EarthX Website: https://earthxmedia.com/
Dr. Jane O'Sullivan and Kathleen Mogelgaard of the Population Institute, discuss the possibility of food shortages (due to climate change) and other existential crises if fertility rates do not slow.
About The Population Factor:
A series of key conversations examining the connection between our planet’s growing population & related issues. Expect to be educated on a range of topics including climate change, wildlife preservation, immigration policy & consumption patterns.
EarthX
Love Our Planet.
The Official Network of Earth Day.
About Us:
At EarthX, we believe our planet is a pretty special place. The people, landscapes, and critters are likely unique to the entire universe, so we consider ourselves lucky to be here. We are committed to protecting the environment by inspiring conservation and sustainability, and our programming along with our range of expert hosts support this mission. We’re glad you’re with us.
EarthX is a media company dedicated to inspiring people to care about the planet. We take an omni channel approach to reach audiences of every age through its robust 24/7 linear channel distributed across cable and FAST outlets, along with dynamic, solution oriented short form content on social and digital platforms. EarthX is home to original series, documentaries and snackable content that offer sustainable solutions to environmental challenges. EarthX is the only network that delivers entertaining and inspiring topics that impact and inspire our lives on climate and sustainability.
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Dr. Jane O'Sullivan and Kathleen Mogelgaard of the Population Institute, discuss the possibility of food shortages (due to climate change) and other existential crises if fertility rates do not slow.
About The Population Factor:
A series of key conversations examining the connection between our planet’s growing population & related issues. Expect to be educated on a range of topics including climate change, wildlife preservation, immigration policy & consumption patterns.
EarthX
Love Our Planet.
The Official Network of Earth Day.
About Us:
At EarthX, we believe our planet is a pretty special place. The people, landscapes, and critters are likely unique to the entire universe, so we consider ourselves lucky to be here. We are committed to protecting the environment by inspiring conservation and sustainability, and our programming along with our range of expert hosts support this mission. We’re glad you’re with us.
EarthX is a media company dedicated to inspiring people to care about the planet. We take an omni channel approach to reach audiences of every age through its robust 24/7 linear channel distributed across cable and FAST outlets, along with dynamic, solution oriented short form content on social and digital platforms. EarthX is home to original series, documentaries and snackable content that offer sustainable solutions to environmental challenges. EarthX is the only network that delivers entertaining and inspiring topics that impact and inspire our lives on climate and sustainability.
EarthX Website: https://earthxmedia.com/
Follow Us:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/earthxmedia/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/earthxmedia
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EarthXMedia/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@earthxmedia
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@EarthXMedia
How to watch:
United States:
- Spectrum
- AT&T U-verse (1267)
- DIRECTV (267)
- Philo
- FuboTV
- Plex
- Fire TV
#EarthDay #Environment #Sustainability #Ecofriendly #Conservation #EarthX
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00:00Hello, and welcome to The Population Factor on EarthX TV.
00:00:06Global climate change is perhaps the leading environmental problem facing humanity today.
00:00:11How do human numbers impact climate change, and what role can curbing population growth
00:00:16play in meeting this threat?
00:00:19Here to help answer these questions is Dr. Jane O'Sullivan, Senior Research Associate
00:00:24at the School of Agriculture and Food Sciences, University of Queensland, Australia.
00:00:30Jane is a cross-disciplinary researcher with interests in environmental protection, agriculture,
00:00:36human ecology, and sustainable development.
00:00:38Her recent publications include Climate Change and World Population.
00:00:43Jane, welcome to The Population Factor.
00:00:46Good to be with you, Phil.
00:00:50Thank you so much.
00:00:51Do we have you up really early?
00:00:53What time is it in Australia now?
00:00:56It's about quarter past seven in the morning.
00:00:59That's not too bad.
00:01:00Okay.
00:01:01Okay.
00:01:02Well, thank you for coming on the show.
00:01:03Jane, you trained as an agricultural scientist and have done a lot of research in that over
00:01:09the years.
00:01:10What first got you interested in population issues and population and climate change in
00:01:15particular?
00:01:17Well, I started focusing on population growth because I saw it as a fundamental threat to
00:01:25the people's livelihoods and security, particularly in least developed countries where fertility
00:01:30is still very high.
00:01:33So all of the other measures that we could take to help lift them out of poverty just
00:01:37can't overtake the pace of population growth that is really holding those countries back.
00:01:43So I discovered that not very much is being done about it, and I was very curious as to
00:01:52why this was.
00:01:53And I discovered it's not because we don't have good solutions, because we're actually
00:01:56doing a lot about it very successfully in the 1970s and 1980s.
00:02:02And since the mid-1990s, we've been doing less and less.
00:02:07And the rate of fertility decline in the world has really slowed to almost nothing.
00:02:14So I discovered that it was because people subscribed to a whole bunch of myths about
00:02:21population growth that just don't fit the data we've got historically.
00:02:25And we really need to expose those myths and get back on track about this existential problem.
00:02:36So we'll get to some of those myths in a moment, but I just want to emphasize, you're
00:02:41not someone...
00:02:42We talk a lot about the iPad equation on this show.
00:02:46You're not someone who pooh-poohs the value of new technology and new agricultural efforts
00:02:53and better management, et cetera.
00:02:56But in terms of increasing food security in the developing world, what you're saying is
00:03:03we have to look at the demand as well as the supply, or the world could be heading
00:03:09for some difficult times.
00:03:11Sure.
00:03:14So with regard to agricultural technology, there's no doubt that those advances in industrial
00:03:20agriculture have allowed the global population to get to the level it is, which is about
00:03:257.8 billion people.
00:03:28There's no doubt that there would have been major famines in South Asia in the 1970s or
00:03:35even 60s if the Green Revolution hadn't come along.
00:03:42But the technologies that are not responding to population growth, we would have had anyway,
00:03:53and we would all be benefiting from them more equitably across the world if there weren't
00:03:58so many people to extend those services to.
