Showing posts from category environment.
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As Somalia Sinks, Neighbors Face a Fight to Stay Afloat
›May 14, 2010 // By Schuyler NullThe week before the international Istanbul conference on aid to Somalia, the UN’s embattled envoy to the country, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, warned the Security Council that if the global community “did not take the right action in Somalia now, the situation will, sooner or later, force us to act and at a much higher price.”
The UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) also issued strong warnings this week. Deputy High Commissioner Alexander Aleinikoff said in Geneva, “The displacement crisis is worsening with the deterioration of the situation inside Somalia and we need to prepare fast for new and possibly large-scale displacement.”
But the danger is not limited to Somalia. The war-torn country’s cascading set of problems – criminal, health, humanitarian, food, and environmental – threaten to spill over into neighboring countries.
A Horrendous Humanitarian Crisis
The UN- and U.S.-backed Transitional Federal Government (TFG) controls only parts of Mogadishu and small portions of central Somalia, while insurgent group Al Shabab controls nearly the entire south. The northern area is divided into semi-autonomous Somaliland and Puntland, which also fall outside of the transitional government’s control.
But the civil war is only one part of what Ould-Abdallah called a “horrendous” humanitarian crisis.
According to the UN, 3.2 million Somalis rely on foreign assistance for food – 43 percent of the population – and 1.4 million have been internally displaced by war. Another UN-backed study finds that approximately 50 percent of women and 60 percent of children under five are anemic. Most distressing, the UN Security Council reported in March that up to half of all food aid sent to Somalia is diverted from people in need by militants and corrupt officials, including UN and government employees.
Because of the country’s large youth bulge – 45 percent of Somalia’s population is under the age of 15 – food and health conditions are expected to get much worse before they get better. In the 2009 Failed States Index, Somalia ranks as the least stable state in the world and, along with Zimbabwe, has the highest demographic pressures.
Islamic Militants and the Battle for the High Seas
Yet the West continues to focus on the sensational pirate attacks on Somalia’s coast. The root cause of these attacks is not simply lawlessness say Somali officials, instead, they began partly as desperate attempts to stop foreign commercial fleets from depleting Somalia’s tuna-rich, lawless shores. A 2006 High Seas Task Force reported that at any given time, “some 700 foreign-owned vessels are engaged in unlicensed and unregulated fishing in Somali waters, exploiting high value species such as tuna, shark, lobster and deep-water shrimp.”
The transitional government opposes the fishermen-turned-pirates, but can do little to stop them. Al Shabab has thus far allowed pirates to operate freely in their territory. Their tacit approval may be tied to reports that the group has received portions of ransoms in the past.
Another hardline Islamist group, Hizbul Islam, recently took over the pirate safe haven of Haradhere, allegedly in response to local pleas for better security, but the move may simply have been part of an ongoing struggle with Al Shabab for control of pirate ransoms and port taxes – one of the few sectors of the economy that has remained lucrative.
“I can say to you, they are not different from pirates — they also want money,” Yusuf Mohamed Siad, defense minister with Somalia’s TFG, told Time Magazine.
A Toxic Threat
Initially the pirates claimed one of their goals was to ward off “mysterious European ships” that were allegedly dumping barrels of toxic waste offshore. UN envoy Ould-Abdallah told Johann Hari of The Independent in 2009 that “somebody is dumping nuclear material here. There is also lead, and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury – you name it.” After the 2005 tsunami, “hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died,” Hari reports.
Finnish Minister of Parliament Pekka Haavisto, speaking to ECSP last year, urged UN investigation of the claims. “If there are rumors, we should go check them out,” said the former head of the UN Environment Program’s Post-Conflict Assessment Unit:I think it is possible to send an international scientific assessment team in to take samples and find out whether there are environmental contamination and health threats. Residents of these communities, including the pirate villages, want to know if they are being poisoned, just like any other community would.
To date, there has been no action to address these claims.
