| Written by Gita Sen and Anita Nayar, this article forms part of the collection of evidence-based papers, Powerful Synergies: Gender Equality, Economic Development and Environmental Sustainability, published in 2012 by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).This analysis examines the paradigm shift in international policy that redefined the relationship between population and environment through a lens of human rights and gender equality. Forged during the United Nations conferences of the 1990s, this new framework directly challenged the traditional Malthusian focus on aggregate numbers and the IPAT model, which obscured issues of consumption equity and historical responsibility. The article argues that feminist advocacy was pivotal in this transition, successfully shifting the debate from macro-level catastrophe scenarios to micro-level realities of power, gender relations, and sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR). Despite this progress, the analysis concludes that the paradigm remains incomplete, as Malthusian perspectives continue to resurface in contemporary environmental debates, often sidelining the core principles of distributive justice and women’s autonomy established in Cairo and Beijing. |
