Sustainability Videos & Lecture Series

Mindy Kinnard: The Global Institute of Sustainability hosts this Serendipitous Series where visitors to ASU’s campus discuss a range of environmental, social, and economic topics.

I have the pleasure of introducing our special guests, Doctor Jose Guzman, who is the Chief of Population and Development for the United Nations Population Fund based out in New York. He has a PhD in Demography from the University of Montreal. He has covered different areas during his career including population, dynamics, fertility, mortality, demographic transition, population projection, urbanization, aging issues, and more recently, population and climate change linkages.

He is interested in how to make results from research useful for policy making both at the national and sub-national level. During his visit to ASU, he wants to finalize a manual on use of census data for climate change and environmental analysis. He also wants to interact with researchers at ASU, particularly, in the area of urbanization, environment, and global sustainability.

Today, we are pleased to welcome Doctor Guzman.

Audience: [Applause]

Dr. Jose Guzman: Thank you very much and Happy Valentine for all of you.

I’m very pleased to be here. I’m very honored to receive this invitation from the Global Institute of Sustainability. I’m very happy to have this opportunity to share with you some thoughts about this linkage between population and environment, and population’s sustainable development.

I’ll provide you with some update on what’s happening in the preparatory process for Rio+20 Conference. The original title of my presentation it is one, People Centered Sustainable Development: Population Issues in the Rio+20 Negotiations but as you will see, I will be talking about also other related issues.

This is the Principle One of the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development in 1992. It say that human beings are at the center of concern for sustainable development. They are entitled to a healthy and productive life in harmony with nature.

I think this is very important because this first Principle of Rio Declaration set the tone for the discussion about sustainable development that–sustainable development that took place after that.

I’m going to now to mention what I’m going to talk about. First, I’m going to talk about Rio+20, why it’s relevant, what about the negotiation process, where are we now.

I would like also to provide some historical background about the concept of sustainable development and about how population has been included in the discussion in the past. I want to mention I would be referring to the Brundtland Report, Agenda 21 on the result of the High-Level Panel on Fundamental Sustainability.

Then I will talk to the population on sustainable development. How it was considered in the past, what is the current rationale that we are trying to use in terms of making possible that the population is included in the sustainable development and the way forward.

Let us talk about Rio+20. Why? I’m now using a quote from the co-chairs of the UN Secretary General High-Level Panel on Global Sustainability. This document have been released just last week. It’s a 100-page document but maybe one of the most important document on sustainability issue more recent.

They say and this is something taken by the news, "That the world is on the unsustainable path. We need to go to a new situation, one that brings equity and environmental concerns into the economic mainstream."

I think this summary from what it reflect–basically, what is this report about? What is Rio+20? I’m going to mention something because not all of you are on top of what’s happening about this kind of conference. For some people, it’s just another UN conference.

Let’s talk a little bit about Rio–what is Rio+20? The Rio+20 is the United Nation Conference on Sustainable Development. It will take place next June 20-22 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It take place just 20 years after the Earth Summit, the first Conference on Environment and Development, that took place in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro.

What is expected from this conference? Basically, governments and media groups are expected to agree on what range of measure to ensure global sustainability. I think that discussing what is Rio+20 in the context of the world that has been done by the Global Institute of Sustainability.

Here, at ASU, I think it’s very relevant. Why it’s relevant? It’s relevant because it’s a historical opportunity. A momentum is being created around Rio+20. A lot of people has been working, thinking, discussing, and reading and writing about sustainability. There is a lot of work, a lot of thinking, that is there and this is relevant, per se.

Independently, what happen in Rio? The organizers of the conference considered that this will be a blueprint to re-think economic growth, advance social equity, and ensure a momentum protection. You can see there the three component of sustainability development agenda.

What we call the three pillars of sustainability development there is the economic pillar, the social pillar, and the environmental pillar. It is expected also the Rio+20 is a chance to move away from business as usual and to act when poverty, at the risk of environmental destruction, and more importantly, build a bridge to the future.

I think this is important because what we are discussing is something that will have effect for the next maybe 20 years at least. It’s important that we have the discussion this in the context of our economic crisis.

What is the main two focus of the conference? Officially, the conference and the decision of the General Assembly of the United Nation mandated the countrymen–the United Nation to focus on two main issues for Rio+20.

The first one is to the team of green economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty reduction. It make clearly explicit the concept of green economy. There has been a lot of discussion after that. Even if country, they propose to the United Nation to accept these two teams, then many countries during the preparatory process were saying, "But we don’t believe too much about this concept," which would be talking about blue economy.

For example, a small island development of states. We don’t think maybe this is something–it’s throughout the–from developed countries to again keep the relationship between us–the divide between us.

There has been a lot of discussion about the issues there and we’ll be there and believe it or not, world economy will be a center part of the discussion in Rio on center part of the outcome document.

There is another topic that is not so substantive. It has to do with the institutional framework for sustainable development.

In Rio, 1992, there was discussion on that and the Agenda 21 mentioned some of these in relation to the need to develop a new institutional framework but not too much happened during this process. Now, there are discussion and very important discussion and the outcome document of Rio will include the component and how we are going to work on that.

There are at least two main issues that are being discussed. One is the reinforcement of UNEP; they say United Nation Environment Program, to make UNEP become the Environmental Agency of UN with broader representation from the countries. The other one is to create the Council on Sustainable Development.

We have a commission in the UN, Commission of Sustainable Development, but the idea is to create–it is a Council on Economic and Social Issue to create a new Council on Sustainable Development.

