Yearly archive for 2010.
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Colin Kahl on Demography, Scarcity, and the “Intervening Variables” of Conflict
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“One of the major lessons of 9/11 is that even superpowers can be vulnerable to the grievances emanating from failed and failing states,” said Colin Kahl, now deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East, at an ECSP event at the Wilson Center in October 2007. However, “if poverty and inequality were enough to lead to widespread civil strife, the entire world would be on fire.”
“I think any in-depth examination of particular cases shows that there’s a complex interaction between demographic pressures, environmental degradation and scarcity, and structural and economic scarcities – that they tend to interact and reinforce one another in a kind of vicious circle,” Kahl said.
“It’s really important to keep in mind that any attempt to address…environmental and demographic factors should focus not just on preventing environmental degradation, or slowing population growth, or increasing public health. They must also focus on those intervening variables in the middle that make certain societies and countries more resilient in the face of crisis.”
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Former Botswana President Champions Health, Governance Issues
›November 16, 2010 // By Wilson Center StaffOriginally featured in the Scholar Spotlight, Centerpoint, November 2010.
His Excellency Festus Mogae, who served as president of Botswana from 1998–2008, recently spent several months at the Wilson Center as a public policy scholar. During his stay, he conducted research, networked with senior policy officials in the U.S. government, the United Nations, and with NGO representatives in Washington and New York, and attended Wilson Center seminars related to health and governance.
Since leaving office, Mogae has advocated for governance reform in Africa, notably presidential term limits, and efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change. Another critical initiative he is pursuing actively is HIV/AIDS prevention across Africa.
Mogae is the founder and chairman of Champions for an HIV-Free Generation, a group that assists current African presidents in dealing with the AIDS pandemic. This year, the delegation visited South Africa, Namibia, Mozambique, and Swaziland and, most recently, Zambia in October. The group seeks policy and attitude changes among the leaders of these nations and also advocates for increased financing for AIDS prevention in their health budgets. “If [these countries] allocate their own resources, the donor agencies will see they are serious about this problem” and match funds, said Mogae.
“We take the view that a more outspoken leadership must come from the continent regarding the AIDS epidemic,” he said. “African leaders must not only care but also be seen by donor countries and agencies as leading from the front on these matters.”
The group includes Mozambique’s Joaquim Chissano, Tanzania’s Benjamin Mkapa, Zambia’s first president Kenneth Kaunda, former Vice President of Uganda Speciosa Wandira, and former Chairperson of Kenya’s National AIDS Control Council, Miriam Were. Also in the coalition are two notables from South Africa, Nobel Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Constitutional Court judge, Justice Edwin Cameron.
The Champions coordinate with local health representatives based in Africa, from UNAIDS, the World Health Organization, PEPFAR, and the Gates Foundation, which prepare country reports on the status of AIDS. Then, armed with this research, the group meets with African leaders, including the presidents, finance and health ministers, local government and parliamentary officials, private sector, union, and civil society representatives, and church groups to lobby for policy changes.
“We highlight success stories on the continent so others can emulate them,” Mogae said. “We are calling for social behavioral change, but that can only happen if advocated and led by the top religious and traditional leadership.”
One particular challenge has been mother-to-child transmissions. He said in sub-Saharan Africa, in 2000, 40 percent of children born to HIV-positive mothers got infected but by 2008, the figure was down to three percent. The target is zero, he said.
Another major initiative chaired by Mogae is the Coalition for Dialogue on Africa, or, CoDA, a joint venture among the African Development Bank, the African Union Commission, and the UN Economic Commission for Africa. This global effort focuses on education, agriculture and conservation, energy and natural resources, and helping women. CoDA currently is organizing a symposium on women’s empowerment, he said, that will focus on education, and reforming land ownership and marriage laws.
These and other organizations with which he is affiliated aim to help shape policies and set priorities for Africa. He said, “We can’t ask the international community for help unless we first help ourselves.”
Dana Steinberg is the editor of the Wilson Center’s Centerpoint.
Photo Credit: AIDS sign in Gaborone, Botswana, courtesy of flickr user cordelia_persen. -
Disease in the Developing World
Poverty, Politics, and Pollution
›November 15, 2010 // By Ramona GodboleA look at the most common illnesses that kill people in the developing world reveals, for the most part, easily preventable and/or treatable diseases and conditions, highlighting the deep disparities between health systems in rich and poor countries. But many of the causes and solutions to these common diseases are also linked to political and environmental factors as well as economic.
