A new tool from the Center for Global Development, Forest Monitoring for Action (FORMA) tool, uses satellite data to monitor tropical deforestation on a monthly basis. Using publicly available feeds from NASA and other sources, FORMA detects the spread of deforestation in areas as small as 1 square kilometer. The video above uses FORMA to animate the rapidly growing damage in Indonesia over the last four years. MORE

“I’m an optimist,” said Peter McCornick, director for water policy at Duke University’s Nicholas Institute, about the future of food and water security in the Ganges and Mekong river basins at the World Wildlife Fund’s recent two-day symposium on water and climate change (video). Although the basins are under threat not only from climate change, but also urbanization, industrialization, development, and population growth, he maintained there are solutions, “as long as we understand what is going on.” MORE

A new survey of Pakistani youth shows why the country is Exhibit A for taking seriously the potent combination of demography and lack of education and employment. Funded by the British Council, the survey shows how Pakistan’s “youth bulge” can be both threat and opportunity. MORE

At an American University event on his new book, Climate Change and Armed Conflict: Hot and Cold Wars, the Center for Teaching Excellence’s James Lee identified some plausible scenarios that the international community will have to face to adequately and peacefully address the security impacts of climate change. MORE

The lecture was only a few hours away. In desperation, I turned to Facebook. “I’ve got just 50 minutes with the cadets at West Point today to talk water, conflict, and cooperation. What are the most compelling examples you would use to make both hard security and human security points, both threat and opportunity points? I ask in part because it is proving harder to decide what to leave out than what to put in!” MORE

At the United Nations, “we see more and more interest in looking at natural resources: how do they contribute to a conflict, and how can they contribute to peacebuilding,” says David Jensen of the UN Environment Programme’s Post-Conflict and Disaster Management Branch in a video interview with ECSP Director Geoff Dabelko. MORE

The Center for Global Development’s latest report, Start With A Girl: A New Agenda For Global Health, sheds light on the risks of ignoring the health of adolescent girls. Like other reports in the Girls Count series, it links broad social outcomes with adolescent health. “Adolescence is a critical juncture for girls. What happens to a girl’s health during adolescence determines her future–and that of her family, community, and country,” state coauthors Miriam Temin and Ruth Levine.

Between childhood and pregnancy, adolescent girls are largely ignored by the public health sector. At the same time, programs and policies aimed at youth do not necessarily meet the specific needs of girls. Understanding the social forces that shape girls’ lives is imperative to improving their health.

Like recent books by Michelle Goldberg and Nicholas Kristof, the report argues for increased investment in girls’ education to break down the social and economic barriers that prevent adolescent girls from reaching their full potential. Improving adolescent girls’ health will require addressing gender inequality, discrimination, poverty, and gender-based violence.

“For many girls in developing countries, well-being is compromised by poor education, violence, and abuse,” say Temin and Levin. “Girls must overcome a panoply of barriers, from restrictions of their movement to taboos about discussion of sexuality to lack of autonomy.” The report points to innovative government and NGO programs that have successfully changed negative social norms, such as female genital cutting and child marriage. However, the authors urge researchers to examine the cost-effectiveness and scalability of these programs.

In the last five years, the international community has become increasingly aware of the importance of youth to social and economic development. Some new programs are focused on investing in adolescent girls, such as the World Bank’s Adolescent Girls Initiative and the White House Council on Women and Girls, but significant additional investment and support is needed.

“Big changes for girls’ health require big actions by national governments supported by bilateral and multilateral donor partners, international NGOs…civil society and committed leaders in the private sector,” maintain Temin and Levin. They offer eight recommendations:
1. Implement a comprehensive health agenda for adolescent girls in at least three countries by working with countries that demonstrate national leadership on adolescent girls.
2. Eliminate marriage for girls younger than 18.
3. Place adolescent girls at the center of international and national action and investment on maternal health.
4. Focus HIV prevention on adolescent girls.
5. Make health-systems strengthening and monitoring work for girls.
6. Make secondary school completion a priority for adolescent girls.
7. Create an innovation fund for girls’ health.
8. Increase donor support for adolescent girls’ health.

“We estimate that a complete set of interventions, including health services and community and school-based efforts, would cost about $1 per day,” say the authors of Start With a Girl. There is no doubt in my mind that this small investment would indeed have a high return for the entire global community. MORE

“All trafficking is not sex trafficking,” argued Woodrow Wilson Center Fellow Pardis Mahdavi, at a recent Middle East Program event. Drawing on her ethnographic research in the United Arab Emirates, Mahdavi analyzed the policy implications of the latest Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. The TIP report offers information on modern day slavery–human trafficking–and includes comprehensive data on policies and enforcement in 155 countries and territories.

