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ShareMumbai: Giving a new angle to the climate change the United Nations Population fund (UNFPA) today said family planning, reproductive health care and gender relations could influence the future course of climate change and affect how humanity adapts to rising seas, worsening storms and severe droughts.
The influence of human activity on climate change is complex. It is about what people consume, the types of energy they produce and use and there is always a disproportionate burden on women all of which having influence on climate change, the UNFPA said in its The State of the World Population report released here today.
The report says, international climate change agreements and national policies are more likely to succeed in the long run only if they take into account population dynamics, the relations between the sexes, and women's well-being and access to services and opportunities.
Slower population growth would help build social resilience to climate change's impacts and would contribute to a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in the future, the report said.
Releasing the report here Vandana Krishna, secretary and commissioner family welfare, public health department, Maharashtra government said that the report clearly questions the current model of development.
The report indicates that the development model which is being followed now (a high energy model) should have to be re-considered. "In India it is important that each one of us will have to think and take steps to save energy and material that will make even smaller difference to climate change," Krishna said.
Speaking on the occasion, the principal secretary of employment and self-employment in Maharashtra government, Anna Dani said the UNFPA report showed an unusual linkage between women and climate change.
Dani said the historical discrimination has not left even in climate change. "Men and women should work together and we need to sensitise the government on this issue," she said.
She condemned the mindset of the game industry and said a recent Japanese game which promotes `raping' on the net has to be stopped immediately before it reaches the rural and small town population.
Governments must anticipate and prepare for the stresses climate change is likely to add to the already challenging business of advancing development, alleviatingpoverty, assuages to education and health care for women and children and moving towards gender equality.
UNFPA stressed that successful approaches to climate change are much more likely to emerge in the context of sustainable economic and social development, respect of human rights, the empowerment of women and access to reproductive health for all.
