Showing posts from category development.
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John Warburton, China Environment Series
UK Helping to Relieve Climate-Related Stress on China’s Agriculture
›The UK and China have been working together since 2001 to better understand how China is going to be impacted by climate change, particularly in the agriculture sector. But understanding must also lead to action, with adaptation needing to be integrated into the development process at both national and local levels. This work, which is ongoing, will increasingly provide a model for how to approach adaptation in other countries.
In my opinion, this work has also contributed to the realization among top-level Chinese officials that it is important to take global action on climate change as part of the international negotiation process; until very recently, most of the international engagement with China has focused on mitigation, with the result that the very real and urgent challenges that China faces in regards to its own adaptation needs have been sidelined.
Another Stressor for Chinese Agriculture
China’s Polices and Actions for Addressing Climate Change, issued in October 2008, state:The impacts of future climate change on agriculture and livestock industry will be mainly adverse. It is likely there will be a drop in the yield of three major crops — wheat, rice and corn; …enlarged scope of crop diseases and insect outbreaks; [and] increased desertification.
Even though assessing the likely impacts of climate change on crop yields is a complicated process, with some evidence showing that in some areas crops may benefit if agricultural technology can keep pace, the overall picture is grim for China.
Potential climate impacts are very worrying for a country which already faces so many other challenges within the agricultural sector, among them the facts that it has to feed nearly one quarter of the world’s population (1.3 billion people) with only seven percent of the world’s arable land; that it has only one-quarter of the world’s average per capita water distribution (one-tenth in large parts of northern China, which are heavily dependent upon agriculture); and that the agricultural land base is fast diminishing due to urbanization, industrialization, and the conversion of arable land to grasslands and forest.
Collaboration on Adaptation
Much of the evidence that supports the understanding of the likely adverse impacts on Chinese agriculture from climate change stems from collaborative work between the UK and China which started in 2001. A joint project, Impacts of Climate Change on Chinese Agriculture (ICCCA), has combined cutting-edge scientific research with practical development policy advice. Although national in scope, the project included pilot work to develop a stakeholder based approach to adaptation in the Ningxia region of northcentral China. ICCCA was successfully completed in December 2008. The UK-China collaboration is now continuing with a major new project which is going beyond agriculture and looking at additional socioeconomic sectors and geographic areas.
Continue reading in the China Environment Forum’s China Environment Series 11, from the Wilson Center. Other articles in the series can be found on CEF’s website.
John Warburton is a DFID senior environment adviser and is currently based in Beijing.
Photo Credit: “Field,” courtesy of flickr user totomaru. -
What “Lost” Cultures Can Contribute to Management of Our Planet
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“Climate change is not a technical problem for indigenous people – it’s a psychological and spiritual problem,” said Wade Davis, explorer-in-residence at National Geographic, at a recent Wilson Center event, the third in a series co-sponsored by George Mason University and the Environmental Change and Security Program. Indigenous people are “being driven out of existence,” as climate change alters landscapes and weather patterns that they have carefully adapted to over centuries, he said. These people are not “failed attempts at being modern…they are unique answers to the fundamental question, ‘what does it mean to be human and alive?’” he said. “It behooves us to pay attention to how they choose to live upon the earth.” [Video Below]
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Working With the Private Sector to Improve Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health
Innovations From Development to Delivery
›“Challenging and dynamic partnerships [with the private sector] are difficult to pull together, but when you look at sustainability, impact, and effectiveness, they can also be great levers of change,” said Kari Stoever, senior advisor for global advocacy at the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) at the Wilson Center on March 22. [Video Below]
Stoever was joined by panelists Laura McLaughlin, environmental engineer at Cascade Designs, Inc., Hugh Chang, director of special initiatives at the NGO PATH, and Laura Birx, senior food security and nutrition specialist at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) for a discussion of the private sector’s role in developing innovative health technologies to increase access to safe water, prevent infectious diseases, and improve maternal health nutrition.
Collaborating to Provide Safe Water
“NGOs have different strengths and different perspectives from the private sector, and we’ve found an area where we can really complement each other,” said McLaughlin. Cascade Designs, Inc., collaborated with PATH to create a smart electrochlorinator, which produces a chlorine solution to purify water using just salt water and a simple battery, because “we wanted to make a bigger difference than we could do with philanthropy alone,” said McLaughlin.
“Products need to be designed specifically for the end user, particularly for women and children, who are often times left out of the design process,” said McLaughlin. Cascade’s smart electrochlorinator was designed with this in mind. One charged battery can treat up to 40,000 liters of water, 200 liters at a time. The device is easy to use, requires simple resources, is significantly more affordable than existing solutions, and lends itself to an entrepreneurial business model that can deliver safe water to small community households. The current prototype is being field-tested in 10 countries globally, with the aim of providing safe water in resource-poor communities while generating income for local entrepreneurs.