The TIP report paradoxically hurts the people it tries to protect, claimed Mahdavi, by placing too much emphasis on sex trafficking and failing to take into consideration other types of abuse, such as those against men and migrant labor workers. Mahdavi pushed for a “breakthrough of the labeling and politicizing of sex traffickers as women and children,” which depicts women as passive and helpless, while excluding male victims.

According to Mahdavi, in Dubai, 80 percent of the population are migrant laborers. Often, these foreign workers do not trust the government to protect them against trafficking abuses, particularly if they are working in the host country illegally. Thus, civil society organizations, and not the state government, serve as the major source of protection and recourse for abused migrant workers. In the Persian Gulf region, Mahdavi argued that the “TIP report needs to be rewritten…to include increased labor inspectors and police training,” and called for the increased “accountability and transparency” of civil society organizations.

Mahdavi cautioned countries against using the TIP report to enact policies that make migration illegal. Tightening borders forces workers into the informal economy, she maintained, where it becomes difficult to track and protect these individuals.

Although the TIP report has weaknesses, it does pressure countries to act, as Mahdavi has witnessed in the United Arab Emirates, where it has provided opportunities for dialogue on the various aspects of trafficking. MORE

In a meeting with business leaders in Lahore in late October, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton pointedly warned of the potential economic impacts of Pakistan’s rapidly growing population: “There has to be…in any plan for your own economic future, a hard look at where you’re going to get the resources to meet these needs. You do have somewhere between 170 and 180 million people. Your population is projected to be about 300 million as the current birth rates, which are among the highest in the world, continue,” she said.

Pakistan is ranked 141 (out of 182 countries) in the Human Development Index. High rates of unemployment are compounded by low levels of education and human capital. Clinton noted that Pakistani women are more vulnerable to poverty; only 40 percent are literate, compared to 68 percent of men.

The Secretary’s emphasis on the need to provide adequate education, jobs, and resources to motivate economic growth and improve well-being is welcome. But demography also has important political consequences. U.S. policymakers and the Pakistani government should consider the impact of population dynamics on the country’s intensifying instability.

As Pakistan’s population grows rapidly, it is maintaining a very young age structure: in 2005, two-thirds of its population was younger than age 30. Research by Population Action International has shown that countries with very young age structures are three times as likely to experience outbreaks of civil conflict than those with a more balanced age distribution.

The members of a “youth bulge” are not inherently dangerous, but when governments are unable to foster employment opportunities or the prospects of stability, a young age structure can serve to exacerbate the risks of conflict, as recently noted by John O. Brennan, assistant to the president for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, in a speech on “A New Approach to Safeguarding Americans.”

As Secretary Clinton and her colleagues consider the complex barriers to achieving peace and stability for Pakistan’s people, their humanitarian and development strategies should include demographic issues. When couples are able to choose the number and timing of their children, very young age structures like Pakistan’s, can change.

Family planning and reproductive health services are fundamental human rights, but remain out of reach for many in Pakistan, where one-quarter of all married women (and 31 percent of the poorest) have an unmet need for family planning.

Greater access to family planning would lower fertility rates and increase the share of working-age adults in the population. In this transition, countries can harness the “demographic dividend”—a change that could turn Pakistan’s age structure into an economic opportunity.

However, funding from the United States—the world’s largest single donor for international family planning—has declined by one-third over the past 15 years. The foreign assistance funding priorities of the Obama administration should reflect this recognition of the linkages between population, development, and stability.

By addressing the high unmet need for family planning and reproductive health services of women in countries like Pakistan, the United States could help to create a more balanced age structure in future generations—and promote stability at the same time.

Elizabeth Leahy Madsen is a research associate at Population Action International (PAI). She is the primary author of the 2007 PAI report The Shape of Things to Come: Why Age Structure Matters to a Safer, More Equitable World.. MORE

As evening fell upon Yirgalem, Ethiopia, more than 70 participants from a large cross-section of Ethiopia’s NGO community—as well as a few international participants like myself—gathered in a packed conference room in the Furra Institute for the second annual General Assembly of the Consortium for the Integration of Population, Health, and Environment (CIPHE).

“An integrated population, health, and environment (PHE) approach begins with an understanding of local population, health, and environment links,” said Population Reference Bureau’s Jason Bremner, setting the stage for an in-depth examination of Ethiopia’s innovative integrated community development projects.

Negash Teklu, executive director of CIPHE, described several projects that use PHE linkages to meet community needs on the ground: The Relief Society of Tigray, LEM Ethiopia, MELCA Mahiber, and the Ethio Wetlands and Natural Resources Association project in Metu.