Cholera: “A disease of poverty”
Ten months after the earthquake that killed more than 230,000 people, Haiti is facing yet another disaster – a cholera outbreak. The current health crisis highlights broader structural and political issues that have plagued Haiti for years.
Cholera, an intestinal infection caused by bacteria-contaminated food or water, causes severe diarrhea and dehydration, but with quick and effective treatment, less than one percent of symptomatic people die according to the World Health Organization. According to BBC, as of November 15, more than 14,000 people have been hospitalized and over 900 deaths have been attributed to cholera in Haiti thus far.
Even before the earthquake, conditions in Haiti, the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, were bleak. The country has very high maternal and child mortality rates (again, highest in the Western hemisphere), and is in the midst of an ongoing environmental crisis, due to deforestation, soil loss, and flooding.
Less than 40 percent of the Haitian population has access to appropriate sanitation facilities and clean water is scarce, according to UNICEF. Displacement, rapid population growth, and destroyed infrastructure in the wake of the earthquake exacerbated already poor conditions and public health officials warned of the increased risk of cholera and other diarrheal diseases after the disaster.
Today these fears have become reality. While public health messages urging Haitians to wash their hands, boil drinking water, and use oral rehydration salts are working to control the current outbreak, long-term solutions to prevent future outbreaks will require much more systematic changes.
As Partners in Health Chief Medical Officer Joia Mukherjee puts it, cholera is “a disease of poverty.” Citing a joint report from Partners in Health and the Robert Kennedy Center for Human Rights, Mukherjee notes that in 2000, loans from the Inter-American Development Bank to improve water, sanitation, and health (including the public water supply in the Artibonite Valley, where the cholera outbreak originated) were blocked for political reasons by the U.S. government, in an effort to destabilize former President Aristide.
The failure of the international community to assist Haiti in developing a safe water supply, writes Mukherjee, has been a violation of the basic human right to water. To halt the current cholera epidemic and prevent future outbreaks, providing water security must become a priority in the reconstruction efforts of the international community.
Politics and Polio
Recent reports have indicated that the global incidence of polio, a highly infectious, crippling, and potentially fatal virus, is significantly declining and a new vaccine is renewing hopes of eradication. Nigeria, one of the few countries where polio continues to be endemic, has also made major progress over the last few years.
But the situation was very different just a few years ago. In 2003 religious and political leaders in Northern Nigeria banned federally sponsored polio immunization campaigns, citing “evidence” that the polio vaccine was contaminated with anti-fertility drugs intended to sterilize Nigerian women. The boycott led to an outbreak of the disease that spread to 20 countries and caused 80 percent of the world’s cases of polio during the length of the ban, according to a study in Health Affairs.
While the boycott was eventually stopped through the combined efforts of local, national, and pressure, the boycott serves as a useful reminder that global health problems can have political, rather than biological or behavioral, origins.
Combating Climate Change and Pneumonia
Studies from the World Health Organization indicate that exposure to unprocessed solid fuels increases pneumonia risk in children by a factor of 1.8, but today more than three billion people globally continue to depend on coal and biomass fuels for their cooking and heating needs.
Cooking and heating with these fuels creates levels of indoor air pollution that are up to 20 times higher than accepted WHO guidelines, putting people at considerable risk for lower respiratory infections. Women, who are often responsible for collecting fuel and performing household tasks like cooking, and their children, are particularly at risk. Today, exposure to indoor air pollution is responsible for 1.6 million deaths globally including more than 900,000 of the two million annual deaths from pneumonia in children under five years old, representing the most important cause of death in this age group.
A recent study from The Lancet shows improved cooking stoves could simultaneously reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the global burden of disease caused by indoor air pollution in developing countries. Such an intervention, the authors argue, could have substantial benefits for acute lower respiratory infection in children, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and ischemic heart disease. The potential health benefits don’t stop there: fuel-efficient stoves can also improve the security of women and children in conflict zones and decrease the risk of burns while improving local air quality.
There would be significant environmental benefits as well. A World Wildlife Fund project in Nepal, which provided loans to purchase biogas units and build improved cookstoves, curbed deforestation for firewood and grazing as well as reduced the incidence of severe cases of acute respiratory infection among under-five children.
Overall, greater access to modern cooking fuels and improved cooking stoves in the developing world could both mitigate climate change and make significant contributions to MDGs 4 & 5, which focus on the reduction of child and maternal mortality.
