Showing posts from category family planning.
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“Bahala na”? Population Growth Brings Water Crisis to the Philippines
›January 4, 2008 // By Meaghan ParkerA report by Filipino TV journalist Melclaire R. Sy-Delfin—recent Global Media Award winner and subject of an ECSP podcast—warns that a water crisis could threaten the 88 million residents of the Philippines as early as 2010. According to Delfin, 27 percent of Filipinos still lack access to drinking water, despite successful government programs to increase supply.
Why? “There has been too much focus on developing new sources of supply rather than on better management of existing ones,” said Department of Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Angelo Reyes at a January 2007 conference. Almost all of the country’s watersheds are in critical condition, devastated by logging, erosion, sedimentation, mining, overgrazing, and pollution.
Population growth is also erasing the government’s gains. “From 1995 to 2005, the government has successfully provided water for an additional 23.04 million. However, the population increased by 24.5 million over the same period,” National Water Resources Board Director Ramon Alikpala told a UNDP meeting.
Growing by more than 2 percent annually, the Philippines’ population could top 90 million next year. Delfin told a Wilson Center audience she has met “women with eight children who want to stop giving birth but no knowledge of how to do it,” and decried the “lack of natural leadership” from President Gloria Arroyo.
The Philippines House of Representatives’ version of the 2008 budget—currently in conference—includes almost 2 billion pesos for family planning programs. “We cannot achieve genuine and sustainable human development if we continue to default in addressing the population problem,” Rep. Edsel Lagman said in the Philippine Star.
However, current Environment Secretary Lito Atienza said at the Asia-Pacific Water Summit that population growth should not be considered part of the country’s water problem. But his opposition to family planning is well-known: Advocates in the Philippines recently launched a suit against him for removing all contraceptives from Manila’s clinics when he was mayor.
“We must not leave things to fatal luck when we can develop the tools to prevent harm,” said President Arroyo at the launch of UNDP’s report on water scarcity. That’s an encouraging attitude, but without focused efforts to improve degraded resources and reduce population growth, the Filipino philosophy “Bahala na”— roughly equivalent to “que sera, sera”—may let the wells run dry. -
Too Big or Too Small? Population Growth and Climate Change
›August 7, 2007 // By Gib ClarkeThe Economist’s recent story “How to deal with a falling population” rightly states that a growing global population does not inevitably exhaust the earth’s resources, and that a shrinking population poses several serious threats to nations.
But the article downplays the impact of a large population. The total number of people on the planet has both global and local consequences. On the global level, each additional resident contributes to climate change, and this contribution is growing for citizens of developing countries making the transition to more western, carbon-consuming lifestyles. While 6.6 billion people have not yet run the oil derricks dry, large local populations have already had significant effects on local resources. In many parts of the world, women and children walk for hours to obtain water, firewood, and other basic needs.
The story seems to suggest that we should wait for governments to solve the problem of climate change. Yet many, including the author of one of the articles in The Economist’s September 2006 survey of climate change, are skeptical that politics can single-handedly and responsibly address this issue.
While governments work on large-scale policies, everyday people can influence natural resource consumption and climate change by focusing on population issues. One of the most effective ways to do this is by expanding access to family planning programs. Concerns about the possibility of coercion accompany all family planning efforts, but regulated, well-managed family planning programs tend to produce positive side effects, increasing women’s empowerment and education and expanding employment opportunities for both men and women.
It is important for governments and international institutions to craft prudent, long-term policies to address climate change. Yet we must also remember that the choices that ordinary individuals make can have significant positive impacts on health, economic development, and the environment. -
The Greening of Population
›July 19, 2007 // By Karima TawfikClimate change, biodiversity, air pollution, deforestation, water scarcity, and other environmental issues share a common denominator that lies quietly beneath the higher priorities of the environmental movement: population pressure.Recently, several experts, including Nafis Sadik, the former director of the UN Population Fund, have said that the lack of attention to population, as evidenced by drops in donor support for family planning since 1995, will have negative consequences for the welfare of future generations. Despite the UN’s 2006 prediction that the population will grow to 9.2 billion by 2050, environmentalists have largely ignored the issue of human population growth, focusing instead on reducing the quantity of resources each person uses and other issues that are often exacerbated by an increasingly crowded Earth.
