Monthly archive for February 2012. Show all posts
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USAID’s New Climate Strategy Outlines Adaptation, Mitigation Priorities, Places Heavy Emphasis on Integration
›By Kathleen Mogelgaard // Wednesday, February 29, 2012In January, the U.S. Agency for International Development released its long-awaited climate change strategy. Climate Change & Development: Clean Resilient Growth provides a blueprint for addressing climate change through development assistance programs and operations. In addition to objectives around mitigation and adaptation, the strategy also outlines a third objective: improving overall operational integration.
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The five-year strategy has a clear, succinct goal: “to enable countries to accelerate their transition to climate-resilient low emission sustainable economic development.” Developed by a USAID task force with input from multiple U.S. agencies and NGOs, the document paints a picture of the threats climate change poses for development – calling it “among the greatest global challenges of our generation” – and commits the agency to addressing both the causes of climate change and the impacts it will have on communities in countries around the world.
These statements are noteworthy in a fiscal climate that has put development assistance under renewed scrutiny and in a political environment where progress on climate change legislation seems unlikely.
Not Just Challenges, But Opportunities
To make the case for prioritizing action on climate change, the strategy cites climate change’s likely impact on agricultural productivity and fisheries, which will threaten USAID’s food security goals. It also illustrates the ways in which climate change could exacerbate humanitarian crises and notes work done by the U.S. military and intelligence community in identifying climate change as a “threat multiplier” (or “accelerant of instability” as the Quadrennial Defense Review puts it) with implications for national security.
Targeted efforts to address climate change, though, could consolidate development gains and result in technology “leap-frogging” that will support broader development goals. And, noting that aggregate emissions from developing countries are now larger than those from developed countries, the strategy asserts that assisting the development and deployment of clean technologies “greatly expands opportunities to export U.S. technology and creates ‘green jobs.’”
In addition to providing a rationale for action, the strategy provides new insights on how USAID will prioritize its efforts on climate change mitigation and adaptation. It provides a clear directive for the integration of climate change into the agency’s broader development work in areas such as food security, good governance, and global health– a strong and encouraging signal for those interested in cross-sectoral planning and programs.
Priorities Outlined, Tough Choices Ahead
President Obama’s Global Climate Change Initiative, revealed in 2010, focuses efforts around three pillars: clean energy, sustainable landscapes, and adaptation. USAID’s climate strategy fleshes out these three areas, identifying “intermediate results” and indicators of success – such as the development of Low Emission Development Strategies in 20 partner countries, greenhouse gas sequestration through improved ecosystem management, and increasing the number of institutions capable of adaptation planning and response.
In laying out ambitious objectives, however, the authors of the strategy acknowledge constrained fiscal realities. The strategy stops short of identifying an ideal budget to support the activities it describes, though it does refer to the U.S. pledge to join other developed countries in providing $30 billion in “fast start financing” in the period of 2010 to 2012 and, for those USAID country missions that will be receiving adaptation and mitigation funding, establishes “floors” of $3 million and $5 million, respectively.
The final section of the strategy lists over thirty countries and regions that have already been prioritized for programs, including Bangladesh, India, Kenya, Malawi, and Peru. But “we are unable to work in every country at risk from climate change impacts or with the potential for low carbon sustainable growth,” the strategy asserts. An annex includes selection criteria to guide further funding decisions, including emission reduction potential, high exposure to physical climate change impacts, a suitable enabling environment, coordination with other donors, and diplomatic and geographic considerations.
“Integration” Central to Strategy
The concept of integration figures prominently throughout the 27-page document. For those of us working in the large and growing space where the global challenges of climate change, food security, health, livelihoods, and governance overlap, this attention is heartening. While it may sometimes seem simply fashionable to pay lip service to the idea of “breaking out of stovepipes,” the strategy identifies concrete ways to incentivize integration.
“Integration of climate change into USAID’s development portfolio will not happen organically,” the strategy says. “Rather, it requires leadership, knowledge and incentives to encourage agency employees to seek innovative ways to integrate climate change into programs with other goals and to become more flexible in use of funding streams and administrative processes.”
To this end, USAID plans to launch a group of pilot activities. USAID missions must submit pilot program proposals, and selected programs will emphasize integration of top priorities within the agency’s development portfolio (including Feed the Future and the Global Health Initiative). Among other criteria, pilots must demonstrate buy-in from multiple levels of leadership, and will be selected based on their potential to generate integration lessons and tools over the next several years.
This kind of integration – the blending of key priorities from multiple sectors, the value of documented lessons and tools, the important role of champions in fostering an enabling environment – mirrors work carried out by USAID’s own population, health, and environment (PHE) portfolio. To date, USAID’s PHE programs have not been designed to address climate challenges specifically, and perhaps not surprisingly they aren’t named specifically in the strategy. But those preparing and evaluating integration pilot proposals may gain useful insights on cross-sectoral integration from a closer look at the accumulated knowledge of more than 10 years of PHE experience.
Population Dynamics Recognized, But Opportunities Not Considered
Though not a focus of the strategy, population growth is acknowledged as a stressor – alongside unplanned urbanization, environmental degradation, resource depletion, and poverty – that exacerbates growing challenges in disaster risk reduction and efforts to secure a safe and sufficient water supply.
Research has shown that different global population growth scenarios will have significant implications for emissions growth. New analysis indicates that the fastest growing populations are among the most vulnerable to climate change and that in these areas, there is frequently high unmet need for family planning. And we have also clearly seen that in many parts of the world, women’s health and well-being are increasingly intertwined with the effects of changing climate and access to reproductive health services.
In its limited mention of population as a challenge, however, the strategy misses the chance to identify it also as an opportunity. Addressing the linked challenges of population growth and climate change offers an opportunity to recommit the resources required to assist of the hundreds of millions of women around the world with ongoing unmet need for family planning.
The strategy’s emphasis on integration would seem to be an open door to such opportunities.
Integrated, cross-sectoral collaboration that truly fosters a transition to climate-resilient, low-emission sustainable economic development will acknowledge both the challenge presented by rapid population growth and the opportunities that can emerge from expanding family planning access to women worldwide. But for this to happen, cross-sectoral communication will need to become more commonplace. Demographers and reproductive health specialists will need to engage in dialogues on climate change, and climate specialists will need both opportunities and incentives to listen. USAID’s new climate change integration pilots could provide a new platform for this rare but powerful cross-sectoral action.
Kathleen Mogelgaard is a writer and analyst on population and the environment, and a consultant for the Environmental Change and Security Program.
Sources: FastStartFinance.org, International Energy Agency, Maplecroft, Population Action International, The White House, U.S. Department of Defense, USAID.
