Links Between Fertility, Family Preferences and Environmental Degradation (original) (raw)
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Perception, Environmental Degradation and Family Size Preference: a Context of Developing Countries
Journal of Sustainable Development
This paper explores how people perceive about family size and environmental degradation. Many studies explain people perception to family size or environmental degradation independently. Considering both of the concepts as interrelated, how people consider the relation between family size and environmental degradation, and how their perception subsequently influence on contraceptive use in developing countries. People who think their immediate environment such as land productivity, soil fertility, water level and biodiversity is declining are more concerned about their family size and contraceptive use than who do not think that their environment is declining. Children in poor area or forest area are involved with fuel wood and water collection. Parents especially women perceive additional child as helping hand in domestic work or fuel wood and water collection. In reality socioeconomic development particularly women education, participation to reproductive decision and access to contraception, and improvement of environmental qualities such as proper sanitation, drinking water, and environmental awareness are important to change people perception to larger family size. As a result people will start thinking that environmental degradation is the result of over access to natural resources.
Population and Environment, 2005
The rise in environmental concerns around the globe has prompted increasing research on the links between such concerns and behavior. However, most studies have focused on pro-environmental behaviors in affluent western societies, such as willingness to pay for environmental protection, pro-environmental political actions, and consumption patterns. Using multiple data sets from the Chitwan Valley Family Study in Nepal, this paper examines the impact of environmental perceptions on contraceptive use in a rural agricultural setting. The results of our analyses show that perceptions about certain aspects of the environment are related to individuals' subsequent use of contraceptives. Specifically, those individuals who think that their environment-agricultural productivity-has deteriorated are more likely to use contraceptives than those who think that their environment has improved or has remained about the same. This study thus provides a first step in our understanding of the relationships between environmental perceptions and fertility behavior in a less developed setting.
Environmental Economics eJournal, 2010
In the study we try to understand and compare how the married man and women in the indigenous community (Khasia people), Bangladesh perceive the relation between family size and environmental degradation. The findings of the study show that people who think their local environment such as land productivity, water level and biodiversity are declining are more concerned about the family size and contraceptive use. Children in poor areas or forested areas are involved to collect fuel wood and water. Most the parents in the study area perceive an additional child as a helping hand in domestic works or fuel woods and water collection. The factors involved having additional children and subsequently negative effects on environment are low level of education, lack of employment opportunities and alternative sources of income and cultural belief. Socio-economic development of indigenous communities through education of women, participation to reproductive decision and access to contraceptio...
Family Planning and Environmental Sustainability: Assessing the Science
Is there a scientific evidence base demonstrating that the use of family planning contributes to environmental sustainability? This report explores that question based on a two-year collaborative review of more than 900 peer-reviewed research papers from around the world published from 2005 through early 2016. No scientific discipline systematically examines or confirms the influence of voluntary family planning on environmental problems. Looking at pathways that lead through the slowing of population growth and the empowerment of women, however, the Family Planning and Environmental Sustainability Assessment (FPESA) found a wide-ranging literature generally affirming that this influence is both real and constructive. FPESA identified considerable evidence supporting—and very little refuting—the statement that the practice of voluntary family planning promotes environmental benefits and that expanding access to it can help bring about an environmentally sustainable world that meets human needs. The diversity of researchers interested in the family-planning connection to the environment is high, the report also concludes. The report features the project's findings, perspectives on major related issues by eight authors, and an annotated bibliography containing assessments of 50 of the most compelling papers relevant to the linkage. Through research and outreach that inspire action, the Worldwatch Institute works to accelerate the transition to a sustainable world that meets human needs. The Institute's top mission objectives are universal access to renewable energy and nutritious food, expansion of environmentally sound jobs and development, transformation of cultures from consumerism to sustainability, and an early end to population growth through healthy and intentional childbearing.
Population and Sustainability: Understanding Population, Environment, and Development Linkages
The triple challenge of rapid population growth, declining agricultural productivity, and natural resource degradation are not isolated from one another; they are intimately related. However, strategic planning and development programming tend to focus on individual sectors such as the environment, agriculture, and population; they do not explicitly take into account the compatibilities and inconsistencies among them. Farm households and their livelihood strategies are at the core of the intersectoral linkages approach advocated in this chapter. Three key aspects of the population-environment-development debate are discussed: first, the finding that inconsistencies between public and individual household behavior regarding childbearing and family planning constitute a veritable "demographic tragedy of the commons;" second, the tendency to conceptualize population variables as "unmanageable," and exogenous to environmental and economic change; third, the importance of land markets and land tenure as critical population-sustainability policy issues. 1 The "commons" here refers to land under collective stewardship. It includes unexploited, virgin territories as well as heavily used farm and range lands.
