{"id":1518,"date":"2009-12-16T12:55:17","date_gmt":"2009-12-16T16:55:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/copenhagen\/?p=1518"},"modified":"2009-12-17T12:31:45","modified_gmt":"2009-12-17T16:31:45","slug":"population-and-climate-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/copenhagen\/2009\/12\/population-and-climate-change\/","title":{"rendered":"What’s the Problem with Population?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Various<\/a>

Various forms of contraceptive which should be made available to all women, especially those living in developoing and vulnerable countries. <\/p><\/div>\n

According to the IIED Times, Environment and Urbanization published research disproved the belief that population growth leads to increases in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In reality, developing countries have growing populations, while developed countries have growing GHG emissions. The International Institute for Environment and Development\u00a0(IIED) <\/a>states that low income nations had 52.1% of the world’s population growth and only accounted for 12.8% of GHG emissions increase, while high income nations had 7% of the world\u2019s population, but have increased GHG emissions by 29%. As Bettina mentioned, it is consumption that is one of the main drivers of climate change, not population. This being said, it is unfortunate that developing countries, those who have contributed the least to the global crisis we currently find ourselves facing, are those who are most vulnerable to climate change and are already beginning to feel the impacts of climate change.<\/div>\n
A blog<\/a> i read in the New York Times linked me to a fascinating tool <\/a>which portrays population, agricultural production, temperatures, and vulnerability to climate change on geographic maps. The increase in population increase the demand for food. Unfortunately, countries with increasingly growing populations are those who already being effected by the changing climate, suffering from drought, soil erosion, degragation, and floods, destroying food supplies, and causing severe famine. The Ethiopian delegate I had lunch with stressed that women are in charge of feeding and maintaining their families, putting massive amounts of stress on them, and in some cases preventing them for being able to attend school.\"Population<\/a><\/div>\n
Some of you are probably wondering why populations are growing in vulnerable areas. The answer is a simple one. There is a lack of education, sexual reproductive health programs and access to contraception in these areas. According to an informational sheet given to me by the \u201cPopulation and Climate Change\u201d booth next to ours, \u201cmore than 200 million women who want to control their pregnancies lack access to contraception.\u201d Education is essential to helping these women realize their sexual reproductive rights. The International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF)<\/a>\u00a0states \u201cin many regions, women still have less decision-making power than men\u2026 [and] struggle to access education and information, and reproductive health care.\u201d Some of these women are forced to have children, and do not have much of a choice because they lack independence. Other women begin having children at young ages because of the lack of sexual education. Another issue brought to my attention while having lunch with an Ethiopian delegate was the issue of high infant mortality rates. Families have multiple children because they expect many of them to die by the age of 5, but with the establishment and improvements in health programs, this problem could be put to an end.<\/div>\n
The fact that population is not directly connected to GHG emissions does not mean we can just ignore the population growth.\u00a0\u00a0One of the main barriers, other than funding, are conflicts with social, cultural, and religious beliefs, causing hesitancy in many people, leading them to believe that implementing sexual education would not be the answer.\u00a0 I feel every woman has the right to access this information and be given\u00a0the right to\u00a0choice whether or not\u00a0they use contraceptives because it is a basic human right! We must help women in developing countries by providing the proper education and health systems. We have entered a new era, where we are beginning to shift away\u00a0from the idea of “population control” and are moving\u00a0into\u00a0a new phase, where\u00a0we are now\u00a0focusing on “reproductive justice.” This is a serious issue which has yet to be addressed by heads of state (with the exception of China’s faulty one-child policy), and it does not seem to a point on anyone’s agenda.\u00a0There is the need for this dialog,\u00a0for it will raise awareness, and get more people involved with this new movement.\u00a0Making contraception, education, and reproductive rights accessible in areas which need it most decreases the amount of people in the world\u2019s most vulnerable countries, make mitigation and adaptation to climate change more efficient, and overall improve the lives of\u00a0all people around the world.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to the IIED Times, Environment and Urbanization published research disproved the belief that population growth leads to increases in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In reality, developing countries have growing populations, while developed countries have growing GHG emissions. The International Institute for Environment and Development\u00a0(IIED) states that low income nations had 52.1% of the world’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":103,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1443,1811,1908],"tags":[1482,1301,1567,1966],"class_list":["post-1518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-7-mitigating-climate-change","category-kyoto-to-copenhagen-course","category-unfccc-cop15","tag-adaptation","tag-climate-change","tag-developing-countries","tag-population-growth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/copenhagen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/copenhagen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/copenhagen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/copenhagen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/103"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/copenhagen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/copenhagen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1518\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/copenhagen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/copenhagen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/copenhagen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}