Photo Credit: “Displaced Darfuris Farm in Rainy Season,” courtesy of United Nations Photo. -
USAID’s Donald Steinberg on Futures Analysis for International Development
›By Stuart Kent // Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Just as the science fiction writer Isaac Asimov explored the idea of predicting the future to influence the world towards a more prosperous, democratic, and peaceful track, so too must USAID try to better understand the challenges of tomorrow, said Donald Steinberg, deputy administrator for the U.S. Agency for International Development, during an address at USAID’s “Future of Development” symposium at the Wilson Center late last year. “Development now is too important to the United States to be left to actions that occur over 1, or 2, or 5, or even 10 years,” he continued. Looking beyond budgetary cycles, Steinberg asserted that “we have to prepare for future development patterns” by analyzing the present.MORE
Why Aid Matters
Drawing on the President’s remarks during the UN’s 2010 Millennium Development Goals Summit in New York, Steinberg outlined three reasons why development aid is central to U.S. foreign policy.
First, we all stand to benefit from living “in a world that’s peaceful, that’s democratic, that’s prosperous, that’s respectful of human rights and respectful of human dignity,” he argued.
Second, “a world that is developing is in our economic interest,” he said. “Developing nations are our fastest growing markets abroad,” providing lucrative outlets for U.S. trade and investment. Eighty-five percent of new U.S. exports over the next two decades will find their way to recipients of U.S. foreign aid, he said.
Third, aid impacts national security. Countries that are developing and prospering “don’t spew out large numbers of refugees across borders or across oceans,” he said, “they don’t transmit pandemic diseases, they don’t harbor terrorists, or now even pirates” – in short, “they don’t require American forces.”
Looking to the Future
According to Steinberg, we can take hold of the future by being prepared to grasp opportunities, even if they come in the midst of challenges.
“We’re seeing demographic shifts that are complicating once steady development patterns,” he said, “and we’re seeing more uneven distribution of wealth within countries and between countries.” But “maternal and infant mortality have plummeted [and] literacy rates are skyrocketing.”
“We still see rampant corruption and we still see crackdowns on civil society all around the world,” however Steinberg pointed out that 17 new democracies have emerged in Africa in the last 15 years alone.
On climate change, he drew from recent events in the Horn of Africa. “A changing rain pattern – from a drought every 10 years to what is now basically a drought every year – has brought together a perfect storm of famine, war, and drought,” he said. Yet across the border from Somalia, the situation is markedly different – in part because “USAID has had the capability to work with eight million Ethiopians over the past decade to strengthen their resiliency.”
Each of these shows the opportunity for positive change amidst difficult challenges, if we are prepared.
“We went through a period where we had eliminated our office of policy and planning,” said Steinberg, but over the last few years the newly established Policy, Planning, and Learning Bureau at USAID has brought back an emphasis on futures analysis. “We are now seeking to become…the thought leader in the development field,” he said.
Overall, the total amount of official government aid is small compared to other sources from the United States, said Steinberg – around $30 billion a year (compared to $36 billion in private giving, $100 billion in remittance flows, and $1 trillion in private capital flows). To make the most of that, USAID should be “a catalyst for development,” he said, working in partnership, encouraging technological innovation, and advancing cross-sectoral understanding.
“We at AID like to think in terms of budget cycles,” said Steinberg. “We’re starting to think about fiscal year [20]14, but I want you to start thinking about fiscal year 25 and fiscal year 30. I won’t challenge you to think 30,000 years ahead like Isaac Asimov did, but I think we do have to consider what the lessons of today are teaching us about the future.”
Sources: The White House. -
Dot-Mom / From the Wilson Center:
Programming to Address the Health and Livelihood Needs of Adolescent Girls
›By Kate Diamond // Monday, February 27, 2012“There are 750 million adolescent girls in the world today, and this is by far one of the world’s most marginalized and vulnerable demographics,” said Denise Dunning, the Public Health Institute’s program director for emergency contraception in Latin America during a February 2 panel at the Wilson Center. Dunning, who also leads the Adolescent Girls’ Advocacy and Leadership Initiative (AGALI), was joined by Margaret Greene, director of Greeneworks, and Jennifer Pope, the deputy director of sexual and reproductive health at Population Services International, to discuss how to better reach underserved adolescent girls in developing countries with health and livelihood programs.
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Marginalized Potential
“Only two cents on every one dollar in international aid funding actually goes to support any type of adolescent girl programming or services,” said Dunning.
And yet, investing in girls represents a “tremendous opportunity to create change,” Dunning said, because that investment doesn’t just impact her, but her family, “her future children, her community, and her country’s economic growth.”
Dunning highlighted education as an example: “We know that adolescent girls who attend seven years of school will actually get married four years later and have 2.2 fewer children than their uneducated counterparts,” she said. And these educated women “have access to livelihoods and jobs that they wouldn’t otherwise [and] who then go on to invest almost 100 percent of their income in their families and in their future children.” On the other hand, said Dunning, men only invest on average 35 percent of their income back into their families, according to research done by the Nike Foundation.
“Pivotal, But Often Hidden”
Even as young girls have the potential to make exponentially huge impacts on their families and communities, the responsibilities they carry within their households can often add to the problems hampering their livelihoods and wellbeing.
Young girls in poor countries have family roles that are “really pivotal, but often hidden,” said Greene. And the fact that those roles are hidden means that “it’s hard to know where to start with the issue of domestic labor and the negative effects that it has on the lives of girls.”
On the one hand, said Greene, “they are bearing the burden of chores in the household, cleaning, fetching water, firewood, caring for family members, often working in fields or in family business.” On the other, “they often have no say in major life decisions that affect them, and their family and community norms often harm their well-being.”
The myriad roles that girls play underscore how many different issues – from education to health care, human rights, and livelihoods – must be addressed to create change for girls. “None of this exists in a vacuum,” said Dunning.
“If we’re not holistically addressing girls’ needs, and engaging them in a process of figuring out their own solutions, [advocacy work] is not going to be nearly as effective as it could be,” she said.
Greene added that the numerous issues important to girls can often be overshadowed by a singular focus on reproductive health. “I think we’re often, with very good intentions, very heavily focused on reproductive health services, and of course girls need much more than that,” she said.
Programming Should Match and Promote Girls’ Agencies
PSI, working in partnership with the Nike Foundation, the Rwandan Ministry of Health, and the Association des Guides du Rwanda, has been able to reach out to girls on a slew of issues by using what had initially been constructed as a reproductive health program as a sounding board to learn more about girls’ concerns and needs. Through the 12+ Program, Pope said girls made it clear that access to assets was a barrier for them; in response, they incorporated financial literacy skills into their programming, which now reaches about 600 10-to-12-year-old girls in Rwanda.
In Guatemala, girls living in the country’s western highlands became engaged in local governance through a program that an AGALI fellow and a Guatemalan reproductive health advocacy group initiated. Through the program, girls from 9 to 18 years old formed a youth parliament, “with boys as well, and actually decided that one of the main problems that they were facing was that they didn’t have enough [sexual and reproductive health] services and programs,” said Dunning. So, she said, these girls lobbied local mayors and ultimately won more funding for programs that met their needs.
In Madagascar, PSI found that the hurdle keeping reproductive health and family planning services out of girls’ reach wasn’t a lack of programming, but social norms that kept girls from making use of programs that already existed. Pope said that, in the case of 16-year-old Anasthasie, her concerns about being judged for going to a clinic that her parents or her parents’ friends might use kept her from seeking out the family planning services she wanted.
