In “An End to One-Child Families in China?,” a recent post on his blog, Dot Earth, New York Times science reporter Andrew Revkin comments on reports that China is considering ending its one-child policy. But a few of Revkin’s assumptions about population and its relationship to climate change are a tad oversimplified:

1. Revkin writes, “Demographers I consulted today said this [relaxing of the one-child policy] could overturn predictions of an imminent end to global population growth.”

Who’s predicting an imminent end to population growth? The latest UN mid-range projections predict the global population will continue to grow over the next several decades—to 9.2 billion by 2050. Furthermore, even without China abandoning its one-child policy, many already consider the UN mid-range projections optimistically low, since they assume that funding for family planning will continue to increase and the total fertility rate will continue to fall (neither of which is guaranteed). If fertility rates remain the same as they are today, the world population will be 11.9 billion in 2050.

2. Revkin also writes, “Urbanization is likely to help [reduce human impact on the environment] more than hurt.”

But according to Brian O’Neill, a scientist who studies the relationships between demographic variables and climate change at the National Center for Atmospheric Research’s Institute for the Study of Society and Environment, preliminary projections of future urbanization in China show higher levels of urbanization correlating with an increase, not a decrease, in carbon emissions. (For more on O’Neill’s findings, click here.) 2008 will mark the first time in history more people have lived in urban areas than in rural ones, and the UN Population Division estimates that by 2050, 70 percent of the world’s population will reside in cities. Given that the vast majority of future population growth—including urban population growth—will be in developing countries, energy-efficient and environmentally friendly design in developing country cities will be crucial in the coming decades.

Uncovering the numerous variables that can influence global climate change can be daunting. Brian O’Neill and his colleagues are improving our understanding of some of these factors by modeling how demographic shifts—such as aging or urbanization—could impact climate change. O’Neill is a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research’s Institute for the Study of Society and Environment in Boulder, Colorado, and also leads the Population and Climate Change (PCC) Program at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Laxenburg, Austria. Researching population-environment interactions and the science and policy of global climate change led to O’Neill’s recent work as a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change‘s Fourth Assessment Report. In this podcast, O’Neill describes how shifting demographic patterns could influence a changing climate.

Norman Borlaug’s innovative plant breeding techniques—which he used to develop varieties of wheat resistant to stem rust—spawned the Green Revolution and earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970. An article in MIT Technology Review (free registration required) discusses why the Green Revolution did not spread to Africa and which policies and techniques could strengthen African agriculture.

A paper commissioned by the Institute for Global Dialogue and the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa explores the prospects for sharing and jointly managing the water resources of the Southern African Development Community (SADC). “Water resources availability has been and still is high on the national security agenda of most SADC states,” write Daniel Malzbender and Anton Earle.

A report from the Institute for Policy Studies analyzes the disparities between the U.S. government’s FY 2008 spending on military security and climate security.

The United Nations, European Union, and United States each have important roles to play in mitigating climate change’s security threats, argue John Podesta and Peter Ogden in The Washington Quarterly. The article echoes The Age of Consequences: The Foreign Policy and National Security Implications of Climate Change, published jointly last year by the Center for a New American Security, which Podesta heads, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

UNAIDS released a statement earlier this week expressing its concern that the recent violence in Kenya is disrupting efforts to combat the country’s HIV/AIDS epidemic.

In the Global Dashboard blog, David Steven remarks on three “hidden drivers” of instability in Pakistan: the government’s failure to capitalize on the “demographic dividend,” the potential socio-economic benefits of a large working-age population; the rising food, water, and energy scarcity faced by working- and middle-class Pakistanis; and what Steven calls “the worrying role being played by the Pakistan army, once a source of national stability and pride.”

According to The Economist, one similarity between seemingly dissimilar Gaza and Kenya is that they both have “too many young men without either jobs or prospects.” Improvements in health and education—which resulted in more current 15-to-24-year-olds being healthy and relatively well-educated—have not been matched by sufficient growth of economic opportunities, leaving many young people frustrated in their attempts to provide for themselves and their families. Fertility rates have fallen somewhat in both places, from around seven children per woman 20 years ago to approximately five today—but this is still far higher than the 1.6 children per woman average in developed countries.