While scaling down each person’s environmental footprint is indeed important, demands for land and resources will increase in tandem with population growth. This is one reason why the Optimum Population Trust’s (OPT) recently-published report Youthquake: Population, fertility, and environment in the 21st century advocates for wider access to family planning and the promotion of voluntary population policies as part of a comprehensive environmental protection strategy. Discourse on population management is always controversial, but OPT believes that it is critical to achieving environmental sustainability. -
PODCAST – Unleashing the Potential of Urban Growth
›July 10, 2007 // By Sean PeoplesNext year, for the first time in history, more than half of the world’s population will live in cities. This urban growth is inevitable, says a new United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) report. Although cities are sometimes thought of as synonymous with poverty and large ecological footprints, the report, entitled State of World Population 2007: Unleashing the Potential of Urban Growth, describes the unprecedented urbanization as an opportunity. Lead author George Martine discusses the misconceptions surrounding urbanization and the ways in which policymakers can maximize the benefits of urban growth.
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Halfway Gone: Tracking Progress on the MDGs
›May 15, 2007 // By Sean PeoplesRemember the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)? We are approaching the halfway point marking the 15-year effort toward eradicating poverty, and improving livelihoods and sustainability. Taking stock of progress in reaching these targets could not come at a better time.
The Global Monitoring Report 2007 annually reviews progress on the MDG targets and highlights emerging priorities on achieving them. This year’s report focuses on gender equity and fragile states. According to the report, progress is evident, but it is clear there is much more work to be done, specifically in harmonizing aid and “translating good intent into viable outcomes on the ground.” It also says that promoting gender equity and empowerment of women can be a conduit to achieve targets for universal primary education, improved child mortality rates and maternal health, and reduced HIV/AIDS transmission—each an MDG in its own right. Similar themes are voiced—albeit with an emphasis on health disparities—in Save the Children’s latest report State of the World’s Mothers: Saving the Lives of Children Under 5.
One of the most interesting resources in tracking progress is The World Bank Group’s Online Atlas of the Millennium Development Goals, which maps each of the eight MDGs by country. The atlas is an easily digestible interface with visually stimulating functions that complement narrative progress reports.
Together, these reports provide a sobering snapshot of what still needs to be done. Indeed, others sources point to the lack of quality data for indicators within the MDGs, which makes tracking progress and assessing success extremely difficult. The Global Monitoring Report doesn’t mince words when it says that “[s]even years after the Millennium Summit at which the MDGs were adopted, there is yet to be a single country case where aid is being scaled up to support achieving the MDG agenda.” Continuing with the MDG development framework is important, but failing to scale up support and harmonize donor effort could further stall progress and “jeopardize the credibility of the program itself.” -
The New York Times Sees “The Shape of Things to Come” in Very Young Populations
›April 11, 2007 // By Gib ClarkeReporting on Population Action International’s latest report, The Shape of Things to Come, The New York Times’ Celia W. Dugger calls the link between young age structures and conflict “no simple coincidence,” observing that Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo all suffer from bad governance, violent conflict, and young populations. Retired Army Major General William L. Nash sets the scene with military efficiency:You’ve got a lot of young men. You’ve got a lot of poverty. You’ve got a lot of bad governance, and often you’ve got greed with extractive industries. You put all that together, and you’ve got the makings of trouble.
Shape concludes that youthful populations (countries where up to two-thirds of the population is below 30 years old) are most likely to present hurdles to political stability, governance, and, in some cases, economic development. For example, between 1970 and 1999, 80 percent of civil conflicts (those with 25 deaths or more) occurred in countries where 60 percent of the population was under 30 years old. In contrast, countries with an older age structure had only a 5 percent chance of civil conflict in the 1990s. Increased access to family planning and reproductive health, as well as improved rights for women—legal, educational, and economic—can help countries avoid demographic problems, the report says.
