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The blog of the Wilson Center's Environmental Change and Security Program
  • Watch: Elizabeth Leahy Madsen Explains the Demography-Civil Conflict Interface in Less Than Two Minutes

    April 12, 2011 By Schuyler Null

    “We know that historically, as well as in the present, countries that have very young age structures – those that have youthful and rapidly growing populations – have been the most vulnerable to outbreaks in civil conflict,” said Elizabeth Leahy Madsen, senior research associate at Population Action International, in an interview with ECSP. “It’s not a simple cause and effect relationship, but we think that demographic trends and pressures can exacerbate underlying conditions.”

    “When this really matters is when governments ignore their necessity to provide opportunities to growing numbers of young people – education opportunities, employment opportunities, prospects for better futures,” Madsen said.

    Fortunately, “one of the great things about demography is that it’s not static – it responds to the opportunities that are available to individual people and to societies as a whole, and we know what some of those opportunities are,” she said. “One of the biggest ones is providing family planning and reproductive health services that enable women and couples to have the number of children that they choose. Around the world, there are more than 200 million women today who aren’t using family planning services even though they would like to avoid pregnancy.”

    Other basic policy solutions that have a major impact over time are ensuring education, especially for girls, and providing employment opportunities for young people, said Madsen.

    Sources: UNFPA.

    Topics: conflict, demography, education, family planning, gender, Middle East, video, youth
    • Anonymous

      In search of science leading to the restoration of balance and sustainability…

      Would professionals with appropriate expertise please examine the extant science regarding human population dynamics and human overpopulation of Earth? How can this knowledge be used to move the human community from the dangerous and patently unsustainable 'trajectory' it is on now to sustainable lifestyles and right-sized corporate enterprises?

      http://newsecuritybeat.blog[…]bmissions.html#comment-form

      —–Original Message—–
      Sir John Sulston, Chair
      People and the Planet Working Group
      UK Royal Society
      March 31, 2011

      Dear Sir John Sulston:

      Your recent comments regarding the review of research on the human population and its impact on the planet we inhabit by a high level panel of experts give rise to hope for the future of children everywhere. Thanks for all you, the Planet and the People Working Group and the UK Royal Society are doing to protect biodiversity from massive extirpation, the environment from irreversible degradation and the Earth from wanton dissipation of its finite resources by the human species. I am especially appreciative for two quotes from you,

      …… “we’ve got to make sure that population is recognized… as a multiplier of many others. We’ve got to make sure that population really does peak out when we hope it will.”

      …….”what we want to do is to see the issue of population in the open, dispassionately discussed…. and then we’ll see where it goes.”

      Inasmuch as you and an esteemed group of professionals with appropriate expertise are examining scientific evidence regarding the unbridled increase of absolute global human population numbers, please note there is research that has been summarily dismissed by many too many of our colleagues regarding human population dynamics and human overpopulation which I would like to bring to your attention. For the past ten years I have been unsuccessfully attempting to draw attention to certain evidence that to date remains both unchallenged and ignored by virtually every top-rank professional. They appear unable to refute the evidence and simultaneously unwilling to believe it. Their unexpected conspiracy of silence has served to conceal certain research by David Pimentel and Russell Hopfenberg. How else can it be that so many established professionals with adequate expertise act as if they are willfully blind, hysterically deaf and electively mute in the face of scientific evidence of human population dynamics and human overpopulation? The conscious denial of what could somehow be real about the growth of the human population in our time is not doing anything that can be construed as somehow right and good for future human wellbeing and environmental health, I suppose. It appears as if we could be witnesses to the most colossal failure of intellectual honesty, moral courage and nerve in human history.

      Peer-reviewed professional publications, letters to the editor, slideshow presentations et cetera can be found at the following link, http://www.panearth.org/

      Thank you for attending to this request for careful, skillful and rigorous scrutiny of research from two outstanding scientists. Please know I am holding onto a ray of hope that the research of Hopfenberg and Pimentel is fundamentally flawed; that human population dynamics is different from, not essentially similar to, the population dynamics of other species; and that human population numbers are not primarily a function of an available supply of food necessary for human existence. That would be the best news.

      Sometime soon, I trust, many scientists will speak up with regard to apparently unforeseen and unfortunately unwelcome science of human population dynamics and human overpopulation the way people in huge numbers in the Mid-East are calling out for democracy now.

      Respectfully yours,

      Steven Earl Salmony

    • http://www.blogger.com/profile/02150141500937478504 Andrew Morrow

      This is researcher's analysis is careful and correct. At last, a reputable person has taken a stance on this vital issue. I have incorporated some of this information at my own web site http://www.thermo4thermo.org/ .

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