In his "Dot Earth" blog for the New York Times, journalist Andrew Revkin yesterday wrote about his recent correspondence with spiked editor Brendan O'Neill on the issue of over-population. It's brief, but a great read nonetheless. The post is called "Deconstructing a bestiary of Malthusian 'miserabilists'", and Revkin quotes O'Neill as saying:
An NGO that arrives in poor Africa with a case of condoms AND a mission to save the world from carbon-producing babies is not a disinterested, dispassionate facilitator of choice. The international problematization of large families and the celebration of carbon reduction impacts heavily, I think, on the way women conceive of themselves and their room to make meaningful decisions.
Unfortunately, the politics of reproductive choice is increasingly bound up with the Malthusian agenda. This is a great tragedy, in my view, because it pollutes the arena of choice by importing Western ideals – such as eco-stability and carbon reduction – into Third World women’s decision-making. If NGOs want to provide women in Africa with contraceptive devices, that’s fine – but then go straight home please…
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