-
Environmental Security: A Guide to the Issues (Book Preview)
›
I remember the first moment when my interest in national security came crashing into ecological reality. I was on a U.S. government trip to Central Asia to inspect uranium mines in the newly-independent states of the former Soviet Union. The Cold War security imperative to achieve nuclear superiority had done a number on the environment there: Uranium was leached from the ground with sulfuric acid, transformed into a uranium oxide powder called yellowcake, and shipped off to be enriched for nuclear reactor fuel or weapons. The generals in Moscow who issued these orders did not see the collateral damage that their idea of security wreaked on the environment in Central Asia. In their attempt to out-weaponize the United States, they laid waste to the groundwater, agriculture, and public health of their own citizens.
-
Lisa Dabek on How Papua New Guinea’s Tree Kangaroo Conservation Project Does More Than Conserve
›
“All through Papua New Guinea, in every province, there is logging and mining, but we are the first conservation area,” says Lisa Dabek in this week’s podcast.
Dabek is the director of the Tree Kangaroo Conservation Project (TKCP), an effort of the Seattle Woodland Park Zoo that works to protect tree kangaroos while empowering communities in Papua New Guinea’s YUS Conservation Area to manage their natural resources, health care, and food security.
-
Joan Castro on Engaging Youth to Create Change in the Philippines
›“Exposing young people to information about PHE [population, health, and environment] and food security dynamics can be a powerful tool to steer their interests and commitment to care for the environment and become sexually responsible individuals,” says PATH Foundation Philippines, Inc. (PFPI)’s Joan Castro in this week’s podcast.
PFPI’s Youth EMPOWER project has trained close to 300 “youth peer educators” in the southern Philippines to promote environmentally sustainable livelihoods, clean up the environment, raise awareness of reproductive health, and encourage participation in local government.
-
Facing the Future: Empowering Youth to Protect Their Health and Environment in Ghana and the Philippines
›In the Philippines, there are health and development programs that specifically target children, senior citizens, and adults, said Joan Castro, but adolescents are underserved. Nineteen percent of the population is between the ages of 15 and 19, but “they can’t even go to health centers to get the family planning commodities [they desire],” she said. [Video Below]
-
Leslie Mwinnyaa: Young People Drive Integrated Development in Ghana’s Ellembelle District
›“I have been amazed and inspired by the youth that I’ve worked with, with their dedication and motivation to help their countrymen and to try to make their communities better places,” says Leslie Mwinnyaa in this week’s podcast.
When Mwinnyaa arrived in the Ellembelle district of coastal Ghana as a Peace Corps volunteer she found a multitude of development challenges. Fishermen routinely use illegal techniques like chemicals, lights, and dynamite that decimate fish stocks; “sand winning” and mangrove clearing increases erosion, leaving communities vulnerable to flooding and reducing breeding grounds for local fish; poor waste and refuse management contributes to disease and poor health; and teenage girls have twice the national rate of pregnancy.
-
Combining Health and Food Security in Mozambique: Interview With Pathfinder International’s SCIP Project
›Pathfinder International’s Strengthening Communities Through Integrated Programming (SCIP) is part of a new push towards integrated development – looking at communities as a whole and addressing multiple, traditionally-siloed sectors at once. SCIP integrates both its activities and its funding to great effect in Mozambique.
-
What Does It Take to Cooperate? Transboundary Water Management Around the World
›Water is the foundation of human society and will become even more critical as population growth, development, and climate change put pressure on already-shrinking water resources in the years ahead. But will this scarcity fuel conflict between countries with shared waters, as some have predicted, or will it create more impetus for cooperation?
-
Clive Mutunga: Addressing Population Growth Can Build Resilience to Climate Change in Kenya and Malawi
›“We know that a number of these countries in Africa have the least to do with climate change in terms of emissions, but they are the most vulnerable, and they are the ones with the least capacity to deal with the effects of climate change,” says Clive Mutunga in this week’s podcast. Mutunga, a senior associate at Population Action International, discusses the results of a study PAI conducted looking at the entwined and related impacts of climate change and population growth, as well as other factors like water scarcity, on Kenya and Malawi.
Showing posts from category environmental health.
