Climate Change: What’s Family Planning Got To Do With It?

BY Cara Honzak, Cheryl Margoluis December 1, 2015

When women are supported in making decisions based on their own health needs, women keep themselves and their households healthier and less vulnerable, and contribute to societies that are more climate compatible.

What's family planning got to do with climate change? A lot.

“Since I was a child, I have gone fishing, but the population increased, fishing practices worsened, and fish reduced.”
—HoPE-LVB Youth Association Respondent, Uganda

Like this young person in Uganda, millions of families in communities around the world depend on their environment for their livelihood—and their future depends on these forests, lakes, and oceans continuing to thrive for years to come.

For many, lack of access to basic sexual and reproductive health care compounds the livelihood and environmental pressures facing these communities. Climate change is predicted to exacerbate the development challenges already faced by many vulnerable and marginalized groups including women, and poor, rural populations who are highly dependent on natural resources and lack alternatives.

The gathering of world leaders this week in Paris to discuss responses to climate change is also an opportunity for all of us to broaden our thinking about how to address this challenge. It is an opportunity to think holistically about supporting vulnerable groups and about how we can work together to build communities that can grow and prosper in the long-term.

Governments will be more effective at tackling development, climate change, and adaptation when they also respond to the health and survival needs of their most vulnerable rural populations and support integrated strategies—such as improved sexual and reproductive health and gender equality within the context of sustainable development

We see a natural connection between—on one hand—helping women and men improve gender equality and maternal health, and promoting healthy timing and spacing of pregnancies, and—on the other hand—encouraging sustainable natural resource management. Family planning decreases the vulnerability of poor, rural women and their families to a changing climate when delivered as a component of comprehensive efforts to promote sexual and reproductive health and rights, advance the status of women and support improved management and governance of natural resources. Women who are able to exercise their sexual and reproductive rights are more resilient to climate disruption, more likely to participate in local conservation efforts, and better able to manage resources for their families.

In turn, empowered women, families, and communities who understand the connections between their health and livelihoods and that of their environment and who are empowered to act on those linkages can make healthier and more environmentally sustainable choices, and play a key role in developing societies that make the same choices.

Recognizing that unmet need for contraception and gender inequality are often observed in remote or rural areas with great needs—where there are already strains on natural resources, few accessible health facilities, and environmental challenges—Pathfinder is committed to integrated population, health, and education (PHE) approaches. Our PHE projects in Uganda, Kenya (HoPE-LVB program) and Tanzania (Tuungane) improve access to sexual and reproductive health services in hard-to-reach and underserved areas while empowering communities with the knowledge and tools needed to manage their natural resources sustainably. Through involvement in local advocacy, citizens also have a better understanding about the external threats that their communities are facing and how to mitigate these threats through policy processes.

“HoPE trained fishermen to practice good fishing methods, they got rid of under-sized fishing nets and also trained Beach Management Units to supervise the fishing activities, and now there are fish.”
—HoPE-LVB Youth Association Respondent, Uganda

The leaders in Paris are gathering to take action because they believe the future is not pre-determined. We agree. We know that projects focused on both improving access to sexual and reproductive rights and promoting and protecting the environment can and do work.

In Ethiopia, for example, husbands who participated in a PHE project were four times more likely to support the use of family planning than husbands exposed to a program that focused solely on reproductive health. Since husbands often prefer larger families than their wives, we also know that it is important that men at both the household and community level understand and support women’s contraceptive choices. When women are supported in making decisions based on their own health needs, women keep themselves and their households healthier and less vulnerable, and contribute to societies that are more climate compatible.

We are heartened to see repeated references to human rights and gender issues included in many of the pledges countries submitted ahead of the Paris meeting. 2016 marks a new era of Global Goals that target the fulfillment of sexual and reproductive health and rights.

Time will tell if world leaders follow through on these important commitments. In the meantime, Pathfinder will continue its work with vulnerable populations, empowering them to live healthier, more sustainable, lives.