Showing posts from category population.
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Video: Roger-Mark De Souza on The Integration Imperative
›August 18, 2009 // By Geoffrey D. Dabelko“I have had a woman say to me, ‘This PHE [population-health-environment approach] makes sense to me because I do not live my life in silos. I live my life in a way that all these things are integrated, and what you are saying to me makes sense, because my life is one of integration,’” said the Sierra Club’s Roger-Mark De Souza, in his lilting Trinidadian baritone.
De Souza, whom I interviewed recently about his contribution to ECSP’s Focus series, is a great storyteller. Whether recounting his conversations with a tsunami survivor in Thailand, a mayor of a small Filipino community, or a Tanzanian journalist, De Souza brings to life their daily struggles to meet basic needs. His tales are packed with lessons for development practitioners tackling multiple and overlapping challenges in poor rural communities.
“When I see communities have a better understanding of how these issues interact and have an impact on their lives, they become very energized, and very enthusiastic and want to make a difference,” De Souza told me.
His latest article, “The Integration Imperative: How to Improve Development Programs by Linking Population, Health, and Environment,” summarizes the advantages of integration. “PHE offers a step in the right direction—a flexible, innovative way for policies and programs to keep pace with today’s rapidly changing world—and lays the foundation for empowering our children to manage these changes for generations to come.” -
Weekly Reading
›The Population Reference Bureau’s 2009 World Population Data Sheet shows that global population numbers will reach 7 billion in 2011. Among its key findings, PRB notes that “population growth is one root cause of increases in global greenhouse gas emissions. But the complexity of the mechanisms through which demographic factors affect emissions is not fully taken into consideration in many analyses that influence governments’ climate change mitigation efforts.”
The Guardian reports that U.S. marines have launched an energy audit of American military operations in Afghanistan, the first such assessment to take place in a war zone. “Some 80% of US military casualties in Afghanistan are due to improvised explosive devices (IEDS),” the article elaborates, “and many of those placed in the path of supply convoys.” DoD’s Alan Shaffer recently told ClimateWire, “nearly three-quarters of what convoys move in Afghanistan’s treacherous terrain is fuel or water.”
The Department of State released an inspection of the operations of the Bureau of African Affairs that identifies a rift between U.S. diplomats and the U.S. military’s recently established African Command (AFRICOM). As the Wilson Center’s Steve McDonald told Bloomberg.com, “It got off to a hugely bad start…Part of it was tied up with policies of the Bush era, where our own security concerns far overrode any sensitivities to local considerations.”
T. Paul Shultz of Yale University’s Economic Growth Center evaluates population and health policies, looking specifically at “the causal relationships between economic development, health outcomes, and reproductive behavior.”
Oxfam’s “The Future is Here: Climate Change in the Pacific” includes recommendations for adapting and mitigating climate change in Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific island nations—a region “where half the population lives within 1.5 kilometers of the sea.” -
Demography and Democracy in Iran
›August 12, 2009 // By Brian Klein
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad might have blamed sinister “foreign powers” for fomenting post-election civil unrest in Iran, but some analysts have fingered another culprit: demography. According to Farzaneh (Nazy) Roudi, program director for the Middle East and North Africa at the Population Reference Bureau, two phenomena “provide a backdrop for understanding Iran’s current instability.” First is the country’s youthful population age structure, or “youth bulge”; over 30 percent of Iranians are between the ages of 15 and 29, and 60 percent are under the age of 30. Second is Iran’s surprisingly comprehensive family planning program, which has empowered women to make their own reproductive choices and enter higher education en masse. -
Weekly Reading
›The NYT’s Andrew Revkin muses about whether “whether family planning programs should be able to get into the carbon business,” citing a study released by Oregon State University that says that the number of children an American resident has could have the greatest environmental impacts of any decision taken by that individual. Reporting on the study, The Oregonian observes that “having fewer children is best way to reduce your carbon footprint.” An interactive graphic from Breathing Earth maps the relationship between population and carbon emissions.
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Focus on Food Security as Clinton Lands in Africa
›August 7, 2009 // By Brian Klein In what CNN has dubbed her “biggest trip yet,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has commenced an 11-day, seven-nation tour of Africa that will take her to many of the continent’s most volatile states, including Kenya, South Africa, Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Nigeria, Liberia, and Cape Verde.
Global hunger and food security are her top agenda items, as Clinton and African leaders discuss how the United States can help improve the continent’s agricultural sector. Also on the table will be the “Second Scramble for Africa“— the recent spate of developed nations buying up African agricultural land (map) to assure their access to adequate food supplies, which was the subject of a recent Wilson Center conference (video).
More Mouths to Feed
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), one billion people are undernourished. If current population projections are correct, that figure is likely to grow. “In the coming 20 years alone, worldwide demand for food is expected to rise by 50 percent,” note Horand Knaup and Juliane von Mittelstaedt in Der Speigel.
Climate change will compound the already-daunting challenge of increasing food production by further “reducing harvests in much of the world, raising the specter of what some scientists are now calling a perpetual food crisis,” Joel K. Bourne, Jr. explains in National Geographic‘s special report, “The End of Plenty.”
