You Are Invited:
Tune in Sunday to Dialogue TV for an Energy Security and Global Change Discussion With Sharon Burke, Neil Morisetti, and Geoff Dabelko
Friday, February 10, 2012
Environmental factors are increasingly related to security concerns and governments around the world are responding. This week, the Wilson Center’s dialogue program examines the critical role that climate change and energy now play in national and international security policies. Geoff Dabelko, director of ECSP, joins guests Sharon Burke, assistant secretary of defense for operational energy plans and programs, and Rear Admiral Neil Morisetti, the UK’s climate and energy security envoy. The episode will air this Sunday at 10:30 a.m.
Premiere episodes of dialogue have a new airtime, moving to Sunday’s at 10:30 a.m., as part of a new block of news and public affairs programming on the MHz Worldview channel. Each program is rebroadcast Thursdays at 4:30 a.m. and Sundays at 2:00 a.m. on MHZ Worldview (nationally) or MHz1 (Metro DC area).
Archived episodes are also be available on YouTube (see the latest in the playlist below).For more information on dialogue, visit WilsonCenter.org or follow them on Facebook, Twitter, or iTunes.
Topics:
You Are Invited
Democratic Republic of Congo and Madagascar Connect Family Planning With Environmental Health
Eric Zuehlke, Population Reference Bureau
Friday, February 10, 2012
The original version of this article, by Eric Zuehlke, appeared on the Population Reference Bureau’s website.
Remote rural communities in developing countries typically face the related challenges of extreme poverty, poor health, and environmental degradation. And population growth often exacerbates these challenges. In communities that face environmental challenges along with high fertility and high maternal and child mortality, health programs that include family planning can have great benefits for the health and well-being of women and families, with positive influences on the local environment. Meeting the reproductive health needs of women and ensuring environmental sustainability by connecting family planning with environment programs has proven to be a “win-win” strategy. Yet this connection has often been seen as controversial or irrelevant to environmental policymaking.
While more developed countries have low populations, they have much higher per capita consumption and resource dependence. However, developing countries, with their faster rates of population growth, are contributing a growing share of CO2 emissions, due to rapid deforestation which releases large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The United Nations Development Programme’s 2011 Human Development Report pointed out that developing countries face a double burden of being more vulnerable to wider environmental challenges such as climate change but also having to cope with immediate environmental problems such as resource depletion and poor water quality.
This is where family planning comes in. Expanding family planning is a response to an existing need, and it gives women autonomy and equity. A study analyzing data from 2008 found that unintended pregnancy accounts for up to 41 percent of all births worldwide. According to UNFPA, it is “the factor in population growth most amenable to program and policy interventions.” In addition, over 200 million women worldwide have an unmet need for family planning. Researchers estimate that the demand for contraception will grow by 40 percent over the next 15 years. The context of family planning has shifted from population control decades ago to individual rights. And the impetus for programs is coming from local communities and developing countries.
Continue reading on Population Reference Bureau.
Sources: Singh (2011), UNFPA, UN Development Programme.
Video Credit: Connecting Family Planning and the Environment: Interview With Robert Engelman, Worldwatch, courtesy of Population Reference Bureau.
From the Wilson Center:
Political Demography: How Population Changes Are Reshaping International Security and National Politics (Book Launch)
Thursday, February 09, 2012
The volume is “a watershed event for a diverse, dynamic, and challenging field,” said ECSP Director Geoff Dabelko at a launch event hosted by the Wilson Center on January 10. The book seeks to meet policymakers’ increasing demands for the insights demography can provide about the challenges ahead. Political Demography is a timely effort to define the field during what co-editor Eric Kaufmann called “a period of unprecedented demographic disparity.” At the Wilson Center, Goldstone and Kaufmann were joined by contributors Mark Haas of Duquesne University and Elizabeth Leahy Madsen of Futures Group International.
Great Power Aging and the Future of American Power
“Due to steep declines in fertility rates [and] significant escalation in life expectancies, all of the current great powers of the world are aging – many of them at a very fast rate,” said Haas.
As labor pools shrink and welfare spending increases, the economies of the traditional great powers – Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China, Japan, and the United States – may slow. In Japan and Russia the workforce is expected to shrink by more than 30 percent by 2050. The German workforce is predicted to decline by 25 percent. Even China, the most populous country in the world, will see a probable loss of almost 20 percent of its working-age population, likely blunting its meteoric economic rise.
“Governments are going to have to find hundreds of billions of dollars in order to meet their commitments to the elderly,” said Haas. At current entitlement levels, these commitments will consume more than a quarter of national GDP in France, Japan, and Germany by 2040.
As aging developed economies struggle to grow, the diversion of funds from military to social spending (what Haas calls “guns vs. canes”) will likely shift national security priorities. Technology and procurement budgets will decrease while personnel costs and pension responsibilities absorb relatively larger pieces of the defense spending pie, said Haas.
However, Haas is optimistic about the long-term primacy of American power. The United States’ ability to act unilaterally may become a prominent asset, he said, as falling defense budgets among traditional allies limit “burden-sharing.” Additionally, the United States has the option of “off-shore balancing” – re-assigning soldiers from Cold War-era overseas bases – which might help mitigate rising costs. And, alone among the great powers, America will benefit from an expected 17 percent increase in its labor force by 2050, according to Haas.
Demographically, “America is in the worst shape of any country – except for every other,” he said.
Providing for Today’s Youth
Ninety percent of the world’s youth live in developing nations, said Goldstone, they are “eager to learn, eager to join the global marketplace, and a great potential resource.” However, “a youth cohort that is either not effectively educated for marketable employment or not effectively socialized and integrated into mainstream political and social life is a youth cohort that tends to be frustrated and seeking other outlets,” he said.
Research by Henrik Urdal of the Peace Research Institute Oslo, included in the volume, shows that societies have a greater chance of violent instability when large cohorts of youth have difficulty finding employment and integrating into mainstream life. Such groups also tend to exist in the most fragile of states, where governance is poor and governments struggle to resolve societal conflicts, said Goldstone.
Although a youthful age structure may exacerbate existing stressors within a society, an abundance of youth may also bring economic opportunity. Plentiful labor, falling dependency ratios, and increased national savings saw an economic boom during the 1990s among the East Asian “tigers” like South Korea and Taiwan. This “demographic dividend” was fostered by policies that ensured free markets and investments in youth. (Editor’s note: See Goldstone’s work in ECSP Report 13 for more on the political and economic consequences of population change at a global level.)
