By Suzanne York, www.howmany.org One solution to easing the effects of global climate change is one that is not often heard – that of voluntary family planning. At a talk this week on “Condoms and Climate” given at the Commonwealth Club of California, Alan Weisman, author of Countdown: Our Last, Best Hope for a Future
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By Suzanne York, www.howmany.org A United Nations report titled Assessing Global Land Use: Balancing Consumption with Sustainable Supply highlights the pressing need to cope with changes in a growing and consuming world that is shifting quickly from the one we’ve known for decades. According to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), the need to feed a
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By Suzanne York, www.howmany.org At the recent International Conference on Family Planning (ICFP), a big gathering of leaders and activists on family planning and reproductive health, there was a big effort to promote the role of men.  While it may seem obvious, men are sometimes missing from family planning. Certainly education and empowerment of women
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By Suzanne York, www.howmany.org Alarmingly, food insecurity in Africa’s Sahel belt continues to worsen. This week the United Nations reported that 16 million people in the region are at risk of going hungry in the next year due to violent conflicts and rapid population growth. The Sahel encompasses a semiarid strip of land in Sub-Saharan
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By Suzanne York, www.howmany.org The third annual International Conference on Family Planning ended in mid-November with a focus on successful initiatives and with momentum to enact voluntary family planning services and education for people around the world. The breadth and depth of work undertaken by professionals and activists is exciting.   From addressing maternal mortality to
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By Suzanne York, www.howmany.org The 2013 International Conference on Family Planning is in full swing in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, concentrated around the them of “Full Access, Full Choice.” The nearly 4,000 participants are energized around bringing family planning and reproductive rights to communities in need the world over.  Ethiopia, the second most-populous nation in Africa,
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Perhaps surprisingly, men often get overlooked in discussions on family planning, population growth, and empowerment. Yet men’s understanding and cooperation is essential in improving the state of families and communities, and for also reaching a stable world population.  The most recent UN (mid-range) projection on population growth is 9.6 billion people by 2050. The Need
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By Suzanne York, www.howmany.org Slowly but surely, economists and other experts are beginning to see the light on the need to rethink society’s obsession with growth, be it population or economic. Dean Baker, an economist with the Center for Economic & Policy Research, took the New York Times to task for celebrating fertility rates in
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By Suzanne York, www.howmany.org We live in interesting times, especially here in the United States.  ObamaCare is about to be implemented yet opponents continue to try and block it.  Contraceptive use and voluntary family planning services – something many take for granted – has become a point of contention too, and we are back to
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By Suzanne York, www.howmany.org If there is one day that all of humanity can recognize together, it would be that of Earth Overshoot Day.  This is the day that global resource consumption for the year exceeds the planet’s ability to replenish its natural capital. Or to put it another way, it is comparable to living
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