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.

Carl Ganter is a journalist with a mission. We tend to think journalists are supposed to be impartial observers, but much good reporting is done by journalists who are passionate about their subjects. And Carl is that—passionate about water, in its many forms, locations, and roles. Water and human health. Water and politics. Water and conflict. Water and food. Water and girls’ education. Water and ecosystems. Water and…

The National Library of Medicine’s newest exhibit, “Against the Odds: Making a Difference in Global Health,” examines the “revolution in global health” that has transformed communities over the past several decades. In addition to acknowledging the vast achievements in health and science, the exhibit also aims to raise public awareness of the various factors that cause illness, from economic and social inequality to conflict.

The exhibit is divided into six sections: Community Health, Food for Life, Action on AIDS, The Legacy of War, Preventing Disease, and Global Collaboration. Each section reveals how doctors and nurses, advocates, and communities have joined forces to overcome public health challenges. For instance, “The Legacy of War” highlights the Nobel Peace Prize-winning work of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, which worked to inform policymakers and citizens of the consequences of nuclear war, and the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which advocated successfully for the passage of the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty. The exhibit’s website features compelling photographs, guest columns by leading public health experts, and a range of interactive features.

The authors of “Reassessing HIV Prevention,” an article in the most recent issue of Science, question the assumptions behind current HIV prevention interventions in Africa. The authors challenge the commonly accepted belief that poverty and political instability increase a population’s vulnerability to HIV infection, arguing that it is not supported by the evidence. They point to data demonstrating that “African regions suffering from conflict, genocide, and rape, such as Rwanda, Congo, and Angola, are much less affected by AIDS than peaceful, wealthier, and more literate countries such as Botswana or Swaziland, which have the world’s highest HIV prevalence.”

Studies have shown that civil war and the breakdown of health service delivery result in an increase in preventable deaths—such as those due to malnutrition, diarrhea, and malaria—but perhaps HIV follows a different pattern. Clearly, there is a need for research that compares the spread of HIV/AIDS in politically stable, wealthier African countries with those torn by conflict.

At a 2007 ECSP event on the human cost of war, Dr. Frederick Burkle of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative—who will discuss public health management after natural disasters on June 17—admitted that the direct impact of poverty, inequality, and cultural incompatibilities on the spread of infectious diseases and mortality during complex emergencies is “difficult, if not impossible,” to measure.

The theme of this year’s World Health Day, observed on April 7, was “Protecting Health From Climate Change.” This World Health Organization report outlines many of the links between climate change and human health.

Kenya’s post-election strife has decimated its once-thriving nature tourism industry, reports Reuters. The displacement of hundreds of thousands of people has driven up demand for bush meat, and in the absence of tourism revenues, reserves can no longer afford to pay rangers to protect the wildlife.

Per capita water availability in the Middle East and North Africa will be halved by 2050, estimates the World Bank, so it is critical for governments to address growing water scarcity now, including making agriculture—which accounts for 85 percent of total water use in the region—more water-efficient.

Yesterday, in a post on his Dot Earth blog, New York Times science reporter Andrew Revkin called attention to the fact that 2.6 billion people lack access to sanitation facilities—and that includes pit latrines, not just flush toilets. The World Health Organization estimates that inadequate water, sanitation, and hygiene are responsible for 4 percent of all deaths worldwide and 5.7 percent of the total global disease burden (including premature death and years lost to disability caused by disease). Children are the most acutely affected by poor sanitation: 1.5 million children die each year from diseases—primarily diarrhea—caused by inadequate sanitation.

Tomorrow is World Water Day, and in honor of 2008 being the International Year of Sanitation, the United Nations and other organizations will strive to raise people’s awareness of sanitation, combat the taboos against discussing it, and galvanize efforts to halve the number of people without access to sanitation by 2015—a Millennium Development Goal.

The Environmental Change and Security Program’s (ECSP) Navigating Peace Initiative seeks to call attention to the importance of water and sanitation issues. ECSP’s Water Stories Flash website includes a multimedia presentation on dry sanitation in Mexico, while “Low-Cost Sanitation: An Overview of Available Methods,” an article by Alicia Hope Herron in ECSP’s recent report Water Stories: Expanding Opportunities in Small-Scale Water and Sanitation, analyzes the pros and cons of the numerous inexpensive, innovative sanitation technologies currently available.

2007 was a significant year for China’s environment. An estimated 750,000 people in China died from respiratory illnesses related to air pollution, while approximately 60,000 died from waterborne diseases. China’s food processing and production sectors made headlines around the globe. Growing desertification in north and northwest China due to excessive water use and land mismanagement created more intense and frequent sand storms that affected the economy and health in China and Northeast Asia. In addition, China most likely surpassed the United States as the leading emitter of greenhouse gasses—and while the central government set laudable energy efficiency goals, it recently admitted that China had not met them.

These events have led to growing numbers of environmental health-related protests in China: 51,000 in 2005 and more than 60,000 in 2006. In June 2007, thousands of Xiamen residents protested the construction of a planned chemical plant. And last month, middle class residents of Shanghai took to the streets to oppose potential harm from an extension of China’s magnetic levitation train. As the Chinese government becomes increasingly concerned with the country’s stability, it is beginning to place greater emphasis on mitigating the effects of environmental degradation on its people. Read more about China’s environmental health problems—and what local and international NGOs, governments, and agencies are doing to address them—in China Environment Series 9, the flagship publication of the Wilson Center’s China Environment Forum.

By CEF Program Assistant Linden Ellis.

China has begun to reverse the high rates of desertification that have plagued it for decades, reported China Daily on January 24. Thanks to the efforts of communities, NGOs, and local governments, China’s deserts are now shrinking by 7,585 kilometers a year, in contrast to their annual growth rate of 10,400 square kilometers in the late 1990s. Yet 400 million Chinese remain affected by desertification: Erosion—particularly due to wind—can cause violent sand storms, forcing people from their homes and threatening the economies of major Asian cities including Beijing, Seoul, and Tokyo. Human health effects include respiratory and eye infections. For more on the health effects of desertification, see “Desertification and Environmental Health Trends in China,” a research brief by the Wilson Center’s China Environment Forum (CEF).

In August 2007, CEF and water NGO Circle of Blue assembled a group of desertification experts and photographers to take a five-day car ride from Beijing into eastern Inner Mongolia in northeast China, one of the regions that has suffered most from desertification. On their drive into the ocean of sand, the team gathered stories, photos, and video to put a human face on China’s desertification crisis. The result of their trip is a multimedia report, “Reign of Sand,” which explains that the primary causes of China’s increasingly frequent and severe sand storms—most of which originate in Inner Mongolia, home to the largest grasslands on earth—are the ecological mismanagement of this region and deepening drought in northern China.

By CEF Program Assistant Linden Ellis.