Showing posts from category population.
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Pop-Up Video: Cable News Covers PHE Connections
›It was a bit of a shock to hear population-environment connections being discussed on television, including the Most Trusted Name in News (aka Jon Stewart’s Daily Show), as well as CNN’s Amanpour, late last month.
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DOD Measures Up On Climate Change, Energy
›May 5, 2010 // By Schuyler Null“As Congress deliberates its role, DOD is moving ahead steadily on a broad range of energy and climate initiatives,” says former Senator John Warner in a recent Pew report, Reenergizing America’s Defense: How the Armed Forces Are Stepping Forward to Combat Climate Change and Improve the U.S. Energy Posture.
The military as a leader and catalyst for renewable energy was a key focus of the recently released Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), which for the first time included consideration of the effects of climate change and excessive energy consumption on military planning:Assessments conducted by the intelligence community indicate that climate change could have significant geopolitical impacts around the world, contributing to poverty, environmental degradation, and the further weakening of fragile governments. Climate change will contribute to food and water scarcity, will increase the spread of disease and may spur or exacerbate mass migration.
According to the Pew report, the Department of Defense has set a goal of producing or procuring at least 25 percent of its non-tactical electric energy needs from renewable sources by 2025. Highlights of the service’s efforts include:
The Pew report offers a generally favorable appraisal of the military’s response to the “twin threats of energy dependence and climate change” and the progress made towards reaching federal energy mandates. However, the authors let slide that the overwhelming amount of DOD energy usage is tied to tactical consumption, which has been given inadequate attention thus far (consider that the senior Pentagon official overseeing tactical energy planning was only just appointed, although the position has existed since October 2008).- The U.S. Navy’s “Great Green Fleet” carrier strike group, which will run entirely on alternative fuels and nuclear power by 2016;
- The construction of a 500-megawatt solar facility in Fort Irwin, California by the U.S. Army which will help the base reach ‘net-zero plus’ status;
- The goal of acquiring 50 percent of the U.S. Air Force’s aviation fuels from biofuel blends by 2016;
- The U.S. Marine Corps’ 10×10 campaign to develop a comprehensive energy strategy and meet ten goals aimed at reducing energy and water intensity and increasing the use of renewable electric energy by the end of 2010.
Interest in this field has grown quickly, as evidenced by the more than 400 people gathered at the launch of the latest report from the Center for New American Security (CNAS), Broadening Horizons: Climate Change and the U.S. Armed Forces – a big increase from the 50 or so at CNAS’ first natural security event in June 2008.
The CNAS study, much like the Pew report, breaks down the military’s efforts by service, but the study’s authors – including U.S. Navy Commander Herbert E. Carmen – thankfully provide more specific recommendations for what could be done better.
Based on research, interviews, and site visits, the study offers geographically specific recommendations for each of the Unified Commands, as well as seven broad recommendations for DOD as a whole:
“While we believe there is still much work ahead, there is a growing commitment to addressing energy and climate change within the DOD,” said USN Commander Carmen in the report:- In light of its implications for the global commons, ensure that DOD is included in the emerging debate over geoengineering.
- Urge U.S. ratification of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea in order to provide global leadership and protect U.S. and DOD interests, especially in the context of an opening Arctic sea.
- Eliminate the divided command over the Arctic and assign U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) as the supported commander.
- The U.S. government should make an informed decision about constructing nuclear reactors on military bases and provide clear policy guidelines to DOD.
- Congress and DOD should move away from the “cost avoidance” structure of current renewable energy, conservation, and efficiency practices in order to reward proactive commanders and encourage further investment.
- All of the services should improve their understanding of how climate change will effect their missions and capabilities; e.g. migration and water issues may impact Army missions, a melting Arctic, the Navy.
- The Air Force should fully integrate planning for both energy security and climate change into a single effort.
Indeed, in our conversation with officials in the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Policy, it was clear that, in developing the climate change and energy section of the 2010 QDR, the Department of Defense has developed a nascent, intellectual infrastructure of civilian and military professionals who will continue to study the national security implications of climate change, and, we hope, will continue to reevaluate climate change risks and opportunities as the science continues to evolve.
A holistic view of national security that includes energy and environment, as well as demographic and development inputs, continues to gain traction as an important driver in DOD policy and planning.
Photo Credit: “Refueling at FOB Wright” courtesy of Flickr user The U.S. Army. -
The Feed for Fresh News on Population
›May 5, 2010 // By Wilson Center StaffDavid Lopez-Carr of UC-Santa Barbara bringing his A-game on demographic trends at USAID #WilsonCenter mtg on econ & environ trends in LAC
Family planning in fragile state settings possible & priority say health workers from
URI & BALANCED Project’s Elin Torell on integrated population-health-environment in the
RT @mercycorps: Working to prevent gender-based violence in
#Climatechange and #gender in New Security Beat’s Reading Radar @UN_Womenwatch Heinrich Boell Fdn #WilsonCenter http://ow.ly/1Cpam
USAID Health’s Earth Day message has link to “An Ethical Approach to Population & Climate Change” article frm ECSP Report http://ow.ly/1BfV3
Follow Geoff Dabelko on Twitter for more population, health, environment, and security updates -
Population and Sustainability
›“The MAHB, the Culture Gap, and Some Really Inconvenient Truths,” authored by Paul Ehrlich and appearing in the most recent edition of PLoS Biology, is a call for greater participation in the Millennium Assessment of Human Behavior (MAHB). MAHB was created, he writes, because societies understand the magnitude of environmental challenges, yet often still fail to act. “The urgent need now is clearly not for more natural science…but rather for better understanding of human behaviors and how they can be altered to direct Homo sapiens onto a course toward a sustainable society.” MAHB aims to create an inclusive global discussion of “the human predicament, what people desire, and what goals are possible to achieve in a sustainable society” in the hopes of encouraging a “rapid modification” in human behavior.
The BALANCED Project, lead by the Coastal Resource Center at the University of Rhode Island, released its first “BALANCED Newsletter.” To be published biannually, the newsletter highlights recent PHE fieldwork, unpacks aspects of particular PHE projects, and shares best practices in an effort to advance the BALANCED Project’s goal: promoting PHE approaches to safeguard areas of high biodiversity threatened by population pressures. The current edition examines the integration of family planning and reproductive health projects into marine conservation projects in Kenya and Madagascar, a theater-based youth education program in the Philippines, and the combining of family planning services with gorilla conservation work in Uganda. The newsletter also profiles two “PHE Champions,” Gezahegh Guedta Shana of Ethiopia and Ramadhani Zuberi of Tanzania.
“Human population growth is perhaps the most significant cause of the complex problems the world faces,” write authors Jason Collodi and Freida M’Cormack in “Population Growth, Environment and Food Security: What Does the Future Hold?,” the first issue of the Institute of Development Studies‘ Horizon series. The impacts of climate change, poverty, and resource scarcity, they write, are not far behind. Collodi and M’Cormack highlight trends in, and projections for, population growth, the environment, and food security, and offer bulleted policy recommendations for each. Offering greater access to family planning; levying global taxes on carbon; introducing selective water pricing; and removing subsidies for first-generation biofuels are each examples of suggestions advanced by the authors to meet the interrelated challenges. -
Philippines’ Bohol Province: Elin Torell Reports on Integrating Population, Health, and Environment
›For 10 years, I have been working on marine conservation in Tanzania with the University of Rhode Island’s Coastal Resources Center. As part of that effort, I’ve helped forge links between HIV/AIDS prevention in vulnerable fishing communities and marine conservation. However, family planning and reproductive health (FP/RH) were relatively new to me. But a recent study tour of an integrated Population, Health, and Environment (PHE) program in the Philippines helped me understand that combining family planning services and marine conservation can help reduce overfishing and improve food security.
Together with developing country representatives from seven African and Asian countries, I spent two weeks in February visiting three PHE learning sites and a marine protected area in Bohol province in the central Philippines, as part of a South-to-South study tour sponsored by the USAID-funded BALANCED Project, for which I work. The tour focused on the activities of the 10-year-old Integrated Population and Coastal Resource Management Initiative (IPOPCORM) project, which is run by PATH Foundation Philippines, Inc. (PFPI).
IPOPCORM has garnered a wealth of lessons learned and best practices to share with PHE newbies like me. Its integrated programs train people to be community-based distributers (CBDs) of contraceptives and PHE peer educators, as well as work with local and regional government officials to build support for family planning as a means to improve food security.
I was most impressed with the ways in which PFPI identifies and cultivates dynamic and motivated local leaders–men, women, and especially youth–to reach out to the members of their community who are highly dependent on marine resources for their survival. My Tanzanian colleagues and I would like to foster the volunteer spirit and “can do” attitudes we experienced through our work in East Africa. (Similar PHE peer educators are successfully working in Ethiopia’s Bale Mountains, as reported by Cassie Gardener in a previous edition of the “Beat on the Ground.”
