Tuesday April 1, 2008
Paul Hanley
The StarPhoenix

The first principle of ecology — that everything is connected — helps us understand why there are links between apparently disconnected things, like the status of women and environmental sustainability.

A critical factor in environmental sustainability is the size of the human population and one critical indicator for reduced population growth is high female status.

“Tackling the gender gap between men and women worldwide is critical for the well-being of half the world’s population,” says Robert Engelman, author of the forthcoming Worldwatch book More: Population, Nature and What Women Want.

“An added benefit is that when women have the same health status, rights and opportunities as men, population growth is more likely to slow and eventually end. That is essential for both social and environmental sustainability.”

Engelman’s view is based on an analysis of statistics from the United Nations Population Division and the World Economic Forum, which compare national fertility rates with scores on a global “gender-gap index” in 128 countries.

A striking example of a “gender-sustainability gap” is the country of Yemen, according to journalist Alistair Lyon. Yemen is one of the poorest countries in the world and has severe resource limitations, especially a lack of water. Not surprisingly, it also has very low female status and an extremely high fertility rate — about 3.4 per cent. Incredibly, the country’s population is expected to increase from 22 million today to 71 million by 2050, a rise of 255 per cent.

Behind this very high, unsustainable growth rate is the fact that some 67 per cent of women in Yemen are illiterate. Only 39 per cent of school-age girls are enrolled in primary school.

Experience around the world shows that as women become better educated, birth rates quickly drop toward sustainable levels. But Yemen is very much a male-dominated society, with cultural and religious values that place great value on a large number of male offspring and little value on the status of girls and women.

This value system is already wreaking havoc in the country, where rising population and poor environmental practices are having a dramatic effect on water supplies. Women must spend hours every day collecting water from rapidly dwindling sources.

Yemen relies on groundwater, but nature cannot recharge it fast enough to keep pace with the rising demand. In 19 of 21 of the country’s aquifers, more water is being consumed than can be recharged. Village wells and cisterns fill during short rainy seasons and gradually run dry as water is consumed or evaporates.

People must then pay for water trucks to struggle up the rocky tracks to their villages.

For Yemen, where 45 per cent of the population survives on less than $2 a day, buying water is a big problem. Nearly 75 per cent of Yemenis still live in the countryside, but an accelerating drift to the cities has also overwhelmed urban water utilities.

To read the entire article, please visit the StarPheonix at:
StarPheonix