“[O]ver the last three decades, approximately 75% of new emerging human infectious diseases have been zoonotic”—transmitted between humans and animals. So states the final report of the One Health Initiative Task Force, warning that “[o]ur increasing interdependence with animals and their products may well be the single most critical risk factor to our health and well-being with regard to infectious diseases.” The One Health Initiative was established by the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) in 2006, and the task force was assembled in early 2007 to articulate its goals and vision. Released last month, the report stresses that “[b]y working together, more can be accomplished to improve health worldwide, and the veterinary medical profession has the responsibility to assume a major leadership role in that effort.”

In our interconnected world, human, animal, and environmental health are linked in numerous and complex ways. One organization tackling these connections is the Ugandan NGO Conservation Through Public Health (CTPH). Founded and directed by Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka, CTPH works to bolster human and animal health in Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable National Park (BINP), home to half of the world’s remaining mountain gorilla population. Zoonotic disease transmission is especially prevalent in remote areas like BINP, where people frequently live in close proximity to animals, and is exacerbated by the fact that these remote areas are often woefully underserved by government services like health care. “They’re the last people the government thinks about,” said Kalema-Zikusoka in a presentation at the Wilson Center on May 8, 2008.

The One Health Initiative demonstrates that people are starting to think seriously about the intersections between human, animal, and environmental health. “We are standing at the precipice of a health care transformation,” said Task Force Chair Lonnie King. “[D]isease prevention and health promotion in people, animals and our environment have become a critical strategic need.”

Speaking at the Wilson Center in November 2005, King expressed a desire for a program like the One Health Initiative. “We have to build infrastructures in health systems in developing countries,” he said, “not just human health, but animal health, too.” At the same event, William Karesh, director of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Field Veterinary Program, said, “[t]he concept we have is ‘one world, one health.’ There is the division of human health and wildlife health. But really, there’s only one health.” The idea of integrated health finally seems to be catching on.

The Senate’s FY 2009 foreign assistance bill cites the stresses “caused by high rates of population growth, which contribute to competition for limited resources, environmental degradation, malnutrition, poverty and conflict” in its recommendation for funding family planning. The $520 million in funding is $15 million above the FY08 level and $219 million above President Bush’s request. This noteworthy new language cements the re-emergence of population issues in Congress, following the record $600 million in reproductive health funding recently approved by the House (also nearly double Bush’s request).

According to an email from Tod Preston of Population Action International, “it is the first time in several years (at least) that population language like this has been included in the foreign assistance bill, and it will almost certainly remain as is.” The impact of rapid population growth on critical issues “referenced in the report (i.e., malnutrition, environmental degradation, poverty and conflict) is getting back on the ‘radar screen’ of policymakers and the media,” which “should help increase support for programs such as voluntary family planning and girls’ education, which we know help reduce population growth rates,” he said.

“The health of our planet is inextricably linked to the health of people,” says Judy Oglethorpe, director of World Wildlife Federation’s Community Conservation program in “The Human Face of Conservation” (WWF Focus, July/August, 2008). While the links between population, health, and environmental degradation are fairly well understood, environmental groups have largely neglected to incorporate family planning or health programs in their conservation efforts.

Several WWF initiatives are breaking this trend, spreading awareness of ecological issues by integrating health or livelihood strategies. In Mozambique, illegal industrial fishing was leading to conflict with local fishermen, who were left with smaller catches of smaller fish. The WWF program helped authorities crack down on illegal fishing and set aside “replenishment zones” for fish to spawn and grow. As a result, local fishermen “have seen dramatic increases in the size of individual fish and in their overall catch outside these zones – and in their earnings,” allowing them to feed their families.

WWF is also diversifying its focus by partnering with other organizations to bring family planning services to poor communities, including in the Khata corridor of Nepal. “It’s really difficult for women living in remote regions to have access to modern family planning and basic healthcare,” said Population, Health, and Environment senior program officer Cara Honzak. By providing basic family planning services, women in these communities are able to control the growth of their families. With this opportunity, it is easier for communities to support and manage themselves, and reduced population pressures on the environment help maintain their local forest ecosystems.