Drought, Deforestation, and Migration
While foreign entities may have been exploiting Somalia’s oceans, the climate has played havoc with the rest of the country. Reuters and IRIN report that the worst drought in a decade has stricken some parts of the interior, while others parts of the country face heavy flooding from rainfall further upstream in Ethiopia.
Land management has also broken down. A 2006 Academy for Peace and Development study estimated that the province of Somaliland alone consumes up 2.5 million trees each year for charcoal, which is used as a cheaper alternative to gas for cooking and heating. A 2004 Somaliland ministry study on charcoal called the issue of deforestation for charcoal production “the most critical issue that might lead to a national environmental disaster.”
West of Mogadishu, Al Shabab has begun playing the role of environmental steward, instituting a strict ban on all tree-cutting – a remarkable decree from a group best known for their brutal application of Sharia law rather than sound governance.
The result of this turmoil is an ever-increasing flow of displaced people – nearly 170,000 alone so far this year, according to the Washington Post – driven by war, poverty, and environmental problems. The burden is beginning to weigh on Somalia’s neighbors, says the UNHCR.
The Neighborhood Effect
One of the largest flows of displaced Somalis is into the Arabian peninsula country of Yemen – itself a failing state, with 3.4 million in need of food aid, 35 percent unemployment, a massive youth bulge, dwindling water and oil resources, and a burgeoning Al Qaeda presence.
In testimony on Yemen earlier this year, Assistant Secretary of State Jeffrey Feltman said that the country’s demographics were simply unsustainable:Water resources are fast being depleted. With over half of its people living in poverty and the population growing at an unsustainable 3.2 percent per year, economic conditions threaten to worsen and further tax the government’s already limited capacity to ensure basic levels of support and opportunity for its citizens.
Other neighboring countries face similar crises of drought, food shortage, and overpopulation – Ethiopia has 12 million short of food, Kenya, 3.5 million, says Reuters. UNHCR reports that in Djibouti, a common first choice for fleeing Somalis, the number of new arrivals has more than doubled since last year, and the country’s main refugee camp is facing a serious water crisis.
A Case Study in Collapse
The ballooning crises of Somalia encompass a worst-case scenario for the intersection of environmental, demographic, and conventional security concerns. Civil war, rapid population growth, drought, and resource depletion have not only contributed to the complete collapse of a sovereign state, but could also lead to similar problems for Somalia’s neighbors – threatening a domino effect of destabilization that no military force alone will be able to prevent.
Speaking at a naval conference in Abu Dhabi this week, Australian Vice Admiral Russell Crane told ASD News that, “The symptoms (piracy) we’re seeing now off Somalia, in the Gulf of Aden, are clearly an outcome of what’s going on on the ground there. As sailors, we’re really just treating the symptoms.”
Sources: Academy for Peace and Development, AP, ASD News, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Christian Science Monitor, Foreign Policy, High Seas Task Force, Independent, IRIN, New York Times, Population Action, Population Reference Bureau, Reuters, Telegraph, Time, UN, US State Department, War is Boring, Washington Post.
Photo Credits: “Don’t Swim in Somalia (It’s Toxic)” courtesy of Flickr user craynol and “Somalia map states regions districts” courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. -
Population and Environmental Challenges in Rwanda
›“Population, Health and Human Settlements” is the second chapter in the Rwandan government’s Rwanda State of Environment and Outlook. The chapter highlights the Rwandan government’s recognition of the interconnections between population, health, and environment, noting that population “can influence the state of the environment” and pose strains “on available public infrastructure, limited land, and natural resources.” The chapter examines Rwanda’s population growth and distribution, the state of “environmental health” in rural and urban areas, and health indicators relating to child and maternal health and HIV/AIDS. It goes on to describe government strategies to “improve settlements and human welfare.” “As population pressure is one of the key drivers of environmental degradation and poverty,” the chapter’s authors write, “the implementation of the population policy, especially aspects that address high fertility rates, gender and reproductive health, migration and human settlements” is increasingly important.The Des Moines Register‘s “Renewal in Rwanda” site hosts a series of articles by IRP Fellow and former Wilson Center Public Policy Scholar Perry Beeman “examining Rwanda’s efforts to build an eco-friendly economy.” Accompanied with interactive maps, photos, and videos, the materials highlight government efforts, share the country’s successes, and describe the vast challenges that lay ahead.
