Yesterday Google and the World Bank expanded their data-sharing partnership, first initiated last fall, to include a subset of 54 World Development Indicators and enhanced visualization tools. Users can now interact with data—spanning a range of both environmental and population statistics, from forest coverage area to contraceptive prevalence—using line graphs, bar graphs, maps, and xy-plots. Each option also offers users the ability to follow the data changes over time.

An alternative to Google’s Public Data Explorer is the World Bank’s Data Visualizer. Although limiting data output to an xy-plot, the customization options go beyond those offered by the Public Data Explorer and achieve a good balance between flexibility and ease of use. Table colors and groupings are fully customizable, scales are adjustable, and the chart can be quickly printed or exported as a jpeg.

The journal Nature Geoscience recently published a study comparing the impacts of rural and urban population growth on deforestation. “Deforestation Driven by Urban Population Growth and Agricultural Trade in the Twenty-First Century” finds deforestation is positively correlated with urban population growth and agricultural exports to international markets. In rural areas, however, the link between deforestation and population growth was absent, indicating that urbanization and agricultural export-oriented economies were the primary drivers for forest loss. The study concludes that, rather than focusing on the activities of rural populations, deforestation reduction efforts should target “industrial-scale, export-oriented agricultural production, concomitant with efforts to increase yields in non-forested lands.” (SUBSCRIPTION ONLY)

Environmental problems that amplify regional security issues are often multifaceted, especially across national boundaries. Obtaining a comprehensive understanding of the natural resource, energy, and security issues facing a region is not fast or easy.

Fortunately, the Environment and Security Initiative (ENVSEC) has created highly informative, easy-to-understand maps depicting environmental, health, population, and security issues in critical regions.

Published with assistance from the United Nations GRID-Arendal, these maps offer policymakers and the public a snapshot of the complex topography of environmental security hotspots in Central Asia, Eastern Europe, Southeastern Europe, and the Southern Caucasus.

1. VIDEO: Peter Gleick on Peak Water

2. Can Haiti Change Course Before the Next Storm?

3. Guest Contributors Cleo Paskal and Scott Savit: How Copenhagen Has Changed Geopolitics: The Real Take-Home Message From Copenhagen Is Not What You Think

4. Hardship in Haiti: Family Planning and Poverty

5. Water, Conflict, and Cooperation: Practical Concerns for Water Development Projects

6. Collier and Birdsall: Plunder or Peace

7. VIDEO: UNEP’s David Jensen on Linking Environment, Conflict, and Peace in the United Nations

8. Gates: More Money for Global Health Is Good for the Environment

9. Lessons From the Field: Focusing on Environment, Health, and Development to Address Conflict

10. Land Grab: Sacrificing the Environment for Food Security

Is the “resource curse” inevitable? The Resource Conflict Monitor (RCM) produced by the Bonn International Center for Conversion (BICC) attempts to monitor the management, administration, and governance of natural resources in countries prone to resource-conflict dynamics by establishing an empirical measure of resource governance.

Climate Change and Security in Africa: A Study for the Nordic-African Foreign Ministers Meeting, a collaboration between the International Institute for Sustainable Development and the Institute for Security Studies, examines the spectrum of literature devoted to the security implications of climate change in Africa. In particular, the study focuses on the economic sectors and regions most susceptible to climate change’s threat multiplier effects. It concludes that “climate change presents very real development challenges which, under certain circumstances, may contribute to the emergence and longevity of conflict.”

“National security often means cyber security, it means energy security, it means homeland security, and more and more…it means environmental security,” says retired U.S. Army Captain James Morin in the Pew Project on National Security, Energy and Climate’s recently released video short, “Climate Patriots.”

Every minute, a woman dies in pregnancy or childbirth. But the overwhelming majority of these more than 500,000 deaths a year are avoidable.

“We know how to save women’s lives, we don’t need a cure…this is a political problem and political will is essential,” said Theresa Shaver, the director of White Ribbon Alliance.

Addressing longstanding issues like political will could jumpstart progress toward Millennium Development Goal 5, which seeks to reduce maternal deaths by 75 percent by 2015. We face daunting challenges, but there are some clear steps we can take to meet this critical goal. We must strengthen health systems in the developing world.

Increasing women’s access to quality health services during pregnancy, and ensuring they are attended by skilled providers during childbirth, can help to reduce preventable causes of death, such as hemorrhage, pre-eclampsia, and obstructed labor—which together account for 80 percent of maternal deaths.

Scaling-up family planning services are a cost-effective way of preventing unwanted pregnancies, delaying the age of first pregnancy, increasing the time between pregnancies, and facilitating important relationships between women and health care providers. However, many societal and cultural factors dissuade women and girls from seeking contraception. Culturally sensitive education programs can help overcome this barrier, especially if they include men and local leaders, in addition to women and girls.

We should recognize that improving the well-being of mothers is inseparable from the health of newborns. Efforts to reach Millennium Development Goal 4, reducing under-5 mortality by two-thirds, are integral to improving maternal health. Skilled birth attendants could decrease both maternal and child mortality.
In the United States and abroad, momentum is growing to make the investment necessary to scale up these interventions. In January, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton renewed a commitment of $63 billion for the Obama Administration’s Global Health Initiative, which will include significant resources for maternal and child health.

According to the U.S. Agency for International Development, maternal and newborn deaths cost the world $15 billion a year in lost productivity. Researchers conclude that maternal health services would cost only a $1 per day per woman. That’s a small price to pay for such a high return—saving not only dollars, but also women’s lives.

For more information about maternal health and the Global Health Initiative’s Advancing Policy Dialogue on Maternal Health Series please see this month’s issue of Centerpoint.

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