Showing posts from category *Blog Columns.
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Philippines’ Bohol Province: Elin Torell Reports on Integrating Population, Health, and Environment
›For 10 years, I have been working on marine conservation in Tanzania with the University of Rhode Island’s Coastal Resources Center. As part of that effort, I’ve helped forge links between HIV/AIDS prevention in vulnerable fishing communities and marine conservation. However, family planning and reproductive health (FP/RH) were relatively new to me. But a recent study tour of an integrated Population, Health, and Environment (PHE) program in the Philippines helped me understand that combining family planning services and marine conservation can help reduce overfishing and improve food security.
Together with developing country representatives from seven African and Asian countries, I spent two weeks in February visiting three PHE learning sites and a marine protected area in Bohol province in the central Philippines, as part of a South-to-South study tour sponsored by the USAID-funded BALANCED Project, for which I work. The tour focused on the activities of the 10-year-old Integrated Population and Coastal Resource Management Initiative (IPOPCORM) project, which is run by PATH Foundation Philippines, Inc. (PFPI).
IPOPCORM has garnered a wealth of lessons learned and best practices to share with PHE newbies like me. Its integrated programs train people to be community-based distributers (CBDs) of contraceptives and PHE peer educators, as well as work with local and regional government officials to build support for family planning as a means to improve food security.
I was most impressed with the ways in which PFPI identifies and cultivates dynamic and motivated local leaders–men, women, and especially youth–to reach out to the members of their community who are highly dependent on marine resources for their survival. My Tanzanian colleagues and I would like to foster the volunteer spirit and “can do” attitudes we experienced through our work in East Africa. (Similar PHE peer educators are successfully working in Ethiopia’s Bale Mountains, as reported by Cassie Gardener in a previous edition of the “Beat on the Ground.”
My favorite part of the tour was a trip to the Verde Island Passage to see PFPI’s efforts in this fragile hotspot. The insights my Tanzanian colleagues and I gained from talking to the field practitioners in the Verde Islands helped us refine our ideas for translating some of the PHE techniques used in the Philippines to the Tanzanian cultural context, including an action plan for strengthening our existing PHE efforts with CBDs and peer educators.
Thanks to the study tour, I now have a better understanding of how to address population pressures in the context of conservation. Overall, my Tanzanian colleagues and I were inspired by the successes we saw firsthand and hope to emulate them to some degree in our own projects.
Elin Torell is a research associate at the Coastal Resources Center at the University of Rhode Island. She is the manager of CRC’s Tanzania Program and coordinates monitoring, evaluation, and learning within the BALANCED project. -
Family Planning in Fragile States
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“Conflict-affected countries have some of the worst reproductive health indicators,” said Saundra Krause of the Women’s Refugee Commission at a recent Wilson Center event. “Pregnant women may deliver on the roadside or in makeshift shelters, no longer able to access whatever delivery plans they had. People fleeing their homes may have forgotten or left behind condoms and birth control methods.”
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Top 10 Posts for April 2010
›Peace parks remain at the top for two months in a row, but the rest of April’s faves includes new posts on population and climate change.
1. Guest Contributor Todd Walters, International Peace Park Expeditions: Imagine There’s No Countries: Conservation Beyond Borders in the Balkans
2. Climate Change and Energy in Defense Doctrine: The QDR and UK Defence Green Paper
3. Book Review: Global Warring: How Environmental, Economic, and Political Crises Will Redraw the World Map by Cleo Paskal
4. Guest Contributor Rear Admiral Morisetti: Climate Change: A Threat to Global Security
5. Copper in Afghanistan: Chinese Investment in Aynak
6. VIDEO: Peter Gleick on Peak Water
7. Megatrends: Embracing Complexity in Today’s Population and Migration Challenges
8. VIDEO: Joshua Busby on Climate Change and African Political Stability
9. The Beat on the Ground: Ethiopia’s Bale Mountains — Cassie Gardener Reports on Integrating Population, Health, and Environment
10. Canada Flip-Flops on Family Planning; Will the G-8 Follow? -
Climate Change and Gender
›“Women, Gender Equality and Climate Change,” a fact sheet released by the United Nations WomenWatch, is a cache of information for those interested in climate change’s differentiated impacts on the sexes. The fact sheet synthesizes data from many sources, mostly UN, into concise sections on food security, biodiversity, water, health, human rights, energy, natural disasters, migration, and adaptation–including financing projects and the development of new technology. While brief, each section is well-sourced and offers a list of links to relevant UN publications and websites.The Heinrich Böll Foundation-Southern Africa commissioned eight case studies examining the relationship between climate and gender in four southern African countries: South Africa, Botswana, Mozambique, and Namibia. Examining poor areas deemed to be significantly exposed to the impacts of climate change, researchers found that women in each study “seemed to cope better with the impacts of changing circumstances than the men” and were “repositories of knowledge about crops and climate, the environment, natural resources, food preservation techniques,” writes Belynda Petrie, CEO of OneWorld Sustainable Investments and author of a regional summary report. The studies offered a number of recommendations, including creating national gender indicators, developing gender-sensitive aid programs, and improving access to water. -
High Altitude Turbulence: Challenges to the Cordillera del Cóndor of Peru
›In 1998, Peru and Ecuador settled a long-running border dispute in the Cordillera del Cóndor mountain range that had killed and wounded dozens on both sides in 1995. In addition to pledging renewed cooperation on deciding the final placement of the border, the agreement, the Acta Presidencial de Brasilia, committed both sides to establishing extensive ecological protection reserves on both sides of the border: A peace park of sorts was born.