“I think what we’re seeing is a kind of virtuous and vicious circle,” Goldstone said. “Where government is weak, ineffective, doesn’t provide education, [and] doesn’t provide security, it’s advantageous – both for individuals and groups – to have larger families. It’s a way of investing in themselves.” In contrast, “a government that’s able to provide education, provide security of property, and encourage investment” leads to reduced birthrates and less strain on government services, he said. Thus, the capacity of government to provide for a growing population can be diminished by the sheer rate at which that growth occurs.
Intrastate conflicts in sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia are the dominant form of political violence in the modern world, said Goldstone. Addressing these conflicts requires a focus on demography and concerted policy action towards two ends, he said: action to provide today’s youth with opportunities to become productive adults, and action to strengthen governance where those youth live.
Demography in Religiously and Ethnically Divided Societies
“Uneven demographic transitions between ethnic and religious groups within a country can lead to a change in the population mix,” said Kaufmann, which can shift electoral politics. While such demographic changes do not automatically result in social conflicts, where identity boundaries are tight and there is little intermarriage or assimilation between groups, these shifts may lead to violence, he said.
Northern Ireland’s history of divisive religious troubles, where Protestant leader Terence O’Neill once proclaimed that “the basic fear of Protestants in Northern Ireland is that they will be outbred by the Roman Catholics,” was cited by Kaufmann as a typical example of how demography can become a competition in a divided society.
More recent cases include the growing gulf between secular and ultra-orthodox groups in Israel, the emergence of a strong Islamist constituency in post-autocratic states affected by the Arab Spring, and the increasing importance of Hispanic voters in several key states for American politics.
Intrastate demography has the capacity to reshape political life and to inform our own forecasts of the future, said Kaufmann. “As societies modernize, fertility becomes a matter of choice…and so values are playing a bigger role in driving fertility and population growth,” he said.
Linking Political Demography and Policy
“Demography is more and more on the policy agenda,” said Madsen, and the diversity and novelty of the field requires a close connection between academics and policymakers. Demography and policy influence each other, she continued, so it is important to understand how governments perceive their own demographic issues and how these issues are integrated into national level policies. (Editor’s note: Read Madsen’s country profiles on the history of building political commitment to family planning on New Security Beat.)
“The question is whether demographic trends are met with sufficient resources,” said Madsen. “Young people coming into adulthood can be a tremendous resource for their countries…but in too many countries…they face an environment with very few viable opportunities to support themselves and their families.” States active in supporting investment in education and human resources, while promoting women’s empowerment and reproductive health as a human right, will stand to benefit both economically and socially, she said. Above all, young men and women must be seen as an asset to their society, argued Madsen.
In Rwanda, the government’s focus on demographic sustainability has helped contraceptive use among married women jump from 13 percent to 45 percent in less than 20 years – and maternal mortality to reduce by half. In contrast, neighboring Uganda, which has the world’s youngest age structure, has seen fertility decline less than 10 percent since the 1980s. At this rate, said Madsen, Uganda will require 1.5 million new jobs every year by the late 2030s for its expanding population (and only about 100,000 new jobs were created in 2009).
“Fertility trends, frankly, are driven by women [and] by their degree of empowerment…too often these are issues easily brushed aside, deemed too sensitive or peripheral to more pressing political concerns,” said Madsen. Yet, she argued, a cogent set of policies for improving reproductive health, education, and women’s empowerment is key to improving development, environment, health, and security across the globe.
Event ResourcesPhoto Credit: David Hawxhurst/Wilson Center.
Pop at COP: Population and Family Planning at the UN Climate Negotiations
Kim Lovell, Sierra Club
Wednesday, February 08, 2012
“Population, development, and climate should be a single discussion,” explained Jacques van Zuydam of South Africa’s National Population Unit. Van Zuydam, speaking to a sparsely filled room at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Durban last month, centers his work around the concept that climate matters because people matter.
Given the focus on the Green Climate Fund, climate change adaptation, and the effects of sea-level rise and changing weather patterns on some of the world’s most vulnerable populations, it would have made sense for discussions about population to play a central role at the 17th Conference of Parties (COP-17). Yet despite these obvious links – and lead negotiator Jonathan Pershing’s admission to the U.S. youth delegation that population plays a central role when discussing climate impacts – the issue gained little traction in the formal negotiations.
Pershing said he considers population “too controversial” to play a role in the international climate talks, and recommended raising the issue elsewhere. But where better to talk about the need for increased access to voluntary family planning services than among a group of world leaders considering solutions to mitigate and adapt to climate change?
As Brian O’Neill and his colleagues at the National Center for Atmospheric Research explained in a 2010 paper, meeting the unmet need for contraceptive services worldwide could reduce emissions in 2050 by 1.4 to 2.5 billion tons of carbon per year, or 16 to 29 percent of the emissions reductions necessary to avoid dangerous changes to our climate. And beyond the potential effects on carbon, increasing access to education and family planning resources will have a huge impact on the ability of women and families to adapt to the effects of climate change that are already altering weather patterns, water availability, and agricultural production around the globe.
Continue reading at Sierra Club.
Sources: Amplify.
Image Credit: UNFCCC/Climate Change Information Center of Armenia.
The Real Population Bomb: Megacities, Global Security, and the Map of the Future (Book Preview)
P.H. Liotta, Salve Regina University
Wednesday, February 08, 2012
There was a time when the city was the dominant political identity. Centuries and even millennia ago, the most advanced societies in the Mediterranean, the Near East, and South America revolved around cities that were either states in themselves or were the locus of power for larger empires and kingdoms. The time of the city is coming again, though now in a considerably less benign way.
From the introduction to The Real Population Bomb:There was a time when the city was the dominant political identity. Centuries and even millennia ago, the most advanced societies in the Mediterranean, the Near East, and South America revolved around cities that were either states in themselves or were the locus of power for larger empires and kingdoms. The time of the city is coming again, though now in a considerably less benign way.This book is about where and how geopolitics will play out in the twenty-first century. Cumulatively it represents two decades of work from authors with seemingly dissimilar backgrounds: one is a poet, novelist, and translator; the other is a security analyst and expert in disaster response and management who has worked for two presidential administrations. Both were colleagues at the U.S. Naval War College in the early 2000s.
With the rise of massive urban centers in Africa and Asia, cities that will matter most in the twenty-first century are located in less-developed, struggling states. A number of these huge megalopolises – whether Lagos or Karachi, Dhaka or Kinshasa – reside in states often unable or simply unwilling to manage the challenges that their vast and growing urban populations pose. There are no signs that their governments will prove more capable in the future. These swarming, massive urban monsters will only continue to grow and should be of great concern to the rest of the world.
