Showing posts from category population.
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This Mangrove Forest Could Save Your Life: Protected Areas and Disaster Mitigation
›June 16, 2008 // By Sonia Schmanski
Natural disasters “are not ‘natural’ at all but are the consequence of our scant regard for the ecosystem services our natural environment provides,” write the authors of “Natural Security: Protected areas and hazard mitigation,” fifth in the Arguments for Protection series published jointly by the World Wildlife Fund and Equilibrium. -
Weekly Reading
›New Day, New Way: U.S. Foreign Assistance for the 21st Century, a report from the Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network, was unveiled at a packed House Foreign Affairs Committee event this week.
The Economist continues to brush off those who worry that there are too many people consuming too many resources on Earth: “If global growth and development continue, worries about overpopulation may, in hindsight, seem a uniquely 20th century phenomenon.”
“Countries that stagnate are less able and sometimes less willing to help address transnational issues, many of which originate within their borders, including illegal migration; trafficking in narcotics, weapons, and persons; health threats such as HIV/AIDS and avian flu; and environmental concerns such as loss of biodiversity,” says USAID’s economic growth strategy.
“We know that the cruel indignities of life without clean water, adequate sanitation, sustainable livelihood, or democratic governance can deny us our basic freedoms as surely as any despotic regime,” says Condoleezza Rice, quoted in USAID’s report Expanding the Impact of Foreign Assistance Through Public-Private Alliances.
The Commission on HIV/AIDS and Governance in Africa, headed by Wilson Center collaborator K. Y. Amoako, presented its report Securing Our Future to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon earlier this week. -
In Egypt, Record Food Prices Lead to Family Planning
›June 12, 2008 // By Geoffrey D. DabelkoAt Egypt’s National Population Conference on Monday, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak—whose government has struggled to respond to recent civil unrest over skyrocketing food prices and bread shortages—told attendees that high population growth is a “major challenge and fundamental obstacle” to development. The following day, Egyptian Minister of Health and Population Hatem el-Gabali announced an $80 million national family planning program with the slogan “Two children per family—a chance for a better life.” Egypt’s current fertility rate is 2.7 children per woman.
With a population of 81 million, Egypt is the 16th most populous country in the world, and, according to Philippe Fargues of the American University in Cairo (AUC), excluding the desert, Egypt has the highest population density in the world—twice that of Bangladesh.
Is the government’s plan a productive long-term response to the food crisis? How can it be part of a larger package? Or is population a distraction from the real issue of corruption, as identified by interviewees in the Washington Post article where I first read about the programs.
I posed these questions to a demography and security listserv and got some interesting responses. According to Valerie Hudson of Brigham Young University, a political scientist known best for her book Bare Branches on the security implications of imbalanced male-female population ratios: “Mubarak would do more to achieve his goal of 2.0 children per woman by a focused plan to raise the status of women, for example, by:- Outlawing polygamy, or erecting such high legal barriers to it that it becomes impractical
- Fully implementing CEDAW [the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women]
- Enforcing the ban on FGM [female genital mutilation]; 97% of Egyptian women are circumcised
- Educating women on a parity with men; the median number of years of schooling for men is 6.3; that for women is 4.4
- Raising average age at first marriage for rural women (current average is 19)
- Creating more parity in family law for women in matters such as divorce, inheritance, etc.—all of which can be found in CEDAW.”
“I don’t think population pressure is a distraction from the real issue of corruption; though the government of Egypt is indeed corrupt by developed-world standards (or maybe by any standard). Corruption, which is symptomatic of state weakness, limits the ability of the Egyptian government to address this problem credibly and effectively. But it doesn’t mean they are wrong about the problem.
I was actually struck by the modesty of official ambition to reduce the fertility rate from 2.7 (which is slightly above the world median, apparently) to 2.0 (which I’m guessing is pretty close to the middle). This assumes that, basically, a steady state population of, say, 100M Egyptians would be sustainable indefinitely. I’m not so sure of that. The impact of anticipated climate change on Egypt may prove quite formidable by the end of this century. I’m not sure a leveling off after some additional increase will do the trick….Too pessimistic? I hope so.” -
Weekly Reading
›The Effects of Climate Change on Agriculture, Land Resources, Water Resources, and Biodiversity in the United States, the long-awaited report from the U.S. Climate Change Science Program and the Subcommittee on Global Change Research, was released this week.
The Worldwatch Institute’s Robert Engelman discussed his recent book More: Population, Nature, and What Women Want on NPR’s Talk of the Nation.
