Annual population review sees dire maternal death rate

Updated November 19, 2009 09:42:35

The 2009 UN population assessment says global maternal mortality rates remain tragic and warns that climate change presents another burden for the poor - and women in particular. The annual State of the World Population report from the UN Population Fund also confirms that some of Australia's closest neighbours, East Timor and Papua New Guinea, continue to see very high numbers of women dying in childbirth.

Presenter: Linda Mottram, Canberra Correspondent
Speaker: Najib Assifi, deputy director, Asia Pacific, UN population fund, the UNFPA; Bob McMullan, Australia's Parliamentary Secretary for International Development Assistance; Dr Janette Lindesay, Deputy Director, ANU Climate Change Institute

MOTTRAM: In Australia just four babies die for every thousand live births, maternal deaths run at about four per hundred thousand live births. Go slightly north though to the world's youngest nation, East Timor, and the statistics soar. 63 babies die per thousand live births, 380 women die giving birth. And where Australian women on average have fewer than two children, East Timorese women have seven.

Najib Assifi is deputy director for the Asia Pacific of the UN population fund, the UNFPA. He says with a population of just one-point-one million, it shouldn't be that way in East Timor.

ASSIFI: Because the country is small, the country is potentially rich, it has natural gas and oil resources. And so theoretically it should not be a major problem.

MOTTRAM: Political instability and poor governance - characteristics that plague developing countries - have been just two of the obstacles to tackling the issues in East Timor. It's the poor, not the well-off, who suffer these tragedies. And as the world's political leaders prepare tpo meet for the Copenhagen climate summit in less than three weeks, the UNFPA report this year focusses on climate change, pointing out that its also the poor - and particularly women - who're most likely to be hit hardest by climate change.

Speaking over the bells that page Australian MPs to the floor of the Parliament, to help launch the UNFPA report, Australia's Parliamentary Secretary for International Development Assistance, Bob McMullan.

McMULLAN: Overwhelmingly the poorest people in the world live on the most marginal land. And therefore are those most vulnerable to the consequences of climate change. This is not a coincidence. People tend to live on the most marginal land because they are excluded from the power structures and that is why they are poor and living on the most marginal land is simply a consequence.

MOTTRAM: And, also speaking at the launch, the UNFPA's Najib Assifi said the implications for women and their families would be huge.

ASSIFI: Throughout Asia, as in other parts of the world, women grow food, manage households and care for family members. Melting glaciers, droughts, storms and rising oceans will make it harder for them to secure food, water, energy for their families. This of course, this situation will simply aggravate a cycle of deprivation, poverty, inequity, which makes it harder to deal effectively with climate change.

MOTTRAM: But empowering women, including giving them education and control over their fertility, would help with climate change by relieving population pressure - and therefore to some degree greenhouse gas emissions too. But also by enabling communities to use grassroots understanding to find ways of adapting to climate change effects.

Failure, Najib Assifi says, would affect millions.

ASSIFI: A one metre rise in sea level could displace up to 100 million Asians mostly in Eastern China, Bangladesh and Vietnam. Most of the islands threatened with extinction are also in the Pacific region and also in other parts of Asia like in Maldives, Indonesia and the Philippines.

MOTTRAM: And eminent climate scientist, Associate Professor Janette Lindesay, also spoke in support of the UNFPA's view that women's knowledge in developing nations is vital in coping with climate change effects.

LINDESAY: The report, the State of the World Population in 2009, highlights the pivotal role of people, in particular women and populations not only in rapidly implementing sensible, practical adaptation strategies, but also in addressing the need for climate change mitigation and sustainable development more broadly.

MOTTRAM: The report suggests that family planning, reproductive health care and gender relations could influence the future course of climate change and affect how humanity adapts .. even as the world's political leaders struggle to reach agreement any time soon on a legally binding regime for tackling the problem globally.