Food and nutrition security, health, gender equality, climate change and environmental degradation, including loss of biodiversity are closely interlinked. Climate change and environmental degradation undermine the ability of people to move out of poverty and compromise their full enjoyment of human rights.  This has a direct impact on the health and food and nutrition security of millions of people – particularly women and their children.

Reprinted with permission from RH Reality Check.

Who's afraid of climate change? Well, I am but not necessarily for the reasons you may think. I’m afraid that the recent, much-deserved attention to climate change will revive some of the old alarmist debates on population. And with those debates, I’m worried that the specter of population control will rear its ugly head again.

This week, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke at an event during the United Nations General Assembly in New York. The event, titled Women and Agriculture: A Conversation on Improving Global Food Security, consisted of a panel of leaders from the UN, civil society, private sector, and government.

Speaking this week at the Games for Change Festival, Al Gore said that when you empower women with not only education, but also access to contraception, women can choose how many children to have and when to have them. Child survival rates improve, family sizes decrease and population growth slows.