But now, indigenous groups fear that extractive industries in the area could threaten both the biodiversity and the ecological integrity of the forests and streams that they rely upon for their survival. They detail these charges in a new report, Peru: A Chronicle of Deception, and in a new video documentary, “Amazonia for Sale.”
Located on the eastern slopes of the Equatorial Andes, the area is a recognized global biodiversity hotspot with large areas of pristine montane habitat. In 1993-4, Conservation International led a biodiversity assessment trip to the area and identified dozens of species new to science. Their report, The Cordillera del Cóndor Region of Ecuador and Peru: A Biological Assessment, noted the “spectacular” biodiversity of the area, and its key role in the hydrological cycle linking the Andes with the Amazon.
Recognizing the region’s importance, the Acta Presidencial de Brasilia stipulated the need to create and update mechanisms to “lead to economic and social development and strengthen the cultural identity of native populations, as well as aid the conservation of biological biodiversity and the sustainable use of the ecosystems of the common border,” wrote Martin Alcade et al. in the ECSP Report.
Indigenous communities in Peru are accusing the Peruvian government of reneging on those promises by allowing extractive industries extensive access to the region. They charge that the government gave in to gold mining interests who want to reduce the size of the protected area in the Cordillera del Cóndor. They also claim that the Peruvian government is violating promises made to include indigenous peoples in the governance and management of the area.
Carefully managing extractive activities was a key priority for Peru and Ecuador when they negotiated an end to their border dispute. A management plan for the area with strong protection for key biodiversity areas was supposed to ensure everyone’s interests.
However, Peru’s current president, Alan Garcia, has been aggressive in promoting extractive industries in Peru,to the point of inciting significant popular opposition among many indigenous peoples. Less than a year ago, protests over oil exploration in Amazonian lowlands city of Bagua killed and wounded dozens of Peruvians. This violence followed years of social conflict over mining development in a number of communities in Peru’s Andean highlands.
Earlier this decade, Peru made some progress in resolving extractive disputes. But Garcia’s strong promotion of the extractive sector in the face of indigenous opposition, like we currently see in the Cordillera del Cóndor region, suggests years of confrontations to come.
Tom Deligiannis is adjunct faculty member at the UN-mandated University for Peace in Costa Rica, and an associate fellow of the Institute for Environmental Security in The Hague.
Photo Credit: “El vuelo del condor, acechando a su presa,” courtesy of flickr user Martintoy. -
Climate Change and U.S. Military Strategy
›Promoting the Dialogue: Climate Change and U.S. Ground Forces, a new working paper by Christine Parthemore of the Center for New American Security (CNAS), delves into how climate change will affect future operating environments, related missions, equipment, and capabilities of U.S. ground forces. The working paper, part of “Promoting the Dialogue” series, is based on interviews, research, and site visits. The paper follows Promoting the Dialogue: Climate Change and the Maritime Services, also by Parthemore, and a publication on climate change’s implications for air missions is forthcoming. Parthemore concludes with recommendations for areas of future research and a call for “[d]eeper intellectual study of how climate change is likely to affect the U.S. ground forces.”
Neil Morisetti, U.K. rear admiral and climate and energy security envoy, and Amanda Dory, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy, published an article in Defense News discussing the inclusion of climate change as a new variable in strategic planning. “The Climate Variable: World Militaries Grapple With New Security Calculus” labels climate change a “threat multiplier,” noting that “[c]limate change will amplify the impact of some of the world’s most difficult and common challenges.” Morisetti and Dory call for greater military-to-military engagement concerning disaster response, studies into at-risk military infrastructure, and efforts to foster innovative energy technologies. “Current military operations must continue to be our highest priority, but we also have a responsibility to assess the future security environment, including the impacts of climate change and other key trends such as energy, demographics, economics and science/technology,” they conclude.