We have traveled widely and conducted fieldwork in places as disparate as the Altiplano of Bolivia; Caracas, Venezuela; Guayaquil, Ecuador; the autonomous Altai Republic in deep Siberia; and the massive slums of Egypt, India, Kenya, South Africa, and Brazil. What we share from this experience is the recognition that the world has changed before our eyes. Terms such as the “developed” and “developing” world – phrases that were always dangerous and loaded with false value – no longer have the relevance they seem to have had once. Concepts such as “first world” and “third world” are stubborn relics of Cold War thinking – just as our “mental maps” are grounded in the often difficult but known past. We must change our ways of seeing the world.
Traditionally there have been two general approaches to understanding societies and states. One is the humanitarian or ecological perspective in which the focus is on society – how people live and are affected by war, pollution, and economic globalization. The other is a realist perspective in which the focus is on the economic, political, and military relations among major powers such as the European Union, the United States, China, and Russia.
What these traditional approaches underemphasize is the overlap and natural alignment between them. To understand the map of the future, we need to critically appreciate how astonishing population growth in cities – particularly fast-growing megalopolises in weak or failing states in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia – is impacting ecology and ecosystems, human security, and the national security of Western states, as well as allies and trading partners.
For both better and worse, globalization and urban population growth have changed political and economic dynamics in ways that previous conceptions of how the world works cannot do justice. In this book we examine how developments below the nation-state level – at the municipal level – affect how we must see the world of the future. While this work is anything but a travelogue, we do visit some of the most alarming locations on the earth. Often these places have been viewed in impressionistic terms, as distant locations where “others” live – with whom “we” have little interaction. But we are far more connected than we think; whether Nigeria or Pakistan, Bangladesh or Egypt, their future is also ours. The odds seem stacked against those who live there. In the dense, overgrown neighborhoods and shantytowns of Lagos, Kinshasa, Cairo, Karachi, Lahore, or Dhaka, government authorities have failed to provide infrastructure and public services. We need urgent, collective, and innovative actions to help critical megacities weather the gathering storm.
But there is hope and strength. Though time is running short, solutions are still possible. In the end, this book is about the power and resilience of the human spirit.
P. H. Liotta’s latest book is The Real Population Bomb: Megacities, Global Security, and the Map of the Future, with James F. Miskel. As a member of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change UN’s IPCC, he shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.
Photo Credit: “Urban View: the Republic of Korea's Second Largest City,” courtesy of United Nations Photo.
On the Beat:
Ryan Britton: Addressing Population in Science Media for EarthSky
Tuesday, February 07, 2012
“What we do is educate the general public and advocate on behalf of science to the general public,” said EarthSky Managing Partner Ryan Britton in this interview with ECSP. “Ultimately we try to bring science to people who don’t normally get science information.”
Part of that effort is addressing population dynamics – growth, aging, youth, food security, etc. – which is often a challenging subject. EarthSky’s coverage over the last year included a series of radio shows on global food security and the “year of seven billion,” which won them a second Global Media Award from the Population Institute in January (alongside New Security Beat!).
EarthSky productions appear on television, radio, online, and in multiple languages. “For us, it’s about getting science out to the general public as best we can,” said Britton.
In terms of population-related issues, he said, allocation of resources, how growing population is affecting ecology and biodiversity, and the effects of climate change are all topics on their radar. “But we do it within the lens of talking about humanity and our continued prosperity,” Britton said. “That’s important for people to hear – what are the solutions, how are we going to get through this, how are we going to be OK? And so those are the questions we’ll keep asking.”
From the Wilson Center:
Saudi Arabia’s Youth and the Kingdom’s Future
Caryle Murphy for the Middle East Program
Tuesday, February 07, 2012
Excerpts below are from “Saudi Arabia’s Youth and the Kingdom’s Future,” by Caryle Murphy, available for download from the Wilson Center’s Middle East Program.
Saudi Arabia is passing through a unique demographic period. …Approximately 37 percent of the Saudi population is below the age of 14. Those under age 25 account for around 51 percent of the population, and when those under 29 are included, young people amount to two-thirds of the kingdom’s population. (In the United States, those 14 years and younger are 20 percent of the population; those 29 and below make up 41 percent.)
The country’s unprecedented “youth bulge” has not yet crested, which means increasing numbers of job-seekers in coming years. This demographic profile is typical of the Gulf region where around 60 percent of the people are under the age of 30, making it one of the most youthful regions in the world.
…
If there is one segment of Saudi society pushing aggressively for reforms, it is young women. Their demands for greater personal freedoms and more say in Saudi public life will be the biggest driver of social and economic change in the next few years. This is because the restrictions under which Saudi women live, which collectively come under the rubric of the “guardianship” system, are increasingly running into two obstacles.
One obstacle is resistance from young, educated women who are aware that Muslim women in other countries have more personal freedoms than Saudi females, who are not even allowed to drive.
In addition, the guardianship system, as well as society’s strict gender segregation, will be difficult to maintain given the government’s often-stated intentions to bring women into the workforce and to create a more diversified, knowledge-based economy less dependent on oil. It is very difficult to have a creative, dynamic, and productive economic system if half the population is segregated and treated like children.
Download the full article from the Wilson Center.
Caryle Murphy is a public policy scholar with the Wilson Center’s Middle East Program and a freelance journalist.
Saudi Arabia is passing through a unique demographic period. …Approximately 37 percent of the Saudi population is below the age of 14. Those under age 25 account for around 51 percent of the population, and when those under 29 are included, young people amount to two-thirds of the kingdom’s population. (In the United States, those 14 years and younger are 20 percent of the population; those 29 and below make up 41 percent.)
The country’s unprecedented “youth bulge” has not yet crested, which means increasing numbers of job-seekers in coming years. This demographic profile is typical of the Gulf region where around 60 percent of the people are under the age of 30, making it one of the most youthful regions in the world.
…
If there is one segment of Saudi society pushing aggressively for reforms, it is young women. Their demands for greater personal freedoms and more say in Saudi public life will be the biggest driver of social and economic change in the next few years. This is because the restrictions under which Saudi women live, which collectively come under the rubric of the “guardianship” system, are increasingly running into two obstacles.
One obstacle is resistance from young, educated women who are aware that Muslim women in other countries have more personal freedoms than Saudi females, who are not even allowed to drive.
In addition, the guardianship system, as well as society’s strict gender segregation, will be difficult to maintain given the government’s often-stated intentions to bring women into the workforce and to create a more diversified, knowledge-based economy less dependent on oil. It is very difficult to have a creative, dynamic, and productive economic system if half the population is segregated and treated like children.
Download the full article from the Wilson Center.
Caryle Murphy is a public policy scholar with the Wilson Center’s Middle East Program and a freelance journalist.
