A climate justice case study about building cultural appetite for policy change.
All people deserve to live with dignity. They also deserve the power to shape their own futures in safe, sustainable communities. When corporations dump toxic waste in our neighborhoods, they do more than poison the planet; they harm our reproductive health, fertility, and abilities to provide community care. This is why, to better understand climate and environmental justice, we have to talk about reproductive justice.
Historically, climate organizations argued there are too many people on the planet, and we need to stop some people—specifically, communities in the Global South—from having children. Similarly, early reproductive rights activism in the US focused on birth control and abortion access without addressing the racist and eugenicist underpinnings of to whom these services were encouraged, coerced, or forcibly provided.
Population control was the name of the game.
This began to change at Cairo’s 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), when 179 countries agreed. International development policy—including family planning and climate policies—should shift away from population control and move toward supporting individual human rights, reproductive health, and ending gender-based violence.
Several legacy organizations still have the word population in their name: United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), Population Council, Population Connection, Population Action International (PAI), Population Services International (PSI), Population Connection, and Population Reference Bureau (PRB).
Some organizations shapeshifted from population control, anti-immigration, racism, and eugenics to fake environmentalism. Today, they argue the quickest climate solution would be fewer babies in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The racism is evident. A single child born in the United States has as a carbon footprint more than ten times larger than a child born in sub-Saharan Africa
Other organizations, such as UNFPA, adopted the Cairo approach and adjusted the way they operated. We’re aligned with this framework. With President Joe Biden in the Oval Office and the Global Gag Rule repealed, a US-based nonprofit climate organization partnered with us on an awareness campaign rooted in justice, community leadership and human rights.
Before We Started
They were attempting something critically important but extraordinarily difficult. They wanted Americans to advocate for the permanent end to a harmful US foreign policy that few even know existed, the Global Gag Rule. The policy prohibits foreign NGOs receiving US global health funding from providing, counseling about, referring for, or advocating for abortion services—even if they use their own, non-US funds to do so. This negatively impacts healthcare access, maternal mortality, and other areas of global health.
The climate organization wanted to carefully launch a comprehensive awareness campaign in a culturally appropriate way that centered rights and justice rather than population control. But, they faced several barriers:
- Complex messaging: They needed to navigate nuanced territory between climate advocacy and reproductive justice without perpetuating harm.
- Legacy burden: Their organization’s embarrassing history and name reflected the problematic population control era.
- Credibility gap: They were sometimes shunned by others in the reproductive justice space due to associations with their historical origins.
- Limited reach: They had a medium-sized audience with limited capacity to reach beyond those already converted.
What Changed
From Advocacy Siloes to Cross-Movement Coalitions
We paired our founder—the first Black American woman with a syndicated magazine and newspaper sex columnist and a recognized voice at the intersection of reproductive justice, racial justice, and cultural change—with the UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health. For the digital action campaign, Twanna focused on educating US audiences why they should care about international reproductive health policy implemented in their name. The UN Rapporteur brought medical expertise and firsthand accounts of the Global Gag Rule’s damning impact on the ground.
From Sectoral Isolation to Intersectional Understanding
We co-created messaging and provided frameworks for talking about climate justice and reproductive justice without lifting eugenicist messaging or dehumanizing people in the Global South. Perhaps this was our most significant conceptual contribution. We helped a climate organization that works in reproductive health (or a reproductive organization that works in climate—the slash itself was part of the problem) better understand what’s actually happening at the intersection of these movements.
From Limited Reach to Amplified Influence
By partnering our founder’s platform and credibility with the UN Special Rapporteur’s authority, we created bridges between communities that don’t always talk to each other: climate activists, reproductive health advocates, human rights experts, and communities of color who have every reason to be skeptical about population-focused climate messaging.
The extended campaign reached more than 900,000 people and attracted online engagement from: Poor People’s Campaign; global reproductive health organizations Ipas, Safe Abortion Action Fund, Women’s Global Network for Reproductive Rights, Reproductive Justice Honduras, and Reproductive Health Network Kenya; media outlets Politico and National Public Radio (NPR), including Morning Edition and the Throughline podcast hosted by Rund Abdelfatah and Ramtin Arablouei; and dozens of reproductive health professionals, human rights defenders, journalists, and advocates across Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the United States.
The Lasting Impact
We didn’t erase the organization’s problematic origins, nor would we want to. Revisionism isn’t our style. Their history exists and truth matters. But we helped them take concrete steps toward building a different future in which conversations about climate, reproductive rights, and justice happen in ways that do not cause harm. We demonstrated to climate organizations how to talk about global health through a lens that centers human rights, bodily autonomy, and global justice.
Reproductive healthcare access is a climate justice issue because people need care, resources, and healthcare to build resilient communities in a changing world. Climate change is a reproductive justice issue because environmental degradation, toxic exposure, and climate disasters directly impact fertility and pregnancy outcomes. We helped make that connection clear and actionable, rooted in the leadership of Black women who understand that justice is indivisible.
When organizations want to repair harm created by their legacies, they need more than good intentions. Sometimes, they need strategic partnerships with voices that communities trust, frameworks that center justice over control, and the courage to do hard work publicly. This campaign demonstrated all three.
Ready to do the same? Get us on your team.