But, during the process, Columbia and other countries, in one of the preparatory meeting, proposed that we need to have new sustainable development goals because people working, particularly in the area of environment, they are not very happy with the idea of and the use of the Millennium Development Goals because the Millennium Development Goals don’t cover very well the issue of sustainability.

The issue of energy, for example, it’s not there. How we are going to talk about sustainability without talking about energy? Some countries propose that we include, as part of the Rio outcome document, that discussion on what we call sustainability development goals and the indicators to measure these goals as we have for the end of years. What we’re going to have out of that, I will mention later.

Some bureaucratic process, I think it’s important for you to have an idea how this is organized. This is the Secretary General of the Conference is the Under Secretary General for Economic and Social Affairs, Mr. Sha Zukang. Then we have two Executive Coordinators Elizabeth Thompson and Brice Lalonde and then have a lot of people here.

I’m just going to mention this is the people that in this high in the United Nation, they are working in preparing the compilation documents. We see them doing all the work that need to be done. It’s like the secured area, though, at the conference. Also, a bureau support has been created, including some countries–about 10 countries are included in this bureau and they are taking decision about how to organize the meeting, et cetera–some decision.

There is also regional preparations that I think are important. I’m going to mention a little bit about that. Then one of the most important part of this set of issues is that this have a partner from Global Sustainability that produce this report that I mention to you before.

To keep you up to date about the process. In black, what has already happened. In blue, what will happen.

This process started in 2010. It’s taking a lot of time; usually take a lot of time to do all of it. I’m not going to mention all this list because it’s maybe too boring to talk about that. Just to tell you that what we have now in the end of January, while I was here because I have been here in the last four weeks.

There was some discussion–the initial discussion this year with Iraq. This was the first time the country agree to discuss [inaudible 00:12:19] In March, again, we have the first round of informing informal negotiations. You know what is UN language?

Audience: [Laughter]

Dr. Jose Guzman: You all say, "What is that?" I guess my colleague that we have working there in the support team in this task force and I asked this morning, "Tell me why informing and informal because now I’m asking myself. I’m going to make a presentation and so people are going to ask me about this. What is this?"

He’s working with them to tell me, "I really don’t know."

Audience: [Laughter]

Dr. Jose Guzman: This is the kind of–you like to say, "Yes, we are going to make proposal but don’t think so huge because at the end, it will be in the form of discussion that we will have and at the end, the final negotiation in Rio, that you need to take me seriously.

There is a process. There is several meetings from now but the most important is that these preparatory meeting, committee meeting, in June, that will take place in Rio and then the final negotiation. You will know in advance that they will be discussing until the last minute of the last day–like 5:00 a.m. consulting, say, "Okay, okay, I agree with that. Okay. Okay."

After discussing one word or it come out something like this because this is how we do work. These negotiation start here because the first draft of the Zero Draft document, prepared by the secretary was just finalized by the end of December. How this document has been prepared?

It’s interesting because they decide to have a very participatory and open approach. Everybody, any one, and institution, NGOs, academia, governments, UN agencies, whatever, are allowed to post, to upload, their input to the Zero Draft.

They receive hundreds of inputs but then what to do with all that? They have to prepare something shorter. They took everything, basically, from the government because the government are the ones that decide about this. They use like searching for words and if there was not many countries proposing population and then the word population or demographic was not there, you must imagine that it was not going to be in the Zero Draft, the first version of the Zero Draft.

Anyway, there is a Zero Draft, first version. It’s in the website. You can go there and to look what is this document.

Let me talk a little bit about this Zero Draft because anything important–because even if there will be changes but the basic structure of the Zero Draft document, will remain and probably will be the structure of the outcome document of Rio.

The outcome document is called The Future We Want and it has five chapters: Preamble; Renewing Political Commitment; Green Economy in the context of sustainable development, the first objective; Institutional Framework for Sustainable Development, the second objective for the conference; and Framework for action and follow-up.

Something that may be interesting for you is that within the Framework for action and follow-up, they have identified some priority/key/thematic/cross-sector issues and areas. Probably you will identify yourself in your work here with some of these topics. Those topics will have and are supposed to have–nobody can assure now that they will be there, but are supposed to have a place in the outcome document of Rio. These include food security, water, energy, sustainable cities actually; this is the water they use, green jobs inclusion, oceans and seas. This says has more island development of states, natural disaster, climate change, forest and biodiversity, land degradation and desertification, mountains. Interesting they research a specific topic for mountains. Chemical waste.

Yeah, I say not because mountains are not important because we live here on a very nice mountain and mountains is really relevant for what’s happening in Phoenix. You know better than me but mountains have the same level of climate change.

Chemical and waste, sustainable consumption and production, education, and gender equality.

You would say, "What population is not there?" Well, this is the question. Just to give you a flavor of how things happen in the negotiation process. This is the paragraph, the first paragraph, of the–so, this first paragraph of the outcome document. The Zero Draft of the outcome document.

It say something very simple. "We, the heads of State and Government, having met at Rio de Janeiro, blah, blah, blah, resolve to work together for a prosperous, secure, and sustainable future for our people and our planet."

If I ask you, you have any problem with this, probably you will say, "No, I think it’s okay."

Country, though, don’t think in the same way. Look, this is the result of the first meeting on January 25-27.

Audience: [Laughter]

Dr. Jose Guzman: I change the name of the country because I don’t think at the moment it’s not available for everyone, so I changed by country A or group of country. I hope I didn’t leave any country like, you know.