Prescription for Change
The international community’s experience with cholera in Haiti, polio in Nigeria, and pneumonia around the world shows that health issues in developing countries rarely occur in a vacuum. As these three cases demonstrate, politics, environmental, and structural issues, for better or worse, play an important role in health affairs in the developing world. Yet efforts to combat these conditions often focus only on prevention and treatment.
Antibiotics and vaccines alone cannot provide solutions to these problems. Employing economic, diplomatic and policy tools to address health and development challenges can save lives. More specifically, public health efforts should not only focus on poverty reduction, but also target environmental, political, and structural issues that contribute to disease globally.
Sources: BBC, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, CIA World Factbook, Health Affairs, The Lancet, Scientific American, UNICEF, United Nations, USAID, World Health Organization, and World Wildlife Fund.
Photo Credit: “Lining up for vaccination,” courtesy of flickr user hdptcar. -
Governing the Far North: Assessing Cooperation Between Arctic and Non-Arctic Nations
›November 12, 2010 // By Ken CristDespite fears of an unregulated race for Arctic territory and resources, there is currently considerable international cooperation occurring to address key issues in the Far North, said Betsy Baker of the Vermont Law School at an event hosted by the Canada Institute in collaboration with the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, the Kennan Institute, and the Environmental Change and Security Program. The program provided a timely forum to discuss efforts by Arctic and non-Arctic nations to cooperate on key environmental, security, and economic issues, and foster discussion on pressing Arctic governance questions. The event’s first panel was moderated by Don Newman, former senior parliamentary editor, CBC News.
Assessing Cooperation Among Arctic Nations
The United States, said Baker, is currently engaged in international cooperation in a number of areas including, shipping, emergency response and rescue, science, seabed mapping, and joint military exercises. The majority of U.S. Arctic initiatives are conducted via the Arctic Council, an institution that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton favors strengthening. Baker maintained that the most effective form of Arctic governance would be a “bottom up” approach. Governing structures closest to the end users, she explained, are the most effective means of ensuring economic development and environmental security.
Baker noted that the lack of infrastructure and search and rescue capabilities represent the most pressing security concerns in the Arctic. Until this occurs, the international community will not be able to adequately respond to a potential oil spill or grounded vessel in the region. While some analysts have expressed concern over the militarization of the Arctic, Baker and other panelists downplayed the possibility of military conflict in the Far North as a significant concern. She suggested that science-based diplomacy would be the best means to peacefully resolve disputes in the region.
Danila Bochkarev of the EastWest Institute in Brussels said that the development of sea routes (particularly the Northern Sea Route), border protection, and infrastructure development are among Russia’s top Arctic priorities. Bochkarev noted that the Arctic region has increased in economic importance to Russia and currently represents 11 percent of its GDP and 80 percent of the country’s discovered industrial gas. Aside from economic opportunities, melting Arctic ice has also allowed increased access to Russian territory, which is also viewed as a security concern by Russian officials. Other looming Russian concerns, noted Bochkarev, include the increasing internationalization of Arctic governance, competing claims for the Arctic continental shelf, and challenges to Russia’s sovereignty claim over the Northern Sea Route. He maintained that Russia has committed to following the principles of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea to peacefully resolve any territorial disputes.
Joël Plouffe of the Université du Québec à Montreal noted that Canada’s recently published “Statement on Canada’s Arctic Foreign Policy” highlights the Harper government’s desire to bolster economic development, protect the environment, strengthen its sovereignty claim, and improve governance in the Far North. Plouffe said that the Arctic policy document also shows Canada’s commitment to foster bilateral relationships among Arctic nations, particularly the United States. He noted that Canada has always promoted international cooperation in the Arctic and was one of the founding members of the Arctic Council. Canada’s Arctic policy, said Plouffe, also serves to fill a security gap in the Far North, an area of particular concern to the United States.
While Canada has demonstrated a willingness to engage coastal Arctic states on key environmental, security, and economic issues in the Far North, the Canadian government’s willingness to work with non-Arctic states is less clear, said Plouffe. Canada, he remarked, has yet to decide whether it would like to create an exclusive neighborhood of Arctic states to resolve governance issues, or if it is willing to include non-Arctic nations in international meetings and Arctic forums.
