Rwanda, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) announced an unprecedented joint effort to save the critically endangered mountain gorilla on February 20, 2008. As part of the 10-year Transboundary Strategic Plan, the countries will develop and adhere to a consistent set of conservation policies and laws in Virunga National Park, which overlaps the three countries and is home to more than half of the world’s 700 remaining mountain gorillas.

The recent fighting in Chad was partially fuelled by rebels’ resentment over President Idriss Déby’s handling of the country’s oil revenue, reported The New York Times. “They say that he has not managed the country’s growing oil wealth well and that he has given preferential treatment to members of his ethnic group, the Zaghawa.”

Although an agreement with the World Bank states that Chad’s government must devote 70 percent of oil revenue to development, few believe this is occurring, especially given Déby’s recent high levels of military spending. Philippe Hugon, a researcher specializing in African economic affairs, told Agence France-Presse, “The oil wealth has been partially siphoned off and wasted on arms spending and on building up the personal fortunes of people close to Idriss Déby….The rebels want their share.”

Chad’s oil production is tiny when compared with that of some of its neighbors, such as Nigeria; even so, it constitutes a considerable portion of the country’s economy. Chad is one of the poorest countries in the world, ranked 170th out of 177 countries in the 2007-2008 Human Development Index.

“It is true that countries like Kenya and Pakistan and some other developing countries have high population growth rates. And that is a real tragedy for Kenya and Pakistan, which are trying to improve their lot but are getting overwhelmed with more people to feed,” Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jared Diamond told Living on Earth host Bruce Gellerman in a recent interview. “But it’s not a tragedy for the rest of the world because those people in rapidly growing third world countries don’t consume very much. The real tragedy for the world is the growth rate of population and consumption in the first world.” Diamond’s comments echoed points he made in a January 2008 New York Times op-ed, in which he argued that total consumption, not total population, is the real threat to Earth’s dwindling natural resources.

Diamond believes we should focus on reducing consumption rates in affluent societies, where the average person consumes 32 times more resources than the average person in a developing country. “Whether we get there willingly or not, we shall soon have lower consumption rates [in the United States and other developed countries], because our present rates are unsustainable. Real sacrifice wouldn’t be required, however, because living standards are not tightly coupled to consumption rates,” wrote Diamond. “Much American consumption is wasteful and contributes little or nothing to quality of life. For example, per capita oil consumption in Western Europe is about half of ours, yet Western Europe’s standard of living is higher.”

Diamond also struck an optimistic tone in “Environment, Population, and Health: Strategies for a More Secure World,” an article in Environmental Change and Security Program Report 10: “Every one of our problems—deforestation, overfishing, water scarcity, and toxic waste—is of our own making. Therefore, we can choose to stop causing them.”

Effective development programs require multisectoral strategies, says Roger-Mark De Souza, and succeed by building local and regional partnerships and winning the trust and participation of individuals and communities. In the following podcast, ECSP Director Geoff Dabelko discusses integrated development approaches in the Philippines with De Souza, who is the director of foundation and corporate relations at the Sierra Club and formerly the technical director of the Population Reference Bureau’s population, health and environment program. De Souza shares his experiences of how local communities have successfully integrated environmental conservation and population issues to alleviate poverty and improve their quality of life. Many of the issues regarding integrated population, health, and environment approaches discussed in this podcast also appear in an article by De Souza in ECSP Report 10.

USAID’s “Adapting to Climate Variability and Change: A Guidance Manual for Development Planning” seeks to help USAID country missions and partners increase their projects’ resiliency to global climate change, though it neglects to mention the links between climate change and population.

The North-South Institute’s Canadian Development Report 2008—Fragile States or Failing Development? (free registration required) assesses reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan; Canada’s contributions to gender equality in Afghanistan and Haiti; and the destabilizing effects development aid and intervention can have in fragile Latin American states.

In an editorial in The New York Times, noted author and former Wilson Center speaker Jared Diamond argues that the world’s growing population “matters only insofar as people consume and produce.”

A new guide from MEASURE Evaluation provides a set of evidence-based indicators that integrated population-health-environment (PHE) projects can use for monitoring and evaluation.

WomenLead in Peace and Stability, a new publication from the Centre for Development and Population Activities, profiles 15 women from war-torn nations—including Sudan, Sierra Leone, and Nepal—who have worked to build sustainable peace in their countries.

Tensions are high between those who support the construction of a new township for former Nairobi slum-dwellers, and those who argue the development will jeopardize the future of Nairobi National Park.

Last week, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) hosted “Agriculture, Land Use, and Climate: Implications for African Development,” a panel discussion on agriculture’s essential current and future role in Africa’s development. As panelist Martin Bwyala of the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) noted at the beginning of the discussion, 60 to 70 percent of the population of sub-Saharan Africa depends on agriculture or another form of direct land use for their livelihoods. “Africa’s foundation for sustainable growth lies in enhancing the productivity and sustainable use of its natural resources,” said Bwyala. The panel highlighted the adverse effects of unsustainable land use and climate change on Africans’ livelihoods, and examined the merits of potential solutions.

