“Sisters are doin’ it for themselves, standin’ on their own two feet and ringin’ on their own bells,” sang Aretha Franklin and the Eurythmics’ Annie Lennox in a 1985 hit song.

Worldwatch – On International Women’s Day 2016 today (March 8), is it fair to ask whether sisters also are doing it for the earth? Or, put differently, could the empowerment of women and girls contribute to environmental sustainability—to a world that meets human and nature’s needs in perpetuity?

That’s the question we’re asking in the Family Planning and Environmental Sustainability Assessment (FPESA) as part of our search for a scientific basis for the proposition that wider use of family planning is good for sustainability. Not that any such justification should be needed for women and girls’ well-being. Equal rights and opportunities are their own reward, and are worth striving for no matter what. And there’s no way that saving the environment should be seen as women’s work or a special obligation for females. It’s human work, and it obligates us all.

Yet a practical question arises: Might people of both sexes who care about sustainability be more likely to advocate for gender equality and an end to sexual violence if research demonstrated that a world of secure and powerful women would be better off environmentally? Tiếp tục đọc “Women’s Empowerment and the Environment: What Does Science Say?” →