Population pressures exacerbate environmental challenges, from resource depletion to biodiversity loss and climate crises. Using a human-rights-based approach—namely, removing barriers to family planning and girls’ education—we can empower people to have smaller families and contribute toward slower population growth. It’s one of the most powerful available actions to limit future greenhouse gas emissions, along with reducing per capita consumption in wealthy nations. Yet an estimated 218 million women in developing regions who want to avoid pregnancy have an unmet need for modern contraception.
This Earth Day, we hosted Dr. Céline Delacroix, adjunct professor at the University of Ottawa’s School of Health Sciences and Director of the FP/Earth project with the Population Institute.
Dr. Delacroix will present the findings from a 2023 journal article she wrote with Dr. Nkechi S. Owoo, a Ghanaian Health and Demographic Economist, that explores the perspectives of sub-Saharan African policymakers, researchers, and activists on the linkages between reproductive rights, population dynamics, and environmental sustainability.
John has been a guest lecturer at more than 80 colleges and has spoken to numerous environmental, religious, and community groups across the U.S. on the environmental and human costs of rapid population growth.
Dr. Céline Delacroix is a part-time professor at the University of Ottawa’s School of Health Sciences. She is the Director of the FP/Earth project with the Population Institute. Her interdisciplinary research focuses on analyzing how family planning, population size, and environmental sustainability intersect and are perceived. She is looking for ways to harness these linkages to benefit reproductive rights and improve environmental sustainability.
Through our Global Partners program, Population Connection supports a growing number of grassroots organizations around the world working to increase access to education, public health and family planning services. Their…
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Through our Global Partners program, Population Connection supports a growing number of grassroots organizations around the world working to increase access to education, public health and family planning services. Their…
Read MoreLow fertility has prompted some governments in East Asia and Europe to implement pronatalist policies to encourage citizens to have more children. These schemes have minimal effect on fertility rates and can be offensive to women by treating them as little more than creators of future taxpayers, consumers, soldiers, and caregivers.
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Population issues are often inaccurate and misleading in media stories, for example, repeating common myths and misconceptions. When we encounter this type of article, our Communications Team usually writes a letter to the editor to have our say.
Find our latest featured coverage, or use your knowledge to spread the word by writing to your local paper!
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Are you searching for unique, engaging lesson plans to make Earth Day more interesting for your students? Population Education offers an excellent opportunity to demonstrate to your students the ways in which human activities impact the environment!
There is a variety of lesson plans for all ages, such as mapping activities, modeling exercises, and interactive storytelling prompts. Students will be inspired to think critically about population dynamics and the environment.
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By including population dynamics in higher education, we can prepare tomorrow’s professionals to work toward effective, rights-based solutions to climate change—namely, voluntary family planning and girls’ education.
As an integral part of our outreach strategy, our trained speakers engage with college-level students and Population Connection members and their networks in thinking about human population dynamics through lively, thought-provoking presentations that focus on global population challenges.
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