In response to Anasthasie’s feedback and others like her, PSI launched Top Réseau, a nationwide network of 173 clinics “focused towards youth…and having a safe space for youth to go to to ask questions,” said Pope. After four years, contraceptive prevalence increased 13 percent in program areas – a sign, said Pope, that with the right information and access to the right services, youth were finally able to achieve what they had wanted all along.
In all these cases, success came from recognizing girls’ agency, and avoiding treating them simply as passive recipients of predetermined aid. We can learn from the girls that our programming targets, said Pope. And once “girls have spoken and people have heard what they have to say,” said Greene, “in many ways there’s no going back.”
Event Resources
Sources: All Africa, Nike Foundation, Population Services International, UNICEF.
Photo Credit: “Fighting poverty in Kenya,” by flickr user Gates Foundation. -
The Sahel’s Complex Vulnerability to Food Crises
›By Stuart Kent // Friday, February 24, 2012“Across the Sahel region of western Africa, a combination of drought, poverty, high grain prices, environmental degradation, and chronic underdevelopment is expected to plunge millions of people into a new food and nutrition crisis this year,” according to a UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) statement from February 10. The coming “lean season” is predicted to be the third food crisis in less than a decade and highlights a set of glaring vulnerabilities in a region facing severe long-term threats to health, livelihoods, and security. However, as international agencies call for funding to mount yet another emergency response, serious concerns are being raised about what is (or isn’t) being done to address the root causes of vulnerability.
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When a Crisis Loses the Surprise Factor
Though more than one million children under-five are estimated to be at risk of “severe acute malnutrition this year, during a ‘normal’ year this figure still hovers around 800,000,” according to the OCHA’s IRIN service. Across the Sahel, UNICEF estimates an under-five child mortality rate of 222 per 1,000 live births – this means that more than one in every five Sahelian children dies before the age of five.
The Sahel is “a crisis in the context of a chronic emergency,” said Oxfam America’s Eric Munoz during a January 25 Wilson Center Africa Program event, “Is a Food Crisis Brewing in the Sahel?”
“It’s not necessarily that there is no food, it’s that the poorest people can no longer afford to access the food with their own means,” elaborated Ben Safari of Catholic Relief Services. Jacques Higgins of the World Food Program weighed in, observing that, “after a crisis, people are not able anymore to recover, to rebuild their coping strategies and resilience until the next crisis hits.” For instance, households previously forced into selling off assets such as livestock during past crises have had insufficient time to recover and cannot now employ the same survival strategy.
The perception that the resilience of populations in the Sahel is being worn down by the increasing frequency of humanitarian events is supported by a December 2011 report from the UN Environment Programme. Livelihood Security: Climate Change, Migration and Conflict in the Sahel, provides a wealth of data, including detailed maps (described on New Security Beat here), and argues that successful strategies to reduce vulnerability and encourage adaptation require understanding “the exacerbating effect of changes in climate on population dynamics and conflict in the region.”
But despite the relatively unified voices emerging from practitioners, evaluations of past crises, and key international agencies about the importance of looking at, and directing funds towards, the long-term and interlinked vulnerabilities that drive food insecurity in the Sahel, “the argument has not been won yet,” said Cyprien Fabre, head of the European Commission Humanitarian Aid Department in West Africa, to IRIN recently.
Robert Johnson, a UNICEF nutrition specialist, told IRIN:It is still difficult to ensure funding from government agencies for long-term preventative activities when there are critical life-saving interventions that they can respond to immediately. It’s much easier [for them] to justify life-saving than long-term.
Sources of Vulnerability
Populations across the Sahel face a diverse set of interwoven vulnerabilities that exacerbate long-term susceptibility to physical shocks such as late rains and failed harvests, as well as social shocks, such as conflict, insecurity, and displacement.
Though traditional adaptation strategies to threats such as desertification, land degradation, and water scarcity exist, they are increasingly in competition with one another, as conflict over land tenure between pastoralists and agriculturalists has revealed. Likewise, governance failures around the provision and control of resource usage and basic infrastructure (notably, water) have exacerbated tensions in a region where the majority of the population depends on rain-fed farming and/or pastoralism.
A contributing factor is that poor maternal healthcare and high rates of unmet need for family planning are common across the Sahel. This places a significant population-related burden on communities. Across the six nations expected by the UN to be most affected by the current crisis (Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, and Chad), the average level of maternal mortality is higher than 700 deaths per 100,000 births while the unmet need for family planning is estimated at more than 26 percent (averaged across states), according to World Health Organization data. (To put this in context, the average maternal mortality ratio in developing countries is 290 per 100,000 births, according to the WHO; in developed countries this figure drops to 14.)
A September 2011 report by the Sahel Working Group (SWG) on the prior crises of 2005 and 2010 concluded that “a glaring weakness in the development aid approach to addressing chronic food and nutrition insecurity is the low level of support for integrated reproductive and maternal health programs.”
Furthermore, mounting insecurity in the region is limiting access and displacing vulnerable populations. The International Committee of the Red Cross reported on February 20 that 60,000 people have been displaced within Mali since mid-January as a result of the evolving Touareg rebellion sparked by the return of well-armed fighters from Libya. Another 20,000 have fled across the border into Niger.
The regulation of local, national, and international food markets also has a role to play. “Markets respond to demand, not need,” writes Peter Gubbels in the SWG report. Vulnerable populations that lack the purchasing power to demand food, even when food is available, face significant threats. For instance, the report asserts that “a third of the population of Chad is chronically undernourished – regardless of the rains or the size of the harvest.”
Sustainable and Integrated Approaches
Without an integrated and long-term approach to the delivery of humanitarian and development aid, prospects for successfully addressing what has in essence become the normal state of crisis in the Sahel seem slim. Ideas for integrating maternal and reproductive health into existing programming, for addressing the environment and sources of insecurity together, and for merging crisis response with the need for integrated development through avenues such as disaster risk reduction are out there. But more must be done to put these ideas into practice in order to reduce the complex vulnerability of populations in the Sahel to future crises.
Sources: Al Jazeera, Groundswell International, International Institute for Environment and Development, Oxfam International, ReliefWeb, The International Committee of the Red Cross United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP), United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN-OCHA), World Health Organization.
Photo Credit: “Walking among scattered bones,” courtesy of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. -
Integration, Communication Across Sectors a Must, Say Speakers at 2012 NCSE Environment and Security Conference (Updated)
›By ECSP Staff // Thursday, February 23, 2012ECSP staff were among the more than 1,000 attendees discussing non-traditional security issues at the 12th National Conference on Science, Policy, and the Environment last month at the Ronald Reagan Building. Our own Geoff Dabelko spoke on the opening plenary (above) and we collected other excerpts below, though they’re only a small slice of the conference. Find our full coverage by following the NCSE tag, see the full agenda on environmentalsecurity.org, and follow the conversation on Twitter (#NCSEconf).MORE
Climate, Energy, Food, Water, and Health
At the conference’s lead-off plenary, Jeff Seabright (Vice President, The Coca-Cola Company), Daniel Gerstein (Deputy Under Secretary for Science and Technology, U.S. Department of Homeland Security), Rosamond Naylor (Director, Stanford’s Center on Food Security and Environment), and our ECSP’s Geoff Dabelko highlighted the challenges and opportunities of addressing the diverse yet interconnected issues of climate, energy, food, water, and health.