Programs such as these are popular and effective, because by considering both human and natural needs, both sides can be winners. Said the manager of an initiative in Namibia, “When communities can earn as much – or more – by conserving wild land as they can by burning and planting it, potential conflicts can be turned into win-win situations for both people and wildlife.”

The land of Niger’s Tuareg Bedouin tribes—and thus the Tuareg way of life—is drying up. The steadily advancing Sahara desert is swallowing northern Niger at a rate of six kilometers per year, part of a centuries-old process recently accelerated by climate change and groundwater withdrawals by the nation’s booming uranium mining industry.

Share your thoughts and ask experts questions about “climate refugees” and other hot environmental migration topics at two upcoming online discussions.

On July 30, from 1-2 p.m., Population Reference Bureau’s Jason Bremner will take questions on “Environmental Change: What Are the Links With Migration?” Bremner, who spent several years studying migration and environment links in the Galapagos and Amazon regions in Latin America, will answer your questions about the relationships between migration and the environment, current trends, and future migrations related to environmental change. You may submit questions in advance or during the discussion at http://discuss.prb.org

From August 18-29, a cyberseminar sponsored by PERN and the Environmental Change & Security Program tackles “Environmentally Induced Population Displacements.” In an online seminar, experts and network members will analyze the evidence for environment’s role in migration, including the potential for future population displacements as a result of climate change. PERN Cyberseminars are conducted using a standard email discussion list; instructions are online.

In the Central Albertine Rift, which runs from the northern end of Lake Albert to the southern end of Lake Tanganyika, “environmental factors are increasingly an underlying cause of instability, conflict and unrest,” says a new report from the Institute for Environmental Security, Charcoal in the Mist, which outlines environmental security issues and initiatives in the Albertine Rift region.

Part of the larger Great Rift Valley, the Central Albertine Rift encompasses portions of Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The area is one of the world’s most important biodiversity hotspots, but is also a geopolitical hotspot, producing critical natural resources for a number of nations recently emerging from devastating civil wars. Lake Victoria, the birthplace of the Nile River, sits in this region, which means that the watchful eyes of its riparian states are trained at all times on the politics of the area. The Albertine Rift is also home to Africa’s Great Lakes, each of which straddles multiple nations and provides significant income to surrounding communities. Questions of access to these waters only heighten existing geopolitical tensions.

Charcoal in the Mist cites armed rebels, illegal mining, and a growing population’s increasing demands for food and energy as threats to regional environmental security. Virunga National Park, an internationally prized wilderness preserve in the DRC, has fallen victim to these pressures. Rampant poaching and illegal mining, as well as conflicts in the DRC and Rwanda, have left park authorities unable to protect the 7,800 square kilometer park. A timeline from National Geographic dramatically illustrates how violent conflict has disrupted conservation efforts in Virunga.

The “interconnectedness between natural resources, development and security” in the Central Albertine Rift region reinforces the need for innovative approaches to address these issues. For example, according to the report, population density around protected areas in this region is far higher than in the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, and the continually growing population already exceeds the capacity of local resources. The area’s population swelled with thousands of refugees fleeing the civil war in Rwanda in the 1990s, and simmering tensions continue to push people away from conflict zones and toward the relative calm of the Albertine Rift. Similarly, conflict stemming from the civil war in DRC, which lasted from 1998 until 2003, has beset North Kivu province. Rebel armies continue to clash in the region, restricting the ability of development organizations to work there and limiting the livelihoods of the local population.

The authors of Charcoal in the Mist call for more comprehensive mapping and monitoring of the Central Albertine Rift ecosystem in order to promote effective policies to address the region’s challenges. They also advocate for enhancing property rights to address fundamental conflicts over land, strengthening environmental law, dampening the illegal natural resource trade, and more aggressively protecting Virunga National Park. They believe that transboundary environmental cooperation has the potential to preserve both the ecological integrity and political stability of this important region.

An independent evaluation group recently reported that while the World Bank has been a vocal supporter of environmentally sustainable practices, it has not followed through on those pledges.

