Showing posts from category *Main.
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Natural-Resource, Demographic Pressures Collide With Political Repression as Guinea Reaches Potential Breaking Point
›December 3, 2008 // By Will Rogers“We have had enough of false promises” from the government, said one resident of the northwestern Guinean mining town of Boké, a sentiment shared by many of his countrymen. Long ruled by self-serving autocrats, members of this predominantly youthful society, angered by their lack of access to basic services like electricity, water, and education, have ramped up demonstrations against the central government in Conakry.
Despite its extensive reserves of bauxite—the ore from which aluminum is produced—Guinea, ranked 160 out of 177 countries in the United Nation’s Human Development Index, has long been plagued by underdevelopment and poverty. Pockets of protests have erupted throughout the country over the past two years, with the frequency increasing in recent weeks in response to high fuel prices and continuing lack of access to basic services such as water and electricity. President Lansana Conté has regularly dispatched state security forces to crack down on protesters, and these forces have murdered, raped, beaten, tortured, and unlawfully imprisoned unarmed demonstrators and bystanders. “There is a tremendous amount of frustration and anger in Guinea,” Corrine Dufka, a researcher with Human Rights Watch, told the New York Times. “People protest to express that anger, and security forces respond with excessive force.”
Given Guinea’s very young age structure—46 percent of its population is younger than 15—violent suppression by the central government heightens the already-high risk that the country will devolve into civil war. According to Elizabeth Leahy in The Shape of Things to Come: Why Age Structure Matters to a Safer, More Equitable World, presented at a 2007 Wilson Center event, Guinea, like other countries with very young age structures—including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, and Uganda—is three to four times more likely to experience civil conflict than countries with more balanced, mature age structures, like the United States. And with the global economic downturn expected to take a devastating toll on the developing world, Guinea may soon find itself embroiled in conflict if the government maintains its violent tactics and fails to provide the services Guineans need.
Photo: In the capital of Conakry, demonstrations fueled by lack of opportunity and civil services have continued unabated despite violent repression by the central government. Courtesy of flickr user martapiqs. -
UC Berkeley to Open New Center for Population, Health, and Sustainability
›December 2, 2008 // By Wilson Center StaffThe 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. -
Coltan, Cell Phones, and Conflict: The War Economy of the DRC
›December 2, 2008 // By Will RogersEclipsed 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.
With some of the world’s greatest reserves of minerals, metals, natural gas, and oil—including 10 percent of global copper reserves and 33 percent of global cobalt reserves, in addition to vast deposits of diamonds, gold, silver, timber, uranium, and zinc—eastern DRC has frequently been exploited by rebel groups, foreign militaries, and international firms looking to fill their coffers. Other African conflicts have been sustained by diamonds and gold, but in the eastern DRC, columbo-tantalite (coltan), is one of the most coveted commodities. And with 80 percent of global reserves of coltan lying in the DRC, coltan has become the new “black gold”.
Coltan is refined into tantalum powder to make heat-resistant capacitors in cell phones, laptops, and other high-end electronics. With global technological innovation on the rise, the demand for the mineral continues to surge, creating the incentive for miners and traders to step up their efforts to extract it. At its peak in September 2001, coltan traded at close to $400 per kilo; today, the market price has steadied at around $100 per kilo.
Struggle for control over coltan mines remains central to the conflict in eastern DRC, which has claimed more than four million lives over the past decade. Whether it is a Hutu militia like the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), which fled Rwanda< following the 1994 genocide; a Congolese rebel faction, like Nkunda’s Tutsi rebels; or the Congolese army itself, each has a stake in the lucrative coltan trade.
These groups, including the Congolese army, have been active in extorting coltan miners, as demonstrated by footage from “Blood Coltan.” With coltan miners earning $10 to $50 a week, five times more than most other Congolese earn in a month, government and rebel troops have taxed the miners for access to the mines—making control of the mines and surrounding land violently competitive. Despite the dangerous conditions of the mines, which have led to countless deaths, workers remain plentiful. And as demand for coltan has increased in recent years, the number of child laborers in the mines has grown, with approximately 30 percent of schoolchildren in the region deferring their education for mining work.
In addition to the human toll, coltan exploitation has also proven severely destructive to the region’s environment and biodiversity. North and South Kivu provinces contain the DRC’s greatest concentrations of coltan, and Kahuzi Biega National Park (KBNP), one of the last sanctuaries for the critically endangered eastern lowland gorilla, spans both provinces. Coltan mining has destroyed much of the gorillas’ natural habitat, leaving them vulnerable to poachers who kill them and sell them to coltan miners and rebel groups for food. According to park surveys, the population of eastern lowland gorillas in KBNP plummeted from 8,000 in 1991 to approximately 40 in 2005.
DRC Ambassador to the United States Faida Mitifu, speaking recently at a U.S. Institute of Peace event, urged the U.S. Congress to adopt what she describes as a Kimberly Process for coltan in an effort to end the illegal export of coltan from eastern DRC. A “Goma Process” could certify the origin of coltan and place punitive levies on those involved in the trade of conflict coltan from eastern DRC—much as the Kimberly Process does for diamonds. Meanwhile, building infrastructure and creating a regulated sustainable resource extraction industry could also help the country generate much needed revenue and profitable trade regimes. But given that coltan is smuggled into Rwanda and other bordering countries and traded to non-U.S. markets, the support of the international community and the UN Security Council would be critical to the success of this initiative and creating a lasting peace in the region. The UN Security Council has already condemned coltan’s role in financing conflict, so the creation of a Goma Process could be a logical—and achievable—next step.
