The Time is Now campaign seeks to raise awareness about the connections between climate change and young people's sexual and reproductive health and rights. To engage in the campaign, check out our resources, take an action, blog, organize awareness raising activities in your community, and spread the world to your friends! To find out more about the campaign's latest efforts, read on.

What are the connections?
There are 215 million women around the world with an unmet need for contraception. In some regions young women ages 15-19 are twice as likely to lack access to the contraception they want and need as women over twenty. Access to sexual and reproductive health services can also be seriously hampered by the harmful effects of climate change.

If you care about young people, women's rights, reproductive health, climate change, and the environment, the good news is that fulfilling the unmet need for contraception is a highly cost-effective way of addressing climate change. When women have power over if, when and how many children to have, communities are better equipped to adapt to climate change and contribute to a more sustainable environment. Furthermore, recent research has shown that responding to the unmet need for family planning and supporting girls education are much less costly approaches than many low-carbon energy development options, including solar, wind, and nuclear power, second-generation biofuels, and carbon capture and storage. Family planning and girls education programs were also found to be cost-competitive with forest conservation and other improvements in forestry and agricultural practices.

What can you do?
So, in a world of scarce resources and an urgent need to address climate change, environmental sustainability and the sexual and reproductive health and rights of young people and women, the time is now for us to ask world leaders to recognize these connections. Twenty years ago, 172 governments participated in the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) to discuss the way forward towards sustainable development. The result was the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, an international treaty consisting of 27 principles intended to guide future sustainable development around the world.

In June 2012, world leaders will be gathering for the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (also known as the Rio+20 Summit) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to secure renewed political commitment for sustainable development, assess the progress to date and the remaining gaps in the implementation of the outcomes of the major summits on sustainable development, and address new and emerging challenges. We must act NOW to advocate for prioritizing young people's sexual and reproductive health and rights within discussions leading up to and during the Rio+20 Summit.

• Act NOW to sign our petition to the Rio+20 Secretary General, Sha Zukang, and Executive Coordinators, Elizabeth Thompson (former Minister of Environment Barbados) and Ambassador Brice Lalonde (former Minister of Environment France) that calls on them to include sexual and reproductive health and rights of young people in the discussions leading up to and during the Rio+20 conference and to ensure that these issues form part of the outcome document.

• Forward the petition to your friends and colleagues so that they can sign it too!

• Blog about why you care, about how you see the connections between youth sexual and reproductive health and rights and environmental sustainability, or about what you think governments and communities should be doing to make a difference.

• Check out our resources to get informed about the connections, statistics, and perspectives on sexual and reproductive health and rights, climate change, and the environment.

• Send us feedback (mimi@advocatesforyouth.org) about the campaign site, suggestions for other resources to include, or if you would like your organization to endorse the campaign.

The TIME IS NOW campaign is supported by these organizations: