The University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health recently received $15 million from the Fred H. Bixby Foundation to expand the Bixby Program in Population, Family Planning & Maternal Health into the Bixby Center for Population, Health, and Sustainability. The Bixby Center will highlight population’s impact on global public health, climate change, poverty, and civil and international conflict. “I think the huge challenge for the human race in the 21st century is whether we can move to a biologically sustainable way of life on this planet,” said Malcolm Potts, chair of the Bixby Center. “Population plays an essential role in that,” he added. The Bixby Center will also address the well-documented unmet need for family planning around the world.

Although it will be housed within the School of Public Health, the Bixby Center will partner with the Blum Center for Developing Economies, the Berkeley Center for Global Public Health, the Berkeley Population Center, and other initiatives.

Eclipsed by the world economic downturn, the great heist of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC) resources continues unabated. In recent weeks, former Congolese General Laurent Nkunda’s Tutsi rebels have launched offensives in North Kivu, and the Congolese army and UN peacekeepers have been hard-pressed to stop them.

New York Times environment reporter Andrew Revkin recently invited readers to post cost-effective environmental proposals on his blog, Dot Earth. He promised to send the 10 best ones, as determined by readers’ recommendations, to the Obama transition team on energy and the environment.

Intriguingly, two of the proposals focus on population. “In a world of increasing scarcity, if we do not get a handle on our own population, it will get a handle on us,” writes one reader. “Because of sustained exponential population growth, we are collectively destroying what remains of the natural world. We are also putting our species at grave risk for rapid catastrophic population decline. We cannot expect to sustain exponential population growth indefinitely,” warns another.

If you missed this opportunity to put in your $0.02 on environmental and population issues, don’t worry: You can submit your comments directly to the energy and environment policy team on the Obama transition website.

Yet another venue for influencing influential people is Thomas Friedman’s Chapter 18 Project. Friedman’s latest book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution—And How It Can Renew America, consists of 17 chapters, but he has said that the second edition will include an additional chapter comprising readers’ best ideas on how to make the transition to clean energy, improve our global environmental stewardship, and revitalize America’s economy and international reputation by “going green.” You can submit your proposals on his website.

Upon arriving in Los Angeles last week to accept a Global Media Award for Excellence in Population Reporting from the Population Institute (PI) —the New Security Beat won the “Best Online Commentary” award—I was greeted by a massive gift basket from PI. The rest of the week was equally bountiful, full of interesting people and vibrant exchanges of ideas.

After a dinner for the award-winners and PI and Population Media Center (PMC) board members and staff on Monday night, we spent most of Tuesday at a conference sponsored by PMC designed to help Hollywood writers and producers incorporate climate change and other serious environmental issues into their work. After Dr. Howard Frumkin of the Centers for Disease Control and Vice Admiral Dennis McGinn (Ret.) outlined the health and security impacts of climate change, various industry insiders—from “CSI” and Fox, for instance—shared how they have managed to include climate change impacts in their jokes, dialogue, and storylines without sacrificing entertainment value. It was truly fascinating, and I encourage you to read more about it in another New Security Beat post.

Paul Ehrlich, who is Bing Professor of Population Studies at Stanford University, was the keynote speaker at the awards ceremony on Tuesday night, and he discussed the connections between population and environment in his trademark candid manner. “As long as you keep the population and consumption growing, you are, in the technical term, screwed,” he said. Bill Ryerson, president of both PI and PMC, and former CNN anchor Carol Lin presented the awards:

• Best Combined Media Effort: DZMM Radio, Philippines
• Best News Service: Reuters
• Best Online News Service: PUSH Journal (Communications Consortium Media Center)
• Best Individual Reporting Effort: More: Population, Nature, and What Women Want (Robert Engelman)
• Best Film or Miniseries: “Planet in Peril” (CNN)
• Best Print Editorial: “Global Overpopulation Is the Real Issue” (Boris Johnson, Mayor of London)
• Best Online Commentary: New Security Beat blog (Environmental Change and Security Program, Wilson Center)
• Best Magazine Article: “Why Have Scientists Succumbed to Political Correctness?” (Albert Bartlett)
• Best Radio Show: “The Naked Scientists” (BBC Radio)
• Best TV Show: “Morning Joe” (Joe Scarborough)
• Best Editorial Cartoonist: Don Wright (Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning, 1966 and 1980)

On Wednesday afternoon, several of us award-winners gave presentations on our winning projects at the UCLA School of Public Health to an audience of students, professors, and PI and PMC staff.

Population remains an underreported issue, but as challenges like climate change, food shortages, water scarcity, and lack of youth opportunity in the Middle East rise to the top of the international agenda, a growing number of journalists seem to be incorporating demographic angles into their stories. Thanks go to PI for calling attention to some of these important contributions.

Photo: The New Security Beat‘s Global Media Award for “Best Online Commentary.” Courtesy of Dave Hawxhurst and the Wilson Center.

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The government of American Samoa has decided to boldly address the issue of rapid population growth, due to its potentially severe environmental impacts on the territory. Governor Togiola Tulafono’s Coral Reef Advisory Group, for which I work, has identified population pressure as the single largest threat to American Samoa’s coastal resources. This is an important finding because all of American Samoa’s population lives along the coast, and the entire territory is considered a coastal zone.