“We need to embrace diversity regardless of the complexity,” said Dabelko, and “abandon our stereotypes and get out of our stovepipes.” Government agencies, academics, and NGOs must be open to using different tools and work together to capture synergies. “If we know everyone in the room, we are not getting out enough,” he said.
“We have to be concerned with every level – national, state, tribal, regional, down to the individual,” said Gerstein. DHS recognizes that climate change affects all of its efforts, and has established three main areas of focus: Arctic impacts; severe weather; and critical infrastructure and key resources.
For Coca-Cola, “managing the complex relationship among [food, water, and energy] is going to be the challenge of the 21st century, said Seabright, who noted that the business community is “seeing a steady increase in the internalization of these issues into business,” including as part of companies’ competitive advantages and strategies.
Similarly, we must offer opportunities and not just threats, said Dabelko, such as exploring climate adaptation’s potential as a tool for peacebuilding rather than simply focusing on climate’s links to conflict. We need to “find ways to define and measure success that embrace the connections among climate, water, and energy, and does not try to pretend they aren’t connected in the real world,” he said.
Communicating Across Sectors: Difficult But Necessary
Next, Sherri Goodman (Executive Director, CNA Military Advisory Board), Nancy Sutley (Chair, White House Council on Environmental Quality), Rear Admiral Neil Morisetti (Climate and Energy Security Envoy, UK Ministry of Defence), and Susan Avery (Director, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute) called on governments, militaries, and institutions to move away from traditional, vertically segmented responsibilities to address today’s environmental and security challenges.
“We live in an interdependent, connected world,” Morisetti said, but communicating that is a challenge. Militaries are likely to have new, broader missions, including conflict prevention, he said, which makes communications all the more important.
Science is moving from reductive to integrated outlooks to better address larger, systems-wide challenges, said Avery, but communicating results of this research to the public, and across and between disciplines, is difficult.
Confronting these communication and education challenges, particularly the difficulties of conveying the probability of various risks, is a key focus of the Council on Environmental Quality, said Sutley. “We confront the challenge of risk communication every day and it’s not limited to climate change,” she said.Challenging Conventional Wisdom on Climate and Conflict
The common argument is that climate change will lead to scarcity – less arable land, water, rain, etc. – and scarcity will lead to conflict, said Kate Marvel (Lawrence Livermore National Lab). But the link between scarcity and conflict is not that clear. It’s “very important to treat models as tools, not as magic balls,” she said. Developing better diagnostics to test models will help researchers and observers sort out which ones are best.
Kaitlin Shilling (Stanford University) called on the environmental security community to move beyond simple causal pathways towards finding solutions. After all, rolling back climate change is not an option at this point, she said; to find solutions, therefore, we need more detailed analysis of the pathways to violence.
The most common types of climate-conflict correlations are not likely to directly involve the state, said Cullen Hendrix (College of William and Mary). Traditional inter-state wars (think “water wars”) or even civil wars are much less likely than threats to human security (e.g., post-elections violence in Kenya) and community security (e.g., tribal raiding in South Sudan). For this reason, the biggest breakthroughs in understanding climate and conflict links will likely come from better interactions between social and physical scientists, he said.
Because the many unique factors leading to conflict vary from place to place, a better way to assess climate-conflict risk might be mapping human vulnerability to climate change rather than predicting conflict risk in a given place, said Justin Mankin (Stanford University). While human reactions are very difficult to predict, vulnerability is easier to quantify.
Yu Hongyuan (Shanghai Institute for International Studies) compared the concerns of U.S. and Chinese officials on climate change. Polling results, he said, show Chinese officials are most concerned with maintaining access to resources, while American policymakers focus on climate change’s effects on global governance and how it will impact responses to natural disasters, new conflicts, and humanitarian crises. Given the centrality of these two countries to international climate negotiations, Yu said he hoped the “same issues, different values” gulf might be bridged by better understanding each side’s priorities.
Schuyler Null, Lauren Herzer, and Meaghan Parker contributed to this article.
Video Credit: Lyle Birkey/NCSE; photo credit: Sean Peoples/Wilson Center. -
Reading Radar:
The U.S. Military, Climate Change, and Maritime Boundaries
›By Kate Diamond // Thursday, February 23, 2012The Defense Science Board, which advices the U.S. military on scientific and technical matters, writes in a recent task force report that the most immediate and destabilizing effects of climate change will impact U.S. security indirectly, through American reliance on already-vulnerable states that are “vital” sources of fuel and minerals or key partners in combatting terrorism. The report singles out three specific themes as particularly important to responding to near-term climate-driven threats and adapting to climate change’s long-term impacts: providing “better and more credible information [about climate change] to decision makers,” improving water management, and building better local adaptation capacity, particularly in African nations. Ultimately, the report concludes that the most effective, most efficient way the United States can respond to climate change is not militarily but “through anticipatory and preventative actions using primarily indigenous resources.”
MOREIn “Maritime Boundary Disputes in East Asia: Lessons for the Arctic,” published in International Studies Perspectives, James Manicom writes that as climate change makes access and exploration easier, there are lessons to be learned from East Asian states’ handling of maritime disputes for Arctic nations. Manicom finds that simply because a state may be party to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), disputes over boundaries and “over the methods used to settle disputes” persist. Domestic identity politics also can and do affect the extent to which a state attempts to exert influence over disputed areas – a noteworthy conclusion given growing rhetoric in Arctic states over the national importance of disputed territories. Finally, Manicom points out that, while “high expectations of resource wealth” may fuel disputes and “political tension,” those expectations do not inevitably doom competing states to conflict over resources.
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Eye On:
Kaitlin Shilling: Climate Conflict and Export Crops in Sub-Saharan Africa
›By Kate Diamond // Thursday, February 23, 2012
“There’s been a tremendous amount of work done on looking for a climate signal for civil conflict, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, and a lot of this work draws a very clear and simple path – if it rains more, or if it rains less, there will be more or less conflict,” says Stanford University’s Kaitlin Shilling in this short video interview. Unfortunately, that straightforward research does little in the way of helping policymakers: “the only way to change the agricultural outputs due to climate change is to change climate change, reduce climate change, or stop it,” she says, “and we’re not really good at that part.”MORE
Shilling moderated a panel at last month’s National Conference on Science, Policy, and the Environment on climate-conflict research. Agricultural export crops – cotton, coffee, cocoa, tea, vanilla – represent one area where policymakers might be able to intervene to prevent climate-driven conflict, says Shilling. Though not as important from a food security perspective, “these crops are really important” for sub-Saharan economies, as well as for “government revenues, which [are] closely related to government capacity.”
But “the effects of climate change on those crops are less well understood,” Shilling says. How they relate to “government revenues and how those relate to civil conflict is an area that I spend a lot of time doing research on.”