Morisetti and Dory recently spoke at the Wilson Center as part of a panel discussing climate change and energy in defense doctrine. -
World Bank President: Climate Policy Is Not “One-Size-Fits All”
›Speaking at the Woodrow Wilson Center yesterday, World Bank President Robert Zoellick said the financial crisis indicated that developed countries should listen to developing countries, but not out of “charity or solidarity: It is self-interest.”
His prepared remarks, “The End of the Third World? Modernizing Multilateralism for a Multipolar World,” notably included a section on climate change:Take climate change: The danger is that we take a rule book from developed countries to impose a one-size-fits-all model on developing countries. And they will say no.
Climate change policy can be linked to development and win support from developing countries for low carbon growth but not if it is imposed as a straitjacket.
This is not about lack of commitment to a greener future. People in developing countries want a clean environment, too.
Developing countries need support and finance to invest in cleaner growth paths. 1.6 billion people lack access to electricity. The challenge is to support transitions to cleaner energy without sacrificing access, productivity, and growth that can pull hundreds of millions out of poverty.
Avoiding geo-politics as usual means looking at issues differently. We need to move away from the binary choice of either power or environment. We need to pursue policies that reflect the price of carbon, increase energy efficiency, develop clean energy technologies with applications in poorer countries, promote off-grid solar, innovate with geothermal, and secure win-win benefits from forest and land use policies. In the process, we can create jobs and strengthen energy security.
The developed world has prospered through hydro electricity from dams. Some do not think the developing world should have the same access to the power sources used by developed economies. For them, thinking this is as easy as flicking a switch and letting the lights burn in an empty room.
While we must take care of the environment, we cannot consign African children to homework by candlelight or deny African workers manufacturing jobs. The old developed country prism is the surest way to lose developing country support for global environment goals. -
Maternal Health Solutions in Peru
›Media reports on the neglected discussion of maternal and child health often focus on the problems and projects in sub-Saharan Africa or South Asia, which is understandable, as a disproportionate 90 percent of global maternal deaths occur in these two regions. Last month, however, PBS correspondent Ray Suarez reminded us that maternal and child mortality affects countries all over the world, including Peru, where “maternal death rates has historically been unusually high,” he noted in a report for NewsHour.
“Few people in the highlands of central Peru own automobiles and it’s hard to know exactly when the next bus is going to rumble by,” said Suarez. “Villagers are a long way from the nearest health clinic, even further from a fully equipped clinic.” Unfortunately, this scene could describe most developing countries struggling to reach the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 5 target of reducing maternal deaths by 75 percent by 2015. Maternal health advocates argue that MDG 5 does not require a cure, but rather increased political willpower.
“Health officials, obstetricians, nurses, and community activists looked for ways to make better use of existing resources and connect expecting mothers with them,” said Suarez, reporting from the remote town of Vilcashuaman. At the Casa Materna, or “mother’s house,” nurses plot on a felt, bulls-eye map the names, due dates, geographical proximity, and travel times of pregnant women in nearby villages. Utilizing two-way radio communication, Casa Materna stays in contact with these remote villages and can signal the regional hospital, hours away in Ayacucho, for ambulance assistance for women needing emergency obstetric care.
Delivery teams at the Ayacucho hospital are familiar with indigenous languages and cultures, and welcome traditional practices, such as displaying herbs and giving figurines to new mothers. “The medical professionals in the area know bringing delivering mothers to the hospital can mean the difference between life and death and are prepared to be as accommodating as possible to lure women from home delivery,” reports Suarez. In the Ayacucho district, maternal mortality rates have decreased by 50 percent in five years.
While Suarez said “cultural competence, a welcoming atmosphere, and low-cost, high-result treatment strategies” may seem “pretty smart and straightforward,” it is important to evaluate the regional health system at a larger level, and consider additional factors, such as access to family planning, that may have contributed to Ayacucho’s success in reducing maternal mortality.
Another part of the solution is improving transportation and referral strategies, but increased research is needed to evaluate best practices and scalability of programs such as the one in Ayacucho. On May 19-20, as part of the Maternal Health Dialogue Series, the Wilson Center’s Global Health Initiative will host a two-day conference on “Improving Transportation and Referral for Maternal Health.” Speakers working on transportation and referral strategies in Bolivia, Ghana, and India will share their experiences and best practices.
Calyn Ostrowski is the program associate for the Wilson Center’s Global Health Initiative.
Photo Credits: Mothers in Peru learn to identify risk factors during pregnancy. Courtesy of Flickr user International Women’s Health Coalition