Saleem Ali urges Pakistan and India to amicably resolve the Sir Creek dispute in an op-ed in Pakistan’s Daily Times.
“Reducing carbon dependency also goes to the heart of our basic security needs for the future,” writes Tony Blair in an op-ed in the Washington Post.
A new guide from the Population Reference Bureau on sexual and reproductive health in the Middle East and North Africa targets journalists. -
Weekly Reading
›Natural Security: Protected areas and hazard mitigation, a new report from WWF and Equilibrium, explores how protected areas might have prevented some of the worst impacts of recent floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, and tsunamis.
The Economist reviews Matthew Connelly’s new book, Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population, which Connelly discussed recently at the Wilson Center, and weighs in on Malthus, calling him a “false prophet.”
The Council on Foreign Relations has a new Daily Analysis that takes Malthusian worries of food and energy shortages more seriously.
In an article featuring recent ECSP speaker Brian O’Neill, Nature explores whether a smaller global population would help solve the challenge of climate change. -
Weekly Reading
›A report commissioned by GTZ, the German government-owned technical assistance agency, examines how it can address the new challenges to development posed by climate change.
In the May/June 2008 issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Jürgen Scheffran provides an overview of climate-security links.
An article in Time examining population and environmental degradation highlights Robert Engelman’s new book More: Population, Nature, and What Women Want, presented recently at the Wilson Center.
Jody Williams and Wangari Maathai, who won Nobel Peace Prizes in 1997 and 2004, respectively, recently discussed climate change, environmental degradation, human security, and women’s leadership on Living on Earth. -
Demographic Change Could Foster Instability, Says CIA Director Michael Hayden
›May 13, 2008 // By Liat RacinRapid population growth “is almost certain to occur in countries least able to sustain it, and that will create a situation that will likely fuel instability and extremism,” warned CIA Director General Michael Hayden in a recent speech at Kansas State University, where he identified demographic change as one of the three global trends most likely to influence world events and challenge American security.
The UN mid-range world population projection for 2050 is 9.2 billion people, an approximately 40 percent increase over today’s population. This population growth, especially in developing and fragile states, may easily overwhelm state capacity. “When basic needs are not met,” explained Hayden, people “could easily be attracted to violence, civil unrest, and extremism.” Such civil unrest can spread across borders, destabilizing regions and impacting both developing and developed countries.
When their governments cannot meet their basic needs, people also often choose to emigrate. A dramatic influx of migrants—legal and illegal—from developing countries to developed ones poses significant challenges for the destination country, as governments must allocate resources for facilitating immigrant assimilation and, in some cases, countering extremism. Many European countries have struggled to integrate Muslim immigrants into their societies.
It’s interesting to note that the estimate of a 40 percent increase in population growth by 2050 is primarily based on the assumption that current levels of funding for family planning services will continue, which is far from certain. Promoting access to family planning has been a proven mechanism in reducing fertility. With growing populations threatening to overwhelm fragile states’ capacity and harm the environment, funding voluntary family planning programs could well be considered an investment in global security.
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‘Fatal Misconception’: Fatally Flawed?
›Matthew Connelly recently published Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population, a book that has chafed demographers and those working in the family planning sector. If Connelly had foreseen the attention his recounting of the population movement would garner, he might have taken more care to represent more sides of the story. He also might have talked to more living people, especially women, rather than relying so heavily on written archives.
Controversially, Connelly argues that family planning programs in the 20th century were responsible for only 5 percent of the fertility decline experienced during that time. His proof? That fertility levels were already declining before family planning programs began. On page 338, he writes, “Moreover, it could not be shown that even the 5 percent effect was actually caused by such efforts, or whether instead broader socioeconomic or cultural changes explained both the decline in parents’ preference for large families and government willingness to provide them with contraceptives (what economists call the endogeneity problem).”
But examples abound in which fertility declined drastically following the introduction of accessible contraception. For example, after officials in Iran revised the country’s family planning program in the late 1980s, fertility dropped from 5.62 births per woman to just above 2 today. Fertility had been declining since the early 1960s, but at a much slower rate.
In the early 1960s, the fertility rate in Brazil was 6.2. In the years after Planned Parenthood arrived and pharmacies began selling contraceptives, fertility fell to 3.5 births per woman. Today, Brazil’s fertility rate is around 2.35 births per woman, which is close to replacement level.
When women can choose for themselves when to have children, they often choose to have smaller families. The family planning movement has not been perfect, but it has frequently acted courageously to give women the choices they deserve. Its successes should not be overlooked.
Marian Starkey, communications manager at Population Connection, holds a master of science in population and development from the London School of Economics.