Anyway and you see that the same blue is what in bracket that means that this been discussed. You will see there are seven proposals. "We, the heads of State and Government, represent," and some people say our country. Country C say, "No, ministers are not the leaders included in the version of sustainable society. Including business and academia."

Okay, and then if you look a little bit more in detail, what we have at the end is the following, "We have been meeting," we don’t know who are we but we know that we met in Rio de Janeiro from 20-22 June, resolved to have a sustainable future for our planet.

It seem like this is basic denominator of what in which we agree. Just to tell you that this is the process. This is the way it happen. It seems like a little bit funny now but actually, it take a lot of time and at the end, some of these country arrive to be the ones that are choosing in terms of their input and finally, this is what remain in the final document. Also, this is something related to the fact that it was the first time.

The most important part of this is that during the meeting in January 25-27, they just discussed the first two chapters. You remember the chapters?

We have not discussed the essence of the conference. The green economy, the context for sustainable development, and institutional framework. This is going to be discussed in the next round of negotiation.

What about these issues of sustainable development goals? Well, sustainable development goals there is not–and I’m talking about the information I have today. There is not an agreement what will happen in terms of the sustainable development goals. Something will be in the outcome document. You must be sure there will be some reference, maybe the creation of a commission or something, I don’t know.

In the meantime, what is the [inaudible 00:19:52] of this? This is the Department of Economic and Social Affair of United Nation is preparing a document that help countries in case they decide that they will be discussing the sustainable development goals. They have identified–this is the issue they are discussing now.

This is not a complete list but this does have the issue that they decided that they were going to discuss. They’re asking all agencies of UN or government to provide input to that. Obviously, we are going to provide input and we are going to say there is something need to be there in type of our issues.

These go to nutrition, safe drinking water, sustainable cities, sustainable energy, decent jobs, sustainable management of all oceans, and building preparedness and resilience to disaster. Some of these issue are the same that you identify in the list of the Zero Draft document.

Let me provide you with some historical background. I will try to be not very long in terms of this presentation but I think it’s important to link the current discussion in terms of what happened before.

As I mentioned, the Earth Summit took place in Rio in 1992. This Summit has had two main outcome documents. One was the Rio Declaration. The Rio Declaration, as I said, are 27 Principles. The first Principle was the one that I mentioned at the beginning of my presentation but there are but 27 Principles.

The other important outcome document of Rio 1992 was what we call Agenda 21. This is a substantive document. It’s a very long document, very comprehensive document.

Then we have the Johannesburg Summit in 2002. It was like Rio+10. This conference produced the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation because in the first ten year, countries agreed that, yes; we agree in a very nice outcome document, the Agenda 21, is fantastic but what’s happening in term of implementation?

There aren’t some words that appear in the UN language and the international language and those words change. Maybe you have two or three per year. This is my own calculation and for some year, they had some word that remain and the last two year, we say that the word that remain is implementation. Everybody’s talking about implementation. So, how to do it?

We have Rio Conference, the Rio+20, and what is expected from Rio+20 is a very short document. People are saying four-ten pages. I participate in one of the meeting and one of the country say, "We need just one or two pages. A political declaration then we can discuss–we can act an annex, telling country can do this or not, but this is their decision. The agreement should be no longer than one or two pages."

I don’t think this is what is going to happen. This Zero Draft is already 20 pages. I don’t know if they reduce–maybe in the way they’re reducing it I show you maybe they will have five pages.

Audience: [Laughter]

Dr. Jose Guzman: I think it’s important that, in this process, we need to refer to this famous Brundtland Report. Our common future that was written–this committee was chaired by Gro Harlam Brundtland, that’s why we call this report the Brundtland Report, the Prime Minister of Norway, at that time.

This can be considered as the mother of–not her, but the report, as the mother of the sustainable development concept. Two important concepts were defined at that time. First, the concept of sustainable development as a development that meets the needs of the person without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. This definition is just still there.

It’s important that it contain two concepts. The concept of needs but also the concept of limitation.

Then the other concept that was important is to consider sustainable development have three pillars. One for economic growth, another for social equality, another for environmental sustainability.

Now let’s move a little bit to the issue of population because you say, "When are you going to talk about population?" No, okay, let’s talk now. I’m going to see what’s happening in Brundtland Report, in Agenda 21, in ICPD Conference.

I’m going to introduce now the International Conference on Population Development that was the most important milestone in term of population development issues. They include an important component on sustainable development because it took place just a year after the Rio 1992, the Earth Summit.

The Brundtland Report it’s very comprehensive in terms of different issues but including population issues. It talk about choices that can make individuals and how those choices can influence the fact that the population could be stabilized next century with a range of six billion people. At that time, we were less than six, now we are seven billion people. We’re expected to be eight billion soon.

I talk about also that the population issues is not just the demographic issue and this is something that was reflected in the Cairo Conference, in the ICPD Program of Action of 1994. We need the countries’ government to provide people with facilities and education that allow them to choose the size of their family. They talk about these as a basic human right of self-determination.

I think it’s very comprehensive and then ask government to develop multi-faceted population policies and mention about the need for family planning and education, contraceptive, and services.

I think that the Brundtland Report is very comprehensive not just in considering population but also in considering the need to develop idea in groups of population issue in a broader concept of both. In term of the individual choices and the right for people to have their choices and to implement their decisions but also the implication of those choices.