The PATH-Cascade partnership was successful in part because it combined “private-sector expertise in efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and meeting market demands” with knowledge about the health needs in developing countries, said McLaughlin. By “pushing each other to a common end goal, this partnership really multiplied our strengths.”
Engaging the Private Sector
“One of the reasons we work closely with the private sector…is because we recognize an efficiency of resource usage that comes with building bridges between the public sector and the private sector,” said Chang of PATH’s work with Cascade and others. Engaging the private sector to advance health technologies can complement PATH’s goals, like encouraging healthy behaviors and strengthening health systems, he said. “But, we are not averse to profits,” he added, stressing that partnerships with NGOs can be mutually beneficial. “We understand for this to be sustainable, these companies need to make a profit.”
PATH is working with the private sector to develop injection and vaccine technologies that “produce a product that not only benefits the recipient of the vaccine but also produces a revenue stream,” said Chang. The SoloShot, for example, is a low-cost, disposable syringe that locks after a single injection, preventing needle reuse and contamination that can increase the risk of HIV, hepatitis B, and other infections. To address the challenge of maintaining the proper refrigeration of vaccines in low-resource settings, private sector collaboration has helped to develop the vaccine vial monitor (a sticker that changes color when a vaccine has been exposed to too much heat) and to create more stable vaccine formulas that are less vulnerable to extreme temperatures. “By combining innovation with on-the-ground presence,” concluded Chang, “private sector engagement can be a powerful tool for global health.”
A “Win-Win Partnership”
“There is a tremendous role for the private sector to play in the intersection of agriculture and health as they relate to nutrition,” said Birx. Engaging the private sector can be a “win-win partnership,” she said. The Obama Administration’s hunger initiative, Feed the Future, for example, uses the resources, expertise, and innovation of the private sector to encourage sustainable, market-driven approaches to reducing poverty and food insecurity, said Birx.
USAID sees innovation as a “research-to-use continuum,” said Birx. “When we look at innovation, it’s not just about the development of a specific product, but about the entire system that goes around that product,” she added. New technologies must not only respond to a major development challenge in poor and rural communities but need to be affordable, culturally appropriate, gender sensitive, easy to use, and durable.
But solutions don’t have to be complicated. “Often times it’s about a really simple technology that can improve accessibility,” said Birx. The nevirapine pouch, for example, a simple foil packet that allows health care workers to give women single doses of nevirapine syrup, can reduce the risk of mother-to-child transmission of HIV by more than half.
“There’s a lot of excitement, but we need to do some serious work to capitalize on [it],” said Birx. Moving forward, health, development, and private-sector organizations must work together to create innovative financing mechanisms, build institutions in developing countries, and encourage enabling policy environments.
Sources: PATH.
Photo Credit: “Mission to Ouanda Djallé,” courtesy of flickr user hdptcar. -
Eric Zuehlke, Behind the Numbers
Building a Gender Strategy for the Afghanistan Ministry of Public Health
›March 25, 2011 // By Wilson Center StaffThe original version of this article, by Eric Zuehlke, appeared on the Population Reference Bureau’s Behind the Numbers blog.
Recent media reports have focused on the stalled progress for women in Afghanistan and the shift in the international community’s focus as they take steps towards an eventual military withdrawl. Although there’s much work to be done, it’s important to note that there has been tangible improvement for women in Afghanistan. A decade ago, women weren’t allowed to go out in public alone. Girls weren’t allowed to attend school – now 57 percent of girls are in school. And gender issues are now being integrated into government policy.
At an Interagency Gender Working Group (IGWG) Plenary in honor of 2011 International Women’s Day hosted by PATH in Washington DC, Karen Hardee, a senior fellow at PRB and president of Hardee Associates, presented her involvement towards developing the National Gender Strategy for the Afghanistan Ministry of Public Health for 2011-2015. Much international development program and policy advocacy calls for attention to “gender,” but what does the term mean? “Gender isn’t just about women,” said Hardee, but is defined as the social roles that men and women play because of the way society is organized. But these roles aren’t set in stone; they can change over time.
Funded by USAID, the Health Services Support Project worked with the Afghan government to create a plan to integrate gender considerations into all public health programs and policies, focusing mostly on mental health and gender-based violence. Interestingly, the impetus of the process stemmed the initiative of a male official in the Ministry of Public Health who requested assistance to write a plan to integrate gender into the Ministry’s policies and programs. Having participated in WHO-sponsored gender training workshops in the past, he understood the importance of mainstreaming gender awareness for both men and women. It’s a great example of the tangible effects of the work being done on gender by NGOs and international donors.
Continue reading on Behind the Numbers.
Sources: The Guardian.
Photo Credit: “PRT, ADT women help celebrate Women’s Day in Kunar,” courtesy of flickr user DVIDSHUB. -
Integrated Approach Helps “Model Farmers” Increase Productivity in Ethiopia
›March 24, 2011 // By Schuyler NullTo reach the village of Grar Gaber from Addis Ababa, you drive up over the Entoto Mountains overlooking the capital then motor down two hours of new Japanese-built highway to the town of Fiche. From there it’s 20 minutes on a broken dirt road across rocky hills. I was joined there by about 20 others from the PHE Ethiopia Consortium’s general assembly (see day one and day two coverage here) and Population Action International, to visit an integrated population, health, and environment (PHE) development program run by LEM Ethiopia.
