RH Reality Check: Taking On Population and Climate Change
Note: This post examines Population and Climate Change in honor of World Population Day, Friday, July 11. This post, written by Carolyn Vogel of Population Action International (PAI), originally appeared at RH Reality Check, a daily publication dedicated to news, analysis and commentary on the issues surrounding reproductive health and justice.
Examining linkages between population and climate change through many different frames leads to important research and policy questions — and it also allows the reproductive health community to discuss these linkages in a productive and positive way. If we leave the debate unframed, and the research questions unanswered, we leave space for harmful discourse and inaccurate facts to take center stage. The following series of blog posts, written by staff at Population Action International, will look at population and climate change from different angles, and provide an initial review of some of the broad frames.
Dr. Karen Hardee raises many of the difficult ethical issues that arise when population and climate change are linked. She examines these linkages from a women’s rights and empowerment frame. She encourages people, both those comfortable and uncomfortable with the linkage between population and climate change, to discuss the issue in order to come up with the best solutions and avoid mistakes of the past.