Teklu explained that the “holistic and participatory community approach can bring real understanding between people and their environment, and between people and their health.”

Heather D’Agnes, technical advisor and PHE champion at USAID, led an enthusiastic discussion on PHE projects that ranged from conception to implementation, focusing on how the CIPHE members may better incorporate the PHE integrated model in their own projects.

Two short years ago, CIPHE began with a small but dedicated group of active members. Since then, the consortium has attracted more than 50 organizations.

This year’s conference aims to “demonstrate population, health, and environment (PHE) interventions as reliable, cost effective, and innovative responses to diverse community needs by presenting local, regional and international developments in the PHE field.” The informal networking after the formal presentations offered a great opportunity for the consortium’s members to share lessons on PHE integration from across the vast country.

Next up: the conference attendees will visit PHE intervention sites for some hands-on experience.

ECSP Program Associate Sean Peoples is reporting from the CIPHE conference in Ethiopia.

Photos: By Sean Peoples and Geoff Dabelko

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Right now, Rich Cincotta is live on “PRB Discuss Online,” answering the question, “Does a Young Age Structure Thwart Democratic Governments?” He is responding to reader questions like “Do Democratic governments being overcome by poverty and high unemployment rates have a chance to succeed” and “Why do you think the mainstream demography community is so slow or unwilling to pick up the research questions you have pursued?” Read the transcript and Cincotta’s recent article on this topic, “Half a Chance: Youth Bulges and Transitions to Liberal Democracy.”

A new World Bank working paper, “Breaking the Waves? Does Education Mediate the Relationship Between Youth Bulges and Political Violence?” by Bilal Barakat and Henrik Urdal finds “evidence that large, young male population bulges are more likely to increase the risk of conflict in societies where male secondary education is low”–particularly in low and middle-income countries. Mardy Shualy of Foreign Policy’s blog suggests policymakers do the math to compare the costs of secondary education to the economic toll of war and civil conflict. MORE

“There’s a correlation between CO2 and population. And it’s that we live in a world of more people, more money and more things, and that all distills down to the need for more energy,” said Dennis Dimick, executive editor of National Geographic, at a Wilson Center event on the media’s coverage of climate change and population, co-sponsored by the Society of Environmental Journalists and the International Reporting Project. MORE

“There can be no durable peace if the natural resources that sustain livelihoods are damaged or destroyed,” said UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, in his message today, the 9^th annual International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict. He called for “Member States to clarify and expand international law on environmental protection in times of war.” MORE

“We don’t do the gloom-and-doom scenarios anymore,” says David Jensen of the UN Environment Programme’s Post-Conflict and Disaster Management Branch, in a video interview with ECSP Director Geoff Dabelko. “We focus on the opportunities provided by resource management. We focus much more on how they can support economic recovery, how they support livelihoods, how environment can be a platform for cooperation.” MORE

Today’s episode of NPR’s “To the Point” with Warren Olney will focus on “Global Warming and the Geo-Political Map,” seeking to answer the question, “What are the risks to natural resources, immigration, and political stability worldwide?”

As one of the four panelists, ECSP Director Geoff Dabelko will draw on his recent article in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists and ECSP’s climate-security resources.

Climate security has been heating up the media for the last few months, although most news coverage has been rather thin. That’s understandable, given the complexity of the drivers involved, and the crushing constraints on environmental reporters’ time and budgets these days. But climate security is a politically powerful argument, one which advocates from all over the political spectrum have increasingly adopting, and it deserves a more thorough, thoughtful treatment.

“Come to Attention,” a panel at this year’s SEJ annual conference (audio) moderated by ClimateWire’s Lisa Friedman, delved into some of the finer points of this often oversimplified connection. As part of the panel, Dabelko outlined seven cautions to keep in mind and suggestions for improving coverage of the difficult link.

While Grist’s Robert McClure jokingly called the session “doom and gloom without the sense of humor,” Dabelko ended on a positive note, pointing out that by coming together to battle climate change, countries may build bridges to peace, rather than war–particularly if the militaries cooperate in the fight.

In a recent op-ed, Dabelko and the U.S. Army War College’s Kent Butts argue that climate could be one of the most productive avenues for improving military relations with China, suggesting that “U.S. and Chinese militaries should jointly assess the security implications of climate change that concern both sides: rising sea levels, changing precipitation patterns, uncertain migration scenarios, and instability in resource-rich regions.”

“To the Point” airs live online at 3 PM EST. In the Washington, DC, area listen to it at 10 PM EST tonight on WAMU 88.5. MORE