In the Rio Declaration, the Principle 8 talk about one very important issue. It say, "To achieve sustainable development and a higher quality of life for all people, States should eliminate unsustainable patterns of production and consumption and promote appropriate demographic policies."

It’s there. It’s one of the Principle of Rio. In Agenda 21, it goes more explicitly and it talk about reproductive health program and services to ensure that women and men have the same right to decide freely and responsibly on the number and spacing of the children and to have access to effective reproductive healthcare and affordable access equal services.

If you look also here, it also say something like, "With their freedom and dignity and personally held values. Dignity and personally held values take into account ethical and cultural considerations. When keeping with freedom, dignity, and personally held values and take into account ethical and cultural consideration."

This was the request from some of the country that were not very happy with the idea that people have the right to exercise reproductive rights.

How can we do that? In some way, we say take into account some cultural considerations. That means that if you don’t agree with that, you can say, "Yeah, it’s because of cultural reconsideration. I don’t think I should provide to these services because in my culture, this against what–"

In some way, this was some kind of restriction imposed by some of the country that were not very open and in some ways some reluctant to this.

Fortunately, later in the Conference on Population Development, the discussion went further and the possibility for the needs for women and for couple to exercise the right to decide the number freely–the number of children they want to have and when they want to have is clearly specified in the conference.

The Principle 6 of the Conference on Population Development take, basically, the same Principle 8 from the Agenda 21 and say, "That a state to reduce or eliminate unsustainable pattern of production and consumption and promote appropriate policies including population related policies. It talk about, also, the need to facilitate the more ethical transition as soon as possible while fully respecting human rights.

This is the point. It’s not the manner to approach, it’s approach that’s based which they–any impact in term of population economics should be the result of appropriate human right based policies.

Now the report of the co-chairs of the UN Secretary General, High-Level Panel on Global Sustainability are very explicit in terms of increasing population growth. They have even a chapter on that. I think it’s very good what they have and they consider the need to consider the impact of population growth but also they talk about improving access to family planning, reproductive right, and health services as a condition that is fundamental for sustainable development.

Now this is like the background but now we have this Rio+20. We say, "Okay, what are we going to do in order to ensure that population issues are there," because it’s not like this that the things appear there. Every word that you see there, when you see there is something called "Job" or something called "Water" or something called "Energy" somebody said this is important.

We have an approach in terms of including different components. We work with the academia and we support seminar of high-level expert on population and environment. They prepare what they call the Laxenburg Declaration by the end of 2011 that was also posted in the website of UN.

We work with other UN agencies in order to convince them. We are supposed to be brother and sister of other UN organizations they are so convinced that population is relevant. Even in some case, they are just not convinced but I don’t think this should be discussed.

We organize a meeting and we were able to agree when a concept note on population sustainable development, we had the agreement of different UN agencies.

We also work with government organizing multiple briefings and at least three or four dinner, a lot of activities, trying to show the relevance of this topic and finally, we organized a meeting with the World Economic Forum with some of the Global Agenda Consulates on the World Economic Forum on energy, water, and food security and also with NGO’s.

We have done some contribution. This is a list of contributions that we have discussed. I’m not going to go through that but all this is in our website or the website of UN Rio+20.

What is the main conceptual approach that we have now in terms of including population issue in the Rio discussion? I think it’s important to mention here is that the population growth multiplies the challenge of sustainable development and right of state in achieving social development objective.

If we are talking about a world of seven billion, it’s not the same for sustainable development that we talk about a world of ten billion. It make a small difference for sustainability. When you see the prospect, a short-term effect, maybe you say, "No, but it’s not an issue."

I will show you later world implication in the long-term. We also say that the challenges can be only met by achieve to the green economy but also population-related policies, including universal access to reproductive health services, which reduce fertility, a slow population growth, and promotes sustainable urban and world development.

The issue here is not that the implication of universal access to reproductive health. That is one of the target of the Millennium development goals. The main target of the Conference on Population Development is that it’s not just that it has an impact on population growth; it’s that also have of an impact in terms of the capacity of people to take decision about their life. This is the central component of any agenda on sustainability.

What we know in terms of some facts. We know that population growth have declined in most of the countries of the world but we know that also the population numbers will continue to increase. Also, we know that in some countries, population remain very high, particularly in those more fragile countries.

Let’s take a looks about the trends. Let’s see the numbers. Okay, what you see here is what we call the medium variant of the population projection of UN. We are here, about seven billion, here; and then what the population projection say is that there is a high probability or some probability that the countries follows this path and then that means that we will be achieving some kind of stability by the second part of this century at about ten billion.

Later that, if you’ll see, the population projection of UN that go through 2300, you will see that there will be, I expect some decline but you know who knows what is going to happen tomorrow and who knows what is going to happen in one century.

This is just a projection and what’s happened is that people take this projection as the truth. That mean that country–yeah, country are going to–and then why we are going to worry about that. We are going to stabilize our population, yes. First, we need to know that from seven to ten, we have less than about 60 years. It’s like three billion more. Okay, and to from seven to eight, is just less than 50 years.

The most important issue here in this table is this, this is the population growth. If we increase in .5 the number of children that women have–this is the only difference between the two projections. That means that if you have a [inaudible 00:36:25] for 50 rate that is the number of children that women will have. If they follow the path of the current rate of fertility by age, this is the number of children they will have at their end of their reproductive life.

Let’s say, "No, it’s not going to be two. It will be 2.5 or it will be 1.5." This is the difference.

