Showing posts from category development.
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STATcompiler: Visualizing Population and Health Trends
›World population is growing – earlier this week, the global community symbolically marked the arrival of the seven billionth person. But the unprecedented growth in global population over the last few decades has not affected everyone equally – in 1950, 68 percent of the world’s population lived in developing regions; today that number is 82 percent. MEASURE’s latest version of their STATcompiler tool helps visually highlight areas simultaneously experiencing the most demographic change and poor health indicators.
The revised STATcompiler – released in September – provides new ways for users to visualize data by generating custom data tables, line graphs, column charts, maps, and scatter plots based on demographic and health indicators for more than 70 countries. Users can select countries or regions of interest, and relevant indicators, including for family planning, fertility, infant mortality, and nutrition. Tables can be further customized to view indicators over time, across countries, and by background characteristics, such as rural or urban residence, household wealth, or education. In some cases, sub-national data is available. User-created tables and images are then exportable so that they may be easily used in papers or presentations.
Since STATcompiler is still in active development, certain functions are still being added. HIV data has not yet been integrated into the program, nor has the express viewer function, with customizable, ready-made tables for quick access. Additionally, updated information is not available for all countries, in all categories – for instance, the most recent data available for Mexico comes from a 1987 survey. If preferred, the legacy version remains available to users in the meantime.
MEASURE DHS – the Monitoring and Evaluation to Assess and Use Results Demographic and Health Surveys project – provides technical assistance for data collection on health and population trends in developing countries. Their demographic and health surveys, funded by USAID, provide data for a wide range of monitoring and impact evaluation indicators at the household level in the areas of population, health, and nutrition. They have become a staple data source for researchers, and the addition of better analysis functions and dissemination tools, via STATcompiler, will hopefully help advance understanding of demographic and health trends.
Image Credit: Map from STATcompiler, arranged by Schuyler Null. -
New Report Launched: ‘The World’s Water’, Volume Seven
›“The water problem is real and it is bad,” said MacArthur “Genius” Fellow and founder of the Pacific Institute Peter Gleick at the October 18 launch of the seventh volume the institute’s biennial report on freshwater resources. “It’s not bad everywhere, and it’s not bad in the same way from place to place, but we are not doing what we need to do to address all of the different challenges around water.”
“The World’s Biggest Problem”
Worldwide, more than a billion people lack access to safe drinking water, while two and a half billion lack access to adequate sanitation services. “This is the world’s biggest water problem,” said Gleick, “the failure to meet basic human needs for water – it’s inexcusable.”
Gleick predicts that the world will fail to meet the Millennium Development Goals for water and sanitation by 2015, and noted that measures of illness for water-related diseases are rising, rather than falling.The World’s Water series provides an integrated way of thinking about water by exploring major concepts, important data trends, and case studies that point to policies and strategies for sustainable use of water. Volume seven includes chapters on climate change and transboundary waters, corporate water management, water quality challenges, Australia’s drought, and Chinese and U.S. water policy. The new volume also includes a set of side briefs on the Great Lakes water agreement, the energy required to produce bottled water, and water in the movies, as well as 19 new and updated data tables. An updated water conflict chronology looks at conflicts over access to water, attacks on water, and water used as a weapon during conflict.Peter Gleick on climate change and the water cycle.
Despite the added data, Gleick said that vast gaps remain in our knowledge and understanding about water. We lack accurate information on how much water the world has, where it is, how much humans use, and how much ecosystems need, he said. “So right off the bat, we are at a disadvantage.”
Focus on Efficiency, Infrastructure to Better Manage Water
One of the major concepts that has connected various volumes of The World’s Water is the concept of a “soft path for water” – a strategy for moving towards a more sustainable future for water through several key focus points: improved efficiency, decentralized infrastructure, and broadly rethinking water usage and supply.
Other cross-cutting themes include climate and water, peak water, environmental security, and the human right to water (formally recognized in a 2010 UN General Assembly resolution). “I would argue that all of these combined offer to some degree a different way of thinking about water, an integrated way of thinking about water,” Gleick said.
The China Issue
The role of China has been one of the most significant changes over the course of the series, said Gleick. The growth in the Chinese economy has led to a massive growth in demand for water (see the Wilson Center/Circle of Blue project, Choke Point: China), as well as massive contamination problems. The newest volume addresses these issues as well as China’s dam policies – internally, with neighboring countries, and around the world.
Gleick pointed out that China is one of the only nations (maybe the only) that still has a massive dam construction policy, and their installed capacity is already much larger than the United States, Brazil, or Canada. In addition, Chinese companies and financial interests are involved in at least 220 major dam projects in 50 countries around world. These projects have become increasingly controversial, for both environmental and political reasons, he said.