Africa: Ground Zero
Sub-Saharan Africa—with birthrates averaging 5.4 children per woman and a farming sector dominated by small producers whose average yield per hectare has remained constant over the last 40 years—is particularly vulnerable to such a crisis. Both Secretary Clinton and President Obama have pushed for increased investment in the continent’s agricultural sector.
“There is no reason why Africa cannot be self-sufficient when it comes to food,” said Obama at the conclusion of this month’s G8 summit in L’Aquila, Italy. “It has sufficient arable land. What’s lacking is the right seeds, the right irrigation, but also the kinds of institutional mechanisms that ensure that a farmer is going to be able to grow crops, get them to market, get a fair price.”
Launching his book on African food security, Enough! Why the World’s Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty, coauthor Roger Thurow told a Wilson Center audience, “We hope to provide both an instructional and inspirational tale to show that hunger today is largely man-made, that so much is also caused by policies and decisions that span the political spectrum, and to inspire by showing hunger is truly achievable to conquer.”
Pledges of Aid, but Land Grab Continues
Largely thanks to Obama’s prodding, G8 countries agreed to invest $20 billion for farm aid in developing countries over the next three years. However, the leaders were unable to agree on a set of shared principles regarding foreign acquisition of arable land.
A number of relatively wealthy but land- and water-strapped nations, including Saudi Arabia, China, South Korea, and the United Arab Emirates, as well as many corporations and other investors, have purchased millions of hectares of land in other developing countries. Asia and South America have been targeted by some, but the inexpensive, fertile land of impoverished Africa appears to be the primary prize.
While some might praise the transfer of land to those with the capital and technology to make it productive, questions abound when one considers the dual pressures of population growth and a changing climate. “[W]hat happens with famine strikes these countries? Will the wealthy foreigners install electric fences around their fields, and will armed guards escort crop shipments out of the country?” ask Knaup and von Mittelstaedt.
The Ethics of Land-Grabbing
In completing such transactions, governments often ignore customary land tenure, selling tracts that are already inhabited and cultivated by small-scale subsistence farmers whose families have lived on the land for generations, but who have no formal deed of ownership.
To prevent such exploitation, experts have suggested the adoption of international rules to govern foreign acquisition of agricultural land in the developing world. A report from the International Food Policy Research Institute recommends a broad swath of measures to ensure transparency, respect for existing land rights, benefit-sharing, environmental sustainability, and adherence to national trade policies.
The Devil Is in the Details
Adding to the strong statements by the G-8 and Secretary Clinton, the FAO plans to convene an international food security summit in Rome this November, which will call for the eradication of hunger by 2025. While these are welcome developments, the details remain unclear.- Will a repeat of the “Green Revolution” save African farmers?
- Is it responsible to engender dependence on petroleum-based fertilizers, if it increases production in the short-term?
- What are the implications of selling arable land to foreign investors?
- How will large-scale commercialization and mechanization of farming transform developing societies?
- What about genetically-modified seeds?
- Can we eradicate hunger in the next 15 years?
Photo: Men gather corn at a farm in Kenya. Courtesy Curt Carnemark and Flickr user World Bank (pool). -
Weekly Reading
›“The natural resources are being depleted at an alarming rate, as population pressures mount in the Arab countries,” says the 2009 Arab Human Development Report, which was published this week by the UN Development Programme. A launch event in Washington, DC, features New York Times columnist Tom Friedman and Wilson Center scholar Robin Wright.
A special issue of IHDP Update focuses on “Human Security in an Era of Global Change,” a synthesis report tied to the recent GECHS conference. Articles by GECHS members, including Karen O’Brien and Alexander Lopez, address water and sanitation, the global financial crisis, poverty, and transborder environmental governance in Latin America.
An op-ed by Stanley Weiss in the New York Times argues that the best way to bring water–and peace–to the Middle East is to ship it from Turkey. A response by Gabriel Eckstein in the International Water Law Project blog argues that “transporting water from Turkey to where it is needed will require negotiations of Herculean proportion.”
CoCooN, a new international program sponsored by The Netherlands on conflict and cooperation over natural resources, recently posted two powerpoint presentations explaining its goals and the matchmaking workshops it will hold in Addis Ababa, Bogota, and Hanoi. The deadline for applications is August 5.
Two new IFPRI research papers focus on the consequences of climate change for poor farmers in Africa and provide policymakers with adaptation strategies. “Economywide Impacts of Climate Change on Agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa” analyzes two possible options for the region. “Soil and Water Conservation Technologies: A Buffer Against Production Risk in the Face of Climate Change?” investigates the impact of different soil and water conservation technologies on the variance of crop production in Ethiopia. -
Clinton, Congress Link Family Planning, Climate Change
›July 24, 2009 // By Meaghan ParkerEarlier this week in New Delhi, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton praised an “enlightening” roundtable discussion with India’s minister of environment for opening her eyes to climate change’s links to population and family planning.
