I recently traveled to Ethiopia to attend “Population, Health, and Environment: Integrated Development for East Africa,” a conference sponsored by the Population Reference Bureau (PRB) and LEM Ethiopia. The conference was attended by more than 200 development practitioners from around the world, including many from Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, and Ethiopia.

The soaring global demand for timber, driven in part by China’s economic growth, is making it increasingly tempting for timber companies to ignore the law when seeking new sources of wood. When they do not ask indigenous people’s permission for the use of their land or compensate them for it, illegal loggers jeopardize communities’ livelihoods, threaten traditional customs and values, and, of course, deprive them of the revenue gained from the sale timber.

No one knows this better than Frederick Sagisolo, chief of the Knasaimos people of Seremuk, in the Indonesian province of Papua, who gives a startling account of the plundering of his community’s land by illegal loggers. Despite being head of the Knasaimos tribal council, Sagisolo says he was not contacted by the company that logged his community’s forest. “Instead it did an illegal deal with one individual from our community, and this created many problems for us. But the company was backed by a local military officer, so what could we do?” The logging finally stopped in 2005, when the Indonesian government launched a major initiative against illegal logging, part of which targeted Papua.

Illegal logging can be fueled by problems that face many countries, including a lack of equitable law enforcement in scarcely populated areas and graft involving local officials and foreign companies. As a result of these and other issues, forests are being logged illegally in places as varied as Brazil and Estonia.

Despite President Bush’s initiative against illegal logging and many other efforts around the world, economic incentives to supply cheap and illegal timber seem to be increasing. If more isn’t done to curb illegal logging, we will continue seeing its effects crop up around the world, ranging from ecosystem destruction to increased damage from natural disasters.

The Gran Chaco of Bolivia, Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil is one of South America’s most extensive biogeographical regions. It is characterized by diverse ecosystems and is inhabited by, among others, the 10,000 indigenous Guaraní people known as the Isoceños. However, Bolivia’s Chaco, the most unspoiled portion, is being degraded by ranching, farming, commercial hunting, highway construction, and the development of Bolivia’s natural gas industry, threatening the livelihoods of the Isoceños.

In 1991, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the Capitanía de Alto y Bajo Izozog (CABI), an indigenous organization representing the Isoceños, began working together to protect the Bolivian Chaco. The cooperation was highly successful, resulting in the creation of the Kaa-Iya del Gran Chaco National Park and Integrated Management Area in 1995, which designates millions of hectares as a protected national park and another million as “indigenous territory.” For WCS, this successful collaboration is evidence that environmental groups and indigenous peoples can—and should—work together to maximize their influence.

More recently, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), environmental and Pygmy organizations united to press the World Bank to cease industrial logging in the DRC; grant the Pygmies greater input into forest issues; carry out a comprehensive assessment of logging’s environmental impacts; and encourage the development of environmentally friendly industries.

Conservationists and indigenous peoples have more leverage when they speak with one voice. However, there is often distrust between the two sides. Conservationists may accuse indigenous peoples of contributing to the degradation of a fragile ecosystem. Conversely, indigenous peoples can fear their livelihoods will be threatened by the creation of protected areas. In India, for instance, members of aboriginal tribes are now banned from gathering non-timber forest products such as honey, wild herbs, and fruits from parks and wildlife sanctuaries for commercial purposes. In the past, many of these tribes relied heavily on gathering and selling these products for their livelihoods.

In the future, the challenge will be finding sustainable solutions that satisfy both groups. This problem has no silver bullet. Instead, the commitment, imagination, and negotiating skills of the actors will make the difference.

Mitigating the effects of global climate change will require an integrated approach, says the UN Development Program’s (UNDP) new report, Human Development Report 2007/2008, which focuses on the human dimensions of a warming planet and highlights the challenges vulnerable populations face in adapting to climatic shifts.