00:04:02A lot of the technologies that allow us to accommodate more people, they're not solutions
00:04:08to overpopulation, they're workarounds, and they have their own costs.
00:04:13For instance, the expanding dead zones in oceans are a result of the fertilizers that
00:04:19we're putting on crops in order to get high enough yields to feed the global population.
00:04:24So we can't do it without the fertilizers.
00:04:29We can't stop the fertilizers running out into the ocean.
00:04:32We're working on it.
00:04:33We're doing it.
00:04:34We're getting better at it.
00:04:35But see, these things, every thing that we use to get more people on the planet has its
00:04:41own environmental repercussions.
00:04:44And that includes, of course, climate change.
00:04:47So let's back up a bit and provide listeners with some background on that.
00:04:52People have increased Earth's average temperature one degree Celsius over natural levels, and
00:04:57most of that increase has occurred during the past four decades.
00:05:02According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, what role has population
00:05:10growth played in that increase?
00:05:13Well, the IPCC says that population growth and economic growth are the main drivers of
00:05:21climate change.
00:05:23And those two factors act on each other.
00:05:27They multiply each other.
00:05:28So you can't say that one's responsible for X percent and the other's responsible for
00:05:33Y percent.
00:05:34It's like two sides of a rectangle.
00:05:36You can't say that the area of the rectangle is responsible, the width is responsible for
00:05:43a certain percentage and the height is responsible for another percentage.
00:05:48They both act on each other.
00:05:49So the consumer behaviours that we have are very important to the amount of emissions
00:05:58that happen, but they're important to the extent of the number of people who are behaving
00:06:04in that way.
00:06:05And likewise, the population is very important, but it's important to the extent that people's
00:06:12behaviours cause emissions.
00:06:15So after the post-war period, when we started using petrol a lot more around the world,
00:06:24the emissions started growing much more rapidly in population growth.
00:06:27So at that stage, it was the expansion of fossil fuel use that was really driving emissions
00:06:33growth.
00:06:34And then from about the late 70s through to the turn of the century, population growth
00:06:41was really accounting for the growth in emissions, per capita emissions weren't growing globally.
00:06:49Then from about 2003, the emerging economies, particularly China and now places like India
00:06:56and Brazil, the growth in their economies has really accelerated emissions growth.
00:07:03So these things play together in order to generate the emissions growth that we see.
00:07:12So if we look forward then, what role might limiting population increase play in limiting
00:07:18future temperature increases and climate disruption?
00:07:22Right.
00:07:24So the global population is still growing at about 80 million people a year.
00:07:30So that's a country the size of Germany equivalent that we have to find somewhere for them to
00:07:36live and food for them to eat every year.
00:07:41And if the remaining high fertility countries, which are mainly in sub-Saharan Africa, the
00:07:49Middle East and Central Asia, if they were to adopt the sorts of voluntary family planning
00:07:57programs that we saw in the 1970s and 80s in places like Thailand and Iran, then the
00:08:06global population could be about one billion fewer by 2050 and maybe three or four billion
00:08:11fewer than it would otherwise be in the year 2100.
00:08:17So we could be looking at seven or eight billion in 2100 instead of 11 or 12 billion.
00:08:24That's really worth doing, not only for climate change, but for the security and wellbeing
00:08:28of the people in those countries in particular.
00:08:32But looking specifically at climate change, most of those additional people, as you say,
00:08:37are projected for the developing world.
00:08:39And as we know, people in the developing world, their per capita emissions are lower than
00:08:45ours in the developed world.
00:08:46So why should those of us concerned about climate change be concerned about population
00:08:51growth in the developing world specifically?
00:08:58There are lots of reasons.
00:08:59And the first is that we want to reduce the impacts of climate change on the people in
00:09:07those countries. So you could see population action as an adaptation tool, because the
00:09:18more people there are, the more difficult it is to cope with adverse weather events
00:09:23in particular. And secondly, we want them to be able to get richer.
00:09:27And the fewer people there are to be raised out of poverty, the less energy and materials
00:09:36and land we need to be able to bring them a good quality of life.
00:09:42But possibly the most important thing to me in the climate change mitigation space is
00:09:47that we can't do it without reducing population from its current path.
00:09:54So the climate change modelling that the IPCC groups have done with the shared socioeconomic
00:10:01pathways has shown that even the most heroic efforts to transfer the energy system rapidly
00:10:12and shift our diets away from using so much meat, all of those behaviours together, still
00:10:20can't keep the climate below two degrees of warming unless the scenario has a much lower
00:10:28population than the UN's current level, the current UN projection.
00:10:35So we have to do this.
00:10:37It's one of the things, it's not the solution to climate change.
00:10:41We still have to do all those other heroic things at a heroic rate.
00:10:46But we can't win unless we also work on speeding up the reduction in births where those births are still high.
00:10:57And even in the most developed countries, having one child fewer is the most powerful action that an individual can take
00:11:06to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions over their entire lifetime.
00:11:12There have been studies that show that having one child fewer than you would have saves
00:11:20more than five times the greenhouse gas emissions that you use in your lifetime.
00:11:27And another study out of Sweden, which looked at all of the developed countries,
00:11:32the average saving was 59 tonnes per year for the rest of your life on behalf of that non-existent child
00:11:41and the non-existent descendants of that child.
00:11:44So it's not an immediate effect, like not flying in aeroplanes, for instance.
00:11:51But ultimately, the saving is very much larger than any of those other actions that you could take.
00:11:58So that itself is a very important point for listeners who are wondering,
00:12:03what can you personally do to make a contribution to limiting climate change?
00:12:10The studies are very clear that the best thing you can do is have fewer children.
00:12:16One of the good things about that particular climate action is non-existent people,
00:12:24you don't have to sort of cajole them into doing the right thing environmentally.
00:12:28They simply do the right thing environmentally, nothing.
