Population and Climate Change Symposium
In March 2010 PSN and colleagues held an International Population and Climate Change Symposium and Ministerial Dialogue on the connection between population dynamics, sexual and reproductive health and rights and climate change.
Generating international understanding and consensus
The symposium took place in London and was organized by PSN, the Commonwealth Medical Trust (Commat), the British Medical Association and Partners in Population and Development African Regional Office. A number of other organisations sponsored the event, and PSN is grateful for the financial support received from DFID and the UNFPA.
With the need to take forward the Copenhagen agenda and to mark the 10th anniversary of the Millennium Development Goals in 2010, the event brought together policy-makers from Africa and the UK to discuss and address the complex but critical links between population dynamics, sexual and reproductive health and rights and climate change.
Symposium objectives:
- To increase understanding among opinion leaders in the international development climate change community and within the communities most affected by climate change of the impact and significance of population dynamics;
- To craft consensus on the contribution that increased access to reproductive health, including rights-based family planning programmes, can make to climate change mitigation, resilience and adaptation programmes;
- To reduce resistance to the inclusion of population dynamics and environmental protection work.
Influencing the policy agenda
Benefiting from the participation of three government ministers from African countries, together with three UK politicians, the conference distilled key messages relating to the importance of linking population dynamics to climate change, and provided a key opportunity to connect research and programmes with policy and strategy for moving the agenda forward. Discussions were fostered on issues that will remain pertinent to the policy agenda for many years to come, such as the responsibilities of developed and developing countries, national leadership and responsibility versus development assistance, and evidence-based programming and the challenges of scale up.
Key messages emerging from the symposium focused on the following points and conclusions:
- The increasing scale and severity of the issue, with the pressures of both population and consumption pressures being great and increasing;
- The far-reaching benefits of investments in voluntary family planning: for women, families, wider society and the environments upon which human well-being depends;
- The synergies that can be generated through integrated population, health and climate change approaches;
- The importance of working in partnership with the communities most impacted by climate change;
- The necessity of a rights-based approach for addressing population and climate change linkages
- The need for flexible climate change adaptation funding streams that recognize family planning as part of effective adaptation strategies;
- The need for political leadership to ensure that issues related to population growth are addressed in tandem with efforts to reduce consumption.
Symposium report and toolkit
A report and advocacy kit for advancing integration of population dynamics into climate change and sustainable development policies and programmes has been published, sharing key messages and learning from the symposium.
The report and toolkit was launched in the UK Houses of Parliament on 7 November 2011, as part of an event that marked the occasion of the world population reaching 7 billion. The event, Population and climate change in a world of 7 billion was held jointly with the All Party Parliamentary Group on Population, Development and Reproductive Health and the Institute for Global Health, UCL.