FAQs

Barriers to family planning are the physical, financial, educational, social, religious, personal, legal or other obstacles preventing women and girls from accessing contraception.

Physical barriers include a lack of healthcare services being available within a feasible geographical distance. Financial barriers include services being too expensive. Educational barriers include misinformation or inadequate information leading to fear of using contraception. Social barriers include stigma, religious views and opposition of male partners. Legal barriers include parental consent restrictions preventing adolescents from initiating their own healthcare.

These barriers are certainly health, wellbeing and empowerment issues. But they are also conservation issues when the barriers lead to a range of negative outcomes not only for women, girls and families, but also for the environment.

Yes, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change noted in its 2014 Fifth Assessment Report the value of family planning for improving health, slowing population growth and reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. UNEP’s fifth Global Environment Outlook specifically calls for greater access to family planning programmes along with women’s education.

No, there are demographic and other challenges resulting from population growth, but we are saying the problem is barriers to family planning. Every country on earth has barriers to family planning, to differing degrees. The Sustainable Development Goals state the target of universal access to reproductive health-care services, including for family planning, information and education, and the integration of reproductive health into national strategies and programmes.

No, and we do not think nurses should manage conservation programmes either. However, just as you do not need to own a wind turbine to accept the benefits of renewable energy, you do not need to run a hospital to accept the importance of barrier-free access to reproductive health services. Barriers to family planning are not only relevant to those who are passionate about improving health, gender equality, empowerment and economic development, but also to those who are passionate about the conservation of biodiversity, the environment and sustainability.

There would be greater infant and maternal health and lower infant and maternal mortality and morbidity. Current estimates of unintended pregnancy around the world suggest that hundreds of millions of women would have fewer children and/or would begin motherhood later in their lives if they faced no barriers to their right to use safe and effective modern contraceptive. For both demographic and non-demographic reasons, removing barriers is a force for environmental conservation that too few in the conservation field currently recognise or harness.

It should not be, although anything linked to sex might make some people uncomfortable. At the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development family planning was positioned within a broad context of reproductive health and human rights. The foundation for voluntary and human rights-based family planning can be traced back even further, to the 1968 International Conference on Human Rights, which included in its proclamation that “parents have a basic human right to decide freely and responsibly the number and spacing of their children.” Given this has been a recognised human right for more than half a century no one can rationally say that removing barriers to family planning is controversial. It is a relevant and appropriate cause for conservationists to embrace, for the sake of their missions, for the lives of women and children and for a better world.