By “understand[ing] the mechanisms that underlie the potential relationship between climate and conflict, we can start identifying interventions that make sense to reduce the vulnerability of people to conflict and help them to adapt to the coming climate change.” -
From the Wilson Center / Guest Contributor:
Stuck: Rwandan Youth and the Struggle for Adulthood (Book Preview)
›By Marc Sommers // Wednesday, February 22, 2012This excerpt is from Marc Sommers’ Stuck: Rwandan Youth and the Struggle for Adulthood, published by the University of Georgia Press. The book was launched at the Wilson Center on February 28 (webcast available here).
Several years ago, I wrote that the central irony concerning Africa’s urban youth was that “they are a demographic majority that sees itself as an outcast minority.” Since that time, field research with rural and urban youth in war and postwar contexts within and beyond Africa has led me to revise this assertion. The irony appears to apply to most developing country youth regardless of their location.MORE
Research for this book underscores the relevance of this unfortunate irony. Youth who felt overlooked and misunderstood ran like a deep, wide river through the field data for this book. The irony surfaced in many ways, including in a theme linking the plight of urban and rural youth in an immediate and concrete fashion: 200 francs ($0.37). Amafaranga magana abiri was a common way of highlighting the plight of a youth’s immediate situation. In rural Rwanda, 200 francs is the most common daily payment for cultivating another person’s farmland. That wage rests at the core of the plans of many if not most rural youth. For male youth, those earnings are how they buy roof tiles for a house they hope to complete. For female youth, the earnings go toward personal care products and perhaps savings that might attract a male youth. In Kigali, Rwanda’s mushrooming capital, 200 francs is what it costs to buy one plate of food in a simple restaurant. This was the daily focus of many urban youth: to somehow get enough money to eat one hot meal a day (most lacked cooking facilities in their residences).
These activities circumscribe the central findings in this book: the exacting adulthood requirements in Rwanda’s countryside and the desperation of city life for its urban youth. Stuck is offered as a contribution toward a more accurate picture of contemporary Rwanda and toward a deeper understanding of the powerful influence of two dynamic forces in youth lives across the world: masculinity and urbanization.
The two forces are linked. The first step to socially recognized manhood in Rwanda is to build a house. This sets the stage for a formal, legal marriage (as opposed to an embarrassing and illegal informal arrangement) and then children. Once a man can do this, and protect and support his children and wife, manhood is achieved. Yet research for this book revealed that attaining manhood is exceedingly difficult. Many male youth are caught on a treadmill toward the first step – building a house – which they know they may never complete. Rwanda, already among the world’s highest ranked in population growth, population density, urban growth, and poverty, also has a traditional culture that is both demanding and unrelenting toward its own young people. Male youth drop out of school to start working in order to save to build their house. Then they get stuck. The fallout from this housing crisis is breathtakingly severe, and a common result is for male (and female) youth to escape adulthood requirements by migrating to an urban area, usually Kigali, where their main pressure is not obtaining adulthood but sheer survival.
The impact of this situation on female youth is profound. Because male youth get stuck, female youth get stuck too, since they cannot attain womanhood without having a formal, legal marriage and then giving birth to children. Rwanda’s infamous genocide of 1994 (and its far lesser known civil war of 1990-94) has compounded this female youth challenge, since it is estimated that there may be 88 men for every 100 women in the land. With polygamy outlawed, and if the above estimate is accurate, then perhaps 12 percent of female youth cannot marry because there aren’t enough men to wed.
A much more immediate fact is that so few male youth are able to marry because they are unable to complete their houses. In addition, the clock is ticking: while male youth strain to construct a house and consider the prospect of a life of public failure, female youth must marry before society considers them failures as well. Once unmarried women reach the age of 28, but perhaps just 24 or 25 (male youth and men debate the cutoff age), they are labeled “old ladies” or “prostitutes” and permanently forced onto the margins of society. Since no one can legally marry before the age of 21 in Rwanda, the window of marriage opportunity for female youth may be as narrow as four years. A male youth, by contrast, has more time to marry than female youth, but it’s far from forever: by his early 30s, a single male youth faces public embarrassment if his house is not completed and he still isn’t married.
The widespread inability of most male and female youth to become adults in Rwanda results in an array of negative social and economic concerns. These include illegitimate children, prostitution, the spread of HIV/AIDS, crime, a high urban growth rate, and an increase in school drop-out rates. Rwanda’s government, together with some of its largest international donors, engages with youth concerns mainly through efforts to expand access to secondary and vocational education. Its disconnect from youth priorities is stark. Even after the government and donors doubled access to secondary education, few Rwandan youth are able to attend, and many youth drop out of primary school to start wage work aimed at becoming adults. Vocational education is available to even fewer youth. Meanwhile, as we see in chapters five and seven, government restrictions on house construction and on income generation make the task of attaining adulthood, and a stable economic existence, significantly more difficult. National and international institutions in Rwanda are focused on what they think youth should be doing, not on what youth priorities are.
The importance of masculinity in the minds of Rwandans shone through the research for this book and brought forth a challenging proposition: if one wants to help young women in countries such as Rwanda, one probably has to help young men first. The traditional dependence of womanhood on manhood appears to make this necessary. Clearly, this is a troubling suggestion, since exacting a measure of independence for and direct assistance to women often seems appropriate if not absolutely urgent. But not helping male youth may prove dangerous and destructive for female and male youth alike by undermining their prospects for becoming adults. Many youth, and nonelite youth in particular, may lack the ability, and sufficient agency, to escape adulthood mandates without risking harsh and perhaps devastating repercussions.
Marc Sommers is a fellow with the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Africa Program and visiting researcher at Boston University’s African Studies Center. Stuck: Rwandan Youth and the Struggle for Adulthood is published by the University of Georgia Press.
Photo Credit: Marc Sommers/University of Georgia Press. -
Dot-Mom / On the Beat:
Championing Women’s Rights and Population Issues in Kenya With the ‘Reject’
›By Kate Diamond // Tuesday, February 21, 2012
“We find that politicians play around with [population] numbers when it comes to the common man and the common woman,” says Jane Godia in this short video interview. Godia writes for Reject, an African Woman and Child Feature Service biweekly news publication that won a Global Media Award from the Population Institute for its issue on family planning and politics in Kenya.MORE
Godia says that politicians “use these numbers for their gain, they tell women not to use family planning because they want more children so that…they can have more voters, but nobody thinks about if this woman will be able to feed these children, if this family will be able to have their next meal, or even accommodation, or even land to till.”
The Reject’s name comes from the paper’s early practice of running stories – often about underserved groups, like women, children, and the poor – that had been rejected from mainstream publications. Population and environment issues have been highlighted since the first issue came out in September 2009, when “we were talking about families moving on to Mount Kenya…to look for pasture and water for their animals,” says Godia.
“When there’s no water and when there’s no food, people migrate,” she says. “And when people are migrating they’re moving with their animals, they’re moving with their families, and they end up going to places” that eventually become overcrowded and resource-stressed, sometimes introducing the same problems that led people to migrate in the first place. -
Guest Contributor:
The Ramsar Convention: A New Window for Environmental Diplomacy?