00:12:31And the world benefits from that.
00:12:33It's sort of a funny thing to say, right?
00:12:36Especially, Jane, I know you have children, I have children.
00:12:40It's a funny thing to say the world would be better off with fewer of them.
00:12:45But we really have sort of reached a point where we have to think about those kind of things.
00:12:52Climate change is just one of the many hints that we're getting from nature
00:12:56that we're either at or rushing past limits to growth.
00:13:01So as individuals, yeah, having fewer children can make a difference.
00:13:05But of course, we also need to be thinking politically about these things.
00:13:09And there are other studies which focus on sort of the macro view of this.
00:13:16For instance, one, the O'Neill and Bongartz article from 2012,
00:13:21I believe found that simply providing enough contraception and family planning help
00:13:29and finding a way to achieve the UN's low population projections
00:13:36versus the median population projections to 2100,
00:13:40they found would provide 40% of the greenhouse gas reductions needed
00:13:47to keep us below two degrees centigrade increase.
00:13:51So again, it's not everything,
00:13:53but it seems as if the scientists are telling us that should be part of what we're trying to do.
00:14:01Absolutely.
00:14:01And a lot of people say we shouldn't be talking about population in the climate change space
00:14:07because it distracts from talking about the behaviours of people in rich countries.
00:14:17And that there's nothing we could do about it anyway,
00:14:19the population's tapering off by itself.
00:14:23And the only things we could do about it are unacceptably unethical
00:14:27in terms of removing people's rights about how many children they have.
00:14:32And these things are both false.
00:14:36The global population is not tapering off by itself at the moment.
00:14:39It's been going at about 80 million per year for the last 50 years.
00:14:45And we are absolutely failing to do the morally ethical thing that is required of us
00:14:55in delivering reproductive freedom to the women around the world.
00:15:00There are more than 200 million women in the world
00:15:04who have an unmet need for family planning.
00:15:07That is women of reproductive age who don't want to get pregnant this year or next year
00:15:12and aren't using any modern contraception.
00:15:15And more than 40% of pregnancies globally are unintended.
00:15:23So there's enormous capacity there to reduce births just by giving people greater freedom.
00:15:30But in the high fertility countries,
00:15:32there is also a pervasive culture of wanting large families that needs to be tackled.
00:15:41Which is not to say that you have to force people to do something they don't want to do.
00:15:46You have to change what they want to do.
00:15:48And that's what the countries in East Asia did very successfully.
00:15:52As soon as people realise that the prospects for themselves and their children
00:15:58is so much improved by having fewer children, they're very happy to do that.
00:16:05It's just those messages aren't being put out at all anymore since the mid-1990s.
00:16:12So, I mean, that's an important point to make that over the past 40, 50 years,
00:16:18we have evidence from many different parts of the world that when you provide contraception
00:16:24to women and couples, they tend to use it and fertility rates decrease often quite rapidly.
00:16:33And that doesn't have to be a coercive thing.
00:16:37In fact, it shouldn't be.
00:16:38It should be providing people the wherewithal to choose the size of their families.
00:16:44The UN, for at least the past 40 years, has defined access to contraception
00:16:52and family planning as a human right.
00:16:55So, it's an important point to make that affirming that right and providing the
00:17:01wherewithal for people to have that right is what we're talking about here.
00:17:06Let's get a little more specific.
00:17:08If you could counsel the world's governments and get them to follow your counsel
00:17:15regarding population policy, what are the key steps that need to happen?
00:17:23Okay, well, one step is really to know that just providing access to contraception is not enough.
00:17:33So, I don't believe it's true that when you provide really affordable access to contraception,
00:17:41people choose small families.
00:17:43It has never got fertility below the replacement level, below two children per woman,
00:17:49unless small families are also promoted as being a desirable thing.
00:17:55So, we really need to get back into that space of advocating family planning,
00:18:00not just providing access.
00:18:03And that's the basis of the major successes in the 1970s and 80s, which we are not doing now.
00:18:12Most women surveyed in sub-Saharan Africa have heard about contraception.
00:18:19Know where to get it and are not using it for a range of reasons,
00:18:24which relate to the desire for large families, the fear of side effects of contraception,
00:18:33because a lot of lies have been spread about side effects.
00:18:40And the disapproval of their husband or their wider family.
00:18:45We need to tackle those barriers to use, and we need to tackle the culture
00:18:50that is preventing people from doing what's best for them and their children.
00:18:55And one of the programs that has been making very good progress on a small scale in sub-Saharan
00:19:02Africa are the population health and environment projects, which integrate family planning in
00:19:10projects, which integrate family planning in resource management and livelihood
00:19:16programs within communities.
00:19:18So, they show that communities really do embrace
00:19:22the idea that smaller families are going to be better for their future,
00:19:26because they can see the environment under strain all around them,
00:19:29and they understand where that's coming from.
00:19:34So, you're making a good point, which is that access to contraception
00:19:39won't lead to population stabilization if people continue to want large families and
00:19:47continue to have them. You could flip that around, though, and you could say that
00:19:51simply telling people all the wonderful benefits they're going to get from smaller families won't
00:19:56work unless the substantial efforts needed to get everyone access to contraception aren't made.
00:20:03And we are, in some cases, talking about relatively poor countries.
00:20:08They might struggle, sub-Saharan African countries might struggle to get good health care
00:20:13to their citizens in general. So, family planning help might be just one of the things that they
00:20:20fail to deliver. But again, there could be a...
00:20:23Absolutely, and that's where there's a really big role for international aid,
00:20:29and always has been in the family planning space.
00:20:33And another reason why we need to have population in the climate change mitigation
00:20:41space, because we're talking about quite big transfers of money internationally
00:20:48from developed to developing countries to address climate change.
00:20:52And those flows are dominating the aid discussions.
00:21:00If you're not in that agenda, you're not getting money.
00:21:05And the amount of money needed for family planning is quite small.