Beat on the Ground:
Papua New Guinea Youth Conflict Study Reveals Effects of Civil War on Young Men
Monday, February 06, 2012
Policies to support youth in post-conflict situations are important for building peace, particularly given the “youth bulge” thesis that suggests that large cohorts of marginalized young people are contributing to a demographic “arc of instability” across the developing world. However, the statistical evidence showing correlations between youth bulges and an increased risk of instability has been criticized for failing to account for the agency of youth themselves. For instance, Marc Sommers points out that there is “scant information on how and why most marginalized African youth resist engagement in violence even when it would seem to provide immediate benefits.” This lack of detailed, evidence-based knowledge can frustrate efforts to develop effective youth policies, particularly in post-conflict settings, where the risk of the persistence or even return of violence, is arguably increased by the presence of youth bulges.
Bougainville’s “Crisis Generation”
Hoping to address this lack of knowledge about how and why young people engage in peace or violence in post-conflict settings, I recently spent several weeks in Bougainville. My aim was to study how young men make lives for themselves in the social circumstances that exist nine years on from a civil war that lasted more than a decade and claimed more lives than any Pacific conflict since World War II. The qualitative evidence I collected on these pathways informed analysis in an article co-authored with Jon Barnett in the Journal of Political Geography, “Localising Peace: The Young Men of Bougainville’s ‘Crisis Generation’” (subscription required).
With a 2010 median age of just 20.4 years (projected to remain less than 25 until at least 2030) and more than 60 percent of its population less than 30 years old, Papua New Guinea is among the world’s youngest states, according to UN population data. Despite a wealth of natural resources, the state faces severe challenges to providing education, jobs, and security for a young population whose growth has for many years severely outpaced the capacity of its formal institutions. Papua New Guinea, and the region of Bougainville within it, is a state where demographic strains are reasonably expected to continue to pose risks to an already fragile state.
Bougainville’s 18-to-30-year olds, known among their peers and elders as the “crisis generation,” are those with living memory of the violence but who were too young to have fought on either side. They continue to face challenges with trauma, accessing education and work, achieving social standing, and escaping from histories of violence. These sometimes impede their capacity to participate meaningfully in local society and can lead them towards sporadic acts of violence.
Understanding the Pathways to Violence
For many young men in Bougainville, achieving critical social measures of success – such as amassing the wealth required for marriage – has become nearly impossible due to high unemployment and restricted access to education. Marriage matters, since land rights in Bougainvillean societies are generally derived matrilineally, and therefore young men who are unable to marry tend to lack secure access to land.
Education is a critical institution for young men in Bougainville. Unfortunately, the formal sector that might employ young men upon completing secondary education is very small, and therefore much of the time and money spent pursuing that education is wasted. The education system itself lacks the resources to meet the needs of all those who seek secondary education. To cope with the demand, youth are asked to sit for exams in grade 8 and again in grade 10, a practice which creates high failure rates and whittles down the student cohort from several thousand at primary level to only a few hundred at the completion of secondary schooling (few of whom then receive meaningful employment). For many, this failure to obtain a return on years of school fees places significant strain on the relationships between youth and their familial and social networks.
Some adapt to these challenges by “upgrading” their poor education through distance learning or by seeking out vocational training as a way to obtain skills relevant for rural life. But some are seen as wedged between a set of unworkable options: “Many of them are existing in a vacuum,” said one civil society leader. “They see things outside but they cannot grab them and they cannot ground themselves.”
As a result, many turn to homebrew alcohol and marijuana and a select few seek social standing by adopting displays and acts of violence that imitate the personas of former rebels. Of these choices, the first attracts the stigma of “lazy,” and the second, “dangerous.” In both cases, these stigmas risk overshadowing the legitimate challenges facing young men by distilling the complexity of the world into a simple morality crisis that itself creates divides both between and within generations.
Building Policy Prescriptions
Unfortunately, the sorts of life and trauma counseling services capable of engaging these young men remain under-supported. As one youth worker claimed of the youth who have no memory of life before the war, “They don’t know how it was before the Crisis. They think things have always been this way; that this is normal.”
In a more southern district, one young man explained of his more notorious peers, “It’s these guys roaming around, mixing with ladies and drinking, they cannot reason so they use the gun, the knife – offensive weapons. And when they are sober they regret. These people spoil the peace process here in Bougainville.”
Providing viable alternatives to these lifestyles is crucial and can only be achieved by asking young men themselves about their world, about the challenges they face, and about the strategies they take to maneuver through them. By understanding the social, cultural, and geographical specifics of a local context, this form of analysis provides a valuable starting point for determining and evaluating policy interventions that statistics alone cannot provide.
In Bougainville’s case, an expansion of vocational training and the provision of trauma counseling, regardless of whether a person was a combatant or not, are two desperately needed interventions that have the potential to increase the capacity of young men to achieve success through peaceful means.
Sources: Conciliation Resources, The Sydney Morning Herald, UN Population Division.
Photo Credit: “Mekamui/Panguna” and crossing from Buka to Bougainville, courtesy of flickr user madlemurs.
Water and Population: Limits to Growth?
Laurie Mazur for the Wilson Center
Friday, February 03, 2012
Indeed, if any resource poses a serious limit to growth on human numbers and appetites, it would have to be water. The planet’s supply of freshwater is fixed, and there is no substitute for its life-giving qualities.
Still, a general water crisis is not inevitable. It is true that people are placing unsupportable stress on freshwater supplies in many areas, while climate change threatens the quantity and reliability of those supplies. And population dynamics, especially growth and migration, contribute to the problem in ways both obvious and less so. However, a broad range of supply- and demand-side solutions are available and implementing those solutions could relieve – and avert – tremendous human suffering.
The “water crisis,” as reported in the media, is actually two oft-conflated crises. First, there is the physical scarcity of water, experienced in arid areas from Yemen to the American Southwest. Second, there is the shortage of safe drinking water, typically caused by a lack of infrastructure in poor countries – even those with plenty of rainfall, such as Uganda. Some regions – notably the Horn of Africa – struggle with both crises at once.
Assessing Scarcity
Physical scarcity of water is a significant and growing problem. Although we live on a planet that is covered with water, very little of that is fresh: in fact, if all of the world’s water could fit into a gallon jug, the freshwater available for our use would equal only about one tablespoon. In addition, that tiny sip of water is distributed very inequitably. So, while there is no global shortage, a growing number of regions are chronically parched.
Today, about one third of the world’s population lives in countries with moderate to high water stress; by 2025, largely because of population growth, fully two out of three of the world’s people will live under those conditions. A recent McKinsey and Company report warns that within two decades, demand for water will exceed supply by 40 percent.