“Renewal in Rwanda” is particularly focused on Gishwati Forest, an area Beeman visited while in Rwanda, and the impacts of its ongoing conservation program on local communities. “Gishwati Area Conservation Program has as much to do with saving the lives of villagers—by sparing them from deadly mudslides and providing them jobs—as it does restoring a once-mighty forest,” writes Beeman in the article “Fighting for an African Forest.” Beeman also calls attention to the program’s more controversial aspects, noting that reforestation efforts would require relocating an estimated 5,000 families. -
Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina: Why a Melting Arctic Needs Stronger Governance
›May 11, 2010 // By Schuyler NullThe Arctic Council, which helps broker economic and environmental agreements between the Arctic nations, needs a larger role in developing joint international policy, says Norway’s ambassador to Canada. Accelerating ice melt is expected to open the Arctic Ocean to seasonal ship traffic sometime between 2013 and 2030 – which analysts worry will lead to disputes over newly accessible oil and gas reserves.
The Arctic Council was founded in 1996 to “provide a means for promoting cooperation, coordination and interaction among the Arctic States” – Canada, Greenland, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Russia, the United States, as well as some Arctic indigenous communities are all members. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the Arctic may contain up to 90 billion barrels of oil (more than the known reserves of Nigeria, Kazakhstan, and Mexico combined) and 27 percent of the world’s known natural gas reserves, most of which is located offshore.
While rhetorical flare-ups over access to resources and accusations of militarization have occurred, to date the Arctic Council has been an effective mitigating body. However, the Council currently lacks a permanent secretariat and reliable funding.
Currently, any territorial disputes are handled under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), while the Arctic Council mainly facilitates communication. However the United States has not yet ratified the Law of the Sea, despite concerted high-level efforts to do so.
Referring to the Arctic, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently told Congress that “the Law of the Sea provides commercial rights to the mining of what is in the seabed of the territories that are claimable under sovereignty provisions in the treaty,” and if the United States does not ratify it, “we will lose out, in economic and resource rights, in terms of environmental interests, and national security.”
While the National Intelligence Council predicts that a major armed conflict over the Arctic is unlikely in the near future, it suggests that “serious near-term tension could result in small-scale confrontations over contested claims.” A comprehensive agreement brokered by Arctic Council leadership and agreed upon by all members – like the Convention on the Protection of the Mediterranean Sea Against Pollution, and Protocols, which helps regulate commerce and environmental protections – would guarantee third-party moderation and alleviate the risk of an outstanding dispute erupting into real conflict.
The value of such an agreement is illustrated by the growing tension between Britain and Argentina over offshore oil rights around the Falkland Islands. Recent British drilling efforts, which have yielded a pocket of oil worth potentially an estimated $25 billion, provoked a furious response from Argentinean officials who have long disputed Britain’s claims to sovereignty, not only of the islands themselves, but of the seas around them.
Under UNCLOS, a nation is entitled to “explore and exploit” any natural resources within 200 nautical miles of their shores and in certain circumstances can apply for an extension to 350 nautical miles. By these definitions, there is considerable overlap in British and Argentinean claims, which the Law of the Sea alone is unable to resolve.
In a statement reported by the Times Online last week, Foreign Minister Jorge Taiana said that “Argentina energetically refutes what is an illegal attempt to confiscate non-renewable natural resources that are the property of the Argentine people.”
In an earlier bid to slow development, Argentinean President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner announced in February that any ship coming to or from the disputed islands would have to be granted a permit in order to pass through Argentinean waters, effectively threatening blockade.
The sovereignty of the Falkland Islands has remained a disputed topic for Argentina since the loss of the Falkland Islands War in 1982, made worse by recent financial woes at home and the country’s lack of domestic oil reserves.