My favorite part of the tour was a trip to the Verde Island Passage to see PFPI’s efforts in this fragile hotspot. The insights my Tanzanian colleagues and I gained from talking to the field practitioners in the Verde Islands helped us refine our ideas for translating some of the PHE techniques used in the Philippines to the Tanzanian cultural context, including an action plan for strengthening our existing PHE efforts with CBDs and peer educators.
Thanks to the study tour, I now have a better understanding of how to address population pressures in the context of conservation. Overall, my Tanzanian colleagues and I were inspired by the successes we saw firsthand and hope to emulate them to some degree in our own projects.
Elin Torell is a research associate at the Coastal Resources Center at the University of Rhode Island. She is the manager of CRC’s Tanzania Program and coordinates monitoring, evaluation, and learning within the BALANCED project. -
Family Planning in Fragile States
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“Conflict-affected countries have some of the worst reproductive health indicators,” said Saundra Krause of the Women’s Refugee Commission at a recent Wilson Center event. “Pregnant women may deliver on the roadside or in makeshift shelters, no longer able to access whatever delivery plans they had. People fleeing their homes may have forgotten or left behind condoms and birth control methods.”
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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. -
Food Security Comes to Capitol Hill, Part Two: Women’s Edition
›April 30, 2010 // By Schuyler NullThe focus on food security on Capitol Hill continued with Wednesday’s House Hunger Caucus panel, “Feeding a Community, Country and Continent: The Role of Women in Food Security.” According to panel organizers Women Thrive Worldwide, “over half the food in developing countries – and up to 80 percent in sub-Saharan Africa – is grown by women farmers, who also account for seven in ten of the world’s hungry.”
The panel illuminated some of the inequities routinely faced by female farmers that often prevent them from using the same inputs as men (tools, fertilizer, etc.), bar their access to credit, and force them onto less productive land.
“Women around the world face unique economic and social barriers in farming and food production,” said Nora O’Connell of Women Thrive Worldwide. “But they are key to increasing food security and ending hunger, and all international programs must take their needs into account.”
Panelist David Kauck of the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) cited the State Department’s Consultation Document on the Global Hunger and Food Security Initiative: “Economic output could be increased by 15-40 percent and under-nutrition reduced by 15 million children simply by providing women with assets equal to those of men.”
According to the 2008 ICRW report, A Significant Shift: Women, Food Security, and Agriculture in a Global Marketplace:Women also are more likely than men to spend their income on the well-being of their families, including more nutritious foods, school fees for children and health care. Yet agricultural investments do not reflect these facts. Women in forestry, fishing and agriculture received just 7 percent of total aid for all sectors.
One of the most fundamental problems faced by women in developing countries is a lack of basic education leading to illiteracy and innumeracy, making it difficult for women to understand agricultural policy or the fair market values of their products. Therefore, men are much more likely to control valuable markets.
In addition, women are less likely to learn about and adopt new agricultural technologies and best practices. Lydia Sasu, director of the Development Action Association, said that when she attended agricultural school in Ghana she was one of only three women, compared to more than 40 men, in her class.
Women in developing countries rarely own the land they farm, which can make it difficult to apply for credit and extension services without collateral. According to the ICRW report:In Uganda, women account for approximately three out of four agricultural laborers and nine out of 10 food-producing laborers, yet they own only a fraction of the land. Women in Cameroon provide more than 75 percent of agricultural labor yet own just 10 percent of land. A 1990 study of credit schemes in Kenya, Malawi, Sierra Leone, Zambia and Zimbabwe found that women received less than 10 percent of the credit for smallholders and only 1 percent of total credit to agriculture. Women receive only 5 percent of extension services worldwide, and women in Africa access only 1 percent of available credit in the agricultural sector.
“The fundamental barrier to women in agriculture,” said USAID’s Kristy Cook, “is access to assets.” Cheryl Morden of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) said we have reached the “tipping point,” where action on this issue seems inevitable on the international policy level. However, she questions how quickly that momentum can translate to change on the ground.
The State Department has made improving women’s lives an important part of both their Global Hunger and Food Security Initiative and the Global Health Initiative. ”Investing in the health of women, adolescents, and girls is not only the right thing to do; it is also the smart thing to do,” said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in January.
Reproductive health and family planning services will be key to both initiatives. A policy brief by ICRW’s Margaret Greene argues that poor reproductive health can have negative effects on women’s educational and economic opportunities. As Secretary Clinton said, “When women and girls have the tools to stay healthy and the opportunity to contribute to their families’ well-being, they flourish and so do the people around them.”
Photo Credit: “Transplanting at rainfed lowland rice in Madagascar,” courtesy of flickr user IRRI Images.