›By Pamela Griffin // Monday, February 20, 2012In seeking ways to connect conservation with peacemaking, the Institute for Environmental Diplomacy and Security (IEDS) has released a study that examines an expanded role for the international wetlands treaty, the Ramsar Convention.MORE
The Ramsar Convention: A New Window for Environmental Diplomacy? describes the wetlands convention, its place within the international environmental treaty world, and its potential to enhance environmental security during this dynamic time of increasingly insecure water supplies and climate change. With more than 40 years of work, the treaty has been quietly and effectively conserving wetlands and increasing recognition of the need to build international cooperation around them. The treaty has also helped define wetlands within greater biogeographic regions and led to formal identification of transboundary wetlands.
In the article, we set out to combine information from the convention’s 234 listed wetlands (13 of which have formal transboundary plans) with the Global Peace Index, which ranks countries using 23 indicators, such as number of conflicts, conflict deaths, military expenditures, and relations with neighboring countries. The result is a prioritized list of countries most in need of tools of conflict resolution.
Working within the framework of the convention builds capacity between high-conflict-risk nations and has potential to develop otherwise-difficult-to-establish trust because the process is transparent and all stakeholder voices are heard. This can be important even when the existing conflict has nothing to do with international wetlands.
The convention is active in many countries with ongoing conflicts, such as Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iran, Iraq, and Sudan, and efforts there may help inform the ongoing debate as to the efficacy of conservation as a tool for peacemaking.
As environmental conditions continue to evolve rapidly, the need for institutions that can work in the transboundary environment will increase. The established international infrastructure of the convention has the potential to be a greater force in peacemaking. Further research may help focus on the strengths and weaknesses of the current system and reveal ways for more effective peacemaking efforts.
Suggestions for ways to enhance the convention’s role in environmental diplomacy include working more closely with researchers and practitioners directly involved in the environmental peacemaking field, increased focus on developing capacity for increased flexibility to react to dynamic conditions, and more active promotion of formal transboundary agreements.
Pamela Griffin is an independent scholar at IEDS where she focuses on the diplomatic potential of transboundary wetlands. -
Taking a Livelihoods Approach to Understanding Environmental Security
›By Kate Diamond // Friday, February 17, 2012Since the concept of “environmental security” first gained traction in the early 1990s, research on the issue has been overwhelmingly focused on how environmental change impacts state security. That has been to the detriment of policymakers trying to preempt instability and conflict, according to the University of Toronto’s Tom Deligiannis in his article “The Evolution of Environment-Conflict Research: Toward a Livelihood Framework,” published in February’s Global Environmental Politics.
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Rather than focus on how environmental change affects security on a state level, Deligiannis argues, researchers should instead turn to “development practitioners, population-environment researchers, and climate change adaptation researchers,” whom he credits with bringing household-livelihood analysis into the mainstream. By taking a livelihoods approach to environmental security, Deligiannis bridges the gap between environment-conflict research and human security research, elevating the individual dimension of environmental security in ways that state-based analysis overlooks. Through a livelihoods framework, scholars and policymakers can build adaptation and mitigation strategies that address climate-driven instability at its roots – in the households and communities whose resilience forms the first line of defense against instability transitioning into conflict.
From Household Scarcity to Small-Scale Conflict
Deligiannis expands on the link that earlier scholars (Thomas Homer-Dixon, notably) have found between environmental scarcity and conflict, arguing that other household factors – such as access to productive livelihoods – can change the course of how scarcity and conflict interact. He references previous research by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature that shows access to natural resources “underpins all livelihoods” and work by Lief Ohlsson that shows that when it comes to whether or not conflict erupts in developing countries, “it is the processes that lead to the rapid loss of rural dwellers’ livelihoods or their inability to attain or maintain adequate livelihoods that prove key.”
According to Deligiannis, state-level environment-conflict analyses miss this link between scarcity, livelihoods, and conflict because the state is often removed from the immediate impacts of scarcity and nascent conflict. “Scarcities initially affect individuals, families, and communities, personally and directly, before being translated into broader state or societal effects,” Deligiannis writes. Similarly, conflict can fester at a sub-state level for years before becoming a direct threat to state stability. Small-scale conflicts “may only kill or injure handfuls of people,” but over time (and they do tend to “occur over many years,” he writes), “their local impacts may undermine the fabric of society, alter migration patterns, and affect social and ethnic group solidarity and cohesion in certain areas of states.”
Even as he emphasizes the scarcity-livelihood-conflict link, Deligiannis makes it clear that a precise path from scarcity to conflict is difficult to map out. The path can be straightforward, with scarcities provoking a security dilemma between communities trying to secure access to dwindling resources which, quoting earlier work done by Colin Kahl, “can set off an action-reaction spiral that leaves all parties worse off and less secure.” Alternatively, a community might adapt successfully to one scarcity, only to provoke “unanticipated negative social effects” that ignite conflict far afield – either “geographically or temporally” – from the community initially impacted.
This scenario is already playing out in the Sahel, where changes in underlying environmental trends have made it difficult for the traditional coping mechanisms of both pastoralists and farmers to co-exist. To reduce this risk of unintended consequences, Deligiannis argues it’s important to prioritize low-risk strategies and offer vulnerable communities access to more and varied types of coping and adaptation mechanisms.
Go Local
Exactly how this “livelihood diversification” recommendation translates into policy, however, remains underdeveloped. To help “the poorest households, with the least access to natural resources such as land,” for example, Deligiannis recommends that policymakers “support policies and infrastructure services that build upon and enhance diversity, such as technology distribution, co-operation services, etc.”
The message to researchers is clearer: “Ultimately, environment-conflict research should do more than diagnose how and why environmental and demographic change contributes to conflict,” he writes. “It should offer scholars and policymakers insights into what interventions would be most effective at mitigating the negative social effects of scarcities.” To do that, Deligiannis argues that more work should focus on the specific, local-level systems of the most vulnerable, as opposed to state-level analysis. “Such an approach will also lead to a better appreciation of the many previously-ignored local violent conflicts that have their roots in human environmental change interactions,” he concludes.
Photo Credit: “Displaced Sudanese, El Fasher,” courtesy of United Nations Photo. -
Eye On:
Dialogue TV With Sharon Burke, Neil Morisetti, and Geoff Dabelko
›Climate, Energy, and the Military
By Stuart Kent // Friday, February 17, 2012
The video embedded above is only a short synopsis of the full episode. To watch the full Dialogue episode, visit WilsonCenter.org.
We are entering “an emerging security environment” where “what constitutes a ‘threat’ and what constitutes a ‘challenge’” requires a broader understanding of security than has often been the norm, according to Sharon Burke, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Operational Energy Plans and Programs. Burke was joined by the UK’s Climate and Energy Security Envoy Rear Admiral Neil Morisetti and ECSP’s Geoff Dabelko on a new installment of Dialogue TV. They debated what climate change and energy security mean for the world’s militaries.MORE
“We do have to be ready for a very broad range of missions in a very broad range of places,” Burke said. “We are spending a lot of effort looking at capabilities that we need to have.” A focus on energy, for example, can help both non-traditional and traditional missions. “What we’re developing that helps a forward operating base in Afghanistan operate independently will be very useful in a humanitarian disaster,” she said.