In the next thing here, this is not too much. This is not going to influence too much but by the end of the century, we are talking a range of six billion, slow decline from the current seven to six or close to 16 billion. Is this probable or this one probable? They are probabilistic projection that tell us about what will be–what is the probability.

Obviously, we have a probability that thinks we’ll be around here but the present is not defined. Demography is not destiny. We cannot say this will happen if things continue to be as if they were in the past. Country continue to invest in family planning. Couples continue to decide they will have less children, et cetera. Developed countries they don’t increase too much their fertility, by the way.

This is what happen. Let’s take India. India, you’ll see the range. India’s suppose to decline their population by the middle of this century. They will achieve like 1.7 billion but the range for them could be lower than 1 billion to more than 2.5 billion. If we take a country like India, what does that mean?

Let’s take the Democratic Republic of Congo to go to Africa. I have included here a new variant that they call The Constant Fertility. That mean what will happen in Congo, we keep the current fertility as it is, more than about five or more–five children per woman. That means that it will–this country could have 1.6 billion by the end of the century. Obviously, this is not going to happen because if this growth happen, a lot of things are going to happen that will create a situation, which is impossible to continue this path.

Let’s see something more realistic. Then we see in the case of Congo, that the population is now about close to 100 million and it is supposed to grow to 200 million. By the end of this century, Congo will have more than 200 million people.

We know a lot of things about the Democratic Republic of Congo. We know that if it equal this, in terms of implementing economic growth and implementing measure to reduce poverty and increase the coverage of social services, there is a probability that the population will grow to 150 million. Even in this context, by the end of the century, we will have between 150 or more than 300.

It’s something that we need to take into account. This is something relevant for sustainability and this is one of the issues that we have been using in terms of the most rate and why it is important. If we follow this one or this one, if country follow this one or this or this or this one, it will depend on what’s happened here. What are the actions that are taken by individuals? What are the choices and opportunities that people have in terms of implementing their reproductive decision?

Rio+20, I took some comment from the Brundtland Report because I think they are still relevant. This is what they wrote in terms of the difficulty included in population issue in the Brundtland Report. It was not an agreed document from the government; it was a report in which government participated.

They said, "The difficulties and considerable population that one of the more difficult concerns which we have to struggle in terms of bringing an agreement on that because of culture, religion, et cetera."

Maybe there is an issue also of timing included in population issue now in the discussion. I just put here the rate of population growth. This is world and this is developing countries.

The Brundtland Report was in 1987, in which we have a growth over 2.0 percent in developing countries. Rio was when we have still a little bit close to two but then Rio+20 is happen when we have a global population growth–now this just a little bit higher than one percent and even developing countries is about 1.3 percent.

Maybe now we have a different demographic situation. It’s more difficult to convince people that population growth is still an issue.

There are some probably good news. This is one of the proposal–one of the group of countries is to include–to say, "At least that we also are free by our commitment to the full implication of the program of action of the International Conference on Population Development."

There is some hope but you can say this is the kind of hope that we can have now to have, at least, some reference to the ICPD, to the Conference on Population Development, or to the world population.

What are the expectation? One, population issue will be considered in Rio+20. I don’t think they will be considered as they were in the Agenda 21 or even on Rio in 1992 in the Principles.

I think what is important is that the Rio offer a new framework. If there is a basic, at least, reference to the Conference on Population Development that means that we have something. If there is a reference of Agenda 21 that means that we are already there.

Also, I think it’s important the discussion of sustainable development goals because most of those goal are related to population issue including the one related, for example, to the Target 5B of the Millennium Development Goals on the universal access to reproductive health. We will continue to work on that.

We are working the next week or during this week or next week. We have to make proposal to this new revised document but most important is that we think that we believe that, including population is relevant because it’s a way in which we can put people at the center of sustainable development.

Beyond the issue of population, I think the Rio is relevant for everyone, particular for this institute because it create a new momentum. It create an agenda in which many people and many country will be working to the lengths of this new agenda. I think for that is relevant.

If you will be visiting countries after June and talk about sustainability, I’m sure most of the country will refer to you to the agreement of the outcome document in Rio.

Thank you very much. Just have some reference and my contact. There are some books that I bought in case you are interested. One of on Population Climate Change and the other one is not so new but I think it’s interesting on Global Frontier of Urbanization.

Thank you.

[Applause]

Mindy Kinnard: We have some time for some questions?

Dr. Jose Guzman: Yes.

Audience: I fully agree with the importance of population and family planning information. What’s your reaction to the current United States’ political climate where universal family planning is being challenged and paying for it abroad is being challenged even more strongly? How are we gonna achieve your goals with what’s happening in the US today?

Dr. Jose Guzman: Well, I think that the United States’ position have changed during the different governments, republic, and some democrats. For example, United Nation provide some funds where I work. When some governments arrive, they cut the funds to us and then we don’t have resources from US for many years. With a new government arrive and then we got some results and we got again.

I think the present situation is, and it has to do with internal situation of your country, in which even in a democrat government, there are some discrepancy on how to mange several issues.

It seems that, from what I can read in the news that these discrepancies are even increasing. I think most of these results are related to the present economic crisis and the implication on every aspect of the life of the people. I think what’s happening, specifically; now, in term of the discussion on family planning is the result of these divide.

I think the most important part is that if we go to the ICPD Program of Action, it has been agreed by most–all of the country of the world. Just some of them make some comments say, "Yes, I agree with everything except with that," but this is the basic agreement that we have. Countries have agreed that they will continue supporting that.