“One of the participants pointed out that it’s rather odd to talk about climate change and what we must do to stop and prevent the ill effects without talking about population and family planning. That was an incredibly important point. And yet, we talk about these things in very separate and often unconnected ways,” said Clinton.
Congress is taking steps to tackle this issue. The version of the bill approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee last week links family planning and reproductive health to climate change.
On page 153, $628 million is alloted for “family planning/reproductive health, including in areas where population growth threatens biodiversity or endangered species or exacerbates human vulnerability to the effects of climate change.”
In addition, in the report accompanying the bill, the Senate committee “directs USAID to review the relationships between population growth and climate change to determine how experience in implementing population-environment activities applies to climate change adaptation and to efforts to increase the resilience of local communities to climate change.”
These comments certainly increase the volume on this overlooked link. Some background resources that might help those new to the discussion:- In the latest ECSP Report, Suzanne Petroni of the Summit Foundation proposes some ethical ground rules, calling for “a thoughtful and deliberative dialogue around voluntary family planning’s contribution to mitigating climate change.”
A recent PAI factsheet points out that “areas of high population growth and high vulnerability to climate change impacts overlap.” - Another handy factsheet includes a brief description of how community-based programs that integrate population-environment activities can strengthen resilience and reduce vulnerability to the effects of climate change.
- PAI’s working paper “Projecting Population, Projecting Climate Change” warns that “population growth is not adequately accounted for in the emissions scenarios” used by the IPCC.
- The Center for Global Development’s David Wheeler recently argued that family planning could be a relatively inexpensive part of solving the climate crisis.
- A paper in Global Environmental Change estimates the extra emissions of fossil carbon dioxide that an average individual in the United States causes when he or she chooses to have children.
- In the latest ECSP Report, Suzanne Petroni of the Summit Foundation proposes some ethical ground rules, calling for “a thoughtful and deliberative dialogue around voluntary family planning’s contribution to mitigating climate change.”
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9.2 Billion Carbon Copies: The Impact of Demography on Climate Change
›July 21, 2009 // By Gib ClarkeAs the number of contributing factors to (and potential solutions for) climate change grows, one—population growth—is conspicuously absent from most discussions. For obvious reasons: After finally prevailing over climate change “skeptics,” why would U.S. climate advocates court more controversy by adding population, and thus family planning and even abortion, to the mix?
Because it could be an important—perhaps significant—and definitely cheap part of solving the climate crisis, argued David Wheeler of the Center for Global Development (CGD) at an ambitious June 23rd event in the CGD series on “Demographics and Development.” Covering both climate change and population issues, he offered a compelling economic analysis of the effectiveness of family planning and female education programs at addressing climate change. Equally impressive was Wheeler’s engaging style, including graphics and animations that could make Gapminder guru Hans Rosling blush.
Describing Pacala and Socolow’s oft-cited “wedge” theory of stabilizing emissions, Wheeler pointed out that slowing population growth is rarely discussed, compared to the more popular—and more costly—wedges related to reduced deforestation, energy efficiency and conservation, renewable electricity and fuels, and carbon capture and storage.
Wheeler argued that slowing population growth has great potential for reduce emissions at a lower cost. As population increases, so do emissions. As a country develops, its per-capita emissions increase, so population increases in more developed countries are especially important. As the middle class in the BRIC and other large developing nations grows, this sizable group of “New Americans” (to use Thomas Friedman’s term) will contribute more and more emissions.
Two interventions will contribute the most to slowing population growth: family planning and female education, said Wheeler. According to his calculations, a $10 billion increase in female education in the developing world would lead to a change in population growth substantial enough to achieve one of the stabilization wedges. Wheeler found that family planning and female education are among the most cost-effective strategies, as evidenced by their placement on the far left side of slides 22 and 25.
Though an economist by training, Wheeler did not make only financial arguments: He emphasized throughout his presentation that family planning and female education are worthy and necessary programs in their own right. And he pointed out the most glaring injustice of climate change: While people in developed countries have the largest carbon footprints, people in developing countries will disproportionately suffer the impacts. (Suzanne Petroni makes similar points in her ECSP Report 13 article, “An Ethical Approach to Population and Climate Change.”)
Tim Wirth, the president of the UN Foundation and the Better World Fund, called for more political and financial support for this link. Funding for family planning has fallen and support for female education is not as high as it should be. Reaching the unmet need of the world’s women would cost about $20 billion, and the U.S. “share” is $1 billion, an amount that many U.S. family planning leaders are advocating.
As CGD’s Rachel Nugent noted in her introduction, demography and climate are classic cases of long-term issues: difficult to understand and address. It is ironic and important, she said, that two such long-term issues are simultaneously at critical moments. The work of David Wheeler on population and climate change, along with that of Leiwen Jiang of Population Action International and Brian O’Neill of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, may help us find an important and inexpensive piece of an elusive and otherwise expensive pie.
More data is needed to confirm these initial findings. However, the devil may not be in the details but in the debate: convincing weary and wary climate warriors to take on a bit more controversy.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad might have blamed sinister “