Although “climate change in itself is unlikely to be a direct cause of conflict,” when “people have lost their land or their livelihood, they’re pressed into action that may or may not be legitimate [and that] may put pressure on their governments – then there’s a risk of conflict,” said Rear Admiral Morisetti.
“What we’ve got to do is to work to try and reduce those risks,” Morisetti said, “to build capacity, resilience…through a combination of national and international aid, diplomacy…[and] some small part for security forces.” These measures are crucial to strengthening countries that may otherwise struggle to meet the security challenges of an uncertain climate.
Bringing the discussion together, Dabelko highlighted an assortment of academic – and policy – focused resources about the linkages between these challenging topics. He noted that views on how the military should prepare and approach climate change have truly expanded beyond the Atlantic sphere. Indeed, many national governments (for example small island states that face existential threats from climate change) and some bodies in the UN system are actively pursuing the broader security challenges of climate change.
Debates remain active and contested. What institutions are most appropriate for dealing with these issues? The UN Security Council, for example, has not been able to come to agreement on whether they should take up climate change as an international security threat despite making climate change the focus of a second UN Security Council session. Despite the ongoing disagreements, “What is interesting and innovative and positive” about Morisetti’s and Burke’s experiences, said Dabelko, is they move beyond “our almost singular focus on…multilateral environmental agreements…which have, frankly, had real challenges getting to a global bargain.” -
Reading Radar:
Assigning Value to Biodiversity, and the 2011 Human Development Report
›By Stuart Kent // Wednesday, February 15, 2012New research in the journal BioScience reports the aggregate economic benefits of conserving high priority biodiversity areas outweigh the opportunity costs of alternative land uses by a multiple of three (where priority is assigned according to a global index of the mapped distributions of 4,388 threatened terrestrial species). The authors of “Global Biodiversity Conservation and the Alleviation of Poverty,” led by Will Turner, estimate the value of highly diverse habitats to the global poor in terms of direct benefits and potential external payments for ecosystem services. They find these environmental flows in excess of $1 per person, per day, for 331 million of the world’s poorest individuals and conclude by arguing that, “although trade-offs remain…results show win-win synergies…and suggest biodiversity conservation as a fundamental component of sustainable economic development.” (For further discussion of development around biodiversity hotspots, see Population Action International’s work on population growth.)
MOREThe 2011 UNDP Human Development Report, Sustainability and Equity: A Better Future for All, builds from the understanding that a “failure to reduce…grave environmental risks and deepening social inequalities threatens to slow decades of sustained progress by the world’s poor majority.” A resilient thread in the report highlights the importance of working to ensure women’s equality and reproductive rights for sustainability, claiming that “meeting unmet need for family planning by 2050 would lower the world’s carbon emissions an estimated 17 percent below what they are today.” The report closes with a wide range of policy suggestions that work towards the goal of equating sustainability and equity, including a supportive discussion of a currency transaction tax as a novel and feasible method of providing climate financing.
These pieces address contradictions between environmentally sustainable behavior and the development imperative. Though both acknowledge that the traditional development model of high intensity economic growth has imperiled the environment upon which the livelihoods of many hundreds of millions depend, they suggest practical ways forward. The Human Development Report in particular adopts some of the strongest language yet, claiming that, “the message is clear: our development model is bumping up against concrete limits.” This honest attempt to work through, rather than around, the tension between development and sustainability is perhaps an indication that we are at last beginning to take seriously the concept of sustainable development. -
Afghanistan and Pakistan: Demographic Siblings? [Part Two]
›By Elizabeth Leahy Madsen // Wednesday, February 15, 2012Late last year, Afghanistan’s first-ever nationally representative survey of demographic and health issues was published, providing estimates of indicators that had previously been modeled or inferred from smaller samples. My first post on the survey focused on the methodology and results, which found that Afghanistan is not as much of a demographic outlier as many observers had assumed. But perhaps the most surprising finding is how the results compare to those of Afghanistan’s neighbor, Pakistan.
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The political future of each country depends largely on the other and, with Afghanistan making progress on reproductive health issues that remain stalled in Pakistan, their demographic trajectories are heading toward closer synchronization as well. In one key measure – use of contraception among married women – Afghanistan is almost identical to Pakistan. The modern contraceptive prevalence rate is 19.9 percent, slightly lower than the rate of 21.7 percent in Pakistan.
While Pakistan faces its own serious political instability, it is widely regarded as more developed than its neighbor. Afghanistan is included in the UN’s grouping of least developed countries, and Pakistan is not. Pakistan’s GDP per capita is almost twice as high. On the surface, this should suggest lower fertility. There is a general negative relationship between economic development and fertility, though demographers are quick to point out its complexities, and David Shapiro and colleagues have found that countries with larger increases in GDP actually experience slower fertility declines.
Pakistan’s fertility rate of 4.1 children per woman is in fact 20 percent lower than Afghanistan’s, but the similarities in contraceptive use, which is one of the direct determinants of fertility, suggest that this gap could be shrinking. If Afghanistan’s median age at marriage (18 compared to 20 in Pakistan) was higher and more women were educated (76 percent of women have never been to school compared to 65 percent in Pakistan), the two fertility rates might be closer.
Pakistan’s Entrenched Challenge
Why are these indicators closer than might be expected? Relative to the other countries in South Asia, Pakistan has had considerably less success in promoting family planning use. Bangladesh has a per capita income about half that of India and one-quarter that of Sri Lanka, yet the three countries’ fertility rates are identical. Nepal has the lowest income in the region – even slightly below Afghanistan – yet more than 40 percent of married women use modern contraception and fertility is three children per woman. And then there is Pakistan. Despite a per capita income 90 percent that of India, only 22 percent of married women use modern contraception and fertility remains persistently high at over four children per woman.
The weaknesses of Pakistan’s family planning program have been well-documented. Government commitment has been lacking and cultural expectations and gender inequities are a powerful force to promote large family size. The country’s most recent DHS report cited disengagement with the program among local agencies, low levels of outreach into communities, and weak health sector support as likely causes for the stagnation of contraceptive use. In summer 2011, the Pakistani government abolished the federal Ministry of Health and empowered provincial governments with all responsibilities for health services. This transfer of authority could pay dividends by increasing local ownership of health care, but some in and outside Pakistan have raised concerns about the loss of regulatory oversight and information sharing entailed in total decentralization.
Compared to the Afghanistan survey, the most recent Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey provides more detail on women’s motivations and preferences regarding fertility and family planning. Overall, 55 percent of married women in Pakistan have a “demand” for family planning; that is, they wish to avoid pregnancy or report that their most recent pregnancy or birth was mistimed or unwanted. More than half of these women are using family planning, while the remaining 25 percent of married women have an “unmet need.”
Unintended pregnancies and births play a major role in shaping Pakistan’s demographic trajectory. The DHS survey finds that 24 percent of births occur earlier than women would like or were not wanted at all. If unwanted births were prevented, Pakistan’s fertility rate would be 3.1 children per woman rather than 4.1. Yet 30 percent of married women are using no contraceptive method and do not intend to in the future. The most common reasons for not intending to use family planning are that fertility is “up to God” and that the woman or her husband is opposed to it.
