11 November 2019
immediate use
Campaigners argue sustainable population goals and reproductive health and rights are “inextricably linked”
Representatives from Population Matters will attend the Nairobi Summit on ICPD 25 next week, taking the message that securing sustainable population through rights-based action is essential to development, and raising concerns that failure to recognise this has led to the promised benefits for people and the environment being delivered too little, too late. Population Matters is calling for the full impacts of our still-growing human population (1) to be considered in all such international fora.
The Summit marks the anniversary of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo in 1994, which placed reproductive health and rights, as well as women's empowerment and gender equality at the heart of the development agenda. ICPD set out a Programme of Action intended to secure ambitious goals regarding family planning uptake and child and maternal health (2). Despite some progress, 25 years on, most of its goals have not yet been met:
The Cairo programme established an ongoing emphasis on sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) - including the right of all people to freely decide how many children to have and when (a principle endorsed by Population Matters). It also acknowledged the potential problems arising from those choices:
"In the exercise of this right, [prospective parents] should take into account the needs of their living and future children and their responsibilities towards the community." (Paragraph 7.3 [4])
The programme was also explicit in its support for the linking of population policies and sustainability, calling on states to:
"promote appropriate policies, including population-related policies, in order to meet the needs of current generations without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." (Principle 6 [4])
These issues do not feature as part of the Nairobi confernece agenda, however (5).
Population growth – driven substantially by large family size – is now recognised by a growing body of scientists as playing a key role in numerous significant environmental problems.
Population Matters director Robin Maynard said:
“Family planning and development policy must be rooted in sexual and reproductive health and rights, within a broader framework focussed on the individual and choice. That’s a given. However, the Cairo programme recognised those choices have wider consequences, but did not act upon that acknowledgement. 25 years on, we’re dealing with the existential threats of climate change and the Sixth Mass Extinction. It’s starkly clear that isolating population and family planning policy from environmental policy has been bad for people and planet.
“Population Matters absolutely endorses a renewed commitment to empowerment for women and girls, to SRHR, and to achieving every one of Cairo’s specific goals. It is a tragedy they have not been met, and efforts to achieve them must be redoubled by all responsible governments – especially given the added challenge of the Trump administration’s re-imposition of the retrograde ‘Global Gag’, cutting US Aid to family planning programmes.
“But we must end the siloing of environment and population policy: the two are inextricably linked and synergistic. In particular, we must shake-off the 25-yr-old shibboleth that a commitment to individual rights and empowerment is incompatible with a commitment to securing a sustainable population as an end in itself. That just isn’t so. The Cairo conference unfortunately and unintentionally led to the formalisation of that idea. Nairobi offers the opportunity to act upon its neglected call to recognise the needs of future children.”
Population Matters is calling for:
-ends-
Alistair Currie, Head of Campaigns and Communications
E: alistair.currie@populationmatters.org
T: +44 (0)208 123 9170
Population Matters is a UK-based charity working globally to achieve a sustainable future for people and planet. Our vision is a future in which a stable human population co-exists in harmony with nature and prospers on a healthy planet, to the benefit of all.
We campaign, inform, undertake research and do all we can to encourage an open, fair-minded and constructive debate about population. We promote positive, practical, ethical solutions – encouraging smaller families, inspiring people to consume sustainably, with the aim of enabling everyone to enjoy a decent quality of life whilst respecting and sustaining the natural ecosystems upon which all life on earth depends.
135-137 Station Rd, London E4 6AG
Charity number: 1114109