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NewSecurityBeat

The blog of the Wilson Center's Environmental Change and Security Program
  • Reading Radar

    Population and Sustainability

    May 4, 2010 By Dan Asin
    “The MAHB, the Culture Gap, and Some Really Inconvenient Truths,” authored by Paul Ehrlich and appearing in the most recent edition of PLoS Biology, is a call for greater participation in the Millennium Assessment of Human Behavior (MAHB). MAHB was created, he writes, because societies understand the magnitude of environmental challenges, yet often still fail to act. “The urgent need now is clearly not for more natural science…but rather for better understanding of human behaviors and how they can be altered to direct Homo sapiens onto a course toward a sustainable society.” MAHB aims to create an inclusive global discussion of “the human predicament, what people desire, and what goals are possible to achieve in a sustainable society” in the hopes of encouraging a “rapid modification” in human behavior.

    The BALANCED Project, lead by the Coastal Resource Center at the University of Rhode Island, released its first “BALANCED Newsletter.” To be published biannually, the newsletter highlights recent PHE fieldwork, unpacks aspects of particular PHE projects, and shares best practices in an effort to advance the BALANCED Project’s goal: promoting PHE approaches to safeguard areas of high biodiversity threatened by population pressures. The current edition examines the integration of family planning and reproductive health projects into marine conservation projects in Kenya and Madagascar, a theater-based youth education program in the Philippines, and the combining of family planning services with gorilla conservation work in Uganda. The newsletter also profiles two “PHE Champions,” Gezahegh Guedta Shana of Ethiopia and Ramadhani Zuberi of Tanzania.

    “Human population growth is perhaps the most significant cause of the complex problems the world faces,” write authors Jason Collodi and Freida M’Cormack in “Population Growth, Environment and Food Security: What Does the Future Hold?,” the first issue of the Institute of Development Studies‘ Horizon series. The impacts of climate change, poverty, and resource scarcity, they write, are not far behind. Collodi and M’Cormack highlight trends in, and projections for, population growth, the environment, and food security, and offer bulleted policy recommendations for each. Offering greater access to family planning; levying global taxes on carbon; introducing selective water pricing; and removing subsidies for first-generation biofuels are each examples of suggestions advanced by the authors to meet the interrelated challenges.
    Topics: Africa, Asia, biodiversity, conservation, demography, family planning, food security, global health, natural resources, PHE, population, Reading Radar, youth
    • http://www.blogger.com/profile/05479213292049229417 Meredith

      Great post! I truly appreciate these sorts of posts from this Organization! It would be wonderful if you would be able to create a "summer reading" series, with the ability of readers to discuss the readings. I think that you would truly engage a huge audience.

      M.Waters
      American University

    • http://www.blogger.com/profile/08952603795648471876 Dan Asin

      Hi Meredith, we're glad you enjoy them! There is so much great literature being produced and unfortunately much of it falls through the cracks; we do our best to highlight what we can, and our glad others find it useful.

      A "summer reading" series sounds like a great idea, but we greatly encourage discussion among our readers for both our reading radars and the other series we post as well. Our readers come from diverse backgrounds and are themselves troves of ideas and information.

      We appreciate your feedback and encourage you to continue posting and to engage with the New Security Beat community. There are many interesting discussions to be had.

    • http://www.blogger.com/profile/12146705726606760035 Julien Katchinoff

      For those who are interested in the MAHB project, NYTimes' Green Blog just posted a Q&A; with Paul Ehrlich at http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/13/q-and-a-the-population-guru/?src=twt&twt;=nytenvironment

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