Is Rubber Recyclable?

By Contributor | August 1, 2011

Climate change was a major theme present during last week’s High Level Meeting on Youth. The Secretary-General emphasized the need for youth to participate in the preparations for next year’s Rio +20 conference on sustainable development. Member states hosted a number of side events on sustainable development. And a number of non-profit organizations advocated for greater youth interest and involvement in “greening the earth.”

The ubiquitous topic of sexual rights and sexuality education was also present at last week’s HLM on Youth. Advocates for Youth, a non-profit organization who presented at one of the side events, took sexual rights advocacy one step further as they presented a new campaign, “The Time is Now,” which explores the intersection of climate change and reproductive rights.

The campaign blog explains just what sort of intersection between “reproductive rights” and climate change might be found:

“…filling the unmet need for family planning and contraception around the world is an extremely cost-effective way of mitigating the negative impacts of climate change, strengthening communities, and empowering women and girls…Experts agree that responding to the unmet need for family planning is a viable option for climate change mitigation and adaption. For example, in a recent study climate change economists concluded that responding to the unmet need for family planning and supporting girls education are much less costly than low-carbon energy development options and are cost-competitive with forest conservation and other improvements in forestry and agricultural practices.

Further, while the environmental and reproductive rights movements have often been at odds with each other, in today’s world we see these movements as one. Providing sexual and reproductive health services to young people and women around the world who are already in need of such care promotes human rights while contributing to climate change mitigation and adaptation — it is a win-win situation.”

The organization also encourages it users to sign their petition urging the Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, Christiana Figueres, to use her position to elevate sexual and reproductive health and rights of young people within discussions about climate change adaption and mitigation. These discussions will no doubt form part of the lead-up to the Rio 2012 Conference on Sustainable Development.

The connection between a growing population and the depletion of resources comes as no surprise – however, what is surprising is the explicit connection made between reducing family size through access to contraception (also interpreted as population control) and advancing the cause of sustainable development. This explicit connection contains an implicit assumption – that people themselves are ultimately a hindrance to sustainable development, and preventing people from being born is a way to make humanity more environmentally “sustainable.”

If, however, human beings are kept at the center of development efforts (and not seen as hindrances to it), then there is no more connection between reproductive rights and sustainable development than there is between condoms and composting. Rubber is not recyclable, and the reproductive rights agenda will ultimately prove equally insoluble in the efforts to preserve the integrity of the environment.

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