The Perspective of Non-Arctic Nations
“[W]e cannot be indifferent to a region whose melting ice sheet, volumes of water, and temperatures have a direct impact on Germany and Europe,” said Franz Thönnes, SPD Member of the German Bundestag. He explained that Germany and the European Union’s interest in the Arctic stem in part from the importance the EU places on the principles of stability and sustainability. EU interests in the Arctic also extend to the economic realm. Of particular interest, said Thönnes, are untapped Arctic oil and gas reserves and potential new shipping routes. He noted that the shipping route from Hamburg to Shanghai would be cut from 25,200 km to 17,000 km should the Northwest Passage become accessible. Given that Germany operates the world’s largest container fleet, access to such routes would be of major importance to Germany and other European maritime countries.
Ted McDorman of the University of Victoria stated that from an international law perspective, the Arctic Ocean is legally no different than any other ocean. Like other oceans, noted McDorman, there are significant gaps in governance that will require international cooperation to address. These include setting standards for shipping vessels passing through Arctic water and waterways, collaboration on marine science, and how to manage the Arctic marine ecosystem sustainably. According to McDorman, while some aspects of Arctic oil and gas development, such as drilling, will fall under domestic jurisdictions, international standards will still need to be negotiated to address potential oil spills or other environmental repercussions that may affect other countries. McDorman questioned whether an international treaty modeled after the Antarctic treaty would make sense for the Arctic region and he echoed comments by others that the idea is not supported by key Arctic players and is unlikely to move forward.
The Scandanavian countries vary in their level of Arctic engagement, said Timo Koivurova of Finland’s University of Lapland. Finland is currently developing a new Arctic strategy, and Iceland remains adamantly opposed to an exclusive Arctic Five governance structure while supporting active EU involvement in Arctic affairs. On the other hand, Sweden remains relatively inactive on the Arctic policy front. Koivurova noted that there are a growing number of non-Arctic nations – including China, South Korea, and Japan – that are seeking to become a part of the Arctic Council.
Koivurova closed by asking whether the Arctic Council could be reformed in a manner that allowed Arctic nations to retain their status while allowing greater representation for non-Arctic nations. Such reform, said Koivurova, may be necessary given the increasing desire and number of countries vying for a voice on Arctic governance.
Ken Crist is program associate with the Canada Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center.
Photo Credit: “Arctic Sunrise,” courtesy of flickr user drurydrama (Len Radin). -
No Peace Without Women
›November 11, 2010 // By Kayly OberOn October 31, 2000, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1325, which calls for women’s equal participation in all efforts to maintain and promote peace and security. The resolution sought to exorcise the demons of the 1990s, when genocide took over 800,000 lives in Rwanda, thousands of women were raped in Bosnia, and millions more were displaced. However, the truth is that little progress has been made over these last 10 years and women remain on the periphery when it comes to post-conflict reconstruction and development.
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Yale Environment 360: ‘When The Water Ends: Africa’s Climate Conflicts’
›November 10, 2010 // By Wilson Center StaffOriginally posted on Yale Environment 360:
For thousands of years, nomadic herdsmen have roamed the harsh, semi-arid lowlands that stretch across 80 percent of Kenya and 60 percent of Ethiopia. Descendants of the oldest tribal societies in the world, they survive thanks to the animals they raise and the crops they grow, their travels determined by the search for water and grazing lands.These herdsmen have long been accustomed to adapting to a changing environment. But in recent years, they have faced challenges unlike any in living memory: As temperatures in the region have risen and water supplies have dwindled, the pastoralists have had to range more widely in search of suitable water and land. That search has brought tribal groups in Ethiopia and Kenya in increasing conflict, as pastoral communities kill each other over water and grass.
When the Water Ends, a 16-minute video produced by Yale Environment 360 in collaboration with MediaStorm, tells the story of this conflict and of the increasingly dire drought conditions facing parts of East Africa. To report this video, Evan Abramson, a 32-year-old photographer and videographer, spent two months in the region early this year, living among the herding communities. He returned with a tale that many climate scientists say will be increasingly common in the 21st century and beyond — how worsening drought in parts of Africa, the Middle East, and elsewhere will pit group against group, nation against nation. As one UN official told Abramson, the clashes between Kenyan and Ethiopian pastoralists represent “some of the world’s first climate-change conflicts.”
But the story recounted in When the Water Ends is not only about climate change. It’s also about how deforestation and land degradation — due in large part to population pressures — are exacting a toll on impoverished farmers and nomads as the earth grows ever more barren.
