Condoms For Climate Control, UN Says
If women were to have better access to contraceptives, it could actually help the battle against global warming, the UN Population Fund claimed on Wednesday.
In a 104-page report, the UNFPA said the use of contraceptives among women would help to slow population growth, which “would help build social resilience to climate change’s impacts and would contribute to a reduction of greenhouse-gas emissions in the future.”
"It really is the first time that a United Nations agency has looked hard at the connections between population and climate change," lead researcher Bob Engelman, vice president for programs at the green group Worldwatch Institute, told AFP.
"People are at the root of the problem and at the solution of it, and empowerment of women is the key."
The report, the 2009 State of World Population, says that “fear of appearing supportive of population control has until recently held back any mention of ‘population’ in the climate debate."
In 2050, the world population is expected to increase from 6.7 billion to 9.2 billion, which poorer regions accounting for most of the growth.
"There is still time … to think creatively about population, reproductive health and gender equality and how these might contribute to a just and environmentally sustainable world," said the report.
"Any treaty emerging from the December conference in Copenhagen that helps people adapt to climate change and that harnesses women’s and men’s power to reverse the warming of the earth’s atmosphere would launch a genuinely effective long-term global strategy to deal with climate change," said UNFPA executive director Thoraya Ahmed Obaid.
“Poor women in poor countries are among the hardest hit by climate change, even though they contributed the least to it,” she added.
The report added that women “bear the disproportionate burden of climate change, but have so far been largely overlooked in the debate.”
Additionally, it found that women are more likely than men to die in natural disasters such as those related to extreme weather brought on by climate change.
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