What’s happening in terms of the internal situation, one country, obviously, is important in the case of US because it have an important effect everywhere. What will happen internally is something which we cannot have any influence. We can just say, "Family planning for everyone."

Not just because of population of the world. It will happen in the future that this won’t be the most important aspect. Maybe on the contrary, it will be but on the opposite side, because people have just one children that means that the population will decline as is happening in many countries.

It’s not an issue of population growth. It won’t be an issue in the future but it will continue to be an issue in terms of–for some people, they don’t want that we talk about issue that take place inside their houses, to say no way. For many year, those are personal issues.

I think the most of the country of the world, there is some recognition and understanding that women have rights. One of the important rights they have is the right to decide how many and when–how many children they want and what to do if they want to have less than five or three or seven.

Audience: I’m curious about what your hope is for the desegregation of the statistics? Do you think they’ll be broken down–for example, population statistics, do you think they’ll be broken down by class, sex and gender in looking at population growth overall?

Dr. Jose Guzman: Yeah. Let me use this opportunity to say something I didn’t say. When we talk about population, if we look at what’s happening, also in the previous conference, there are two complimentary approach. One is population and what about individual choices and how those choices influence their life but also impact the population world.

The other issue is how we use information from demographic change and demographic dynamics for planning. This is the second–the second is refer to what to your question. Obviously, we need to have the information as desegregated as possible.

For example, I just made a presentation on a more complete issue on how to use population data, particularly from census, for an environmental analysis.

One of these was that you need to have this information desegregated in various small areas, very, very small. Not just about the total number of people but also who are women or men, older person or children, et cetera. Obviously, desegregation of information is key for anything we do and we can do in this area.

Audience: I had a question somewhat related. You talk about big numbers and people tend to like big macroscopic seven, eight, ten million. Yet you may have a country that may be perfectly sustainable economically and socially with a 10 billion world population but a country like Congo, who may already be in trouble.

How important is it to have these world groupings with very broad agreements when that may not–do those sort of agreements also capture what has to be looked at, at a more of a microscopic per country view?

Dr. Jose Guzman: Well, those agreement are very general in most cases. In some cases, they mention, specifically. For example, the case of least developed countries. There was a conference last year on least developed countries and Congo is part of this group of countries. The poorest of the poor are those countries. Then in this conference, it’s more specific about those countries and their needs. I’m sure part of the conclusion of this meeting of last year will be included in the outcome document of Rio.

There is not a specific recommendation for countries in this category and that category. In some cases, there are some references. It’s like for a country to take this and to adapt this framework for their specific needs.

I didn’t mention something that is really very relevant and I didn’t mention, not because it’s not relevant, but because I think–I have not time to go in details in the process.

One of the most important demographic process is not just population growth. It will be population growth in the cities. Population living in urban areas. These will be the most important challenge. In some way, if we talk about demographic issues already included in Rio, urbanization is there and sustainable cities. The concepts of sustainable city is there in Rio. It’s already there. I think it will be there in the outcome document, too.

I think, also, this is relevant for the work that this Institute is doing because it is part of the work that you are doing as far as I know from what I have read or talked with some of your colleagues.

I think, yes, we need to go more in detail with this agreement to what specific countries and based on their specific needs. Obviously, countries are in conflict. This is a different category. What you can do? You cannot just go to say, "Okay, this is in Rio, government should do this and this and that."

In case in which government have just control over the capital or part of the capital. You think, obviously, that this issue need to be tailored to the specific needs of the countries.

Audience: I’m a PhD student from School of Sustainability and I have two questions. First, we know that a sustainable development is cooperation, is kind of symphony not solo. I’m wondering what do you think the role of academia [inaudible 00:52:26] can help in the process to achieve the end mate in land and development goals?

That is my first question and the second I think it’s very important to integrate demographic issues with all of variety kinds of [inaudible 00:52:42] issues. How to ensure that a census that are collected and to proceed for better-detailed analysis to meet the needs of adaptation and mitigation policies? Thank you.

Dr. Jose Guzman: You suppose I will be here for half an hour or more.

Audience: [Laughter]

Dr. Jose Guzman: One hour just for your question. Yeah, but just be very–in terms of the last one, the issue of–no, the first one, the role of academia. I think it’s interesting because you cannot think in terms of global sustainability without science. You cannot talk without the research being conducted by an institute like this one, about the result of your research in different universities and research center. It is impossible.

How this issue is considered? I mentioned, in our case, what we did we organized a specific meeting but also we organized other kind of meeting with people, researcher. This is the way we proceed. In this case, I think one of the most important input went to this report on the High-Level Panel on Global Sustainability. This document has been produced with input and meetings. There was a lot of discussion and most of it came from the discussion.

The only work that has been done in the issue of climate change by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. That is basically a scientific government community. Basically, in terms of result of research.

I think academia there and it should be there. Most importantly, I think it’s relevant for institutions like the Global Institute of Sustainability to be there, to be part of this process because I think this is what is going to guide the action at the country level. Maybe not too much in US because US is a very big country and in many cases, the decision taken by UN are not so relevant.

For developing countries, the outcome document will be very relevant and if they show water and energy’s there, you should be there. You should be supporting countries in implementing their plan, their policies in relation to water, energy, gender, et cetera, on those issues.

Your second question was about data?

Audience: Census data, what that means?