The panelists emphasized that governments and NGOs are better positioned to aid Africa today than ever before, and that the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) provides an important opportunity to do so. A joint venture by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and NEPAD, with the support of other agencies, CAADP is “a manifestation of African governments’ commitment to address issues of growth in the agricultural sector, rural development and food security,” FAO’s website explains. [w1] The panelists’ overwhelming consensus was that NGOs and governments can and should collaborate to pursue CAADP’s goals, which include: achieving an annual agricultural production growth rate of 6 percent; strengthening domestic and international markets for African agricultural products; spending at least 10 percent of annual public expenditure on agricultural investment; and expanding sustainable management of land and water resources.

Elaborating on CAADP’s goals, Arati Belle of the World Bank explained precisely what is at stake in increasing the sustainability of African agriculture. 485 million Africans are adversely affected by land degradation, which is not surprising, she said, considering that 30 percent of Africa’s GDP and 70 percent of its employment come from the agricultural sector. The goal of the TerrAfrica initiative, launched at the CAADP Partnership Forum, is to “scale up the effectiveness and efficiency of sustainable land management in sub-Saharan Africa.” The need for sustainable land management couldn’t be more urgent: On average, soil and nutrient loss cause a 3 percent annual reduction in African countries’ GDP, said Belle. Citing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Belle warned that unless sustainable and adaptive solutions are implemented, declining crop productivity and increasing variability in precipitation over the course of this century are likely to exacerbate the agricultural sector’s woes.

Continuing this line of reasoning, WWF’s David Reed argued that agencies, governments, and companies involved in Africa “have to change the very base case of their investments, calculations, and thinking, particularly in the agricultural sector.” When thinking about the future of African agriculture, it is crucial to incorporate the impacts of the continent’s massive population growth, said Reed, because the 15 million sub-Saharan Africans who enter the labor market each year are likely to move predominantly into agriculture. It is important that NGOs help African countries take advantage of this influx of labor, Reed said, by promoting agro-forestry best practices, working with agricultural ministries, and encouraging more diverse production systems at the household and community levels.

The final panelist was Angel Elias-Daka of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), who used statistics—as well as anecdotes from his 20 years working in the wetlands of Zambia and Malawi—to shed light land degradation in Africa. Elias-Daka’s field experiences showed him that millions of people depend heavily on wetlands that—due to climate change and unsustainable use—are drying up and losing their biodiversity. He explained the link between COMESA’s work in the region and Africa’s agricultural production as follows: “If you promote trade and investment and people are able to trade their agricultural products, you are also going to promote agricultural production because people know they can trade their agricultural products easily.” Sustainable agricultural development will serve both the economic and the environmental needs of the continent, said Elias-Daka.

Major environmental challenges—including land degradation and desertification, pollution, and climate change—demand swift, concerted global action, say the authors of Global Environmental Outlook: Environment for Development (GEO-4), which was recently published by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). Assessing the state of the Earth’s atmosphere, land, water, and biodiversity, the 572-page report finds that as the global population grows and consumes increasing amounts of natural resources, it threatens the health of essential ecological assets ranging from fish stocks to fertile land to freshwater. GEO-4 identifies the most pressing environmental issues confronting each region of the world, and offers policymakers specific recommendations for responding to these challenges.

For the first time, the assessment includes explicit analysis of the linkages between the environment and conflict. ECSP Director Geoff Dabelko served as one of the lead authors of Chapter 7, “Vulnerability of People and the Environment: Challenges and Opportunities,” which explores the relationship between environmental change and security using the concept of human vulnerability. The authors emphasize that the poor are the most susceptible to the stresses caused by degraded environments, and suffer disproportionately from land degradation, water contamination and scarcity, and increasingly frequent and severe natural disasters.

“A combination of environmental change, resource capture and population growth decreases the per capita availability of natural resources, and can threaten well-being for large segments of societies, particularly the poorest who depend on these natural resources for survival. The resulting social effects—migration, intensified unsustainable behavior and social sub-grouping—strain the state’s ability to meet its citizens’ demands, and can contribute to violent outcomes,” write the authors. They recommend reducing people’s vulnerability to environmental and socio-economic changes by bolstering the resource rights of local people; promoting sustainable livelihoods; improving communities’ natural disaster coping capabilities; and empowering women and other historically disadvantaged groups. They also urge the integration of environmental considerations into broader development activities, so that development will be sustainable and will help, not harm, a country’s poorest members.

UNEP has spearheaded a range of efforts analyzing environment, conflict, and security connections. Its Post-Conflict and Disaster Management Branch (PCDMB) conducts scientific assessments of environmental conditions in conflict and post-conflict settings. The Woodrow Wilson Center recently hosted the U.S. launch of PCDMB’s June 2007 Sudan Post-Conflict Environmental Assessment. In 2003, UNEP’s Division of Early Warning and Assessment (DEWA) took a broader look at the links between environment and conflict with the publication of Understanding Environment, Conflict, and Cooperation.