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The Youth of North Africa
Surging on a Knife’s Edge
›March 23, 2011 // By Christina DaggettThe Middle East/North Africa region is experiencing a “youth surge,” said Jack Goldstone, director of the George Mason University’s Center for Global Policy, at a recent GMU event. “In the last two decades the number of people in their late teens and twenties has increased… It’s doubled in Egypt; it’s grown by half in Tunisia; and nearly doubled in Libya,” he told Warren Olney on KCRW’s To the Point.Such youth surges are problematic because, Goldstone wrote in ECSP Report 13, “population distortions – in which populations grow too young, or too fast, or too urbanized – make it difficult for prevailing economic and administrative institutions to maintain stable socialization and labor-force absorption.”
In the case of Egypt, the youth surge put enormous pressure on a government system that could no longer guarantee jobs to every college graduate, said Goldstone. When government guarantees dried up, graduates found that their poor-quality degrees were of little use, especially in a system that prioritized connections and bribery. The result was an unemployment rate of 25 percent among Egyptian youth and a mounting sense of frustration with the economic system and the government.
This frustration found a symbol when Mohammed Bouazizi, a 26-year-old Tunisian, set himself – and an entire region – on fire after his third run-in with the police cut off his only source of income. Youth across North Africa and the Middle East, Goldstone said, could identify with Bouazizi’s desperation and frustration after years of dealing with a closed economic system and a corrupt government.
While overall economic growth has been strong in the region – a fact which had misled many observers (including himself, Goldstone admits) into thinking the region was more stable – these economic gains were apparently being captured by the ruling elite to a far greater degree than previously thought, said Goldstone. For example, it is estimated that ousted Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and his family are worth between $40 and $70 billion.
Meanwhile, a burgeoning surge of young people were struggling to get by. Goldstone pointed to a Gallup poll conducted in 2010 in which only 12 percent of Egyptians and 14 percent of Tunisians would classify themselves as “thriving” – down from 25 and 24 percent, respectively, in 2007 and 2008.
While the Ben Ali and Mubarak regimes have fallen, these revolutions do not ensure the youth in these countries will have a prosperous future. They need not only access to capital, said Goldstone, but also access to information and social networks so that they can identify market opportunities and stay connected.
Immigration to more developed countries could also be an important avenue for economic growth and education. In a Foreign Affairs article, “The New Population Bomb,” Goldstone writes, “Given the dangers of young, underemployed, and unstable populations in developing countries, immigration to developed countries can provide economic opportunities for the ambitious and serve as a safety valve for all.”
The future of Middle Eastern youth, and that of the region at large, depends on the quality of their education and their ability to be productive, said Goldstone. They stand on “a knife edge,” he said, and the transition to democracy will not be smooth or easy.
Image Credit: “Protest Face Paint,” courtesy of flickr user Ahmad Hammoud.
Sources: The Economist, ECSP Report 13, Foreign Affairs, Gallup, International Monetary Fund, KCRW, Voice of America. -
The Continuing Challenges of Integrated Development
›March 20, 2011 // By Schuyler Null“How are we going to feed all these mouths?” asked Bekele Hambissa, director of the Environmental Protection and Development Organization in Addis, on day two of the PHE Ethiopia Consortium general assembly (read about day one here). Environmental resources are directly tied to Ethiopia’s population growth, said Hambissa, during a discussion of balancing efforts to address population growth, environment, and livelihoods. While poverty alleviation is an important goal of population, health, and environment integration (PHE), it must be environmentally sustainable, he said.
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USAID: Maternal Deaths in Bangladesh Decline by 40 Percent in Less Than 10 Years
›The original version of this article, by the USAID Global Health Bureau, appeared on the USAID Impact blog.
Bangladesh is on track to meet the 2015 deadline for UN Millennium Development Goal 5 (50 percent reduction in maternal deaths). The Bangladesh Maternal Mortality and Health Service Survey, jointly funded by the Government of Bangladesh, USAID, Australian Aid (AusAID) and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), found that maternal deaths in Bangladesh fell from 322 per 100,000 in 2001 to 194 in 2010, a 40 percent decline in 9 years.
The decline in direct obstetric deaths is most likely the consequence of better care seeking practices and improved access to and use of higher-level referral care. The decline in total fertility rate due to the successful family planning program has reduced exposure to high risk pregnancies and has thus prevented a large number of maternal deaths.
Continue reading on USAID’s Impact blog.
Sources: Directorate General of Health Services – Bangladesh, UN.
Photo Credit: Adapted from “Mother & Son,” courtesy of flickr user Anduze traveller.