00:21:08We're currently spending less than a billion dollars a year globally in terms of international
00:21:13aid for family planning, which translates to less than a dollar per year per woman of childbearing
00:21:19age. It's not very much. We only need to up that by two or three times, just a few billion dollars
00:21:28a year. The sort of money my government in quite a small country is spending a month on
00:21:35coronavirus response. And you only need to do that for a couple of decades until
00:21:41the system is changed and you don't need to promote family planning anymore.
00:21:48So, it's a very small investment, and the global community needs to get behind it,
00:21:56because there are countries that really don't have the means to do it themselves at this stage.
00:22:02But countries are reluctant to do it because they're listening to developed countries
00:22:09expressing concern about their own low birth rates, which is just right.
00:22:17It's the great triumph of the modern age that we've been able to curb population growth in
00:22:25the developed countries, and that has allowed us to deliver a good quality of life to everybody.
00:22:32It's allowed us to clear the slums and get everybody well housed, and make sure that
00:22:36there's enough water and energy to go around. But there's this irrational fear of demographic
00:22:43aging, of having too many old people and not enough workers. And it just doesn't come out
00:22:48in the economics that that's what's happening. Whenever the working age population is shrinking,
00:22:53it just means that fewer people are unemployed. It doesn't mean that there's less work happening,
00:22:57or the economy is suffering in any way at all. And yet, those messages are so strongly
00:23:03discussed in the global media that the president of Tanzania, where they have five children per
00:23:11woman and about 2% of people are over 65, is worried about population aging and withdrawing
00:23:18access to contraception from their women, which is nuts. And we just need to
00:23:26get our heads right in the developed country and realize that an older and declining population is
00:23:34absolutely the best thing for our future. And we need to be leading by example for the rest of the
00:23:40world. And really, if you're ever going to end population growth, you're going to have to go
00:23:46through that stage of having an aging population. And as you say, it's a function of our success,
00:23:53right? It's a function of giving people the freedom to choose how many children to have.
00:23:58It's a function of keeping people healthy enough to live to an old age.
00:24:04So clearly, curbing population growth could play an important role in mitigating climate change.
00:24:10If we want to keep climate change from truly disastrous proportions, it probably has to play
00:24:17an important role. Why then isn't this a more important part of government's efforts
00:24:23to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions? Why isn't it part of the aid budgets that are flowing
00:24:33towards developing nations for adaptations? Why isn't it discussed among environmentalists?
00:24:41I think they've been hijacked by a very successful campaign that started in religious circles
00:24:51but has attracted a lot of well-meaning people who believe it. That population control
00:25:02is a misanthropic
00:25:04activity that is trying to repress poor people and coloured people and whatever.
00:25:15And they are pressing this myth that the people who want fewer people are anti-people, are racist,
00:25:28are eugenicists or whatever name they want to throw at us.
00:25:32But what they're really trying to do is not allow women to have access to contraception or abortions.
00:25:39And they are co-opting a lot of well-meaning people to further that cause by suppressing
00:25:49the population discussion. And it's really a very perverse situation where those people
00:25:56who think that they're defending the poor from the population controllers are actually
00:26:01actively harming the poor by ensuring that they're in this trap of high population growth,
00:26:10deepening poverty and environmental degradation in those poor countries. So I just think that
00:26:18people are not brave enough to confront that taboo and to call it out for the evil that it is
00:26:27and the evil that it's doing in the world. So this brings up huge issues, issues around
00:26:35patriarchal control of society, issues around the failures of governments and elites to
00:26:43be able to see past just an endless growth economy as the model for an economy. But we
00:26:50are out of time. Jane, I'd just like to thank you for coming on the show and helping us
00:26:57maybe begin to break some of the taboos you mentioned by talking about the issues. Thank you
00:27:02so much. Great. Lovely to be with you too. Clearly, curbing population growth can play
00:27:10an important role in mitigating climate change. Limiting the number of emitters can help limit
00:27:15future greenhouse gas emissions. But in recent years, the international community has come to
00:27:22realize that climate change adaptation is just as important as climate change mitigation.
00:27:28With one degree centigrade of temperature increase already baked into the earth system
00:27:33and more heating on the way, human societies will have to adapt to whatever amount of continued
00:27:39climate change we inflict on the planet. What role might population policies play in helping
00:27:45societies adapt to future climate change? Here to discuss that question is Kathleen Mogulgard,
00:27:52a senior fellow with the Population Institute in Washington, D.C., where she works to promote
00:27:58responsible policies to address linked issues that are critical for sustainable development.
00:28:04These include population dynamics, reproductive rights, gender, climate change, and food security.
00:28:11Kathleen has been a policy advisor for Oxfam America, the National Audubon Society, and the
00:28:16Population Reference Bureau, where she assisted conservation and development projects in Africa
00:28:23and Asia. Kathleen was also the lead researcher and writer of the UN Population Fund's 2019
00:28:30State of World Population Report. Kathleen, welcome to The Population Factor.
00:28:36Thanks very much, Phil. It's good to be with you.
00:28:39So let's start at the beginning here. What are some of the challenges societies will face
00:28:45in a hotter world confronting increased climate disruption?
00:28:51Well, as you already mentioned, there's a certain degree of warming that is already baked into the
00:28:55system. We're seeing climate change impacts already with increased wildfires here in the
00:29:02United States this year. We're seeing increased heat extremes in many parts of the world,
00:29:08shifting precipitation patterns, floods, droughts, and extreme weather events that are really
00:29:15endangering human lives and our way of living. So it might be hard. I mean, those of us who
00:29:22are living in the western United States don't have any problem imagining the fires. We've been
00:29:28living with them for what seems like an awfully long time this summer and fall.