Human numbers are growing most rapidly where water is scarce. The World Bank’s Water and Development report identified 45 “water poor” countries that are both physically short on water and economically impoverished. Those countries have an average fertility rate of 4.8 children per woman – nearly twice the world average – and their populations are expected to double by 2050. “Rapid population growth makes water problems more complicated and difficult to solve,” said Sandra Postel, director of the Global Water Policy Project, in an interview.
When water-stressed countries lack surface water supplies, they typically resort to overpumping underground aquifers, drawing down wells faster than they can be replenished. As a result, groundwater levels have dropped precipitously in many places over the past nine years, and wells have gone dry in parts of India, China, and Pakistan.
The depletion of groundwater is an ominous sign for world food production, which must increase 70 percent by 2050 to meet the demands of a growing world population. Postel estimates that 10 percent of world food production now depends on the overpumping of groundwater.
And then there is the wild card of climate change, which has already begun to disrupt rainfall patterns and intensify drought in many parts of the world. The famine ravaging the Horn of Africa may be a harbinger of what is to come for fragile nations. Many countries, including Kenya and Ethiopia, are likely to experience longer, harsher droughts, which – superimposed on existing water scarcity, rapid population growth, poor governance, and poverty – could create the conditions for widespread starvation and misery.
In another grim development, climate change is melting glaciers and snowpack on the world’s great mountain ranges, including the Himalayas, Hindu Kush, and Andes, which supply drinking water for one in six of the world’s people. New evidence shows that those glaciers are disappearing faster than expected, leading to water shortages in Peru and elsewhere.
Quality and Delivery
The other water crisis – the shortage of clean drinking water – is not simply about the physical scarcity of water. Nor is it simply about poverty, though more funds are needed to address the problem.
Today, nearly a billion people lack access to clean drinking water; 2.5 billion lack adequate sanitation; and some 5 million die every year due to preventable water-related diseases.
Nowhere is the crisis more evident than in the fast-expanding cities of the developing world. Cities have seen explosive growth in recent decades, and the UN predicts that by midcentury the world’s urban population will nearly double, from 3.5 to 6.3 billion – an increase equivalent to the current population of China, India, and the United States combined. Developing regions as a whole will account for 93 percent of that growth; more than 80 percent will be in the cities of Asia and Africa.
It is safe to say that they are not ready. Most of those cities are already failing to provide basic services – including water and sanitation – to new arrivals, who typically occupy informal slums and shanty towns beyond the reach of municipal services.
For example, Dhaka has grown sixfold since 1975 and is now home to nearly 17 million people but has “water supply network coverage for only a small fraction of this population,” according to Pier Mantovani, lead water supply and sanitation specialist at the World Bank. As a result, in areas not served by official services, including the city’s slums, people pay exorbitant prices to middlemen with tankers selling water of dubious quality.
Here, too, population dynamics play a role. Migration, mostly from rural areas, accounts for roughly 40 percent of urban growth. That migration is spurred, in part, by rapid growth in the countryside, where the total fertility rate (average number of children born per woman) is usually higher. The remaining 60 percent of urban growth results from “natural increase,” meaning simply that there are more births than deaths. Population growth, then, is a driving force behind the breakneck pace of urbanization and compounds the challenges of providing safe water to city dwellers.
Silver Linings
Today’s twin water crises pose enormous challenges for human well-being and even survival. Without a dramatic change of course, water could indeed pose a severe “limit to growth” of the human enterprise. As Margaret Catley-Carlson, vice-chair of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on water security, has written:
[I]f “business as usual” water management practices continue for another two decades, large parts of the world will face a serious and structural threat to economic growth, human well-being, and national security.But there are alternatives to “business as usual.”
Consider this: despite its growing scarcity, vast amounts of water are wasted through inefficiency; growing water-intensive crops in dry areas or using drinking water for purposes (like flushing toilets) where non-potable “grey” water would suffice, for example. Such waste is a “silver lining,” said Postel. By reducing waste, “we can get the most value from limited water supplies.”
Rethinking pricing is key. Irrigation is heavily subsidized in many parts of the world; farmers typically pay just 15 to 20 percent of the cost of the water they use, according to Postel. Reducing those generous subsidies would make conservation more cost-effective.
Meeting the need for safe drinking water will require greater attention to the needs of the poor, especially in informal urban settlements. That, in turn, will require a mobilization of resources and political will. “In every country,” said Mantovani, “politicians swear that ‘water is life,’ and that providing safe drinking water is a critically important policy priority…but in many countries water supply is not adequately funded or supported.”
On the demand side, slower population growth would help reduce pressure on limited water supplies, providing some breathing room to develop creative solutions. As it happens, many water-poor countries also have high levels of “unmet need” for family planning – they are home to millions of women who want to prevent or postpone getting pregnant but aren’t using modern contraception. Investments in family planning programs could improve women’s health and well-being, slow population growth, and reduce vulnerability to water stress.
In short, solutions abound. “We can meet the water needs of seven billion and have healthy aquatic ecosystems at the same time,” said Postel. However, she added, “We are not moving toward those solutions at a rate commensurate with the problem.”
Laurie Mazur is a consultant on population and the environment for the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program and director of the Population Justice Project.
Sources: Africa News, The Daily Beast, Global Water Policy Project, McKinsey and Company, National Geographic, The Pacific Institute, Population Action International, Population Reference Bureau, Postel (1999), Science News, UN Environment Programme, UN Population Division, UNESCO, UNFPA, World Bank, World Economic Forum, World Food Programme, World Health Organization, World Water Crisis.
Photo Credit: “Virtual City,” courtesy of ToniVC (Toni Verdú Carbó).
From the Wilson Center:
Securing Development and Peace in the Niger Delta: A Social and Conflict Analysis for Change
Paul Francis, Deirdre LaPin, and Paula Rossiasco for the Africa Program
Thursday, February 02, 2012
Excerpted below is the introduction by Steve McDonald. The full report is available for download from the Wilson Center’s Africa Program.
This study, Securing Development and Peace in the Niger Delta: A Social and Conflict Analysis for Change, draws together a vast range of information about Nigeria’s delta region not previously available in a single publication. It richly illuminates the social history and underlying causes of unrest in the area. Equally important, the study adds to the empirical research available to us about conflict prevention and approaches to post-conflict reconstruction in regions harmed by the extraction of natural resources.
It examines the complex interactions between the social, political, economic, environmental, and security factors that drive and sustain conflict. It also reviews the main policy responses and initiatives that have already been brought to bear in the delta and maps out key policy options for the future.
Encouragingly, the study finds that many of the elements of sustainable pathways to development and peace already exist or can readily be realized. What is needed is a systematic framework and, most critically, a leadership consensus and the political will to marshal them. Nigeria’s development partners are already showing a renewed commitment to support solutions to the delta’s challenges. Imaginative dialogue and partnership between them and with critical stakeholders in government, the private sector, civil society, and communities holds the promise of yielding effective strategies for sustainable development and peace that befit the region’s unique character and history.