The report, Environmental Sustainability: An Evaluation of World Bank Group Support, states that “addressing environmental degradation and ensuring environmental sustainability are inextricably linked to the World Bank Group’s mandate to reduce poverty and improve people’s lives.” It urges greater coordination between the World Bank, IFC, and MIGA, as well as with external partners, and calls for improving assessments of the environmental impacts of World Bank interventions.

“It is clear now from the Amazon to India that if environmental sustainability is not raised as a priority, then all bets are off,” Vinod Thomas, the director general of the Independent Evaluation Group, told the New York Times. When pressed about the related issue of preventing the impact of natural disasters, Thomas told Revkin, “Even where disasters recur, the preventive side gets neglected, for political reasons. Reconstruction gets photos.”

At the Wilson Center launch of the new book Greening Aid, former World Bank advisor Robert Goodland said that “The World Bank Group…is de-greening itself,” criticizing a new Bank project:

The project manufactures cheeses in India, flies them to Japan to supply Pizza Hut. Project appraisal omitted any assessment of greenhouse gas emissions or climate risks; accountability is zero, in terms of respecting local religious taboos on holy cows. In this project the World Bank promotes the interests of the well-to-do, flying food away from those who need more to those that don’t. Despite soaring claims of fighting the global food crisis and climate change, the bank makes cows fly.

The authors of Greening Aid?: Understanding the Environmental Impact of Development Assistance found that absolute levels of dirty aid have remained relatively constant, while absolute levels of environmental aid have risen dramatically. But despite its absolute rise over the past several decades, environmental aid remains just 10 percent of total aid because neutral aid has increased significantly. Bilateral donors have greened the most, “a bit of a surprise,” said coauthor J. Timmons Roberts, given that so much emphasis has been placed on improving the practices of multilateral donors like the World Bank. The five bilateral donors with the highest per capita environmental aid from 1995-1999 were Denmark, Norway, Germany, the Netherlands, and Japan.

As Revkin asked in his blog dotEarth, “As the world heads toward nine billion people, with most population growth in the poorest places, how can prosperity be spurred — by lenders or in other ways — without erasing the planet’s natural assets?”

Note: ECSP interns Sonia Schmanski and Daniel Gleick contributed to this post.

“Women are key to the development challenge,” says Strategies for Promoting Gender Equity in Developing Countries, but “gender mainstreaming has been associated with more failures than gains.” Detailing findings from an April 2007 conference co-sponsored by the Wilson Center and the Inter-American Foundation, the report calls for a redesigned approach operating on multiple fronts. Blogging about the report, About.com’s Linda Lowen dubs the gap between women and men in developing countries a “Grand Canyon-like divide” compared to the “crack in the sidewalk” faced by Western women.

A Council on Foreign Relations backgrounder on Angola—now Africa’s leading oil producer—tackles the familiar paradox of extreme poverty in resource-rich countries. Burdened by “an opaque financial system rife with corruption,” Angola’s leaky coffers are filling up with Chinese currency. As Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos put it, “China needs natural resources, and Angola wants development.” FastCompany.com’s “Special Report: China In Africa” criticizes the overwhelming Chinese presence in Africa: “The sub-Sahara is now the scene of one of the most sweeping, bare-knuckled, and ingenious resource grabs the world has ever seen.”

In Scientific American’s “Facing the Freshwater Crisis,” Peter Rogers writes that the demands of increasing population, along with increasingly frequent droughts due to climate change, signal rough waters ahead, and calls for major infrastructure investments to prevent catastrophe. Closer to home, Circle of Blue reports on a new era of water scarcity in the United States, and director Jim Thebaut’s documentary “Running Dry: The American Southwest” takes a look at the hard-hit region.

Pastoralists are socially marginalized in many countries, making them highly vulnerable to climate change despite their well-developed ability to adapt to changing conditions, reports the International Institute for Environment and Development in “Browsing on fences: Pastoral land rights, livelihoods and adaptation to climate change.” The paper notes that the “high rate of development intervention failure” has worsened the situation, and calls for giving pastoralists “a wider range of resources, agro-ecological as well as socio-economic,” to protect them.