00:29:32But some of those other threats might be a little hard for people living in a rich country in the
00:29:38temperate zone to understand. So let's just talk for a moment about one of them, increased heat,
00:29:44and especially increased heat stress. The scientists tell us that once the daytime
00:29:53temperature increases to 32, 33, and above centigrade during the daytime, that can literally
00:30:07lead to heat-induced mortality for people trying to work outside.
00:30:11So if you're thinking about a tropical country where you already get a certain number of days
00:30:16during the year where you have those high temperatures, I believe the scientists say
00:30:20that at 35 degrees centigrade, that's just too much for the average human being. And if you
00:30:28project out climate change over the rest of this century, there are countries in tropical Africa,
00:30:34Asia, Latin America, where many, many more millions of people will be seeing those kind
00:30:42of temperatures. So just one kind of example where climate change could make it harder
00:30:51for people, especially poorer people, who don't have the wherewithal to either not work for a few
00:30:57weeks or to work in air-conditioned comfort, let's say. Right. No, you're exactly right. Increased
00:31:03heat, the number of hot days, has a huge human health impact, particularly in countries where
00:31:09there's just not the infrastructure for people to be able to get into air conditioning.
00:31:14So we're seeing increased mortality due to heat extremes. We're also seeing a huge economic impact
00:31:20that comes from hotter days because it has a direct impact on labor productivity. Another
00:31:28really major concern with a growing number of hot days is the productivity of agriculture.
00:31:35We're doing lots, people are doing a lot of things all around the world to help agricultural systems
00:31:41adapt to a changing climate. But one of the trickiest problems with climate change is
00:31:46figuring out how to get crops to adapt to hotter temperatures. We've just not found a good way to
00:31:52do that in a lot of places. And for many countries where the majority of the population is employed
00:31:58in the agriculture sector, an increasing number of hot days can mean disaster for the economy and
00:32:04for people's food security. And of course, you know, when you talk about agriculture adapting,
00:32:10it's possible that wealthier producers with more resources can go to new techniques, new food
00:32:18varieties, etc. But I know in your work, you're also concerned with farmers who are just poor and
00:32:28just basically growing a crop to feed their family. Those are the people who might not have the
00:32:33resources to make those changes to adapt. You're absolutely right. Some of the work that I've done,
00:32:40for example, is in the country of Senegal, where about 75% of the labor force there is employed
00:32:45in the agriculture sector. Senegal has seen a lot of challenges for their agricultural systems
00:32:52based on shifting precipitation patterns, unpredictable rain, really heavy precipitation
00:32:59events that can wash away crops, and where a lot of the population is dependent for their food
00:33:06security directly on the subsistence farming that they do. Not long ago, I was in the capital Dakar
00:33:12and went to a small village about an hour from Dakar to see what kinds of adaptation initiatives
00:33:20they are undertaking there. And it's really challenging because it is a very poor community,
00:33:25not a lot of agricultural resources. A lot of the farm workers in that area had pretty much
00:33:33given up on farming, migrated to Dakar to look for paid employment, leaving behind a lot of
00:33:40women really to do the farming with very little mechanized equipment to do so. In this particular
00:33:48village, women were carrying large rocks by hand to build a dike to help divert some of the water
00:33:55that would be coming through heavy rain events that they had seen. They were planting vegetative
00:34:00windbreaks to cut down on some of the high winds that had been coming through to blow down
00:34:05seedlings before they'd had a chance to really grow. And these women were extremely proud of
00:34:10the work that they were doing. They thought that it was going to hopefully help their growing season
00:34:16in the next round and that they would be better able to feed their families, but it's a real
00:34:20struggle. Are poor people in Senegal, and is the government in Senegal, worried about climate
00:34:28change? Do they connect up some of these challenges to climate change? Absolutely. And Senegal,
00:34:34like a lot of developing countries right now, are developing what are called NAPs, National
00:34:40Adaptation Plans. This is part of the UN Framework on Climate Change Agreement, the Framework
00:34:46Convention on Climate Change, that all countries are putting together long-term, medium to long-term
00:34:53plans for how they will adapt to the coming impacts of climate change. This is a really
00:34:58critical exercise that Senegal and many other developing countries are undertaking to try to
00:35:03assess the risks to their economy, to their people's livelihoods that climate change will
00:35:08bring, and to plan for that, to get the planning mechanisms into place, the institutions, and
00:35:14hopefully the financing in place that's going to help them better be able to cope with the coming
00:35:19challenges. So this was an outgrowth, I believe, of the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015, right?
00:35:26That either mandated or strongly suggested that all countries create these National Adaptation
00:35:32Plans. I'm curious, are countries taking that responsibility seriously? Are they putting a
00:35:40lot of thought into the plans? And is there, it might be too early to say whether the plans are
00:35:44actually going to influence policy, but are they at least taking the plan seriously?
00:35:51From what I've seen, they are taking the plan seriously. I mean, for many developing countries,
00:35:55they are faced every day with the challenge of climate change. They know that the changes are
00:36:00growing more and more severe, and they are seeing the way that their economy and their people are
00:36:05impacted by these changes. What it takes is a lot of resources to get those plans into place,
00:36:12and a lot of capacity, scientific capacity, social capacity, economic capacity, to move these plans
00:36:17forward. The Green Climate Fund, which is the largest international institution that provides
00:36:23support for climate change activities in the developing world, is providing major sources
00:36:31of funding for countries to develop these National Adaptation Plans. So a lot of developing countries
00:36:37are in the process now of putting these plans together to really think through carefully,
00:36:42and in an evidence-based way, how their societies and economies and communities can adapt to these
00:36:48changes over the coming decades. And if you think about how the international community is
00:36:55negotiating this situation, one big part of the puzzle that many people think has to be part of it
00:37:02is moving some resources from wealthy countries like the United States, like the nations of the
00:37:09EU, to poor countries like Senegal or Bangladesh or what have you, to help them adapt and also to
00:37:16help them transition their economies so that as they get wealthier, their emissions don't balloon.
00:37:25So I guess the idea would be these adaptation plans aren't just important in themselves.