This study, then, emerges at a time of particular opportunity and hope. And yet it must be noted that the present time also holds a considerable potential risk. Without appropriate and thoughtful action, the legitimate aspirations of the citizens of the delta and their compatriots in Nigeria as a whole will, yet again, go unrewarded. For the Niger Delta today, any plan or project must be rooted in practical and active understanding of the origins and risks of conflict in order to sustain the momentum of peaceful development and avoid planning that does not take into account the dynamics of conflict and its core causes.
Finally, the importance of the issues dealt with in this study extends beyond the delta or Nigeria as a nation. They are much broader when viewed from Nigeria’s place in the sub-region and the world economy. While the delta is unique, there are also lessons that can be learned for other conflict situations, and especially for the expanding number of new oil producing countries along the Guinea coast. For all, the key lesson is that peace is hard work. It requires a leadership committed to equitable government, dialogue with citizens, and sustainable development.
Download the full report from the Wilson Center.
This study, Securing Development and Peace in the Niger Delta: A Social and Conflict Analysis for Change, draws together a vast range of information about Nigeria’s delta region not previously available in a single publication. It richly illuminates the social history and underlying causes of unrest in the area. Equally important, the study adds to the empirical research available to us about conflict prevention and approaches to post-conflict reconstruction in regions harmed by the extraction of natural resources.
It examines the complex interactions between the social, political, economic, environmental, and security factors that drive and sustain conflict. It also reviews the main policy responses and initiatives that have already been brought to bear in the delta and maps out key policy options for the future.
Encouragingly, the study finds that many of the elements of sustainable pathways to development and peace already exist or can readily be realized. What is needed is a systematic framework and, most critically, a leadership consensus and the political will to marshal them. Nigeria’s development partners are already showing a renewed commitment to support solutions to the delta’s challenges. Imaginative dialogue and partnership between them and with critical stakeholders in government, the private sector, civil society, and communities holds the promise of yielding effective strategies for sustainable development and peace that befit the region’s unique character and history.
This study, then, emerges at a time of particular opportunity and hope. And yet it must be noted that the present time also holds a considerable potential risk. Without appropriate and thoughtful action, the legitimate aspirations of the citizens of the delta and their compatriots in Nigeria as a whole will, yet again, go unrewarded. For the Niger Delta today, any plan or project must be rooted in practical and active understanding of the origins and risks of conflict in order to sustain the momentum of peaceful development and avoid planning that does not take into account the dynamics of conflict and its core causes.
Finally, the importance of the issues dealt with in this study extends beyond the delta or Nigeria as a nation. They are much broader when viewed from Nigeria’s place in the sub-region and the world economy. While the delta is unique, there are also lessons that can be learned for other conflict situations, and especially for the expanding number of new oil producing countries along the Guinea coast. For all, the key lesson is that peace is hard work. It requires a leadership committed to equitable government, dialogue with citizens, and sustainable development.
Download the full report from the Wilson Center.
What You Are Reading:
Top 10 Posts for January 2012
Thursday, February 02, 2012
The event summary from December’s meeting on new climate-conflict research took the top place last month and was joined by several other new comers: Marc Bellemare’s post about his food prices research, new Sahel vulnerability maps from UNEP, a summary of the water security plenary from NSCE 2012, and new reports on youth demographics from UNICEF and the U.S. Institute of Peace.
1. New Research on Climate and Conflict Links Shows Challenges for the Field
2. Tunisia’s Shot at Democracy: What Demographics and Recent History Tell Us
3. In Search of a New Security Narrative: The National Conversation Series Launches at the Wilson Center
4. Guest Contributor Marc F. Bellemare: Do High Food Prices Cause Social Unrest?
5. In the Rush for Land, Is it All About the Water?
6. UNEP Maps Conflict, Migration, Environmental Vulnerability in the Sahel
7. Peter Gleick: Population Dynamics Key to Sustainable Water Solutions
8. India’s Maoists: South Asia’s “Other” Insurgency
9. Move Beyond “Water Wars” to Fulfill Water’s Peacebuilding Potential, Says NCSE Panel
10. Three New Reports Highlight Ongoing Significance of Youth Demographics in Global Trends
Topics:
Top 10
You Are Invited, February, 2 2011:
Addressing Social Constructs to Improve Adolescent Health
Wednesday, February 01, 2012
Environmental Change and Security Program, Global Health Initiative
Thursday, February 2, 2011, 12:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m.
Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington DC
5th Floor Boardroom
RSVP Agenda Directions Webcast
Margaret Greene, Co-Author, Delivering Solutions; Director, GreeneWorks
Denise Dunning, Program Director, Public Health Institute
Jennifer Pope, Deputy Director of Sexual and Reproductive health, PSI
Adolescence is an age of opportunity yet the voices of young girls and boys are often left off the development agenda. More political will and advocacy is needed to overcome negative social constructs that hinder adolescent health. Today’s discussion will highlight opportunities to engage youth and work alongside the community to identify action steps that guide programs and policymakers.
Margaret Greene, director of GreeneWorks, will present a five-point action plan for empowering girls to address negative social constructs that preclude them from accessing healthcare services. Denise Dunning program director with the Public Health Institute, will present case studies from Ethiopia, Guatemala, and Malawi for overcoming community resistance to empowering girls by training local leaders to advocate for policies and budgets that are supportive of adolescent women. Jennifer Pope, deputy director of sexual and reproductive health at PSI, will present communication and programming strategies to meet the health needs of adolescent boys and girls.
If you are interested, but unable to attend the event, please tune into the live or archived webcast.
Location: Woodrow Wilson Center at the Ronald Reagan Building, 1300 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, Washington DC, USA ("Federal Triangle" stop on Blue/Orange Line), 5th floor boardroom. A map to the Center is available at www.wilsoncenter.org/directions. Note: Due to heightened security, entrance to the building will be restricted and photo identification is required. Please allow additional time to pass through security.
Topics:
You Are Invited
What Would It Take To Help People and the Planet?
Wednesday, February 01, 2012
People living in the most biodiverse areas of the world tend to be poor, isolated, and dependent on natural resources. They often lack reliable access to alternative livelihoods and health services and thus can place stress on these ecologically unique regions.
Conservation efforts will merely slow habitat loss if they don’t fundamentally address the living conditions of the human residents as well as the flora and fauna. But programs to assist these communities have commonly focused on one problem at a time, reflecting the interests of the funders: Environmental groups focus on conservation, while health organizations concentrate on disease. We must ask whether investments to protect biologically rich areas are effective and sustainable if they don’t respond to the many needs of the people who live there.