Although tensions in the Arctic region are low now, a changing environment and increased competition for energy resources may lead to similar disputes in the polar region – a strong argument for strengthening multilateral institutions like the Arctic Council and UNCLOS sooner rather than later.
Video Credit: “2008 Arctic Sea Ice Minimum w/overlay” courtesy of Flickr user NASA Goddard Photo and Video. -
Deepwater Horizon Prompts DOD Relief Efforts, Questions About Energy Security
›May 6, 2010 // By Schuyler NullAs the crippled Deepwater Horizon oil rig continues to spew an estimated 210,000 gallons of crude oil a day into the Gulf of Mexico, the Department of Defense has been asked to bring its considerable resources to bear on what has become an increasingly more common mission – disaster relief.
British Petroleum has requested specialized military imaging software and remote operating systems that are unavailable on the commercial market in order to help track and contain the spill.
In addition, the Coast Guard has been coordinating efforts to burn off oil collecting on the ocean’s surface and thousands of National Guard units have been ordered to the Gulf coast to help erect barriers in a bid to halt what President Obama called “a massive and potentially unprecedented environmental disaster,” as the oil slick creeps towards the coast.
As shown by these calls and the ongoing earthquake relief effort in Haiti, the military’s ability to respond to large-scale, catastrophic natural (and manmade) disasters is currently considered unmatched. The first Air National Guard aircraft was on the ground in Haiti 23 hours after the earthquake first struck, and DOD’s Transportation Command was able to begin supporting USAID relief efforts almost immediately. The Department of Defense also spearheaded American relief efforts after the 2004 tsunami and played a critical role in providing aid and security in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
The Pentagon’s four-year strategic doctrine, the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), released earlier this year, predicts that such humanitarian missions will become a more common occurrence for America’s military, as the world grapples with the destabilizing effects of climate change, population growth, and competition over finite energy resources. Some experts see this expansion of the military’s portfolio as an essential part of a “hearts and minds” strategy, while others are critical of the military’s ability to navigate the difficulties of long-term reconstruction.
The QDR also highlights DOD’s efforts to reduce the need for oil – and thus deepwater oil rigs – in the first place.
The DOD as a whole is the largest consumer of energy in the United States, consuming a million gallons of petroleum every three days. In accordance with the QDR, Pentagon leaders have set an ambitious goal of procuring at least 25 percent of the military’s non-tactical energy requirement from renewable sources by 2025. The Air Force – by far the Pentagon’s largest consumer of petroleum – would like to acquire half of its domestic jet fuel requirement from alternative fuels by 2016 and successfully flight-tested a F/A-18 “Green Hornet” on Earth Day, using a blend of camelina oil and jet fuel.
At a speech at Andrews Air Force Base in March, President Obama lauded these efforts as key steps to moving beyond a petroleum-dependant economy. However, at the same event, he announced the expansion of off-shore drilling, in what some saw as a political bone thrown to conservatives. Since the Deepwater Horizon incident, the administration announced a temporary moratorium until the causes of the rig explosion and wellhead collapse have been investigated.
Cleo Paskal, associate fellow for the Energy, Environment, and Development Programme at Chatham House, warns that without paying adequate attention to the potential effects of a changing environment on energy infrastructure projects of the future – like the kind of off-shore drilling proposed for the Gulf and Eastern seaboard – such disasters may occur more frequently.
In an interview with ECSP last fall, Paskal pointed out that off-shore oil and gas platforms in the Gulf of Mexico were a prime example of how a changing environment – such as increased storm frequency and strength – can impact existing infrastructure. “Katrina and Rita destroyed over 400 platforms, as well as refining capacity onshore. That creates a global spike in energy prices apart from having to rebuild the infrastructure.”
The Department of Defense has demonstrated – in policy, with the QDR, and in action – that it can marshal its considerable resources in the service of renewable energy and disaster relief. But given the scope of today’s climate and energy challenges, it will take much more to solve these problems.
