Should slowing population growth become part of the international push to tackle climate change? That question is raised by US environmentalists writing in the journal Science. They argue that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ought to view it as a potential 鈥減olicy lever鈥� in a warming world.
To their credit, the authors advocate only voluntary fertility-reducing measures such as education and access to family planning services. Unfortunately, history shows that such good intentions are not enough to prevent abuses, that voluntary programmes frequently turn into the opposite.
In November 2014, a single doctor in Chhattisgarh, India, set a record by sterilising 聽around 140 women over two days. Shortly after, 15 of those women died and 70 more were hospitalised. The doctor reportedly said . That was not an isolated incident. Around the world, thousands of women have suffered and died in the name of arbitrary population quotas.
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In Bangladesh, which population lobbyists hail as a success story for voluntary birth control programmes, impoverished women were paid to 鈥渁ccept鈥� sterilisation, and the number who accepted rose sharply during periods of high unemployment.
In Peru, 350,000 women and 25,000 men, most from the Quechuan and Aymaran indigenous minorities, .
The 鈥渞ight鈥� choice
Such abominations result from treating fertility control not as a human right, but as a means to an end. When birth control programmes are motivated by demographic, economic or environmental goals, the focus easily shifts away from supporting women鈥檚 right to choose, to pressuring them to make the 鈥渞ight鈥� choice.
Doctors are paid for every sterilisation, recruiters are paid for every participant, and desperately poverty-stricken women are bribed or forced to 鈥渧olunteer鈥�. Surgical sterilisation and less safe long-term contraceptives are promoted rather than safer short-term methods, because the organisers and sponsors don鈥檛 trust women to continue making the correct choice.
That鈥檚 particularly true in societies that are deeply divided along class, ethnic and racial lines, and in which powerful elites routinely treat 鈥渙thers鈥� as disposable. And yet those are the kinds of societies in which population control programmes in the name of fighting climate change would be most likely.
In the past, we were told that reducing birth rates in developing countries would end hunger and poverty. It achieved neither. Now we are told it will slow climate change, not because poorer people are high carbon dioxide聽emitters, which they definitely are not, but because emissions from the world鈥檚 poorest countries might rise in the future.
Numbers hiding the truth
Never mind that countries with the highest birth rates have the lowest per capita emissions. Never mind that the forms of economic development in those countries are controlled by giant corporations, not population. Never mind that most industries in poorer nations produce goods for wealthy nations, not for local consumers. Never mind that poor people have no influence over which technologies the corporations use, get little benefit from polluting industries, and are the primary victims of global warming. Population controllers only see numbers of poor people, ignoring the qualitatively more destructive impact of the聽1 per cent鈥檚 power and greed.
As the Science authors say, safe and affordable contraception should be universally available, so that all women can choose whether and when to bear children. But linking birth control to climate change risks undermining women鈥檚 right to choose. If rich countries treat women鈥檚 rights instrumentally, as a means to achieve environmental ends, they will strengthen repressive elites and turn the world鈥檚 poorest people away from supporting environmental causes.
Climate policies must incorporate the deepest respect for human rights and social justice. Population control campaigns do not qualify.
Science