Dr. Jose Guzman: I think it’s another issue. I think what we need to do is to be more aware of the different kind of data that are being produced. There is a lot of discussion now in term of using the famous big data, basically, for business.

How can we use this big data toward sustainability? I think there is some progress. There are people that are using different kind of way to map information, to participatory mapping, et cetera. I think there is a very important evolution in that area that maybe will change, not completely, but will change the way we produce, analyze, and assimilate it.

Audience: I wanna ask about the reduction in the rate of population growth we are already experiencing. It seems quite important to understand the causes of that but it seems likely that some of the causes of that are related, specifically, to family planning policies, availability of education, and contraception, and so on.

Other causes of that may not be so closely related to family policy, per se–family planning policy per se, such as better economies or women’s rights or other things that lead to these kinds of decisions.

I wonder, as a strategic matter, whether you think it’s better to focus on the strictly family planning related policies or might it be equally useful and maybe less politically fraught to focus on some of the other policies that also could lead to a demographic shift?

Dr. Jose Guzman: Well, this is a very important question and it relate to the discussion that had been there for many, many years about what is most important economic development or family planning. Actually, there is not an answer for that. I think it is a combination in this case because in some cases, it doesn’t matter if you–what kind of family planning programs you develop, there must be some level of some threshold in terms of economic development.

The way the government is organized something that must be there to allow for this change. We know that the many sub-Saharan countries of Africa and women they say they want to have five, six, seven children. You are there just with family planning are you going to make a change? No. This is actually what happened in the past in many countries.

There is not a way. That’s why when we talk about family planning, we need to talk with a broader concept of allowing people to exercise some rights but also there’s a right to have education and this is what we think in many countries. Let’s take for example, the case of Ethiopia, in which the women, the girls, are married very early, seven year, eight years. The parent decide. Then what is the right of these women to take decision about their life?

It’s not just family planning. It’s about first, before family planning, it’s about having the possibility to eliminate this situation that in some cases, to be considered cultural but actually it’s the result of discrimination and huge gender inequality.

In those country, the way we work is supporting countries and develop polices to really–first, to eliminate this practice. Then for those women that are able to–not to marry so young, then they have the possibility to decide when they want to have–but this is a process and it’s not just family planning, per se, providing contraceptives because that has shown that it doesn’t work.

At the same time, we cannot just wait for the women to become educated and then when they are educated, we will provide them with the means to take to implement their decision. I think that both need to be together. It’s not one without the other in some way.

We have the case of Bangladesh that has had a very important decline in fertility. Bangladesh is a very poor country. That means that you don’t have to wait until the country develop to implement some population programs. It depends how it is implemented, the basic condition; and in the case of Bangladesh, I think it was important.

The way the decision were taken and the way the government was organized and at least the–because how we take a decision over our life based on assumptions. You don’t know what will happen in the future but you take some decision because you think, "Yes, I will have probably this job and will keep the salary and then I can have a mortgage for ten years or twenty years," because we make decision based on assumptions.

Then what assumptions people have is very relevant. In a country in which there is no possibility for education for girls, that assumption is not in the mind of women. It’s just not there. How can they decide about their future life if they don’t imagine that we have a future? At least not a future in which they are educated and they can take decisions by their own.

It’s important you make the question because it allow me to tell you that this is not–I didn’t come here to sell family planning.

Audience: [Laughter]

Dr. Jose Guzman: I’m sorry, I think you were–but anyway, after. Yeah. Sorry.

Audience: I guess there’s some pattern that’s been borne out by evidence of when the prosperity in a country reaches a certain level and it’s not worldly high, that reproduction rates drop way down without any kind of policy on the part of the country at all. This has happened in the Western world and maybe is starting to happen elsewhere in some developing countries.

What I’m wondering is–I mean I’m talking about kind of the same thing here but everybody submits this list of goals and problems that they wanna address within this little category of a topic, right, so demographics and mountains and whatever. Given that these certain things interact to produce an outcome, I just wonder how useful it is to–I mean that’s sort of the bigger question. Sort of bigger question.

How useful is it to frame these questions within a category and not consider the interactions between them? Also, is my source of information correct that there is this incidence of this drop off in fertility once prosperity in a country reaches a certain point?

Dr. Jose Guzman: Well, that doesn’t mean that fertility can’t increase is something that–

Audience: No. Is that people–suddenly women or families start being able to–they go from having 11 children to 3 children or whatever without any outside sort of coercion? It’s just they–or helps because their kids are less likely to die once a certain level of prosperity is reassured. Once the economy becomes richer, than everything costs more and now they can only afford to feed three kids instead of eleven. I don’t know.

Dr. Jose Guzman: Studying on the fertility has been a subject of a study for many, many years. Different theories, different approaches. There is some common understanding of what–it seems too easy to–it’s something like so basically, how many children you have but it’s very complex in terms of framing, putting in that conceptual framework. What did really did determine it?

We have seen for some developed countries more rising fertility, particularly, northern countries. The hypothesis is that maybe in those countries, the situation of the women and it’s the policy that are in place in those country. Basically, some northern countries are good but also the economic situation on the level of prosperity, not just in terms of the level of prosperity but also in terms of the distribution of resources.

How an equal of equally society. We know that even in the United States, we have a group of people, women having a high fertility. Not because they are part of some religion groups that think that having more children is good for some reason but just because they don’t–there are problems in terms of their decisions. They have to go through abortion in order that–in the way that women from developing countries go.