Photo Credit: “Deepwater Horizon,” courtesy of flickr user U.S. Coast Guard. U.S. Air Force Tech. Sgt. Joe Torba of the 910th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron, which specializes in aerial spray, prepares to dispatch aircraft to a Gulf staging area. -
Thinking Outside the (Lunch) Box: Meat and Family Planning
›May 3, 2010 // By Dan AsinJoel Cohen, a renowned population expert and professor at Columbia and Rockefeller universities, recently gave a lecture simply titled “Meat.” As it was co-sponsored by the International Food Policy Research Institute and the Population Reference Bureau, I was hoping for an insightful discussion of meat eating and its implications for feeding a world of nine billion. While I think Cohen avoided the question of whether meat eating is ultimately sustainable, I was pleased that he included two key insights: the potential for family planning services to contribute to food security, and the importance of using multidisciplinary approaches to solve today’s global problems.
Family Planning for Food Security
In working to improve food security, Cohen said policymakers and practitioners need to focus on those who are most vulnerable. To this end, he identified five groups and suggested targeted policies for each:While the healthy eating policies will not surprise food security experts, his recommendations on family planning might. He highlighted what should be–but is not always–apparent: that tackling food security without thought for family planning is like attempting to fill an empty bucket without first plugging the holes.
Feeding the one billion hungry people in the world today is an enormous challenge that cannot be met by any single policy. Instead, it will take an array of partial solutions, and offering family planning services to women and young people is an important part of the package. Such projects can help reduce the number of children being born into hunger by allowing women and couples to assess their economic and food situations and plan according to their needs and wishes. Voluntary family planning services and materials will not solve the food security challenge on their own, but they can make it more manageable, especially in the long run.
Family planning’s potential contribution to food security is just one part of Cohen’s larger take-home message: population, economics, environment, and culture all interact. To meet today’s multidisciplinary challenges, single-sector approaches are not up to task.
The Many Faces of Meat
Cohen offered two competing perspectives on meat eating. On the one hand, average global meat production generates a fraction of the calories and protein, per unit of land, that could be derived from plant sources. It is likely the “largest sectoral source of water pollution,” said Cohen, and is at least partly responsible for the spread of over a dozen zoonotic diseases. It contributes to only 1.4 percent of world GDP while comprising 8 percent of world water consumption.
These hidden “virtual water” costs made headlines in Britain the other week, when a study on global water security published by the Royal Academy of Engineering popularized the Water Footprint Network’s earlier findings that that an average kilogram of beef requires 15,500 liters of water–over eight times the volume needed to produce the equivalent weight in soybeans and greater than 10 times that needed for the equivalent amount of wheat.
On the other hand, Cohen pointed out that meat production provides livelihoods for an estimated 987 million of the world’s rural poor, and has important cultural significance in many societies. And it can provide many essential nutrients, even in small doses.
In one study he cited, children living in Kenya who were provided 1 ounce of meat a day received 50 percent of their daily protein requirements and showed greater increases in physical activity and development, verbal and arithmetic test scores, and initiative and leadership behaviors as opposed to students who received the calorie-equivalent in milk or fat.
The Four Factors: Population, Economics, Environment, and Culture
Clearly, Cohen’s four factors all come in to play when evaluating meat’s role in food security. An analysis of any global health issue that looks at only one factor would miss indispensable parts of the problem.
“Population interacts with economics, environment, and culture,” Cohen concluded. “If you use that checklist when somebody gives you a simple-minded solution to a problem, you can save yourself a lot of simple-minded thinking.”
Photo: Pigs on a farm, courtesy Flickr user visionshare. -
Paul Collier Discusses the Plundering of the Planet at the World Bank
›April 27, 2010 // By Dan Asin“Nature is something that is both vulnerable and valued,” Paul Collier said yesterday at the World Bank. “It is being mismanaged…what it has turned into is a series of environmental battles between environmentalists and economists.”
Collier was giving the first public presentation of of his new book, The Plundered Planet: Why We Must—and How We Can—Manage Nature for Global Prosperity. In it, he asserts that disputes between environmentalists and economists often arise from a fundamental misunderstanding on both sides about the unique qualities and purposes of “natural assets.” This misunderstanding, he says, has created a state of natural plunder. In Plundered Planet, Collier elucidates the ethical and economic considerations for the proper management of natural assets, how a greater understanding of natural assets and better environmental management can be achieved, and lessons for development.