This study was conducted aiming at to assess perception of couples towards family planning and its relevance to environmental sustainability and to identify factors hindering family planning practice. Sample respondents for study comprises 90 couples in rural and 28 in urban. Data was collected by using random systematic and simple random sampling methods. The instruments used for data collection were interview and focus group discussion. The research found that there is promising level of awareness on family planning and main source of information were health extension agents. Reported reasons in sought of large number of children were old age support, son or daughter preference, considering children as a wealth, and labor support, religious prohibition. Nearly half of respondent couples approve contraceptives with more approval of women in both settings. Most of the respondents showed positive attitude towards family planning. Furthermore, half of the rural and nearly less than half of the urban respondents approve the importance of family planning for environmental sustainability. During the study period 23.2% of urban and 18.9% of rural couples were using some method of family planning; among which 21.4 of urban and 16.7% of rural women were using modern methods, hence, awareness level and practice in family planning showed a gap in both urban and rural. In general, urban showed more favorable attitude and practice than rural couples in family planning. Despite of their lower practice in family planning, rural respondents likely showed more favorable attitudes towards relevance of family planning for environmental sustainability.
Population and Environment Working Papers
The past fifty years have witnessed two simultaneous and accelerating trends: an explosive growth in population and a steep increase in resource depletion and environmental degradation. These trends have fueled the debate on the link between population and environment that began 150 years earlier, when Malthus voiced his concern about the ability of the earth and its finite resources to feed an exponentially growing population.
The Power of Fertility and Its Importance for the Concept of Sustainable Development
Studia Ecologiae et Bioethicae, 2021
Demographic changes are one of the indicators of sustainable development, expressed by the value of the natural increase in the human population, resulting directly from the fertility level, which is the subject of this article. Human fertility is a complex potential conditioned by the environmental, social, and economic factors. The multi-dimensional relations of fertility that may affect its level, constitute an unlimited field of research, study, and analysis. The inter-disciplinary scope of fertility research conducted by the authors has shown that fertility is an issue that, in its historical, social, political, and medical aspects, has the potential of contributing to societal development and raising the standard of living. The aim of this article is to answer the question: whether and how the fertility of an individual has an impact on the idea of sustainable development. To achieve this, the available literature was analysed and synthesised, as well as supplemented with information provided by experts in the field. The article incorporates presentations of selected fertility determining factors, methods of measuring fertility potential, and diverse contexts, such as the impact of fertility on history and its relationship with the freedom of the human individual. Moreover, the authors present the relationship between the fertility of an individual, and the assumptions and postulates of the idea of sustainable development.
Population and environment in the twenty-first century
Population and Environment, 2007
In the past 50 years global population grew by 3.7 billion. There is a large unmet need for family planning and wherever women have been given the means and the information to decide if or when to have the next child, then family size has fallen, often rapidly. However, since the UN 1994 Cairo conference on population and development, support for international family has collapsed and fertility declines in many of the poorest countries have stalled. Amongst some of the most vulnerable groups family size has risen. The investment made in voluntary family planning will largely determine whether, in the next 50 years, the global population grows to something less than 8 billion or to over 10. The trajectory taking us to the higher figure could jeopardize any possibility of transitioning the global economy to a biological sustainability. Much precious time has been lost. Almost all the additional growth in population will take place in the world's poorest countries, and it is imperative that the international community act to improve access to family planning in those countries, within a human rights frame framework.
This review paper is intended to exhibit the interplays between environmental change and rapid population growth in developing countries. In the course of discussion, the impacts of rapidly population growing on the environment have been discussed, and evidence, from various parts of the world have been traced. Studies on the impacts of population pressure on environment have been critically reviewed. It is revealed that all across the developing countries, farm size is shrinking as farmers continue to subdivide holdings among their children. In countries such as Malawi, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Haiti, Nepal and Bangladesh, population growth rates are high, and the non-farm sector is still in its early stages of development. Demographic pressure, land scarcity, and land fragmentation drive greater rural vulnerability and poverty, marked by decreased food security, inadequate response to such natural disasters such as drought or pest infestations, weakened resilience to shocks, and poor health. It is not just the supply of food, fodder, and fuel wood but the resource base itself and the lives that depend upon it are being affected. The evidences pinpoints that man through his non-sustainable production and consumption patterns, is placed at the heart of environmental changes. However, contradictory view, and practices are also in place that the population growth has positive impacts environmental restoration and improvements, while other evidences show insignificant effect of population on the environment. This contradicting scenario puts scholars in argument, and still need further research. Hence, it would be a blind generalization to draw conclusion from this relationship alone, rather, another factor that acts beyond population pressure must also be considered to justify the impact of population on environmental changes.