For a more detailed analysis of the relationships between large youth cohorts and conflict, see Population Action International’s report The Shape of Things to Come. As report author Elizabeth Leahy noted at the Wilson Center in October 2007, “The problem is not that there are too many young people, but that there are too few opportunities and resources available to them….Young people are the most important asset a society has in looking to the future. When young people are educated, healthy, and employed, they are the ones who renew and revitalize a country’s economy and institutions.”

This article from the Population Reference Bureau provides an overview of Kenya’s demography—including population growth, HIV/AIDS prevalence, and the country’s youth bulge—in the context of the ongoing ethnic conflict.

“Weather of Mass Destruction? The rise of climate change as the “new” security issue,” by past Wilson Center speaker Oli Brown, examines the risks and opportunities associated with the growing acceptance of climate change as a national and international security issue.

The United States should expand its civilian tools of international power, argued Wilson Center President Lee H. Hamilton in “Wielding our power smartly,” a January 14 editorial in The Indianapolis Star. “America’s crucial role in a complicated world demands that we apply effectively all the tools of U.S. power—public and private, military, economic and political. Our challenge is to cultivate an international system that puts cooperation and engagement at its core,” said Hamilton.

A publication from the U.S. Institute of Peace lays out guidelines for relations between U.S. armed forces and non-governmental humanitarian organizations in conflict zones or potentially hostile areas.

President George W. Bush signed an exemption that the U.S. Navy hopes will increase the likelihood that the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will vacate a federal judge’s recent injunction that the Navy take additional steps to protect marine mammals from the sonar it uses during anti-submarine warfare training.

The National Interest sponsored an online debate on the links between natural resources and conflict featuring David Victor, Thomas Homer-Dixon, Michael Klare, Sherri Goodman, and Paul Kern.

Georgetown University’s Colin Kahl argues that Kenya’s present strife is largely due to deep-seated ethnic land grievances, while a Council on Foreign Relations brief claims that it is partially the result of demographic factors—the country’s “youth bulge,” for instance.

“Weathering the Storm: Options for Framing Adaptation and Development,” a new report from the World Resources Institute, reviews climate change adaptation efforts from throughout the developing world, and explores how adaptation activities intersect with poverty, environmental degradation, and other challenges.

An article from IRIN News examines whether or not the extraction of Mozambique’s mineral resources—including heavy metals, coal, natural gas, and perhaps oil—is likely to reduce the country’s widespread poverty.

Thousands of people in Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Malawi have fled the flooding caused by the overflowing Zambezi River, reports BBC News. “Damage to crops and roads has raised fears of food shortages, and aid agencies have also warned of increased risk of waterborne diseases and diseases caused by poor sanitation.”

A story in yesterday’s New York Times describes an expanding campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Kikuyu tribe in western Kenya. We’ve seen this story before. In my 2006 book States, Scarcity, and Civil Strife in the Developing World, I explained how rapid population growth, environmental degradation, and historical land grievances collided with multi-party elections in the early 1990s to provide opportunities for Kenyan elites to gain power and wealth by violently mobilizing ethnic groups against one another. The ensuing violence pitted the Kalenjin and other smaller tribal communities engaged in pastoral activities against the Kikuyu, Luo, and other traditional farming communities in the fertile Rift Valley, leaving more than a thousand Kenyans dead and hundreds of thousands homeless.

Sound familiar? Demographically and environmentally induced ethnic land competition—at the heart of the 1990s conflicts—remains problematic today. Deep-seated grievances emanating from struggles over scarce farmland provide ample opportunities for elites across the political spectrum to mobilize tribal supporters to engage in violence and ethnic land cleansing during times of electoral instability—especially in rural areas, where strong group identification facilitates such mobilization. This didn’t happen during the last presidential election, in 2002, because elites bought into the democratic process and the elections were viewed as fair. In addition, the Kenyan Electoral Commission and the international community, in an effort to prevent a repeat of the strife in 1992 and 1997, closely scrutinized electoral behavior in 2002.

This time, the apparent rigging of the election by the Kibaki regime—which many minority tribes view as having used its political power to unfairly benefit its own Kikuyu tribe—unleashed the latent grievances against the Kikuyu still present in Kenyan society. “You have to understand that these issues are much deeper than ethnic,” Maina Kiai, chairman of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, told the Times. “They are political…they go back to land.”

Colin Kahl is an assistant professor in the Security Studies Program at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service and a regular ECSP contributor.