“My lens is typically a water lens,” Gleick said, but “none of us can think about the problems we really care about, unless we think about a more integrated approach.” Gleick emphasized the need for new thinking about sustainable, scalable, and socially responsible solutions. “We have to do more than we are doing, in every aspect of water,” he concluded.
Event Resources
Photo Credit: “Water,” courtesy of flickr user cheesy42. -
Bring the Water-Energy Nexus to Rio+20
›Global demand for energy will increase 30 percent by 2030, according to estimates, but in regions that are experiencing rapid economic growth, the increased demand for energy will lead to increased demand for water. The conflicting nature of achieving both water and energy security is exacerbated by a lack of institutional policy frameworks that integrate both concepts. However, the upcoming UN Rio+20 Sustainable Development Conference could provide an opportunity to change that.
Breaking Down Sustainability
Despite its emerging importance as an international relations concept, sustainability has been fragmented to reflect different economic, environmental, social, and cultural agendas. The lack of a common framework is reflected in the disjointed understanding of the water and energy nexus. More often than not, water-basin committees are only consulted when energy decisions are related to hydropower, and they are left out of consultations about alternative energy sources and land planning, even though such decisions have a direct impact on water resources.
Other examples of energy decisions impacting the water sector include the Canadian oil sands, where extraction techniques can consume 20 times more water than conventional oil drilling; irrigated first-generation and soy- and corn-based biofuels, which consume thousands times more water than traditional oil drilling; and solar thermal electricity, as opposed to photovoltaic electricity, which consumes twice as much water as a coal power plant. According to the Wilson Center/Circle of Blue Choke Point project, China will need perhaps 20 billion cubic meters of water a year (5.3 trillion gallons) over the next decade to meet its expanding coal power needs. Meanwhile, from 2000 to 2009, China’s total water reserves fell 1.5 percent annually.
Bring It to Rio
Is this a zero-sum, Kobayashi Maru-like scenario then? It doesn’t have to be if we expand our understanding of sustainability.A holistic understanding of the water-energy nexus is already present in regional documents such as the Organization of American States’ Declaration of Santa Cruz+10. The declaration recognizes that to be sustainable, every aspect of a nation – its energy matrix, water resource management, emergency planning, forest management, and governance – needs to be addressed to reach true sustainability. The nexus is also discussed in other documents such as the Stockholm Statement, but what is truly needed is a place on the agenda of the UN sustainable development conference next year in Rio de Janeiro.OnEarth Magazine’s Ben Jarvey at SXSW Eco.
Most of the major groups of the UN Division for Sustainable Development have released statements supporting the incorporation of the water-energy nexus within the Rio+20 discussions; these groups represent children and youth, women, free trade unions and businesses, scientists, and indigenous communities. The European Union has already established the water and energy nexus as one of the main challenges for the green economy. However, many of the key players within the negotiation process, including the United States, Brazil, India, and China, have not included the water-energy nexus in their official position papers.
To gather the support of these remaining actors, representatives of the Major Groups must advocate for the proposal at the national level. For example, the U.S. Senate is reviewing the Water and Energy Integration Act of 2011 (S.1343). If this bill were to be approved, it will be easier to push for the inclusion of the nexus approach in the official U.S. position paper for Rio+20. Civil society must aim to build domestic support for the inclusion of the water-energy nexus and a whole system approach before the third UNCSD Preparatory Committee Meeting, where the overall agenda for Rio+20 will be set. The inclusion of the nexus in the final agenda will only be possible if true engagement and dialogue between state and non-state actors is developed prior to the conference.
Although it is only one step, the incorporation of the water-energy nexus in the Rio agenda would help to expand our understanding of sustainability, in as official a way as possible, to encompass its truly cross-sectoral reach. Given the importance that the previous Earth Summit had for developing sustainable development goals, global leaders need to take this opportunity to incorporate the water and energy nexus into new discussions to validate its importance as a sustainability concept. This is essential to promote and deliver comprehensive frameworks at a local and regional level that account for the intricacies of an interconnected world.
Olimar Maisonet-Guzman is a 2011 Boren Fellow to Brazil and a member of the SustainUS Youth Delegation that will participate in the Rio+20 Earth Summit.
Sources: Council of the European Union, GovTrack.us, Organization of American States, UN Development Programme, UN Environment Programme, World Economic Forum, World Policy Institute, World Water Week.