While Dugger’s explanation of the link between youthful populations and conflict is strong and succinct, she does not delve into the nuances of demography that are not so simple, but yet just as illuminating. Shape also focuses on other countries along the “demographic transition”— a population’s shift from high to low rates of birth and death—including “youthful” South Korea, “mature” Germany, and “transitional” Mexico and Tunisia. Some countries are impossible to classify strictly by age structures, including the United Arab Emirates, where large numbers of young men are immigrating for work; and sub-Saharan Africa, where HIV/AIDS is killing adults and children alike.
This report, as well as the PAI’s 2003 The Security Demographic, was released in a political environment increasingly concerned with the negative economic consequences of low fertility—the “birth dearth”—in developed countries, which has led Russia, France, and Iran to offer financial rewards for women that have more children. In addition, other recent reports have focused on the “demographic dividend” that developing countries could harness by taking advantage of the ingenuity and additional labor of youthful age structures. Many developed countries, concerned about below-replacement fertility rates, are thus not noticing or remain unconcerned that the population of the developing world continues to grow—and some even consider family planning to have been “accomplished.”
Despite the shifting political landscape, the fundamental arguments for female empowerment and family planning remain the same. Provision of reproductive health information and access to family planning goods and services are development imperatives, and the only way to ensure that women and couples can choose the size of their families. Furthermore, lowering birth rates still has positive economic benefits. The NYT article, while limited in its focus, will help bolster support for such programs, because as PAI’s Tod J. Preston tells Dugger:The budget realities are such that unless you can show how your programs help achieve larger ends—security, development, poverty reduction, democracy—traditional rationales for humanitarian assistance aren’t enough.
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WHO Article Explores Family Planning-Poverty Link
›March 2, 2007 // By Alison WilliamsA new article in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization concludes that higher fertility and lower contraceptive use among poorer segments of society should be considered an inequity—a product of the poor being prevented from achieving their desired fertility to the same degree as wealthier segments of society. The analysis conducted by the authors—Johns Hopkins’ Duff Gillespie, Saifuddin Ahmed, and Amy Tsui; and Scott Radloff, director of USAID’s Office of Population and Reproductive Health—reveals that family planning can help level the playing field between rich and poor:“Family planning…is an effective way for individuals and groups to lower their fertility if they so desire; and reducing inequality in access to modern contraception will also reduce the inequality in fertility… Our analysis suggests that looking at family planning and fertility through an equity lens is justified for those countries with joint inequalities in unwanted fertility and access to family planning.”
ECSP held a meeting in January 2006 on a related topic—the impact of family planning on poverty alleviation. The speakers, George Washington University’s Thomas Merrick and Meg Greene, had recently conducted a study on this relationship and found that reproductive health interventions in poor populations have the strongest impact on overall health, followed by education, with household well-being the most weakly affected.
Merrick and Greene’s conclusions will be published in a forthcoming issue of ECSP’s FOCUS on population, environment, and security series. -
China Pledges to Address Gender Imbalance
›January 22, 2007 // By Wilson Center StaffOver the next decade China expects to have 30 million more men of marriageable age than women, said a report released last week by China’s State Population and Family Planning Commission. In esponse, Chinese authorities have made new commitments to slow the imbalance by curtailing fetus gender testing and sex-selective abortions. Efforts to promote equality between men and women are also being scaled up in hopes of staving off potential problems noted in the initial report:The increasing difficulties men face finding wives may lead to social instability.
The government is also concerned with overall population growth. Public financing of family planning and population programs is being increased as a way to keep the mainland population under 1.45 billion by 2020, said an official statement:Maintaining a low birth rate is the priority of family planning during the next phase.China’s current population is 1.3 billion.
