VOLUME 55 | ISSUE 3 | SEPTEMBER 2024
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Population Connection Participation at the 57th Session of the UN Commission on Population and Development (CPD57)
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This year is the 30th anniversary since the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo — a watershed event whose Programme of Action set an agenda for achieving goals related to sexual and reproductive health, maternal mortality, HIV/AIDS, and much more. The document acknowledged the role population stabilization plays in sustainable development, but much of the environmental and reproductive health and rights community still came away from that conference believing that population challenges have no place in modern conversations around achieving universal access to family planning.
We vehemently disagree. Sadly, we seem to be one of the only organizations still committed to ending population growth for the benefit of people and the planet. As such, we’ve started delivering statements at UN conferences so that population challenges aren’t completely absent from discussions about global health and sustainable development. Click the link below to read the oral statement we gave at the 57th session of the UN Commission on Population and Development, in partnership with Population Matters and Population Media Center.
Read the Full Statement [[link removed]]
PROGRAM UPDATES
[[link removed]] #Fight4HER Summer Highlights
Organizers in Arizona, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio, and Pennsylvania are guiding our reproductive health and rights campaign with impactful local events, and more.
Read Updates from the Field [[link removed]]
[[link removed]] Abortion Bans Evidently Aren’t Enough
The past few years have indicated that the right to contraception is under palpable threat.
See the Latest Updates from the Hill [[link removed]]
[[link removed]] Cultivating Hope in a World of 8 Billion
Over 3,100 videos were created by students from 58 countries and 46 US states and territories this year. Close to 400 teachers used the contest as a classroom assignment — some have been participating for all 11 years!
Meet the Winning Students [[link removed]]
[[link removed]] Summer Photo Contest Winners
We are thrilled to present the winners of our third annual Summer Photo Contest!
View the Winning Photos [[link removed]]
[[link removed]] Global Partner Spotlight: Hope for Kenya Slum Adolescents Initiative
Hope for Kenya Slum Adolescents Initiative works with Kenyan adolescents, with a special focus on girls, who are living in slums in and around Nairobi, Kenya’s capital and largest city.
Learn About their Work [[link removed]]
[[link removed]] President’s Circle Member: Scott Lambros
Scott Lambros, a Population Connection member since 2021, has long held a deep-seated passion for philanthropy and supporting causes that improve society.
Learn Why He Supports Our Mission [[link removed]]
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Stay up to date on population news and demographic trends.
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LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT
Dear Friend,
Population Connection member and Seattle environmental attorney Rick Aramburu put me on to a terrifying 2015 New Yorker story [[link removed]] about the Cascadia subduction zone, a coastal area from British Columbia through Washington and Oregon and into California. That’s where a massive earthquake, possibly 15 times greater than the largest potential quake along the San Andreas Fault, will take place — tomorrow, or perhaps some 800 years from now — an inconsequential time difference geologically, but a matter of life and death for inhabitants, human and otherwise. Examining the buildup of human population, the author observed that we are living in an “age of ecological reckoning.” She asked, “How should a society respond to a looming crisis of uncertain timing but of catastrophic proportions?”
Since 1800, our population has exploded as we’ve recklessly drawn down natural capital that took eons to accumulate. Call it overdraft, overshoot, or bone headedness, this irrefutable truth has inevitable consequences.
Human population and greenhouse gas emissions have grown in tandem. Cataclysmic changes are already baked in, no pun intended. By 2050, we may see “a 20% weakening of the famous North Atlantic overturning circulation which keeps Europe’s climate mild,” according to one recent analysis [[link removed]] . A separate study [[link removed]] warns that failure of this oceanic system “would disrupt the climate globally, shifting Asian monsoon rainfall patterns and even reversing the rainy and dry seasons in the Amazon.” Peter Ditlevsen at the University of Copenhagen states that “You cannot adapt to this. There’s some studies of what happens to agriculture in Great Britain, and it becomes like trying to grow potatoes in Northern Norway.”
India, the most populous nation on Earth, projects a ninefold increase [[link removed](IEA,TVs%2C%20refrigerators%20and%20washing%20machines.] in home air conditioning by 2050. As temperatures soar, coal-generated electricity in India is rising [[link removed]] while renewable sources decline. We just witnessed the extinction [[link removed]] in the US of the Key Largo tree cactus. It’s the first species we’ve lost due to sea level rise, but it won’t be the last. Modern Homo sapiens resembles an adolescent who hasn’t yet mastered impulse control, speeding down the highway, pedal to the metal.
We can do better. When women are educated, have access to reproductive health services, and have true reproductive autonomy, the vast majority choose smaller families. And we have scientific data (widely ignored by our friends in the environmental community) that investment in family planning is the single most cost-effective way to meet the twin challenges of population growth and the climate crisis.
[[link removed]] John Seager
PRESIDENT AND CEO
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