Last week, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) hosted “Agriculture, Land Use, and Climate: Implications for African Development,” a panel discussion on agriculture’s essential current and future role in Africa’s development. As panelist Martin Bwyala of the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) noted at the beginning of the discussion, 60 to 70 percent of the population of sub-Saharan Africa depends on agriculture or another form of direct land use for their livelihoods. “Africa’s foundation for sustainable growth lies in enhancing the productivity and sustainable use of its natural resources,” said Bwyala. The panel highlighted the adverse effects of unsustainable land use and climate change on Africans’ livelihoods, and examined the merits of potential solutions.

The panelists emphasized that governments and NGOs are better positioned to aid Africa today than ever before, and that the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) provides an important opportunity to do so. A joint venture by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and NEPAD, with the support of other agencies, CAADP is “a manifestation of African governments’ commitment to address issues of growth in the agricultural sector, rural development and food security,” FAO’s website explains. [w1] The panelists’ overwhelming consensus was that NGOs and governments can and should collaborate to pursue CAADP’s goals, which include: achieving an annual agricultural production growth rate of 6 percent; strengthening domestic and international markets for African agricultural products; spending at least 10 percent of annual public expenditure on agricultural investment; and expanding sustainable management of land and water resources.

Elaborating on CAADP’s goals, Arati Belle of the World Bank explained precisely what is at stake in increasing the sustainability of African agriculture. 485 million Africans are adversely affected by land degradation, which is not surprising, she said, considering that 30 percent of Africa’s GDP and 70 percent of its employment come from the agricultural sector. The goal of the TerrAfrica initiative, launched at the CAADP Partnership Forum, is to “scale up the effectiveness and efficiency of sustainable land management in sub-Saharan Africa.” The need for sustainable land management couldn’t be more urgent: On average, soil and nutrient loss cause a 3 percent annual reduction in African countries’ GDP, said Belle. Citing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Belle warned that unless sustainable and adaptive solutions are implemented, declining crop productivity and increasing variability in precipitation over the course of this century are likely to exacerbate the agricultural sector’s woes.

Continuing this line of reasoning, WWF’s David Reed argued that agencies, governments, and companies involved in Africa “have to change the very base case of their investments, calculations, and thinking, particularly in the agricultural sector.” When thinking about the future of African agriculture, it is crucial to incorporate the impacts of the continent’s massive population growth, said Reed, because the 15 million sub-Saharan Africans who enter the labor market each year are likely to move predominantly into agriculture. It is important that NGOs help African countries take advantage of this influx of labor, Reed said, by promoting agro-forestry best practices, working with agricultural ministries, and encouraging more diverse production systems at the household and community levels.

The final panelist was Angel Elias-Daka of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), who used statistics—as well as anecdotes from his 20 years working in the wetlands of Zambia and Malawi—to shed light land degradation in Africa. Elias-Daka’s field experiences showed him that millions of people depend heavily on wetlands that—due to climate change and unsustainable use—are drying up and losing their biodiversity. He explained the link between COMESA’s work in the region and Africa’s agricultural production as follows: “If you promote trade and investment and people are able to trade their agricultural products, you are also going to promote agricultural production because people know they can trade their agricultural products easily.” Sustainable agricultural development will serve both the economic and the environmental needs of the continent, said Elias-Daka.

The November issue of International Affairs focuses on security issues in Africa, with several articles investigating the links among environment, population, and security.

Chatham House’s Nicholas Shaxson explores poverty and bad governance in oil-rich countries in the Gulf of Guinea. “Oil, corruption and the resource curse” builds on the author’s extensive research into the politics of oil in sub-Saharan Africa, including interviews with numerous key players.

“Climate change as the ‘new’ security threat: implications for Africa,” by Oli Brown, Anne Hammill, and Robert McLeman, reviews the linkages between climate change and security in Africa. Climate change could precipitate socio-economic and political collapse, the authors say. However, good adaptation policies could help prevent environmental stresses from triggering conflict.

In “Human security and development in Africa,” Nana K. Poku, Neil Renwick, and Joao Gomes Porto note that Africa is unlikely to achieve a single Millennium Development Goal by the target year of 2015. Arguing that security and development are closely intertwined, they identify four critical developmental security issues: ensuring peace and security; fostering good governance; fighting HIV/ AIDS; and managing the debt crisis.