Image Credit: Adapted from UNSCD 2012 official logo. -
Seven Ways Seven Billion People Affect the Planet
›October 31, 2011 // By Geoffrey D. DabelkoSeven billion people now live on earth, only a dozen years after global population hit six billion. But the seven billion milestone is not about sheer numbers: Demographic trends will significantly impact the planet’s resources and peoples’ security.
Growing populations stress dwindling natural resource supplies while high levels of consumption in both developed countries and emerging economies drive up carbon emissions and deplete the planet’s resources. And neglected “youth bulges” could bolster extremism in fragile states like Somalia and destabilize nascent democracies like Egypt.
Here are seven ways seven billion people affect the planet, according to recent research:
Security: Nearly 90 percent of countries with very young and youthful populations had undemocratic governments at the end of the 20th century. Eighty percent of all new civil conflicts between 1970 and 2007 occurred in countries where at least 60 percent of the population is under age 30, says demographer Elizabeth Leahy Madsen. According to research by demographer Richard Cincotta, these countries may achieve democracy, but are less likely to sustain it.- Richard Cincotta: Tunisia Predicted: Demography and the Probability of Liberal Democracy in the Greater Middle East
- Elizabeth Leahy Madsen: Demographic Security 101
Water: By 2025, 1.8 billion people will be living in countries with water scarcity, and fully two-thirds will be living in conditions of water stress. People are using groundwater faster than it can be naturally replenished, putting us in danger of “peak water,” says MacArthur “Genius” Fellow Peter Gleick. “We cannot talk about water without also understanding the enormously important role of population dynamics and population growth.”- Peter Gleick: Population Dynamics Key to Sustainable Water Solutions
Forests: The growing demand for energy has helped devastate tropical forests, as more than two billion people depend on wood for cooking and heating, particularly in developing countries. Projects in Indonesia, Nepal, and Uganda are fighting deforestation by providing alternative energy and incomes along with health and family planning services.- Indonesia: Health in Harmony
- Nepal: Forests for the Future
- Uganda: Sharing the Forest
Future Growth: By 2050, the UN says global population could range anywhere from 8 billion to 11 billion – and where it ends up depends in large part on the status of women in developing countries. “Even if fertility rates remain constant at current levels (which is unlikely), developing regions would grow from 5.7 billion in 2010 to 9.7 billion in 2050, but the total population of developed countries would remain essentially unchanged,” writes Madsen.- Elizabeth Leahy Madsen: How Did We Arrive at 7 Billion – and Where Do We Go From Here? [Part One] [Part Two]
There are no quick solutions to these seven problems. But meeting the unmet need for contraception of more than 200 million women is an effective and inexpensive way to start.
Sources: Population Action International, UN, World Health Organization.
Image Credit: Used with permission courtesy of Scott Woods, The University of Western Ontario. -
Laurie Mazur, The Aspen Leaf
The Planet at 7 Billion: Lessons from Somalia
›October 28, 2011 // By Wilson Center StaffThe original version of this article, by Laurie Mazur, appeared on the Aspen Institute’s Aspen Leaf blog.
Listless, emaciated children wait for water to arrive by donkey. Their mothers rest nearby, too exhausted to speak. Tiny graves are chiseled out of bone-dry earth to hold the famine’s youngest victims. That is what Mary Robinson, then-president of Ireland, found when she visited Somalia 19 years ago. Images of suffering haunted her for years: “I never got Somalia out of my system,” she said.
Now, the Horn of Africa is again in the grip of famine. When Robinson returned to Somalia earlier this year, “Everything was even worse” than in 1992. At the National Press Club on Monday, October 17, Robinson issued an eloquent plea to address the crisis in Somalia, which has already claimed 40,000 lives. “How can we allow that to happen in the 21st century?” she asked. “It’s a black mark for all of us.” The event was part of a series of discussions organized by the Institute’s Aspen Global Health and Development program, titled “7 Billion: Conversations that Matter.”
Women, Reproductive Health, and Fertility.
It is not enough to respond to the current crisis, Robinson said. To prevent a recurrence, we must also address long-term health and development challenges. That means bolstering governance and security. And, perhaps most important, it means unleashing the power of women. Women are critical to the future of Somalia, said fellow speaker Walid Abdelkarim, principal officer and team leader for Somalia at the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations. “The most important element is the ability of the household to grow,” he said, “and that’s about the woman who nourishes and runs the household.”
Continue reading on The Aspen Leaf.
Video Credit: Aspen Institute. -
How Did We Arrive at 7 Billion – and Where Do We Go From Here? [Part One]
›October 26, 2011 // By Elizabeth Leahy MadsenThe United Nations Population Division has estimated world population will reach seven billion on Monday. Which changes in demographic trends led us to this milestone? What do the past and present tell us about how human numbers will change in the future?