If you imagine a society–it doesn’t matter what you think about abortion and I’m not going to talk about that. This is like a complicated issue. It doesn’t matter what you think about that but everybody agree that it’s better to have less abortion. Why to expose women to have abortion? I think there is, particularly, and I’m talking–let me be very clear.

In those countries, there is no way you can have an abortion and ensuring the life of the women. Many women in developing country expose their lives and secure abortion and with a lot of complication for their life. This, also, happening in some developed countries, not in all developed countries.

I think the issue what define the fertility and what will be defining the future? All this discussion in China, for example, what define why China has a lower fertility because the one child policy or because they wanted to have less kids? We have career. Career have lower fertility in China without any one-child policy.

It’s what policy define and what will happen in the future for many countries of Europe, central Asia, and Eastern Europe, particularly. The issue of low fertility is the issue now is a problem. We are trying to work with them in term of see what’s happen with this. We are not just working with the high fertility country but we are also trying to for low fertility country.

In that case, it’s not an issue of family planning. Even if they have some problems, see there’s programmed family planning, but particular issue related with the choices that women have. They don’t have too many choices in many cases but they have other kind of problem.

In terms of the how population will be included in the final document, I think we are not trying to have a chapter. We just forgot about the idea, have a chapter on population. It’s not possible. We have tried hard and now what we are trying to do is to connect to several issue.

One of the area that we want to connect and I think we got a good result outside the discussion in Rio is in terms of putting population in these triangle in which now we understanding the issue of food security, energy security and water security. We’ve considered population need to be included in this triangle. It’s now considered one of the important framework in the discussion of sustainability.

Before everybody discuss about those issues separate. Water, energy, and food. Now we realize that there is no more–it’s not possible any more to talk about those issue without connecting to the other two, at least.

Audience: I like what you had to say that we can’t wait ’til education rises because how long does that take? I’ve always heard that issue and with the lady here was talking about economics. We can’t always wait until a country becomes economically–like not necessarily America but it increases with more opportunity. I’m glad that you say that we have to have that population drawn into the framework because we can wait too long and by then it’s too late.

I notice, though, have you ever thought, with your group, there are green shows now on TV that are reaching out to the young people. I always try to email ’em. I says it’s nice to talk about recycling and making your home green and all this but you need to touch on population, what fuels all these problems because we increase the need for–we always try to get people to consume then we deplete–we destroy resources. We’ve destroyed the forest and everything else. We use more water and population fuels all these problems.

Have you tried to work with some of these TV programs and tried to reach out to the public to talk about population and possibly the urban sprawl because it is a touchy subject? I know they’re on TV but they might be scared they’ll be cut off–

Dr. Jose Guzman: We have tried.

Audience: –because of the cultural religious aspects?

Dr. Jose Guzman: We have tried to do a lot of ways, different ways to communicate those issues including TV. Not just at the global level because I work in New York more at the global level but also we have regional offices and we have country offices. The regional offices and the country offices have done a lot of work in terms of sensitizing population.

Now that you’ve mentioned the issue of educating people, I think one of the important chapter of this document. If you have time to read it, it have a very long chapter what they call, Empowering People to Make Sustainable Choices.

I think this is about the location. This is about transformation because we talk about the Rio and the Agenda 21. In Cairo, they talk about two ways. One is population could help but population, even if you reduce the population to half we have now but you increase the particular consumption that we have, in some countries, it will sustainable.

What we are seeing here, it’s just not about populations. It’s about creating a new way for production and particularly for consumption to help people to make what they call sustainable choices. To empower people to make sustainable choices.

I think this is really one very important issue and in this area, it’s more the young people. It’s through the young people that–

Audience: My generation, they don’t care. I don’t even talk to ’em. It’s a waste of my time.

Dr. Jose Guzman: For example here, I am based. I had the opportunity to be here in the NASA Space Facility Center. They have a place in which they bring students from all over the world and they train there in a scientific way about space, about everything. They involve things–research in some way and they make a project with them.

I think you have false–I don’t know. Maybe I’m saying something that is not correct but if you have this School of Sustainability maybe you have something you can do, too, in the same way to start training people. To a student from different age to understand why is it relevant.

In a city like Phoenix, in which the age of sustainability is so evident, I think you have the best space for discussing those issues.

Audience: Could I ask a question about the timeline, maybe we could go back to that slide? Is that possible?

Dr. Jose Guzman: Today?

Audience: To the timeline.

Dr. Jose Guzman: Of the process of negotiation, you say?

Audience: Uh-huh.

Dr. Jose Guzman: Yeah, I think we can go there.

Audience: I’m curious about which parts of the process are transparent and which allow for civil society input?

Dr. Jose Guzman: Sorry. By the way, this presentation–I don’t know it will be available on your website. It could be available. You can use it, copy, paste it. I don’t care. Don’t worry. Use it.

I think it’s at the beginning. I talk a lot. Okay, you say what?

Audience: Which parts of the process are transparent and which are open to public comment?

Dr. Jose Guzman: All of this process are–let’s say for example here, this informing informal negotiation. It’s some meeting in United Nation place. If you are an institution, you are represented, and you are registered, you can attend the meeting.

There is no place in most of these negotiations for anybody to talk. Just to government. You can be there but you cannot say anything. I’m talking about it including us. You are just there. We cannot say anything. It’s just governments that are and in all this process, when they talk about negotiations, they ask if they have–the country, the government, they have question, they say, "I would like to have the opinion of this agency of UN to tell me about this."

If they don’t ask–what is? Don’t a