00:37:31There's going to be money, hopefully, in the pipeline to help act on them. And so how that
00:37:39money gets spent, whether it's spent effectively both in terms of climate change and improving
00:37:44people's lives, could be very important for the future of Senegal or the future of other countries.
00:37:53Absolutely. With climate finance, I think we'll see a lot of funding. We already are seeing a lot
00:37:59of funding going to developing countries to help them develop their economies in ways that aren't
00:38:04as polluting as many developed industrialized countries followed, as well as to help them
00:38:11bolster their resilience to the changes that are coming, which, as we know, is really,
00:38:17if we're thinking about fairness, that is a fair route to go. The industrialized world, which has
00:38:23by and large been the ones to create this challenge of climate change, is in a position
00:38:30now to be able to provide some assistance to developing countries who've had very little to do
00:38:35with emitting greenhouse gases that are causing these problems, to help them develop in a more
00:38:39clean pathway that will not contribute to growing emissions in the atmosphere, but also to help
00:38:46strengthen their resilience to the climate change impacts that they are facing.
00:38:51Sure. And of course, these countries, again, it's a little hard for those of us living in the wealthy
00:38:56world who haven't traveled to the developing world much to understand this. These countries just
00:39:02don't necessarily have the resources themselves to make these kind of changes, to, for instance,
00:39:09take a more renewable energy pathway as opposed to just burning the cheap coal that some of them
00:39:15have. So that's an important part of this component too. If we really want to reduce our emissions,
00:39:23beyond the fairness of it, simply if these poor countries are going to be part of that effort,
00:39:30they're going to have to have some help from the wealthier nations.
00:39:35You titled a policy brief a few years ago that you wrote, Building Resilience Through Family
00:39:42Planning and Adaptation Finance. Could you explain the argument that you made there?
00:39:49Absolutely. So when we think about the ways in which countries will be able to adapt
00:39:55to the climate change challenges that they're facing now and the challenges that they will
00:39:59face in the future, it's really important to think about population dynamics within a country
00:40:06when you consider the ways in which a country will be able to respond to climate challenges
00:40:11over the rest of this century. For many developing countries, population growth remains high.
00:40:18Population density is intensifying in these countries just as climate change impacts are
00:40:24intensifying. So being able to understand what the population dynamics are
00:40:31going on in a particular country and what that means for a country's vulnerability to climate
00:40:35change impacts is really critical. For a lot of countries, let's take Senegal again as an example,
00:40:42their population growth path is significant and it's going to exacerbate challenges there,
00:40:48particularly when we look at things like the agricultural sector, when we look at coastal
00:40:53resources, when we look at the kinds of extreme heat or extreme weather events that they will be
00:40:58facing. A larger population, a more dense population will be something that will exacerbate
00:41:03vulnerability for Senegal. So the first part of the proposal here is for countries to really take
00:41:10a closer look at population trends and to factor that into their adaptation planning moving forward.
00:41:17The second part of that is to more deeply understand what is driving population trends
00:41:23in a particular country. In a country like Senegal, for example, we know that fertility
00:41:27is really high. It's about 4.4 children per woman in Senegal. We know that rates of unintended
00:41:35pregnancy are high and we know that the unmet need for family planning is high. It's about 20%
00:41:41right now. So that means one in five women in Senegal would like to be able to end childbearing
00:41:49or delay their next pregnancy, but they lack family planning to be able to achieve their
00:41:57childbearing desires. As we think about that issue and we think about how providing services
00:42:06that women already want in the realm of family planning and reproductive health services
00:42:11that would enable them to avoid unintended pregnancy, that would have the effect of
00:42:16reducing fertility and slowing population growth over time. In addition, meeting women's needs for
00:42:23family planning makes women and families healthier. It will reduce maternal mortality.
00:42:29It will reduce infant mortality. It will help achieve a broad range of other sustainable
00:42:34development goals related to hunger, related to education, related to alleviating poverty.
00:42:41And yet we know there is this unmet need in reproductive health and family planning in
00:42:46Senegal and in a lot of other developing countries. So if we're thinking about strategies for
00:42:51achieving climate resilience and adapting to climate change impacts over the long term,
00:42:56understanding the population dynamics and understanding women's reproductive health
00:43:00and family planning needs can be a really important part of that. And as resources flow
00:43:05into countries to help with adaptation planning, to help with adaptation action, those are things
00:43:11that should be on the table as we consider the types of interventions that are going to build
00:43:15resilience and strengthen adaptive capacity moving forward. So I just want to emphasize
00:43:22one of the things you said there because it was very helpful to me to read that policy brief.
00:43:29It's pretty straightforward and understandable, the idea that if you're a poor country
00:43:34and you're worried about sufficient natural resources and water and food, if you have fewer
00:43:41people to worry about down the line, you might have a better chance to have less hunger or less
00:43:47water stress, et cetera. That part of the equation seems pretty straightforward in terms of helping
00:43:53adaptation. Fewer people make fewer demands on scarce or dwindling natural resources.
00:44:00But your policy brief helped me understand that there are other aspects of this too.
00:44:08Improved family planning, as you say, can improve maternal and child health.
00:44:14And in countries that are struggling with climate change or simply struggling to develop and dealing
00:44:20with poverty, that in itself can be a huge help in reducing harms down the road.
00:44:31And there are other aspects of this too. Smaller families, for instance, are often able
00:44:37to provide more resources to educate their children. That can help that family
00:44:44do better down the line as well. So what I liked about this and some other things that you wrote
00:44:50is that you tie these things together. As we think about adaptation in the United States,
00:44:58where we are, we probably tend to think of it mostly in terms of protecting good things that
00:45:03we have. We have enough food to eat, most of us. We want to avoid flooding that harms our nice homes,
00:45:11etc. In the developing world, it's a harder challenge, right? Because they're not just
00:45:16trying to preserve what they have. They are trying to improve their lives in very basic ways.