The video focuses on four groups of pastoralists — the Turkana of Kenya and the Dassanech, Nyangatom, and Mursi of Ethiopia — who are among the more than two dozen tribes whose lives and culture depend on the waters of the Omo River and the body of water into which it flows, Lake Turkana. For the past 40 years at least, Lake Turkana has steadily shrunk because of increased evaporation from higher temperatures and a steady reduction in the flow of the Omo due to less rainfall, increased diversion of water for irrigation, and upstream dam projects. As the lake has diminished, it has disappeared altogether from Ethiopian territory and retreated south into Kenya. The Dassanech people have followed the water, and in doing so have come into direct conflict with the Turkana of Kenya.
The result has been cross-border raids in which members of both groups kill each other, raid livestock, and torch huts. Many people in both tribes have been left without their traditional livelihoods and survive thanks to food aid from nonprofit organizations and the UN.
The future for the tribes of the Omo-Turkana basin looks bleak. Temperatures in the region have risen by about 2 degrees F since 1960. Droughts are occurring with a frequency and intensity not seen in recent memory. Areas once prone to drought every ten or eleven years are now experiencing a drought every two or three. Scientists say temperatures could well rise an additional 2 to 5 degrees F by 2060, which will almost certainly lead to even drier conditions in large parts of East Africa.
In addition, the Ethiopian government is building a dam on the upper Omo River — the largest hydropower project in sub-Saharan Africa — that will hold back water and prevent the river’s annual flood cycles, upon which more than 500,000 tribesmen in Ethiopia and 300,000 in Kenya depend for cultivation, grazing, and fishing.
The herdsmen who speak in this video are caught up in forces over which they have no real control. Although they have done almost nothing to generate the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming, they may already be among its first casualties. “I am really beaten by hunger,” says one elderly, rail-thin Nyangatom tribesman. “There is famine — people are dying here. This happened since the Turkana and the Kenyans started fighting with us. We fight over grazing lands. There is no peace at all.”
Watch When the Water Ends: Africa’s Climate Conflicts on Yale Environment 360.
For more on integrated PHE development and the Horn of Africa, see “The Beat on the Ground: Video: Population, Health, and Environment in Ethiopia” and “As Somalia Sinks, Neighbors Face a Fight to Stay Afloat,” on The New Security Beat. -
John Bongaarts on the Impacts of Demographic Change in the Developing World
›“The UN projects about 9.1 billion people by 2050, and then population growth will likely level off around 9.5 billion later in the century. Can the planet handle 9 billion? The answer is probably yes. Is it a desirable trajectory? The answer is no,” said John Bongaarts, vice president of the Policy Research Division at the Population Council, in this interview with ECSP.
Although family planning was largely brushed aside by international policymakers following the 1994 UN International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, Bongaarts said he is hopeful because it is now enjoying a higher profile globally – and receiving greater funding.
“I am optimistic about the understanding now, both in developing and developed world, and in the donor community, that [family planning] is an important issue that should be getting more attention,” Bongaarts said. “And therefore I think the chances of ending up with a positive demographic outlook are now larger than they were a few years ago.”
The “Pop Audio” series is also available as podcasts on iTunes. -
Where Have All the Malthusians Gone?
›Forget youth bulges and population bombs; lately, the population story has been all about the baby bust. The cover of this month’s Foreign Policy features “Old World: The graying of the planet – and how it will change everything,” by Phillip Longman, and author Ted Fishman recently appeared in The New York Times and on NPR to talk about his book, Shock of Gray: The Aging of the World’s Population and How It Pits Young Against Old, Child Against Parent, Worker Against Boss, Company Against Rival and Nation Against Nation. Nicholas Eberstadt covered similar issues in Foreign Affairs with his article, “The Demographic Future: What Population Growth – and Decline – Means for the Global Economy.”
To the extent that policymakers take away a sense of urgency to reform retirement institutions and potentially reevaluate military strategy, the recent spate of publications about aging is useful. But policymakers should not be misled into thinking that the population tide has turned and resources for education, development, and family planning are no longer necessary. While global population growth is slowing, it has not stopped, and the political and economic consequences of continued growth and youthful age structures across most of the Global South will be dire.
A Population Bomb…of Old People
Eberstadt, Fishman, and Longman argue for the need to prepare for a future where there are large proportions of elderly dependents and relatively few workers to support them, and they chronicle the many challenges that may result, including political resistance. The October protests in France against raising the pensionable age from 60 to 62 — which, despite the hullabaloo, fall far short of the levels needed to improve France’s long-term economic position — are but one example of the reform resistance they warn about.