The “Day of Seven Billion” was announced this spring following the release of the latest revision of UN population projections. Although the seven billionth person will not be precisely identified, this estimate is based on careful demographic modeling. Every two years, the UN revises its projections to incorporate the latest trend data and modify its assumptions, as seemingly small changes can make a huge difference demographically.The UN estimates that the seven billionth person alive today will be born on October 31. Demographer Elizabeth Leahy Madsen explains how we got to that number, its significance, and where our demographic path might take us from here. Read part two here.
The United Nations Population Division has estimated world population will reach seven billion on Monday. Which changes in demographic trends led us to this milestone? What do the past and present tell us about how human numbers will change in the future?
The “Day of Seven Billion” was announced this spring following the release of the latest revision of UN population projections. Although the seven billionth person will not be precisely identified, this estimate is based on careful demographic modeling. Every two years, the UN revises its projections to incorporate the latest trend data and modify its assumptions, as seemingly small changes can make a huge difference demographically.
Demography Is Driven by Fertility and Population Momentum
Since world population reached three billion in 1959, the rate of growth has increased, peaked, and begun to slow. Each succeeding milestone was reached more quickly than the last: It took 15 years to reach four billion, 13 years to hit five billion, and only 11 years to get to six billion at the end of 1998. The interval leading to seven billion was slightly longer, at 13 years, as the global rate of population growth has slowed.
Although mortality and migration also affect population trends, the factor with the greatest influence by far is fertility – the average number of children born to each woman. The decline in the global fertility rate from an average of nearly 5 children per woman in the early 1960s to 2.5 children today has in turn slowed the pace of world population growth. However, demographic momentum from previous generations of high fertility can drive population growth for decades to come. Even if Nigeria reached replacement-level fertility today, its population would still grow by one-third by 2050 as the number of births continued to exceed the number of deaths.
Assumptions Matter
Population projections consider: 1) current data about fertility and 2) assumptions about the ways fertility will change in the future. These assumptions vary depending on the source, so how much of a difference do they make? As it turns out, quite a lot.
Projections of world population in 2050 range from 8.1 billion (if fertility rates fall to a global average of 1.7 children per woman) to 10.9 billion (if they remain unchanged). The gap of nearly three billion between those possibilities is greater than the combined populations of China and India today.
Estimates vary even more widely for the end of the century, with the UN projecting that by 2100 world population could total anywhere between 6 billion (if total fertility falls to an average of 1.55 children per woman) and 27 billion (if every country’s fertility rates remain constant at today’s levels).
While demographers parse the details of the projections, policymakers would like to know which of these scenarios is more likely. After all, the economic, environmental, and political consequences of a population of 8 or 11 billion two generations hence are not the same, and a world of 27 billion is difficult for anyone to fathom.
If we simply projected past trends into the future at a steady rate, the population estimates on the low end of the fertility spectrum seem more likely. The global fertility rate has fallen from 4.5 children per woman in the early 1970s to 2.5 today, a decline of 43 percent, so the 14 percent decline projected in the medium-fertility variant between now and 2050 seems reasonable at first glance, perhaps even conservative. The medium-fertility variant assumes that all countries’ fertility rates will begin moving towards replacement level, around 2.1 children per woman, regardless of whether they are currently above or below that number.
However, even a 14 percent decline in fertility assumes that areas where fertility rates remain stalled at high levels will soon begin rapid declines, paralleling the past experience of other regions. As Population Reference Bureau demographer Carl Haub writes, “the assumption that the developing world will necessarily follow the path of the industrialized world…is far from a sure bet.”
In the last 40 years, fertility rates in the Caribbean, northern and southern Africa, Latin America, and all of Asia declined by 50 percent or more. The pace of decline in sub-Saharan Africa, while still notable, was much slower, at 23 percent. In order to meet the UN medium-variant projections, the region’s fertility rate would need to fall by nearly 40 percent by mid-century.
Some of the largest, fastest-growing populations in the developing world would need to experience a major acceleration from recent trends. In Nigeria, fertility edged down by 15 percent between 1970 and 2010, but the medium variant projection depends on a decline of 37 percent over the next four decades; Ethiopia’s fertility rate will need to fall by half.
Gender Matters, Too
The great irony of fertility trends is that gender inequities play an important role at both ends of the scale. In countries with the highest fertility rates, women tend to have less education than men and less autonomy. Their fertility choices may be greatly affected by the preferences of their husbands or other family members. In Niger, which has the highest fertility rate in the world, married men would, on average, like three more children than married women. In Uganda, where women average more than six children each, 60 percent of men report that domestic violence is justified.