Photo: In this makeshift refugee camp in Mugunga, 10 kilometers from Goma in North Kivu, tens of thousands remain displaced by ongoing conflict in eastern DRC. Courtesy of flickr user Julien Harneis. -
Development From the Bottom Up and the Top Down
›From Poverty to Power: How Active Citizens and Effective States Can Change the World, by Oxfam’s Duncan Green, is a very important book—one that should be read by everyone at the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and bilateral aid agencies. It combines a critique of current development policies and institutions with insights from community organizing and grassroots empowerment. Furthermore, it is comprehensive, covering not only aid but also politics, inequality, vulnerability, and reform of global governance structures. Finally, the book links the two critical components of the development equation: citizen participation and competent governance. The dichotomy between these two has always been a false one.
Green’s central message is that “development, and in particular efforts to tackle inequality, is best achieved through a combination of active citizens and effective states.” This should become part of the operational code of every development institution.
Green points out that “shocks and changes” can be important catalysts for reform. The current financial crisis is one of these shocks, and for our political leaders, it has made global governance a problem to be dealt with—as opposed to an issue too easily ignored. Just look at the recent G20 meeting. My colleagues and I spent a fair amount of time a decade ago designing and trying to sell leaders on an expanded summit to deal with the challenges of globalization. There were no takers. Yet this month we had a heads-of-state meeting that included leaders previously excluded from the G7.
No one really knows how long this crisis will last. But if leaders and their governments do not respond wisely and creatively, the human costs in both rich and poor countries will be immense. Leaders must understand that market forces left unregulated can ultimately prove destructive. This is the lesson of the struggle to regulate the U.S. national economy during the 19th century and of the period after World War I.
The financial crisis also provides an opportunity to raise fundamental questions about long-standing development policies. I strongly believe that the world, and particularly the United States, needs to adopt a new type of realpolitik—call it global realpolitik if you wish. For the United States, a global agenda should include:- An energy strategy that transitions to a less oil-dependent energy supply;
- A climate policy that recognizes one of the greatest threats to our well-being;
- A renewed emphasis on agriculture so that food production increases, particularly in poor countries;
- A health policy that deals with major health threats, old and new, and equips the world to deal with the next pandemic;
- An international effort to deal with failing states and internal conflicts; and
- A major emphasis on ending poverty.
In all of these areas, development promotion provides an important set of tools. No matter how good our intentions, we cannot accomplish these goals without competent partners: states with the capacity to manage their own affairs and cooperate on global problems—states in which rights and freedoms are guaranteed, and in which people feel they have a voice in the policies that affect them. International development is critical to helping foster such states.
I have two additional comments on From Poverty to Power. First, I think the section on aid could have been stronger. The aid “business” is in considerable disrepair, with simply too many donors trying to do too many things in too many places with too little coordination. There are many ways to make aid more effective, but they will not be easy to implement, and Green could have delved into the complexities a bit more.
Second, the book’s strength is also its weakness. It is nearly 500 pages long and has 792 endnotes! Fortunately, there are summaries in English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese available online—but there needs to be a version aimed specifically at policymakers. Imagine you had 10 minutes to brief President-Elect Obama on the key findings of the book. What would you tell him? For better or worse, in this town, your insights are only as good as your elevator speech.
John W. Sewell is a senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center and the former president of the Overseas Development Council. -
How to Win (Green) Friends and Influence People (Who Are Interested the Environment)—Without Leaving Your Computer
›November 28, 2008 // By Rachel WeisshaarNew 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. -
“I’d Like to Thank the Academy…”: ‘New Security Beat’ Wins Global Media Award
›November 26, 2008 // By Rachel WeisshaarUpon 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)
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. -
Population-Health-Environment Effort Launched in American Samoa
›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. -
Weekly Reading
›The National Intelligence Council has released Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World, an unclassified report seeking to identify a range of future security trends. As the Washington Post notes, the report “makes for sometimes grim reading in imagining a world of weak states bristling with weapons of mass destruction and unable to cope with burgeoning populations without adequate water and food.” ECSP hosted a review of an intermediate draft of the report in July 2008.
The United Nations, the U.S. Department of Defense, and several other militaries are spearheading an effort to fight climate change and ozone-depleting substances. The partnership comes out of a conference held in Paris earlier this month on the role of militaries in protecting the climate. Andrew Alder, who attended the conference, writes, “the Pentagon can also play a leading role in reducing carbon emissions, ironically helping to reduce the very threat for which it is preparing.”
In “Quantum of Solace,” James Bond goes up against a villain who takes control of a country’s water supply. Pacific Institute Director Peter Gleick thinks this is “art imitating life in many ways,” as he believes conflict over water will become more severe unless we develop and implement more efficient ways of using our limited freshwater resources.
“Data on rainfall patterns only weakly corroborate the claim that climate change explains the Darfur conflict,” argue Michael Kevane and Leslie Gray of Santa Clara University in “Darfur: rainfall and conflict,” a paper in Environmental Research Letters.
Human and animal diseases must be addressed before the different protected areas that make up the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Conservation Area can be connected, according to “As the Fences Come Down: Emerging Concerns in Transfrontier Conservation Areas.”
Healthy People, Healthy Ecosystems is a new manual by the World Wildlife Fund on how to integrate health and family planning into existing conservation projects. It features examples of population-health-environment projects from the Philippines, Nepal, India, Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, Central African Republic, Cameroon, and Uganda.
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 
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.
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 
