Family Planning an Important Component of Resilience to Climate Change, Says Roger-Mark De Souza

Summary: “We believe that if you want to respond to critical development issues like climate change, that you need to address the social dimensions of resilience,” says Roger-Mark De Souza of Population Action International (PAI) in this week’s podcast. “If you want to address climate change and you only look at mitigation, you are missing some of the important components,” he said. PAI, which advocates for family planning in developing countries, starts from the standpoint that allowing couples to decide how many children they have leads to “investments in education and technology, providing opportunities for additional economic growth, enhanced development, and ultimately helping to build resilience and adaptive capacity.”