The concern is that while the Global North – Europe and Japan in particular – scramble to meet the needs of their older citizens and preserve the health of their economies, their powerful positions in the international system are at risk. As Fishman states, “It now looks as if global power rests on how willing a country is to neglect its older citizens.” China, a country on the cusp of aging, has thus far chosen neglect over meaningful investment, stoking more fear that the Global North may fall behind.
Though a focus on economic health is useful, other aspects of their arguments do a disservice, particularly those that start from the premise that the days of Malthusian angst over the planet’s ability to support a rapidly growing population are long gone.
Echoing Fred Pearce in his The Coming Population Crash and Our Planet’s Surprising Future, Longman argues without reservation that dangerous population growth is a thing of the past, and instead, the world faces a “population bomb…of old people.” He even goes so far as to claim that “having too many people on the planet is no longer demographers’ chief worry; now, having too few is.”
I have to ask: what demographers did he talk to? Articles published over the last year in the field’s top journals — Demography, Population and Development Review, and Population Studies — certainly explore low fertility, but they also cover a range of youth- and growth-related issues and topics such as mortality, teen parenthood, and immigration. And within the field of political demography in particular there is still quite a lot of attention being paid to the implications of population growth and youth bulges on civil conflict and human security. Even Foreign Policy, in which Longman’s article appears, publishes an annual Failed States Index that argues there is an important relationship between demographic pressure and state collapse.
As studies like the Failed States Index and the National Intelligence Council’s Global Trends project show, contrary to Pearce et al., carrying capacity arguments are not completely outmoded. Regardless of how extreme the impact of an aging population will be on developed nations in the near future (although the United States will almost certainly be less affected than others), in many parts of Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East, population growth is straining local water and land resources and creating instability — issues that will likely be exacerbated by climate change.
Geographic Bias
If there really is more attention being paid among demographers to low fertility it may well be due to institutional and geographic bias. After all, most of the funding for demography comes from Western nations concerned with their own decline. Likewise, all the top journals are American or European.
Though it is correct that most advanced industrial states are aging because of low fertility, for a large part of the world, population growth is still the number one issue. Declining fertility in most countries of the world means that populations are getting older, but this is not the same as saying they have a problem with aging. Between 1980 and 2010, the median age of the less developed countries, excluding China, rose from 19 to almost 25 and the world’s least developed countries saw a rise from 17 to 20 years. Median age in more developed countries, however, went from 32 to 40 — a level twice that of the least developed countries.
Many of the low-fertility countries Longman cites — Iran and Cuba, in particular — are exceptions among developing countries, rather than the rule. The UN Population Division estimates that sub-Saharan Africa will gain 966 million people by 2050 – more than the current population of all of Europe – and, as Richard Cincotta and I have both argued on this blog previously, the total fertility rate (TFR) projections used in those estimations are likely low. Rapid population growth in sub-Saharan Africa has already exacerbated many countries’ abilities to meet the growing needs of their populations, causing civil conflict and instability, and will continue to do so in the future.
Why is it Important to Get it Right?
Alarmism is useful when it grabs the attention of policymakers and a public that is overloaded with information, but it is also risky. Both Pearce and Longman take jabs at Paul Ehrlich because his “population bomb” never exploded. What they fail to note is that Ehrlich’s predictions could have proven right, except that he was successful at scaring a generation of policymakers into action. Funding towards population programs increased greatly in the wake of such research. If those of us who write about the dangers of aging are successful, perhaps we will be so lucky to look as foolish as Ehrlich one day.
If these warnings fall on deaf ears and policymakers do not act to reduce the burden of entitlements, certainly budgets will be strained beyond capacity and the dire future predicted by Fishman, Pearce, and Longman may well become a reality. On the other hand, if policymakers similarly disregard carrying capacity issues in the developing world, conflict and misery are sure to continue in these places and may well worsen.
Jennifer Dabbs Sciubba is the Mellon Environmental Fellow in the Department of International Studies at Rhodes College. She is also the author of a forthcoming book, The Future Faces of War: Population and National Security. Follow her on Twitter at @profsciubba for more on population-related issues.
Sources: Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, NPR, National Intelligence Council, The New York Times, Population Reference Bureau, Reuters, UN.
Photo Credit: Adapted from “Protest/Manifestation,” courtesy of flickr user lilicomanche.
