Reproductive Health

Reproductive Health

Climate change and family planning: least-developed countries define the agenda.

The links between rapid population growth and concerns regarding climate change have received little attention. Some commentators have argued that slowing population growth is necessary to reduce further rises in carbon emissions. Others have objected that this would give rise to dehumanizing 'population control' programmes in developing countries. Yet the perspective of the developing countries that will be worst affected by climate change has been almost completely ignored by the scientific literature. This deficit is addressed by this paper, which analyses the first 40 National Adaptation Programmes of Action reports submitted by governments of least-developed countries to the Global Environment Facility for funding. Of these documents, 93% identified at least one of three ways in which demographic trends interact with the effects of climate change: (i) faster degradation of the sources of natural resources; (ii) increased demand for scarce resources; and (iii) heightened human vulnerability to extreme weather events. These findings suggest that voluntary access to family planning services should be made more available to poor communities in least-developed countries. The authors stress the distinction between this approach, which prioritizes the welfare of poor communities affected by climate change, and the argument that population growth should be slowed to limit increases in global carbon emissions. The paper concludes by calling for increased support for rights-based family planning services, including those integrated with HIV services, as an important complementary measure to climate change adaptation programmes in developing countries.

: These 40 National Adaption Programmes of Action (NAPA) reports, created by governments with consultative input from civil society and local groups, articulate the priorities of least-developed countries and small island developing states for climate change adaptation. Only 3 countries did not cite concern about the impact of rapid population growth in exacerbating the effects of climate change or impeding their ability to adapt to it. The fact that ministries of the environment authored the reports while population issues are concerns for ministries of health may explain why only 6 countries proposed strategies to address population growth. Our calls to integrate sexual and reproductive health services into HIV programming are amplified here by the call to get family planning out of its reproductive health sector ‘silo’ into multisectoral environmental adaption efforts, including mainstreaming family planning into the agricultural sector. International efforts to assist least-developed countries to adapt to climate change clearly must rectify the chronic global underspend on family planning development assistance and support integration of sexual and reproductive health and HIV programmes and the blending of rights-based family planning programmes into climate change adaptation strategies.