00:45:23Climate change is going to make that more difficult. And you make the case that
00:45:29financing for family planning could help these poorer countries to achieve that.
00:45:35Absolutely. Investing in family planning, investing in the health and well-being of
00:45:41women and girls is a win-win-win situation all around. There are really no downsides here.
00:45:49And we have a large movement around the world that is working toward ending unmet need for
00:45:56family planning, based on the rights of girls and women to have reproductive autonomy.
00:46:04It's something that is really critical for women, and it's codified in our international
00:46:09agreements that women and families have the right to be able to determine the number,
00:46:14timing, and spacing of their childbearing. And they have the right to the information
00:46:19and the services to be able to do so. Unfortunately, we're not close to realizing
00:46:25that right universally for women and girls around the world. Right now, there are at least 218
00:46:32million women around the world who would like to be able to delay childbearing or end childbearing,
00:46:39but they lack the contraceptive services that help them achieve those desires.
00:46:44So we are not in any way talking about a top-down population control kind of approach here. What
00:46:50we're talking about is meeting the existing needs of women and girls around the world.
00:46:57And because we do have such a large movement of people who are really working very hard to
00:47:01mobilize the resources and the political will to achieve those rights for women and girls around
00:47:07the world, and we also have, on the other hand, a movement that is working very hard to reduce the
00:47:13impacts of climate change, to reduce emissions, and to strengthen countries' abilities to adapt
00:47:19to climate change over the long term, we don't yet see very much of a marriage between these
00:47:25two movements globally. And yet, there are so many positive synergies there that can come about
00:47:31if we really are better able to integrate this existing drive toward investing in women and girls
00:47:39into efforts to really grapple with the climate change challenge moving forward.
00:47:45So I'm curious why that is. This seems like just a strong argument, and there's pretty good
00:47:52evidence from around the world, different parts of the world, that if you provide family planning,
00:47:58contraception, if you improve educational opportunities for girls, these things can
00:48:06relatively rapidly bring fertility rates down, and countries have seen the economics and
00:48:11environmental benefits of that. So why aren't governments, for instance, making enhanced family
00:48:20planning a part of their adaptation, climate change adaptation planning? Why aren't we
00:48:25connecting those things? As with many things in international development,
00:48:33institutions, individuals, researchers, program managers, we end up in these
00:48:38silos. We develop our particular expertise on a particular area, and somehow it can be really
00:48:45difficult to see the connections into a very different field. So we need to find better ways
00:48:52to bust out of these silos and talk to each other more. And also, I should say, with population
00:48:59issues, I think probably a lot of your viewers understand there is a fraught history when it
00:49:04comes to population issues. We do have terrible examples in our history of coercive population
00:49:11control measures, and I think that's had a little bit of a chilling effect for government
00:49:17leaders and other decision makers to even talk about population, that there's somehow it seems
00:49:23like for some people it's a bit of a taboo topic. Kathleen, you've written that there's a strong
00:49:28correlation between the country's currently at greatest risk due to climate change and countries
00:49:35around the world with the highest percentage of unmet contraceptive needs. Could you explain that
00:49:42finding and what it means? Sure. So there are lots of different ways to measure climate change
00:49:51impacts and climate change vulnerability. We can look at things like just the physical impacts of
00:49:58climate change, where we're likely to see more extreme weather events, where precipitation
00:50:04patterns are really altered, where drought and flooding may be the most impactful. And when we
00:50:11look at countries that are highly vulnerable to the physical impacts of climate change,
00:50:17we see that there is a pretty strong overlap with countries that continue to have rapid population
00:50:24growth rates, as well as high rates of unmet need for family planning. As we've talked about,
00:50:32Senegal is one of those countries, many countries in sub-Saharan Africa, which are vulnerable to the
00:50:38physical impacts of climate change and have exacerbated vulnerability because of the
00:50:45economic and social conditions in their country, are also countries that have a high unmet need
00:50:51for family planning. We see that in parts of Southeast Asia as well. And to me, this just
00:50:59really tells us that the investment of resources in efforts to address unmet need for family
00:51:07planning is something that could have, again, these win-win-win benefits for efforts to achieve
00:51:14human well-being and sustainability moving forward. Yeah, just to give people a sense of some of the
00:51:20numbers we're talking about, you've discussed Senegal, a country where you've worked.
00:51:28I'm looking now at some figures from the UN World Population Report from 2019. Senegal's population
00:51:35in 2019 was 16 million. Under the median UN projection, that's projected to increase
00:51:42to 64 million in 2100, so a 300% increase. Some other huge increases in Africa, Nigeria,
00:51:52projected to increase from 201 million to 733 million, a 265% increase by 2100.
00:52:02And then in some Asian countries, we're also looking at usually not increases that high,
00:52:11but substantial. So Pakistan, for instance, 217 million today, a median projection of 403 million
00:52:20in 2100, an 86% increase. Those are just the median projections, but of course, depending on policies,
00:52:29those numbers could go a lot higher or a lot lower. And so it's important for listeners to realize
00:52:37that we're really talking about some large numbers for these countries. And again,
00:52:43for the most part, we're talking about poorer countries, and often countries which because of
00:52:48geography could be hardest hit by climate change. I believe you've spent some time
00:52:57working in the Philippines as well. Could you talk a little bit about this issue
00:53:03in terms of the Philippines? Yeah. I don't know how many of your viewers may have been to the
00:53:12Philippines, but it is a remarkable country. It is a beautiful country. It's a country that's made
00:53:17up of more than 7,000 islands. And it is right now a fairly densely populated country as well.
00:53:25The current population of the Philippines is 110 million, and it is growing. The fertility rate
00:53:32there is about 2.7 children per woman. The fertility has declined pretty significantly
00:53:38in the last couple of decades, but there continues to be a pretty high unmet need for
00:53:42family planning. About 17% of women in the Philippines have an unmet need for family
00:53:47planning. So population is continuing to grow in the Philippines, and that presents a lot of
00:53:55challenges, especially when, because it is a country that's made up of all of these islands,
00:54:02communities are living on islands that are becoming more and more densely populated.
