Impact of Climate Change and Environmental Disasters on SRHR Addressed in New Center Reports

As the impacts from climate change and environmental degradation continue to grow worldwide, there is an urgent need to address the harms to individuals’ sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR).  

The Center for Reproductive Rights recently issued two reports about the intersections between climate justice, environmental justice, and SRHR. These reports outline how environmental degradation, global warming, and other environmental disasters endanger SRHR and recommend ways to build greater protections for SRHR using international laws and policies.

How is SRHR impacted by environmental degradation and climate change? 

Environmental degradation, which involves the depletion of resources due to the deterioration of the environment, and climate change, which involves long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns, directly impact people’s sexual and reproductive health and rights. Marginalized and underserved populations, including low-income, rural, and indigenous communities, are disproportionately impacted. 

Sexual and reproductive health (SRH) can be impacted by:

• Forced migration due to more frequent natural disasters, sea level rise, extreme temperatures, and shifts in global weather patterns. 
• Reduced access to reproductive health services due to disrupted supply chains and lack of health providers, facilities, medicines and other supplies. 
• Lack of clean and safe water, posing risks to maternal health.  
• Increased exposure to pesticides and other toxic chemicals—which are known to harm fertility and pregnancies—by companies responding to environmental changes.  
• Underfunding and deprioritizing of SRHR services during environmental crises.

International and Legal Policy Can Be a Critical Tool in Establishing Greater SRHR Protections 

The international legal and policy framework is a critical tool for addressing, mitigating, and in some cases preventing the adverse SRH consequences of climate change and environmental degradation. Increasingly, the framework has recognized that combating climate change and environmental degradation are human rights imperatives.  

There are also critical opportunities for strengthening international law and policy to further recognize the detrimental impacts of climate change and environmental degradation on SRH and to establish greater SRHR protections and guarantees. 

The Center’s Work Developing Stronger International Legal Guarantees 

The Center is working to develop stronger international legal guarantees in response to the climate crisis and environmental degradation, utilizing its expertise in international law and policy and human rights. 

Partnering with civil society organizations throughout the world, the Center is:

• Working at the United Nations to strengthen norms and create greater accountability for SRHR violations related to climate change and environmental racism. 
• Providing technical assistance to governments and local organizations seeking to ensure SRHR in responding to climate change. 
• Addressing the impact of toxic chemicals on SRHR in Latin America. 
• Leveraging regional human rights mechanisms to hold states accountable, including litigating an environmental case before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

The Case of Yaneth Valderrama at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights

The Center and its partner, Conde Abogados, are currently litigating a case before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to hold Colombia accountable for the death of Yaneth Valderrama, a pregnant farm worker who died from severe exposure to glyphosate, a toxic herbicide.

When she was 14 weeks pregnant, government planes flew over her family’s property and covered her in glyphosate. Yaneth later miscarried. Several months later, she died of simultaneous failures of her nervous, immune and respiratory systems.