By contrast, in countries with the lowest fertility rates, women have achieved equal access to education and the labor market, with more autonomy about how to earn income and what to do with it. Yet cultural expectations that place the burden for child and elder care and housework almost entirely on women can make marriage an unappealing option. In Japan, which is among the 10 lowest fertility countries in the world, more women are choosing to stay single: The marriage rate has fallen by almost half since the 1970s. Japanese women who do marry are waiting until their late 20s and tend not to give birth until they are 30, both of which result in lower average family size.
Even at this end of the demographic spectrum, the assumptions embedded within population projections seem optimistic. Japan’s fertility rate was last above replacement level in the early 1970s; it has fallen steadily to 1.3 children per woman today. The UN projections assume that fertility will immediately reverse track and begin rising to over 1.8 children per woman in 2050, rebounding above two children per woman before the end of the century.
The stalled high fertility rates in much of sub-Saharan Africa and parts of the Middle East, together with unprecedented low fertility in Eastern Europe and parts of East Asia, indicate that we are currently in an era of remarkable demographic diversity, despite the UN’s projection of future convergence.
Continue reading part two here.
Elizabeth Leahy Madsen is a consultant on political demography for the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program and former senior research associate at Population Action International.
Sources: Boling (2008), Haub (2011), Japan Statistics Bureau, Measure DHS, UN Population Division, UN Population Fund, Washington Post.
Image Credit: Chart data from UN Population Division, arranged by Elizabeth Leahy Madsen. -
Robert Draper, National Geographic
People and Wildlife Compete in East Africa’s Albertine Rift
›The original version of this article, by Robert Draper, appeared on National Geographic.
The mwami remembers when he was a king of sorts. His judgment was sovereign, his power unassailable. Since 1954 he, like his father and grandfather before him, has been the head of the Bashali chiefdom in the Masisi District, an undulating pastoral region in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Though his name is Sylvestre Bashali Mokoto, the other chiefs address him as simply doyen – seniormost. For much of his adult life, the mwami received newcomers to his district. They brought him livestock or other gifts. He in turn parceled out land as he saw fit.
Today the chief sits on a dirty couch in a squalid hovel in Goma, a Congolese city several hours south of Masisi. His domain is now the epicenter of a humanitarian crisis that has lasted for more than a decade yet has largely eluded the world’s attention. Eastern Congo has been overtaken by thousands of Tutsi and Hutu and Hunde fighting over what they claim is their lawful property, by militias aiming to acquire land by force, by cattlemen searching for less cluttered pastures, by hordes of refugees from all over this fertile and dangerously overpopulated region of East Africa seeking somewhere, anywhere, to eke out a living. Some years ago a member of a rebel army seized the mwami’s 200-acre estate, forcing him, humiliated and fearing for his safety, to retreat to this shack in Goma.
The city is a hornet’s nest. As recently as two decades ago Goma’s population was perhaps 50,000. Now it is at least 20 times that number. Armed males in uniform stalk its raggedy, unlit streets with no one to answer to. Streaming out of the outlying forests and into the city market is a 24/7 procession of people ferrying immense sacks of charcoal on bicycles or wooden, scooter-like chukudus. North of the city limits seethes Nyiragongo volcano, which last erupted in 2002, when its lava roared through town and wiped out Goma’s commercial district. At the city’s southern edge lies the silver cauldron of Lake Kivu – so choked with carbon dioxide and methane that some scientists predict a gas eruption in the lake could one day kill everyone in and around Goma.
The mwami, like so many far less privileged people, has run out of options. His stare is one of regal aloofness. Yet despite his cuff links and trimmed gray beard, he is not a chief here in Goma. He is only Sylvestre Mokoto, a man swept into the hornet’s nest, with no land left for him to parcel out. As his guest, a journalist from the West, I have brought no gifts, only demeaning questions. “Yes, of course my power has been affected greatly,” the mwami snaps at me. “When others back up their claims with guns, there is nothing I can do.”
Continue reading on National Geographic.
Photo Credit: “Aerial View of Goma,” courtesy of UN Photo/Marie Frechon. -
PHE Is One Great Idea That Won’t Be On the Rio Agenda, Says Roger-Mark De Souza
›October 17, 2011 // By Sean Peoples“I am now serving as an example to other women in the community because I am not having any more children. I have received training in sustainable agricultural practices, I’m generating income, and I’m educating others,” said Berhane Ferkade, an Ethiopian farmer, to Population Action International’s Roger-Mark De Souza earlier this year. The 39-year-old mother of 11 become one of the community’s model farmers after working with LEM Ethiopia – a local population, health, and environment (PHE) development organization.