But the problems faced by people in these remote areas don’t fit our traditional sectors. The way we disburse our funds, divide our bureaucracies, demarcate our disciplines, and measure success ignores the reality of intersecting needs. Such stovepiping can disrespect the communities’ scarce resources, especially their time. It can waste development aid on duplicate supplies and staff. And it can lead us to miss how the solution to one problem (e.g., providing antiretroviral drugs to treat HIV/AIDS) can be undercut by another (e.g., lacking access to safe water with which to take the pills).
So, what would it take to help particularly vulnerable populations while protecting particularly important ecological systems?
We need to strategically target our help by addressing HELP – health, environment, livelihoods, and population – through a truly integrated approach to sustainable development in these areas. Evidence suggests tackling problems concurrently can be more efficient and effective. Key donors such as the U.S. Agency for International Development are increasingly prioritizing integrated responses, providing some funding for sustainable development innovators and supporting evaluation of the results. But we need more evidence that these efforts can achieve results that match or exceed the outcomes of single-sector projects. To rigorously test this approach, more projects must be funded, implemented and analyzed, over longer periods of time and at bigger scales.
To date, some promising projects and research in diverse locations – Ethiopia, Nepal, Madagascar, Rwanda, the Philippines, and Uganda – suggest that the HELP approach offers greater benefits than traditional programs.
In the Philippines, for example, the PATH Foundation Philippines’ Integrated Population and Coastal Resource Management (IPOPCORM) program addresses pressing needs for both family planning services and sustainable environmental stewardship in densely populated coastal communities, where local fisheries have been depleted because of increased demand for food. IPOPCORM helps create marine protected areas and promotes alternative economic livelihoods such as seaweed harvesting, thus allowing critical local fish stocks to recover. Concurrently, the initiative mitigates human-induced pressures on the environment and lowers the vulnerability of this underserved population by providing voluntary family planning services. Since its launch in 2001, the IPOPCORM program’s approach has yielded measurable benefits, simultaneously reducing program costs and improving health and environmental outcomes – and outperforming compartmentalized, side-by-side sector interventions.
How can we bring HELP to biodiversity-rich communities? First, we can encourage scholars, practitioners, and policy-makers to step outside their stovepipes by producing and distributing manuals, for example, based on lessons learned from existing cross-disciplinary projects. Second, we must bridge the gap between analysis and field-based programs by developing new metrics that better assess the impact of integrated programs. Third, we must open up bureaucratic funding structures by demonstrating not only the short-term savings but also the synergies that bolster long-term sustainability.
The challenges are significant, but I see promising new opportunities for overcoming them. For example, the new Pathfinder International-led projects around Lake Victoria in Uganda and Kenya mark the entry of a respected health organization into the environmental arena and the return of a leading private funder – the MacArthur Foundation – to HELP programs. With some of Africa’s highest population densities, poverty, ethnic diversity, and biodiversity, the Great Lakes region is one of the most volatile intersections of human development and environmental change.
Through these and other community-based, integrated projects, we can truly help people and the planet at the same time.
Photo Credit: "Boy on road east of Addis," courtesy of Geoff Dabelko/Wilson Center.
From the Wilson Center:
Is Foreign Aid Worth the Cost?
Don Wolfensberger, Wilson Center
Wednesday, February 01, 2012
Lancaster noted that following World War II, foreign aid became “a two-pronged instrument – one as an instrument of the Cold War and the other as an extension of American values.” It has been a very “intense marriage” between the two, he said, “with one side up and the other side down at different times, as any marriage tends to be.” Truman convinced Congress to provide aid to Greece and Turkey in 1948 to combat communism, and he was able to gain approval for the Marshall Plan by “scaring the wits out of Congress” about the communist threat.
Aid Under Fire
Congressman Donald Payne (N.J.), who is the ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Subcommittee on Africa, agreed that the Cold War was the principal reason for our foreign aid programs after World War II, as we provided hundreds of billions of dollars in aid to our supporters around the world. But, “It’s different today,” he added. “Since the end of the Cold War, more funds are going for humanitarian and development assistance, but it is still directly linked to our national interests. One in five American jobs are tied to U.S. trade, and the growth of our trading partners is our growth as well.”
Payne cautioned that there is “a new group in the House of Representatives who think we should step out of the world. They’ve told their constituents they are going to cut the budget, and foreign aid is an easy target.” Payne noted that polls show the American people think one-quarter or more of the federal budget goes to foreign aid when it is little more than one percent.
Nevertheless, there has been bipartisan support for former President Bush’s HIV/AIDS initiative in Africa which is showing remarkable results in reducing deaths from the disease. Payne added that aid to Africa is showing results in the number of economies that are doing well despite the global economic downturn.
Payne expressed frustration with the inability to enact a foreign aid authorization bill in the last several Congresses because the measures became weighted down with all manner of policy riders that were both partisan and controversial. Consequently, our foreign relations operations are solely dependent on the annual appropriations bills which tend to become encumbered as well with troublesome riders.
The Dangers of “Nation Building”
Charles O. Flickner, Jr., a 28-year Republican staff member on the Senate Budget Committee and then the Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee in the House, presented a more skeptical view, saying foreign aid is not worth the $35 billion it is costing us each year, even though some of the programs have been successful and should be continued. The biggest problem in recent years, he said, has been the amount of money wasted on projects in Iraq and Afghanistan without adequate planning or execution. Money was being virtually shoveled out the door in amounts the host countries did not have the capacity to absorb, said Flickner, and as a consequence we have witnessed a lot of failed projects and corruption.
Smaller projects, which the U.S. government and private aid donors are better at, have a greater chance for success because they do not overwhelm the capacities of host countries. He cited some of the scholarships and technical training programs available for foreign nationals as being among the most worthwhile in building internal leadership capacity for the future in developing countries.
Rajiv Chandrasekaran agreed on the amount of wasted aid dollars being spent in Iraq and Afghanistan, which he has covered as a foreign correspondent for The Washington Post. He told the story of a small, dirt-poor town in Afghanistan he visited in where the bazaar was bustling with new shops and goods, and people were freely spending money on modern electronics, motor bikes, and clothes. The town was the beneficiary of a massive U.S. aid program that provided seed money for farmers to grow crops and created day labor jobs for the residents of the area. A contractor was authorized to spend $30 million on the economic development of the town during the U.S. counterinsurgency surge and that came to roughly $300 per person. It was clear to the USAID official on the ground and to the reporter that the experiment would not be sustainable over the long-term, even though there was a temporary sense of economic activity and prosperity.