Linked Destinies
Just as Afghanistan and Pakistan’s political circumstances have become more entwined, their demographic paths are more closely in parallel than we might have expected. For Afghanistan, given the myriad challenges in the socioeconomic, political, cultural, and geographic environments, this is good news; for Pakistan, where efforts to meet family planning needs have fallen short of capacity, it is not. While Afghanistan is doing better than expected, Pakistan should be doing better.
Regardless, both countries are at an important juncture. With very young age structures and the attendant pressures on employment and government stability, each government must reduce unmet need for family planning or face mounting difficulties to providing for their populations in the future. In addition to rolling out health services, turning the share of women without education from a majority into zero would be an excellent way to start.
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: Afghanistan Ministry of Public Health, Bongaarts (2008, 1978), Cincotta (2009), Embassy of Afghanistan, Haub (2009), International Monetary Fund, MEASURE DHS, Nishtar (2011), Population Action International, Savedoff (2011), Shapiro et al. (2011), UN-OHRLLS, UN Population Division, U.S. Census Bureau, The Washington Post.
Image Credit: Chart arranged by Elizabeth Leahy Madsen, data from MEASURE DHS. -
Afghanistan’s First Demographic and Health Survey Reveals Surprises [Part One]
›By Elizabeth Leahy Madsen // Tuesday, February 14, 2012Late last year, Afghanistan’s first-ever nationally representative survey of demographic and health issues was published, providing estimates of indicators that had previously been modeled or inferred from smaller samples. It shows that Afghan women have an average of five children each, lower than most experts had anticipated, and that their rate of modern contraceptive use is just slightly lower than that of women in neighboring Pakistan.
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The Afghanistan Mortality Survey 2010 is based on interviews with nearly 48,000 Afghan women, ages 12 to 49, conducted over eight months in 2010. Due to conditions of extreme insecurity, 13 percent of the population, mostly living in the southern provinces of Helmand, Kandahar, and Zabul, had to be excluded from the survey. Although officially titled a mortality survey, it includes the topics most commonly addressed in other USAID-sponsored Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), such as fertility, family planning, and maternal health. The survey objectives were to provide a knowledge base of health needs as the country continues to rebuild from constant conflict, as well as to demonstrate how international humanitarian and development investments have affected population well-being.
Afghanistan’s last census was conducted in 1979, the year of the Soviet invasion, which ushered in a decade of war followed by more insecurity. The population then was estimated at 15.6 million; in 2010, the UN Population Division estimated it had reached 31.4 million.
Contraceptive Use Higher Than Sub-Saharan AfricaFertility in Afghanistan is estimated at an average of 5.1 children per woman. While still quite high – growing at 2.6 percent per year, the population is on pace to double every 26 years – this is significantly lower than estimates generated before the survey was conducted. Afghanistan was often grouped among countries with the highest fertility rates in the world. The most recent fertility estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau, UN Population Division, and Population Reference Bureau range from 5.8 to 6.6 children per woman. Even these estimates are lower than those for the 1990s, when the UN pegged the fertility rate at eight children per woman.
In 2009, demographers Richard Cincotta and Carl Haub noticed indications of demographic change in Afghanistan, with Haub suggesting that the national Basic Package of Health Services, introduced in 2003, was succeeding in bringing health care, including family planning, to rural areas. The Mortality Survey itself proposes that fertility rates may be falling due to urbanization and “exposure to modern means of communication,” as well as access to family planning.
Although women in Afghanistan are often restricted in their mobility outside the home, knowledge of effective family planning methods is, as in most countries, almost universal. However, current use of contraception remains relatively low: One-fifth of married women of reproductive age are using a modern contraceptive method, most commonly injectables or the pill. Following the typical pattern, contraceptive prevalence is higher among women who are educated, wealthier, and those who live in urban areas. Still, family planning use among rural women has more than tripled since 2003 and the overall rate is four points higher than the average for sub-Saharan Africa.
Household Indicators
Women in Afghanistan face conditions of widespread inequity, and this is reflected in the survey results. Seventy-six percent of women surveyed have never been to school, making education for girls and women a clear priority for government intervention. In a positive step, Afghanistan’s 2004 constitution promised that the government will provide them with education.The median age of marriage is 18, and half of women surveyed gave birth while still teenagers. Age at marriage directly affects fertility patterns, and another sign that fertility is falling is reflected in the fact that age at marriage is rising among younger women.
Two-thirds of births occur at home, the vast majority of these without the assistance of a skilled provider. Still, the survey also reports much lower estimates of maternal mortality than those prepared by international agencies.
The survey also provides a snapshot of the housing circumstances and economic quality of life for Afghans. About 40 percent get their water from unprotected wells, surface water, and other non-improved sources. Households are large, averaging eight people each, and only five percent of homes have their own flush toilet. Nearly 60 percent of the population lives without electricity and in homes with mud or earthen floors. Although only eight percent of the population has a refrigerator, three-quarters have a mobile phone.
Per capita GDP is estimated at less than $600 annually. More than one-third of the population is unemployed, and agriculture remains the primary industry and source of income, even though most of the country’s land is not arable.
Moving Closer to Pakistan
Despite these dire statistics, given the rapid rise in contraceptive use, the health system has clearly succeeded in improving health care access among some Afghan women. For the demographic picture moving forward, the question is whether rapid jumps in contraceptive use will continue. Several developing countries have experienced an initial decline in fertility that has subsequently stalled. These stalls have been linked to slower improvements in female education, infant and child mortality, and contraceptive prevalence, compared to countries that are experiencing steadier fertility declines. Unfortunately, the Afghanistan survey does not include data on women’s and men’s fertility preferences, sources of contraception, and reasons for not using family planning, which would provide clues in planning priorities for future services and outreach.
The most important general finding of the new survey is that Afghanistan is not as much of a demographic outlier as many observers had assumed, given the challenging conditions of geographic remoteness, violence, poverty, and low status of women. While the sustainability of these improvements can’t be taken for granted in such fragile conditions, the public health system in Afghanistan is making strides against the odds and reaching closer to parity with neighboring Pakistan.
Update: In the second paragraph we originally stated that “nine percent of the population, living in the southern provinces of Helmand, Kandahar, and Zabul, had to be excluded from the survey.” However, there were several “enumeration areas” (units selected to be included in the survey sample), constituting another four percent, that were not surveyed during implementation, also primarily due to insecurity. The total non-covered portion of the population, therefore, is 13 percent.
Part two of Elizabeth Leahy Madsen’s look at the Afghanistan Mortality Survey 2010, compares the survey’s surprising results with those of Pakistan and others in South Asia.
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: Afghanistan Ministry of Public Health, Bongaarts (2008, 1978), Cincotta (2009), Embassy of Afghanistan, Guttmacher Institute, Haub (2009), International Monetary Fund, MEASURE DHS, Nishtar (2011), Population Action International, Savedoff (2011), Shapiro et al. (2011), UN-OHRLLS, UN Population Division, U.S. Census Bureau, The Washington Post.
Photo Credit: “View inside Afghan Apartment Block,” courtesy of United Nations Photo; charts courtesy of MEASURE DHS.
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