience.
4.5 A statement by the Department for International
Development to the All Party Parliamentary Group on Population,
Development and RH claims:
"The ability of women to control their own
fertility is absolutely fundamental to women's empowerment and
equality" (DFID 2007)
4.6 Gender differences must be considered
not just in terms of differential vulnerability, but also as differential
adaptive capacity. During a natural disaster for example women
play a key role in protecting managing and recovering lost household
resources, and often develop innovative strategies to address
climate change impacts (WEDO 2007). Case studies in Senegal, Bangladesh
and Ghana demonstrate grass roots women groups developing coping
strategies related to energy and forestry, agriculture, water
resources and trade (WEDO 2007). Women thus must be perceived
as powerful agents of change and should be fully integrated into
climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies at all levels.
5. FAMILY PLANNING
5.1 Population growth projections are often
based on assumptions that fertility decline to date will continue.
In many places the family planning programmes that have been responsible
for this decline are crumbling, due to decreased investment over
the past 15 years.
5.2 It is not uncommon to hear policy makers
disregard family planning as an unimportant aspect to fertility
reduction on the premise that female education will be enough
to stimulate reproductive preferences in line with demographic
transition. This is a significant oversight; for a woman to have
full control over her reproductive preferences she will need the
means to prevent the pregnancies she has now decided are unwanted.
5.3 Family planning is a relatively inexpensive
intervention. It is estimated that to provide high quality family
planning services to the 200 million women who would like to delay
or prevent their next pregnancy, the costs would be in the margin
of $3.9 billion a year (Guttmacher/UNFPA)—a fraction of
the hundreds of billions, possibly trillions of dollars that are
estimated to be the total cost of mitigation and adaptation to
climate change. UNFPA/ NIDI resourceflows.org/ APPG, Return of
the Population Growth Factor.
5.4 The 1994 International Conference on
Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo reached a consensus
about the importance of reproductive health. Since that time,
there has been a reduction in funding for family planning programmes,
partly due to its replacement by HIV/AIDS as the global sexual
and reproductive health and rights priority and partly because
USAID funds under Republican administrations have been subject
to the "GAG rule". This rule stipulates not that US
tax payers money cannot be spent on "abortion related activities"6
(such a ruling, the Helms Amendment, has been in place since 1973)
but that, in order to be eligible for USAID funding, an organization
could not spend any other funding from any other source on such
activities. This has led to an apartheid in sexual and reproductive
health services in many countries, in which family planning and
abortion services (where available) are offered by entirely separate
organizations, so that the most obvious part of abortion aftercare—ensuring
that the woman who has evidently had unprotected sex is given
access to contraception—does not take place, principally
because USAID contraceptive services must demonstrate that they
have nothing whatever to do with abortion services.
5.5 There are numerous and complex obstacles
to family planning. Various "Population control" programs
of the 20th century were well known for employing coercive methods
to achieve desired population/ fertility reduction targets. These
programs cast a long shadow since they were very far from protecting
the rights of individuals and couples they worked with. Efforts
must remain therefore firmly oriented towards upholding the highest
quality of woman centered service delivery offering a wide range
of culturally acceptable, non-coercive and temporary forms of
contraception. LDCs that highlight population programmes as a
part of adaptation strategy must be supported by the international
community in this respect.
6. POPULATION
GROWTH AND
CLIMATE CHANGE
MITIGATION
6.1 So far this paper has examined the relationship
between high population growth, high fertility, poor sexual and
reproductive health and vulnerability. The implications for adaptaon
policy are thus apparent; namely increased investment in high
quality voluntary family planning programs for those that are
crumbling, and renewed commitment to sexual and reproductive health
goals. The grounds for these interventions should be considered
as central to helping individuals and women cope with changes
in the natural environment, but perceived as leveraging wider
benefits of population stabilisation.
6.2 In this context family planning should not
be perceived inherently driven by "population targets",
but as a beneficial, relatively inexpensive policy intervention
in its own right with likely ensuring favourable effects on demographic
trends.
6.3 The so far little mention of population
growth in respect to mitigation is because in the context of development
and climate change what matters to the global poor is adaptation,
but mitigation can not be ignored.
6.4 The framing of population growth in
the context of mitigation is altogether a more difficult relationship
to explore. Not only in the ethical sense, given that it is simply
wrong to claim that the high population growth mainly occurring
in the south is one of the key drivers of climate change today,
given that the poor account for a very small amount of GHG emissions,
disproportionately less than their population share, but also
because so little research has yet been dedicated to it. Growth
in population has however been identified to be an important source
of GHG emissions in the future (O'Neill). Nicholas Stern explains,
in his seminal report the Stern Review, that per capita emissions
growth in the developing world, where the majority of population
growth is projected to take place, will rise significantly faster
than in the developed world (Stern Review 2006).
6.5 The current research that exists, seeks
to feed population scenarios or variants (low, medium and high,
produced by the UN) into emissions scenarios. Building upon the
emissions scenarios produced by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change, Brian O'Neill, a climate scientist at the National Centre
for Atmospheric Research in Washington has adjusted some of scenario
modelling to include more detailed analysis of the variables.
6.6 The overall conclusion of this work
is that in general you can associate a smaller global population
with lower emissions, but it's not going to guarantee a low emissions
scenario on its own (O'Neill 2008). While population is a major
factor in emissions scenarios, reducing population growth on its
own would not be the answer to emissions reductions. There are
multiple other significant drivers behind growing harmful GHG
emissions that cause climate change.