Finally, David Styan of Birkbeck College, London, examines the relationship between international migration and African economic security in his article “The security of Africans beyond borders: migration, remittances and London’s transnational entrepreneurs.”

For years, some experts have predicted that the depletion of global oil reserves—and the resulting rising price of oil—would make U.S. dependence on foreign oil economically untenable. Calls to address American energy consumption are nothing new. Yet technology has expanded the industry’s ability to find and extract oil: The National Petroleum Council estimates the total proven reserves at 1.2 trillion barrels—38 years of supply at current rates of consumption. It is likely that another trillion barrels of undiscovered oil exist, as well as 1.5 trillion barrels of “unconventional” reserves of heavy oil, according to the federally chartered advisory committee. As Vijay Vaitheeswaran argues in Foreign Policy magazine, “the world is simply not running out of oil. It is running into it.”

Recently, then, many advocates of oil independence have shifted from an economic argument, which has become hard to sustain at a time when governments are paying $98 a barrel for oil, to a security argument—although this is not to say that national security was not a concern at all previously. Besides the failure of alarmist predictions, two factors explain the shift from an economic to a security discourse: climate change and terrorism. The growing awareness of the causes and extent of climate change has tarnished the image of fossil fuels. According to a BBC poll, 50 percent of the world population favors higher taxes on fossil fuels.

Even more than climate change, however, it is the links between oil and terrorism that cause concern among policymakers. At a conference at the Brookings Institution, former CIA director James Woolsey argued that oil revenue often flows to Islamist regimes that finance madrassas, which educate the next generation of terrorists. Oil can be a source terrorism, but it can also be a target. Oil convoys are one of the main concerns of U.S. troops in Iraq, as they are frequently attacked by terrorists. In addition, the oil fields of the Niger Delta are often attacked by rebel groups.

In his book Freedom from Oil, David Sandalow, an expert on energy policy and climate change, explores what could happen if the next president prioritized oil independence– which he defines as reducing U.S. oil consumption to the point that imports are minimal. [For Sandalow’s response, read comments below.] He believes the transportation complex should be the target of future policies, and that biofuels and plug-in cars are part of the solution. Indeed, as Vaitheeswaran notes, “this year, two-thirds of U.S. oil consumption—and half of global oil consumption—will be sucked up by cars and trucks. Reinventing the car is the only serious way to wean the world off oil.”

Last month, George Washington University’s School of Public Health hosted its annual “Mini-University”, a day-long conference showcasing novel approaches to improving global health.

The conference featured seventy presentations on topics including child marriage, monitoring and evaluation, fistula, urban health (with Wilson Center Global Health Initiative Senior Advisor Vic Barbiero), contraceptive security, male circumcision, XDR TB, nutrition, water and sanitation, gender, and the effects of the brain drain.

A few of the presentations looked at the relationships between conflict and health. One notable presentation (see #12) looked at the transition from relief to development in post-conflict states, examining best practices for strengthening health systems in these settings. Drawing on examples from Liberia, Afghanistan, and Sudan, the presenters discussed what the health priorities should be, how to execute them, and acknowledged the difficulty in accomplishing these tasks in such difficult environments.

The population, health, and environment (PHE) field was on display as well. Along with Johns Hopkins Ph.D. student Yung-Ting Kung, I (ECSP Program Associate Gib Clarke) presented “Is the whole better than the sum of its parts? Operations research design and initial evidence from integrated population and environment projects.” I offered background on integrated PHE programs, as well as a PHE case-study from the Philippines, I-POPCoRM. Kung’s presentation reported findings from statistical analysis of the Madagascar Environmental Health Project, with the goal of determining whether family planning and conservation outcomes are significantly better when services are delivered in an integrated PHE program than when they are delivered in isolation.

Though the conference sought to inform graduate students of the variety of new approaches being developed, the number of seasoned professionals present indicated that many members of the public health field recognize the importance of innovation. That monitoring and evaluation was emphasized throughout the day, and that many time-tested programs were on display as well, however, showed that in many cases new energy and commitment—not new technology or strategies—is what is needed.