1 May 2012

UN / POPULATION SUSTAINABILITY

Introducing a recent report by Britain’s renowned Royal Society on the link between population and sustainability, Nobel prize-winning biologist Sir John Sulston said today that the 21st century was a critical juncture for the planet, and called on countries to reduce consumption and give women better access to family planning. UNTV / FILE

Posted at: May 1, 2012 5:48 pm

Duration: 02:23

Available in: SD

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Full script

STORY: UN / POPULATION SUSTAINABILITY
TRT: 2.23
SOURCE: UNTV / UNICEF / WORLD BANK / ILO / UNAMA
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / NATS

DATELINE: 1 MAY 2012, NEW YORK / FILE

SHOTLIST:

FILE – 2011, UNITED NATIONS HEADQUARTERS, NEW YORK CITY

1. Wide shot, exterior United Nations Headquarters

1 MAY 2012, NEW YORK

2. Wide shot, press conference
3. Cutaway, journalist
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Sir John Sulston, Nobel Laureate:
"Population and consumption must be considered together. There's been far too much trouble caused by separating them and talking about one or the other. In thinking about people's well-being and their impact on the planet we need those two together."

FILE – WORLD BANK – 2010, INDIA

5. Med shot, train and passengers
6. Med shot, people walking in train station

FILE – WORLD BANK – 2009, NIGERIA

7. Med shot, road construction in Lagos
8. Wide shot, crowded streets

1 MAY 2012, NEW YORK

9. SOUNDBITE (English) Sir John Sulston, Nobel Laureate:
"The more we looked the clearer it became that inequality lies very much at the heart of what we need to achieve in going forward to sustainability. We need equality of access to resources. And this means – let us not dissemble – that developed countries must reduce their material consumption and the less developed, the developing countries will need to stabilize the material consumption in order to allow the most deprived to consume more."

FILE - ILO - APRIL 2005, UNITED STATES

10. Med shot, fast-food drive-through window

FILE – UNTV – APRIL 2008, NEW YORK CITY

11. Pan right, French fries being served

FILE – UNICEF – 1 FEBRUARY 2012, MAURITANIA
 
12. Wide shot, woman washing dishes
13. Close up, food in pot
14. Med shot, woman stirring food in pot
15. Med shot, woman feeding children
16. Close up, child drinking
17. Med shot, girl being measured

1 MAY 2012, NEW YORK

18. SOUNDBITE (English) Sir John Sulston, Nobel Laureate:
"These women want to choose when and how many children they have, just like other women around the world. And we could achieve this. We think that a cost of maybe six billion dollars per year would allow family planning to be made available to everybody, by choice, as a voluntary option, which at the moment is denied to all those people."

FILE – UNICEF - JULY 2010, WONDOGENET, ETHIOPIA
 
19. Pan left, woman and children at health clinic

FILE – UNICEF - 28 MAY 2010, ORISSA STATE, INDIA

20. Wide shot, pregnant woman walking into a primary health centre
21. Med shot, pregnant woman being checked by nurse

FILE – UNAMA - DATE UNKNOWN, AFGHANISTAN

22. Wide shot, maternity room at Indira Gandhi Children's Hospital in Kabul

STORYLINE:

Nobel prize laureate Sir John Sulston today (1 May) told reporters at United Nations (UN) headquarters in New York that the 21st century is a critical juncture for the planet, and called on countries to reduce consumption and give women better access to family planning.

Presenting key findings from a new report by Britain's renowned Royal Society on the link between population and sustainability, Sulston said that it was a mistake that population and consumption had thus far been looked at as separate issues.

Sulston, a biologist, led a team of 23 scientists from around the world in preparing a study entitled "People and the Planet". It was published last Thursday (26 April) ahead of the UN's Conference on Sustainable Development, known as Rio+20 taking place in June.

Sulston explained that the 21st century was a "critical period" because a growing world population, shifting demographics and unprecedented, increasing levels of consumption were combining to cause "profound" environmental changes that impact human health and threaten other species.

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has warned that the provision of food, water, energy, housing, health, education, infrastructure and economic output will have to keep pace with a world population that passed the seven billion mark last October and is set to grow to more than nine billion by the middle of this century.

Sulston said that "the more we looked the clearer it became" that inequality was at the heart of the problem. For example, obesity was a becoming a health threat in the developed world, while poor countries were struggling to feed their people. Fossil fuel consumption in the richest countries was fifty times higher than in low-income countries.

The solution, he said, was for rich countries to consume less, and poorer countries to stabilize material consumption "to allow the most deprived to consume more".

Another important aspect was to give women control over how many children they wanted to have. He said that a recent study had found that 200 million women who wanted access to family planning could not get it.

With six billion dollars a year, he said family planning could be made available to everybody "as a voluntary option, which at the moment is denied".