Paul Collier will be joining ECSP for an in-depth discussion of Plundered Planet, economics, and development at the Wilson Center in June. Until then, for a more detailed look, check out the New Security Beat’s previous coverage of Collier’s book preview with Nancy Birdsall, president of the Center for Global Development, at the U.S. Institute of Peace. -
Cassie Gardener
Integrating Population, Health, and Environment in Ethiopia’s Bale Mountains
›Ethiopia suffers from vast deforestation, rapid population growth, and high rates of maternal mortality. But development programs that address these issues in an integrated fashion may help end that suffering. As part of my two-month internship with the PHE-Ethiopia Consortium, I recently visited the Movement for Ecological and Community Action (MELCA) Project in the rural Bale Zone of southeastern Ethiopia to witness these programs in action.
Ethiopia’s Spectacular Bale Mountains
The little-known Bale Mountains are national and global treasures of biodiversity, teeming with dozens of endemic mammal, bird, and plant species. Ethiopia’s most important region for migrating birds, the rivers and streams in the Bale watershed flow to more than 12 million people in southern Ethiopia and western Somalia. Bale Mountains National Park hosts half of the world’s population of its rarest canid, the Ethiopian wolf, which has dwindled to a mere 250 individuals due to human interaction. When I toured the park, I was lucky enough to spot bushbucks, mountain nyalas, molerats, and several Ethiopian wolves.
As in many parts of the country, rural communities around the park face grave livelihood and health challenges, and their unsustainable use of land to eke out a living is threatening its conservation efforts. Due to diminishing agricultural land and an average total fertility rate of 6.2 children per mother in the region, people are increasingly forced to cut trees for fuel and timber in order to feed and house their families.
If Bale’s resources continue to be exploited in an unsustainable way, more mammal species would become extinct here than in any other area of equivalent size in the world. Even worse, MELCA Project Manager Tesfaye Teshome told me that if deforestation and impending climate change dry up Bale’s precious watershed, drought and famine could lead to the displacement or death of millions of Ethiopian citizens.
Raising PHE Awareness in the Community
Since 2005, MELCA, a member organization of the PHE-Ethiopia Consortium, has been working to protect biodiversity and culture in the Bale region through research, advocacy, and their award-winning youth environmental education program called SEGNI, or “Social Empowerment through Group and Nature Interaction.” In March 2008, with funding from Engender Health and the Packard Foundation, MELCA launched an integrated population, health and environment (PHE) project that provides culturally sensitive training at the community, school, and government levels.I was impressed that after just seven months of raising awareness, I met dozens of community members and key stakeholders who strongly believe in both the conceptual and operational benefits of PHE integration. For example, the Health Extension Workers and beneficiaries explained to me that community members in the Bale region, most of whom are conservative Muslims, held negative perception of family planning, which contributed to the area’s large family sizes and maternal mortality. But by involving Islamic community leaders in the project’s discussions, MELCA helped convince religious leaders that family planning is an important part of improving the health and livelihoods of the community.
“After the PHE training, we have improved awareness of population, family planning, health and environmental issues, and we understand that child spacing is better. Even my wife is now using family planning services, and as a result our lives are improved,” said Shihase, a religious leader in the community.
Join the Club: PHE Goes to School
Inspired by training sessions at schools, the SEGNI nature clubs, women’s clubs, and anti-AIDS clubs joined together to form new “PHE Clubs.” With the support of MELCA, PHE Club students plant indigenous tree seedlings in school nurseries for distribution to the community. They also create dramas, songs, poems, and illustrated storyboards about population, health, and environment issues, and use modest “mini-media” equipment such as a stereos and microphones to share these stories with their peers and other community members.
When I arrived at Finchaa Banoo Elementary School, hundreds of students greeted me with a PHE song, wearing traditional costumes with PHE banners strewn across their chests. They led me to their nursery site where they had planted 60,000 indigenous tree seedlings. A beautifully decorated cultural hut was filled with 10 PHE storyboard panels, painted by a local PHE-trained artist.
