Making the connections between sexual and reproductive health and rights and environmental sustainability
The Margaret Pyke Trust, with the Population & Sustainability Network, jointly with member organisations, Deutsche Stiftung Weltbevölkerung (DSW) and the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), hosted a Lab Debate on 8 June at the European Development Days in Brussels. The event showcased innovative integrated projects that demonstrate how addressing sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) is a key human right, essential to women and girls’ health and empowerment, while also contributing to environmental sustainability and other priority development objectives.
Former UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon emphasised that democratic governance and full respect for human rights are key prerequisites for empowering people to make choices that promote sustainability. Meeting the unmet need for family planning is not only a serious human rights concern, fundamental for women’s and girls’ health and empowerment, but also plays a significant role in sustainable development, including responding to climate change.
Integrated development approaches that can respond to interdependent challenges have begun to get some traction among policy makers, particularly when considering the fulfilment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The EU for example has recognised this important link by ensuring all development programmes include actions on priority cross-cutting issues, particularly climate change and gender equality.
The Lab Debate, hosted as part of the EDDs, showcased an EU funded project in South Africa currently being implemented by the Margaret Pyke Trust, together with the Thohoyandou Victim Empowerment Programme, whose aim is to improve access to SRHR, furthering human rights for women and girls while also raising awareness on the importance of fulfilling these rights to contribute to environmental sustainability.
DSW presented its work in East Africa at the community level, by explaining how its Bonga project in Ethiopia enables communities to positively interact with their local environment and the resources that are available to them. DSW’s primary focus is to empower youth in order to curb increasing degradation of the forest, improve livelihood opportunities, and address unmet health needs of people who live in communities surrounding the forest. To that end, DSW supports a network of youth clubs to provide peer education on issues regarding SRHR and environmental protection, while also developing the business and leadership skills of club members.
IPPF presented its advocacy and policy work to raise awareness on these linkages among the family planning, climate change and sustainability sectors. In particular, IPPF also featured the publication Climate Change: Time to Think Family Planning prepared jointly with the Margaret Pyke Trust, with the Population & Sustainability Network, to promote family planning as a cost-effective, human rights-based approached to climate change.
The event included a debate on integrated programmes and provided recommendations for policies that foster greater health, gender and environmental outcomes. These policies should constitute the cornerstone of sustainable development strategies, should the SDGs ever be achieved. The EU is already promoting this type of approach, which should now be championed, and other institutional donors and policymakers should follow suit in order to ensure human and ecosystem health.
The Lab Debate was part of the EU funded project being implemented by the Thohoyandou Victim Empowerment Programme and the Margaret Pyke Trust, with the Population & Sustainability Network.
The event has been made possible with the assistance of the European Union
For more information, please contact Carina Hirsch, Advocacy and Projects Manager (ch@populationandsustainability.org)
