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Linking Protection and Population |
 Ambien-Tema Centro de Periodismo Ambiental de la Alianza para Bosques Diane Jukofsky, directora, Nuria Bolaños, asistente infotrop@sol.racsa.co.cr  |
Soon after a 1989 presidential decree established the 1.8 million acre Calukmul Biosphere Reserve, in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, a local conservation group began working with communities outside the new protected area. The goal of Pronatura Península de Yucatán is to find ways villagers can improve their standards of living so they do not depend on the reserve for resources such as firewood, food, and farmland. Conservation groups have long worked in rural and often impoverished towns outside protected areas in this way. But now some groups, like Pronatura, are adding another element to their conservation strategies: family planning services.
According to Carlos Saavedra of the Summit Foundation, which provides funding to groups that link conservation with reproductive health issues, "easing human pressure on the natural environment and fulfilling reproductive health and other needs of the rural poor are equally important, and reinforcing goals".
In the Calukmul area, villagers are well aware that population pressures and their own activities have an impact on natural resources, reports Sayira Maas Rodríguez, a social anthropologist with Pronatura. Between 1980 and 1995, the population in the area quadrupled, from 6,858 to 24,295, due to immigration and a high birth rate. "People began to ask 'what lands are we going to leave to our children if more people come to the region?'" she says.
With the World Wildlife Fund and the University of Michigan Population-Environment Fellows Program, Pronatura researched the relationship between the area's demographics and environment and found that rapid growth and a lack of land-use planning are threatening the region's natural resources.
Maas Rodríguez says the group is planning a follow-up project that will: encourage residents to consider family planning options; support local health and education institutions; monitor the population rate; and work with villagers to better plan how land in the region is used.
Robert Engelman, vice president for research at Population Action International in Washington, D.C., would like to see more conservation groups link biodiversity protection and reproductive health services, although he understands the reluctance of many groups to take on the sensitive issue of family planning. What conservation groups should recognize, he believes, is that "women who gain control over their reproduction and have only as many children as they want to have, also gain the time to learn how to diversify their incomes and sustainably use natural resources".
Evidence suggests, he says, that when women have access to reproductive health care, they become better environmental stewards. He warns that it can be a mistake for conservation groups to undertake demographics analysis in the same communities where they plan to work. "If you count heads, then return to help with reproductive health services, it suggests that the reason you want to help is because you counted these people, and there are too many of them," he points out.
Saavedra notes that in addition to Summit, other private foundations in the U.S. are looking for opportunities to support partnerships among "development, reproductive health, and conservation groups that come together to search for practical answers to the challenges posed by high social inequities, high population numbers, and environmental degradation". @
Contacts:
Pronatura,
Calle 17, #188-A x 10, Col. García Ginerés,
CP 97070, Mérida, Yucatán, México,
Tel 99/25-3787
marodrig@tunku.uady.mx
Summit Fundation ,
1990 M Street, NW, #250, Washington, DC 20036 USA
Tel 202/785-1724,
Fax 202/857-0025
csaavedra@summitfdn.org
Population Action,
1120 19th Street, #550, Washington, DC 20036 USA
Tel 202/659-1833,
Fax 202/293-1795
re@popact.org
www.populationaction.org
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