Fatiye, a 21-year old PHE club leader in 8th grade, proudly told me, “Before the coming of PHE, I’d been working only on SEGNI and knew only about biodiversity and culture. But now, I clearly understand health and population issues, including HIV/AIDS, taught to me by my peers. By having the integration of clubs, we’ve strengthened our power to accomplish more.”
Working Together to Save Time and Improve Health
MELCA’s PHE trainings also helped government officials and development workers who had previously operated in isolated sectors to integrate their work at the planning and implementation levels. Health Extension Workers and experts from the Agricultural and Rural Development Office said that collaboration is beneficial to them and the community, because it saves time and accomplishes greater results. Shankore, one of the Health Extension Workers, told me that integrating efforts across sectors allows them to help more households adopt both family planning and better sanitation, by more consistently and efficiently delivering services at the same time.
And their efforts are paying off: “Previously, we were giving birth just like chickens, our forest coverage was diminishing, and we were damaging our resources. We had cattle in our homes, and our children had health problems. Now, we understand how to improve these issues,” Khasim Sheka, a male member of the community, told me. “Health Extension Workers are teaching us about cleaning our home gardens and homes, and we separate our house from our cattle, liquid, and solid waste. My wife wasn’t using any family planning before, and now she’s using five-year Norplant.”
Although MELCA’s PHE project is still in its early stages, it appears capable of being scaled up with a little investment in additional training and by building the capacity of its staff and community members. In particular, the reproductive health component of the project needs to be strengthened, since Health Extension Workers are not trained on simple long-term family planning methods like IUDs, and are afraid they will lose clients if they continue to have to refer them to the distant health clinic.
With these improvements, MELCA could more successfully implement the integrated PHE approach, which will not only reduce the impact of population growth and deforestation on Bale Mountain Natural Park, but will improve the health and livelihoods of its neighbors, and ultimately protect its biodiversity for Ethiopia and the global community.
For more information about PHE-Ethiopia, please contact phe-ethiopia@gmail.com or visit their website at http://www.phe-ethiopia.org. For more information about MELCA, please contact melca@ethionet.et or visit their website at http://www.melca-ethiopia.org.
Cassie Gardener was the National Campus Organizer for the Sierra Club’s Global Population and Environment Program from 2006-2010, and is currently traveling around the world and volunteering for integrated health and development programs like PHE-Ethiopia and GoJoven prior to beginning her Masters in Public Health Program at UCLA in the fall.
Photo Credits: Morgennenbel034_31a, courtesy of flickr user Agoetzke Practitioners, courtesy of Cassie Gardener. -
Watch: Jennifer Dabbs Sciubba on Bringing Demography Into the Classroom
›April 7, 2010 // By Julien Katchinoff“You can’t just mention [population] in passing…If you’re going to talk about it, [students] will probably be interested in it, and you have to give it a really serious treatment,” cautioned Jennifer Sciubba, Mellon Environmental Fellow and professor at Rhodes College, during a panel discussion on science and policy in the classroom at the 2010 International Studies Association Conference.
Drawing on her experience as a practitioner of population studies, both within the Beltway and in the classroom, Sciubba shared techniques for bridging the gaps that exist between the study of political science and issues of population and environment. “I don’t think there’s that much of a difference between policy makers and students in some ways. They want to know the solutions, and they want you to break it down for them,” she said.
Bringing demography into the classroom should not start with population, recommended Sciubba. Rather, population and environment should be thought of as elements that shape and facilitate understanding of each topic covered in International Relations theory, from issues of conflict, war, and cooperation, to economics and development.
“It’s possible,” she concluded, “to put these things in any course–they’re part of the discipline. If we go back to some of the roots of international relations, this is how people thought of it to begin with and it’s very interesting to get back to that.”
Jennifer Sciubba is the author of a forthcoming book on demography and security, The Future Faces of War: Population and National Security, Praeger International Security Press, 2010