The government recently hosted a Population Summit with more than 130 key stakeholders to discuss the problems and to devise collaborative solutions. Governor Tulafono opened the summit by stating that “resources are not finite—there are limits—and in an island setting as ours, the primary threat comes from people and how they behave responsibly in their use of land, water and air.” Participants developed a Population Declaration containing numerous policy initiatives, project proposals, and a recommendation to create a Population Commission. This declaration was presented to the legislature and Governor Tulafono for their consideration. American Samoa recently held elections, and the new government will be sworn in come January, at which point the working team I coordinate will be pressing the government to implement this important call to action.

Population-health-environment (PHE) activities are still in their infancy in American Samoa. However, we do have some projects underway. The most progress so far has been with local education and outreach efforts. I am working with one of our local environmental educators to develop PHE lesson plans and activities for local schools. We will be advertising these lesson plans in the local newspaper and informing teachers that our staff are available to come to their schools to introduce these issues. In addition, we are developing a number of PHE educational resources to distribute at schools we visit.

Family planning clinic staff and environmental educators have begun collaborating on a weekly radio series on the issue of rapid population growth. These discussions are raising the awareness of listeners and encouraging them to be good stewards of their health and their environment. In addition, a team of educators is planning the first annual World Population Day event here next year.

On the policy side, we are collaborating with the various agencies, planning departments, and staff from the Secretariat of the Pacific Community to develop a Territorial Population Policy. Once this is developed, American Samoa will be one of only three island states in the South Pacific with such a policy. This policy is still in the early stages of being written, but I am confident that a draft will be developed over the coming year.

Finally, American Samoa is ramping up its marine-protected-area efforts, especially the Department of Marine and Wildlife Resources’ community-based fisheries management program, which is an ideal venue for integrating population and environmental efforts. One of my main focus areas over the coming year will be looking at how I can connect the ongoing Department of Health activities with these programs. Although we are still in the early stages of addressing PHE issues in American Samoa, I am hoping to use the momentum from the recent summit to get us up to speed as quickly as possible.

Alyssa Edwards, a former ECSP intern, is the population pressure local action strategy coordinator with the Coral Reef Advisory Group in American Samoa.

Photo: Samoan schoolchildren play on a truck. Courtesy of Alyssa Edwards.

As U.S. governors and international climate representatives met at the Beverly Hills Hilton for California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s climate change summit on November 18, a group of Hollywood writers and producers—plus a few climate change experts—gathered on the other side of Los Angeles at the Skirball Cultural Center for “Changing Climate…Changing People: Connecting to the Biggest Story of Our Time,” a unique conference sponsored by the Population Media Center on how to incorporate climate change into mainstream TV and film.

Entertainment industry insiders like Sonny Fox emphasized that “earnest isn’t enough and won’t cut it”—that a show or film’s entertainment value cannot be compromised by its addressing serious issues like climate change impacts. Yet Chris Alexander, senior vice president of corporate communications for 20th Century Fox, showed that this is possible, with examples of how “The Simpsons,” “King of the Hill,” and “Boston Legal” have seamlessly incorporated environmental issues into jokes, dialogue, and storylines.

David Rambo, a writer and supervising producer for “CSI,” described how “CSI” has addressed climate change impacts in two separate shows: one that examined the surprisingly large effect of a degree or two difference in temperature; and another that explored the high concentration of pharmaceuticals in water that has been recycled due to water shortages. According to Rambo, after that episode aired, “CSI” received grateful letters from public officials and educators from around the country, who said that the fact that “CSI” had addressed water reuse had made it acceptable for them to broach this once-taboo topic.

The conference was also anchored by some heavy-hitters—Dr. Howard Frumkin, director of the National Center for Environmental Health/Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and Vice Admiral Dennis McGinn (Ret.). Frumkin discussed the potential health impacts of climate change, which include increased levels of air pollution; higher incidence of allergies; geographic spread of vector-borne and waterborne diseases; severe disruptions to water and food supplies; and mental health problems, often resulting from exposure to natural disasters. McGinn explained that because climate change is a threat multiplier for instability, it could increase the risk of humanitarian disasters, failed states, civil conflict, extremism, competition over scarce natural resources, and mass migration.

In addition to panels, the conference also featured a one-act play, “Shuddering to Think,” about the challenges of incorporating serious issues into mainstream entertainment. It sounds dull—but was actually funny and incisive, thanks to sharp writing by Jon Robin Baird and adept acting by Bruce Davison, Scott Wolf, and Bradley Whitford, whom you may remember as Josh Lyman from The West Wing. Speaking after the performance about media’s power to convince the public to get serious about climate change, Whitford observed, “The press failed, the government failed, science failed—but Al Gore’s movie [An Inconvenient Truth] worked.”

“Time is pressing, and we need all hands on deck,” says Jean-Yves Pirot, an ecologist with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), on the urgent need for conservationists to look outside their sector for help in improving sustainable environmental management in developing countries. In a podcast with ECSP’s Gib Clarke, Pirot, who coordinated the “Healthy People, Healthy Environment” stream at the recent World Conservation Congress, discusses the challenges of integrating population and health into environment programs. He urges conservationists to forge synergies with health and development specialists in order to scale-up small, short-term projects and provide long-term health and environmental benefits to the poor.

Though the floodwaters have finally receded, Gonaives—Haiti’s third-largest city—remains buried in 2.5 million cubic meters of mud, one in a long list of miseries plaguing those desperate for relief. Four major storms have ravaged Haiti since August, and recovery and reconstruction are projected to span several years and cost upwards of $400 million. While the international community has committed $145 million in disaster relief—nearly $32 million from the United States alone—the price tag for long-term development assistance could well exceed these early estimates as the extent of the damage becomes clearer. But reconstruction efforts could be moot if Haiti fails to adopt environmentally sustainable development practices.