Future Vulnerabilities
The panel seemed to agree that it was unfair to blame USAID for these failures since they were thrown into situations overnight they were not prepared to manage in countries that were not capable of absorbing the assistance being directed at them – all in the midst of ongoing conflict. The real test of whether the new directions being charted by the Obama Administration will work will be on the smaller, more manageable projects in which the host countries have a greater role in shaping and implementing.
Lancaster listed four vulnerabilities in the future course of U.S. foreign aid that should be avoided, including trying to merge our various interests through the State and Defense Departments with our aid programs in countries like Pakistan, where the institutions are weak and corrupt; the danger of creating an entitlement dependency through funding of HIV/AIDS drugs, where we will be guilty of causing deaths if we reduce funding; the danger of attempting to undertake too many initiatives at once, such as food aid, global health, climate change, and science and technology innovations, while simultaneously trying to reform the infrastructure of USAID; and trying too hard to demonstrate results from aid given the difficulty of disentangling causes and effects and gauging success over too short a time frame.
Event Resources:
Don Wolfensberger is director of the Congress Project at the Wilson Center.
Building Commitment to Family Planning: Indonesia
Elizabeth Leahy Madsen, Wilson Center
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
While the two other countries profiled in this series, Rwanda and Iran, have only reinvigorated their family planning programs within the past 20 years, Indonesia’s story begins in the 1960s. In this respect, the world’s fourth most populous country is classified among the pioneers of family planning in the developing world and has been described as a “world leader” and “one of the developing world’s best.” An extensive community outreach program combined with a centralized government that made family planning a priority were key to Indonesia’s success story.
Jakarta Pilot and Religious Support Motivates National Scale-up
For a decade and a half after the struggle for independence from the Dutch ended in 1949, the government of President Sukarno ruled out any government support for family planning. According to a Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) report, the rate of contraceptive use among married women at the time was essentially zero. Fertility rose slightly during this period, from an average of 5.5 in the early 1950s to 5.6 children per woman a decade later. However, in 1965, Sukarno was overthrown, and the next year, a military general named Suharto assumed power in an uprising that left as many as half a million people dead.
Suharto’s regime would last until 1998. Though he operated with a “heavy hand” amidst personal corruption, Suharto also aggressively pursued economic development and brought about a policy shift towards promoting family planning. Despite initial reservations – Suharto believed that the people would oppose family planning on religious grounds – various domestic and international advisers convinced him otherwise.
General Ali Sadikin, the governor of Jakarta – a city of three million even then – was particularly influential in convincing Suharto. According to Australian demographer Terence H. Hull, who has written extensively about population issues in Indonesia, Sadikin was “quickly learning demographic lessons in his attempts to renovate a city with poor housing, schooling, transport, and basic services,” and he began to regularly speak out about the challenges that rapid population growth posed to his goals of urban development.
Hull reports that a second integral event in the early years was a 1967 meeting between government officials and Muslim, Protestant, Catholic, and Hindu leaders representing four of the country’s major religions. Following the meeting, a pamphlet called “Views of Religions on Family Planning” was published, representing “a tipping point when national consensus around the morality of birth control was turning from strongly negative to strongly positive.”
A Strong Coordinating Board Reaches out to Communities
By late 1968, efforts were in place to scale up the family planning program in Jakarta to the national level. The National Family Planning Coordinating Board (BKKBN in Indonesian) was created and quickly became entrenched throughout the country thanks to generous funding, including from international donors.
The BKKBN’s emphasis on the community level, which ensured that family planning services and awareness-generating activities were reaching people around the country through multiple channels, was a key factor in the program’s achievements. The organizations involved in promoting family planning messages at the community level included youth, women’s and religious groups, employers, and schools, with high-level support reiterated regularly by the president. Hull described the BKKBN’s efforts as “a true collaboration because the program emphasized institutions not normally associated with family planning, but did so in a way that was both socially acceptable and socially invigorating.”
In the program’s first two decades, the contraceptive prevalence rate for modern methods rose from almost nonexistent to 44 percent, and fertility subsequently fell from 5.5 to 3.3 children per woman. These changes are widely attributed to robust government sponsorship from the highest levels, together with effective grassroots implementation that fostered support from nearly all sectors of society.
In subsequent years, Indonesia experienced rapid economic and social development. Per capita income increased more than 20 times over between 1966 and 1996, with initial growth largely due to oil revenues. Other development indicators also improved dramatically. The literacy rate is now over 90 percent, nearly all girls attend school, and half of women are members of the labor force. However, Hull cautions against proclaiming the family planning program the primary causal factor in these successes. Family planning and other development programs would not have been as effective, he says, without changes in the political structure, which steadily became more centralized and stable in its oversight of a very heterogeneous society.
A Recent Plateau
In the early 2000s, the family planning program was decentralized to district and municipal levels, in line with political reforms aimed at diminishing the role of central hierarchy nationwide. District leaders were charged with planning, budgeting, and implementing family planning and other primary health services. In accordance, BKKBN modified its strategies to become even more community-oriented. Still, observers judge the family planning program to have “weakened” following decentralization.
With strong logistics, popular support, and donor assistance, contraceptive use continued rising during the years of political transition. By 2002-2003, 57 percent of married women were using a modern contraceptive method and the fertility rate had reached 2.6 children per woman. However, these indicators remained unchanged in the next national survey, conducted in 2007. Fertility in Indonesia is at the median for Southeast Asia – higher than Thailand and Vietnam and lower than Cambodia and the Philippines.
The Program Moves Forward
As democracy became more secure in the early 2000s, the country’s next generation of leaders kept sight of demographic issues. In 2005, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono stated, “High population growth without rapid economic growth will result in poverty and setbacks … Large numbers of children and high populations will only bring advantages if they are skilled.” BKKBN and the Ministry of Health worked with USAID, public health researchers, NGOs and others to develop national family planning standards for quality of care, which were devised and implemented in the early 2000s.
Judging the program’s achievements to have been substantial and its momentum sustainable, USAID graduated Indonesia from population assistance in 2006, after 35 years. Though gaps remain, women’s fertility preferences are largely being met.
Today, 80 percent of all births are intended, and unmet need for family planning – the share of married women who wish to delay or prevent pregnancy but are not using contraception – stands at nine percent, two percentage points below the average for Southeast Asia and all developing countries. Meanwhile, Indonesia’s demographic profile looks much different than it might have. At the time of graduation, USAID reported that without its long-standing and well administered family planning program, Indonesia’s 2006 population would have been larger by 80 million people, or 35 percent.
Elizabeth Leahy Madsen is a consultant on political demography for the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program and senior technical advisor at Futures Group.
Sources: Demographic and Health Surveys; Hull (2007); Management Sciences for Health; New York Times; UN Population Division; USAID.
Photo Credit: “Jakarta,” courtesy of flickr user frostnova.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