00:54:05And a lot of these places too, the communities living on these islands are very dependent on
00:54:11the natural resources space there, right there for their livelihoods. So we're seeing some
00:54:18challenges there, but we're also seeing some really remarkable progress in integrated approaches that
00:54:25really incorporate natural resource management, coastal resource management, as well as addressing
00:54:32the health needs of communities to better be able to cope with the challenges that are coming.
00:54:38So in a number of communities that I have visited around the Philippines, we see some really
00:54:42terrific community-based projects where there is a fishing group, for example, that is thinking about
00:54:50how to manage fisheries, a fisheries reserve in their area, so that they can continue to fish
00:54:57for decades and not completely fish, completely deplete the fish populations.
00:55:04And within those same groups, they have discussions about family size, they have discussions about the
00:55:12different methods of family planning, and they, men and women are talking together about their
00:55:17child planning, or their family planning desires, and how to achieve them, and what that means over
00:55:22the long term, as they also are thinking about how to manage the resource space that they depend on.
00:55:27So it's a very integrated approach that is seeing a lot of success in parts of the Philippines.
00:55:34So it's exciting to see that happening, and we need more and more of that across the Philippines
00:55:39and across the world, really, as we experience more severe impacts from climate change, which
00:55:46for the Philippines, because it's such a densely populated country already, with a lot of communities
00:55:51living right on the edge of the sea, when there is sea level rise, when there are extreme weather
00:55:59events, that can be really harmful for communities that are just trying to survive.
00:56:05So it's exciting to see this kind of progress in the Philippines, where communities are really
00:56:10taking the lead in thinking about how to manage their natural resources, how to protect their
00:56:17communities, how to plan their families. But of course, more support is needed to scale up those
00:56:24efforts, and to really bring them across the country in ways that are going to affect the
00:56:29long-term future. It's wonderful to hear that kind of story coming out of the Philippines.
00:56:35Sometimes you hear less hopeful stories about family planning from the Philippines. For instance,
00:56:42resistance from the Catholic Church, most Filipinos are Catholic, resistance to
00:56:49contraception and family planning. I know there have been huge political battles fought over
00:56:56availability of contraception in Manila, for instance. But the fight goes on,
00:57:04right, between people who see a connection between family planning, improving people's
00:57:10lives and protecting the environment, and people who really don't. It's interesting, too,
00:57:18from my perspective, to hear about Filipino villages who are making this connection between,
00:57:25okay, how many children are we going to have, and are we going to be able to support
00:57:32ourselves and our communities? I think to a debate we've had in Fort Collins, Colorado, where I live,
00:57:39where environmentalists have been fighting the building of a new dam and taking water out of
00:57:46the river that flows through town. That's the usual sort of developers on the one side,
00:57:53environmentalists on the other. But both sides pretty much accept the idea that population is
00:57:59just going to continue to grow. I would say that we're not really grappling with the fundamental
00:58:04issues here. We're fighting over some important things, but we're not really asking how many
00:58:10people can we support in Fort Collins in the way that we want to live. So maybe we have something
00:58:18to learn from those Filipino villagers. That's a really good point. And, you know,
00:58:25getting back to the national politics in any place, really, but in the United States or in
00:58:30the Philippines, we do see a lot of battles at the national level in the Philippines over access
00:58:38to modern contraception, because as you mentioned, it is such a strongly Catholic country.
00:58:43But there's a lot of progress being made in the Philippines to address the concerns about
00:58:48reproductive health and modern contraception. There's a really robust grassroots efforts in
00:58:54the Philippines to advance and support a progressive reproductive health law that
00:58:59helps protect women's health and infant health and child health in ways that is evidence-based
00:59:07and based on the needs really driven by the grassroots of communities in the Philippines.
00:59:13So while the national debate, I think, takes up a lot of airspace, a lot of political attention at
00:59:21the national level, from what I have seen in the Philippines at the community level,
00:59:25they are moving ahead. And I had a very memorable conversation not long ago in one of the coastal
00:59:32towns in the Philippines with the parish priest for that community, who was so concerned about
00:59:39the health and well-being and the long-term survival of his community and their way of life,
00:59:44that he was very supportive of the integration of a wide range of contraceptive methods into
00:59:50programs that were serving his community. So even though we see this back and forth and
00:59:56political battles often at the national level, when we get down to the local level and see that
01:00:01where communities are really just trying to solve their own problems, that's something where I think
01:00:05we see a lot of hope. It doesn't get sort of to the larger issue that you were just talking about,
01:00:10Phil, in terms of, you know, we can sort of try to protect our own communities, but there are global
01:00:15trends that are happening here that have impacts at the national and the global level. And I think
01:00:20we need to, beyond sort of taking care of our own communities, we need to be mindful of what those
01:00:25global trends are and think about ways that for us here in the wealthiest country in the world,
01:00:33are we pushing our government to provide resources for communities around the world that need them
01:00:40so that we can have a more sustainable future for the planet and not necessarily just protect our
01:00:46own little corner of the world? Well, I think that's a wonderful sentiment and maybe we should
01:00:55let that be the last substantial word in this segment. From your lips to God's ears, as my
01:01:05grandmother used to say. Kathleen, thank you so much for joining us today. It's been a pleasure
01:01:13talking with you, Phil. Thank you for your work in this area. It's really something that I'm glad
01:01:18we're having more and more conversations about these issues and it makes me feel more hopeful
01:01:22for a better future for women, for a better future for children, families, communities,
01:01:28and the planet at large. Thanks so much. Can we have you back on the show in the future?
01:01:35I would love to come back. Terrific. Thanks, Kathleen. Thank you, Phil.