6.7 O'Neill amongst others working in both
the demographic, health and climate sectors argue that considerations
of population issues, which start from individual well being and
that respect rights should be part of climate policy dialogues,
where as up until now they have remained absent. A likely reason
for this absence is the dangerous misconception that linking population
issues with climate change is being used to "hijack"
the debate and direct attention away from the current key drivers.
6.8 A larger global population at any level
of consumption will inevitably make it more difficult to curtail
emissions than a smaller one. This is exemplified in the Kaya
identity published in the Stern Review.
CO2 emissions from energy=
Population x (GDP per head) x (energy use GDP)
x (CO2 emissions/ energy use)
Stern uses this equation to demonstrate the
main drivers of energy related emissions growth, which he says
are:
"|economic growth, technological choices
affecting carbon intensity of energy use and energy intensity
of output, and population growth." (Stern Review 2006)
6.9 Nevertheless a good deal of current
global population growth will continue no matter how effective
family planning programs are because so much of it is the result
of high population momentum gathered from previous growth: there
are always larger cohorts of people having children from one generation
to the next. Additionally fertility has dropped in most parts
around the world, and globally stands at 2.54 births per woman
(UNFPA 2008). However where fertility is higher, namely in the
least developed countries, which is as high as 7.16 in Niger for
example, but stands at an average of 4.6 there is good scope for
high quality voluntary family planning programs coupled with female
education and health care to act not only as an adaptation strategy
but also as mitigation against carbon emissions of the future.
6.10 Outside of the scope of this paper
but equally significant factors of concern are general population
demographics encompassing large scale migrations (particularly
cross border), spatial distribution (especially along coast lines
and to urban centres), population/ age structure and household
composition.
6.11 The difficulty in framing population
growth within the context of climate change mitigation policies
is that there seems so much scope to undo the hard won victories
achieved at Cairo. The fear remains that as soon as family planning
is considered a population/ climate change policy, the purpose
for which is to explicitly reduce population sizes this will compromise
the integrity of such programmes, which are fundamentally based
on Cairo principals. In a situation such as this, the consequences
for reproductive health and family planning might be at best;
lower quality services or at worst grave infringements of human
rights. The other anxiety is that if "population policies"
are adopted aggressively by governments seeking to address climate
change it is likely that they will be taken over by departments
or ministries that would not normally address these issues thus
throwing open huge opportunities for ill practice.
6.12 Many argue that family planning coupled
with education and efforts to address underlying drivers of high
fertility offer a high cost effective investment option. O'Neill
points out that if you have a fixed long term policy goal for
climate change, for instance a targeted emissions reduction—"how
much less costly would it be to achieve (through changing the
energy system) to reach that goal if you had a lower population
path rather than a medium one?" (O'Neill 2008)
7. CROSS SECTOR
ENGAGEMENT
7.1 We need to support reproductive health
as a basic right in itself not as an explicit motive behind population
targets. With this in mind it is easy to see the benefits of a
cross sector framework simultaneously addressing population-health-
environmental (PHE) issues. A policy response across multiple
domains would ensure that programmes always build on the theoretical
and programming expertise of generations past. The PHE framework
is growing in popularity and has recently been launched as a government
initiative in Ethiopia, part of the wider East African PHE movement
to increase coordination and dialogue amongst sectors working
in both the population/ health and environmental fields.
7.2 "Ethiopia is home to two of the world's
biodiversity hotspots, each of which comprises at least 1,500
species living in a rapidly shrinking habitat. Land is needed
to grow food, yet agricultural yields have dropped and traditional
farming practices are proving unsustainable. With more than 77
million citizens—and with the population growing by more
than two million annually—Ethiopia must strike a better
balance between human survival and preservation of natural resources."
(Ethiopian PHE network brochure).
7.3 There are valuable lessons to be learnt
here for the British Government's response to climate change.
With increased coordination across department teams there would
be greater opportunity for harmonizing a collective response to
climate change, which in turn would improve the quality of adaptation
policies and address key underlying vulnerabilities. With climate
change presenting one of the key development challenges of the
21st century every team at the Department for International Development
should prepare for the unexpected challenges that lie ahead and
mitigate against the potentially gravely damaging impacts.
8. CONCLUSION
8.1 This paper has explored and illustrated
the ways that population growth currently interfaces with climate
change and is likely to do so in the future hence arguing it is
vital to address these issues in an open debate, encompassing
actors across sectors. There is huge scope to develop an approach
that addresses underlying causes and vulnerabilities, and one
that no longer shies from the topic of population, as is so often
the case with climate change policy dialogue.
8.2 Policy planning and budgetary allocation
must account for the fact that family planning services are in
decline (see earlier section on family planning) and also reconcile
this with the significant leveraging benefits it can bring at
the individual, household, societal and global level, not only
in the context of climate change but across the board. Whilst
heeding concerns about the possible wrong way to link population
growth and climate change and respecting the gravity of the mistakes
made in the past, it is perhaps significant to revisit the language
of the 1994 Program of Action, to which 180 countries signed:
"|recognizing that the ultimate goal is the
improvement of the quality of life of present and future generations,
the objective is to facilitate the demographic transition as soon
as possible in countries where there is an imbalance between demographic
rates and social, economic and environmental goals, while respecting
human rights." Emphasis added
8.3 It is fundamental to openly bring population
back into the debate since it will underwrite every other difficulty
that climate change triggers. This is not meant to be seen as
an effort to divert attention or urgency away from the other necessary
climate change policies which address reducing GHG emissions from
energy intensive consumption activities, but to present a synergistic,
reinforcing intervention developed within a win/win framework.
BIBLIOGRAPHYThe All
Party Parliamentary Group for Population, Development and Reproductive
Health, 2007. The Return of the Population Growth Factor, its
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