UNICEF poll on young people's thoughts about future families (2)

11 November, 2022

Thanks for this posting. If “climate change is forcing nearly half of young Africans to rethink their plans to have children someday”, this would inevitably impact on population growth, which is one of the likely drivers of climate change. It seems true that larger populations accelerate climate change, so it is intriguing to consider that there might be an innate demographic response to climate change that leads to having smaller families.

I remember an encounter I had with Prince Philip when he challenged me to tell him what WHO was doing about overpopulation. I started to stammer a reply, but he interrupted, saying "Rubbish, you only cause the problem, you do nothing about it!" That accusation stayed with me for a while - I wondered how WHO was causing the problem, other than by helpiing more people to survive various diseases and thus stay alive in greater numbers. Surely that was ethically sound? On the other hand, most of the large-scale attempts at population growth control - whether it iis setting an imposed maximum family size, or enforced sterilization – have been dubious ethically.

HIFA profile: Chris Zielinski: As a Visiting Fellow and Lecturer at the Centre for Global Health, University of Winchester, Chris leads the Partnerships in Health Information (Phi) programme, which supports knowledge development and brokers healthcare information exchanges of all kinds. He is the elected Vice President (and President-in-Waiting) of the World Association of Medical Editors. Chris has held senior positions in publishing and knowledge management with WHO in Brazzaville, Geneva, Cairo and New Delhi, with FAO in Rome, ILO in Geneva, and UNIDO in Vienna. He served on WHO's Ethical Review Committee, and was an originator of the African Health Observatory. He also spent three years in London as Chief Executive of the Authors Licensing and Collecting Society. Chris has been a director of the UK Copyright Licensing Agency, Educational Recording Agency, and International Association of Audiovisual Writers and Directors. He has served on the boards of several NGOs and ethics groupings (information and computer ethics and bioethics). chris AT chriszielinski.com. His publications are at https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Chris-Zielinski and https://winchester.academia.edu/ChrisZielinski/ and his blogs are http://ziggytheblue.wordrpress.com and https://www.tumblr.com/blog/ziggytheblue