Showing posts from category Africa.
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An Update on PRB’s Population, Health, and Environment Project Map
›As reproductive rights advocates reflect on their disappointment with the outcome of last week’s Rio+20 summit, it is encouraging to see that population, health, and environment (PHE) projects – which fundamentally connect women’s health with sustainable development – continue to sprout up around the world. The Population Reference Bureau (PRB) launched their community-supported PHE Project Map in March 2010, and since then, the map has grown to include 76 projects across three continents, and has been viewed more than 82,000 times.
The goal of the map is to show which organizations are doing what PHE work where and when. While the map highlights expected hotspots like Ethiopia, Madagascar, and the Philippines, it also brings into focus countries that may not necessarily come to mind when thinking about PHE – South Africa, Venezuela, and Vietnam being among them. The map is updated on a rolling basis, and has grown substantially during its first two years.
These numbers should offer encouragement to reproductive rights and sustainable development advocates. Even if world leaders are still struggling to integrate these issues into a global development framework, NGOs, local nonprofits, and development agencies across the world are moving full-speed ahead to improve healthcare, strengthen ecosystems, and empower women and men across Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and South Asia.
To add a project to the map, contact PRB’s Rachel Yavinksy at ryavinsky@prb.org. -
Jennifer Dabbs Sciubba, The Huffington Post
Global Threats Exist, But Also Many Global Demographic Opportunities for the United States
›July 3, 2012 // By Wilson Center StaffThe original version of this article, by Jennifer Dabbs Sciubba, appeared on The Huffington Post.
Events like the Arab Spring gave birth to a generation of demographic converts in the national security community. Many are now convinced that demography matters because demographers today can clearly show how youthful population profiles in the developing world could lead to conflicts over the next 20 years – a major concern for policymakers.
Too much focus on demography and conflict, though, means policymakers miss opportunities for cooperation.
We are used to thinking of the wealthy and stable “Global North” and the poor and tumultuous “Global South,” but a demographic divide within the developing world is emerging, a third category of states that are growing older, more urban, more prosperous, more peaceful, and active in international affairs. These states – particularly India, Brazil, and South Africa – represent opportunities for building U.S. and world security.
Even as it maintains its longstanding relationships in Europe and elsewhere in the developed world, the U.S. should be more assertive in seeking partnerships with India as both a counterbalance to China and as a global security partner in addressing piracy and terrorism and in distributing international aid.
Continue reading on The Huffington Post.
Photo Credit: Tahrir 2011, courtesy of flickr user Denis Bocquet. -
Book Review: ‘World Population Policies’ Offers Sweeping Overview of a Complex Field
›July 2, 2012 // By Elizabeth Leahy MadsenWith much attention in the international family planning community directed to the impending anniversary of the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development and the closing date of the Millennium Development Goals, the fact that 2012 is the 60th anniversary of two other milestones in population programming may have escaped notice. In 1952, the International Planned Parenthood Federation was created, and India became the first country to formulate a national policy to reduce population growth.
These and many other landmarks are highlighted in World Population Policies: Their Origin, Evolution and Impact, a new book by demographer John May that reviews several decades of policies, advocacy, and program interventions addressing the full range of diverse demographic trends seen globally.May, who spent more than two decades working on population issues at the World Bank and other international institutions before recently assuming a fellowship at the Center for Global Development, is well-positioned to provide such an ambitious overview. Although the breadth of material included in the book means that some topics receive less coverage than a specialist might wish, it serves as a sound introduction to this diverse field, and offers some particularly interesting case studies.
The book’s main chapters begin with a summary of current population trends, including a comprehensive array of figures and statistics about population size, distribution, and projections. Some important concepts, such as the demographic transition and dividend, are perhaps covered too quickly, and in such cases the book would have benefited from more than a handful of figures, charts, and graphs. May classifies regions and countries as demographic “hotspots,” where the number of people outstrips available resources, and “coldspots,” which have too few residents. He makes an ambitious suggestion that high-density countries facing resource challenges, such as Bangladesh, should consider promoting rapid fertility decline below replacement level to stop population growth, then reverse course and increase to a rate that promotes a stable population – but such a reversal from low fertility is a feat that has stymied several countries in Europe and East Asia.
Evolution of the “Population Movement”
In addition to summarizing the ways that demographic issues have been framed in the past several decades, May briefly describes the long-running debate between demographers and economists about the ways in which population is theorized to affect economic development.
Three points in this chapter were particularly striking: First, the concept of family planning as a human right dates from well before the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development. In 1968, the Tehran International Conference on Human Rights defined the ability to choose family size and spacing as a fundamental right; still, some programs, such as India’s under the Emergency-era government of the late 1970s, adopted coercive practices. Second, population policies are not limited to official initiatives targeting fertility, mortality, and migration, but also encompass implicit or “passive” policy measures that arise without advance planning or that have an unintended effect on demographic trends. Related to this, May suggests that “contextual variables” such as education, health, gender, culture, and religion can have a greater impact on population policies’ effectiveness and demographic outcomes than government structures or funding.
Although population policies are most often designed at the national level, May’s discussion of the “population movement” highlights the influence of international networks and donors on such policies. By the late 1960s, the U.S. Agency for International Development had begun funding family planning programs overseas, and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) was active. Although the United States has become less dominant over time, population programming remains a Northern-driven movement.
Beginning with a meeting in Belgrade in 1965, a series of international population conferences successfully raised the prominence of population issues on the global development agenda and built consensus around international goals, while also becoming increasingly political.
May’s cautions about such conferences are timely given this month’s London Family Planning Summit: “Consensus-building through international conferences and their preparatory meetings is often inefficient as a process, whereas such events could be used to promote learning among policymakers and experts…The gap between the conferences’ resolutions and the actual policies implemented at country level is important to remember” (110).
Growth and Aging Distinguish the Demographic Divide
In his chapter focusing on the developing world, May notes that population policies have become broader in the nearly 20 years since the Cairo conference, incorporating a reproductive rights framework while also addressing new issues such as the environment, HIV/AIDS, and poverty. But under this more holistic approach, national policies are susceptible to becoming overly diffuse, with an ambitious agenda not matched by concrete action plans.
The challenges expand to policy implementation as well. Kenya is profiled as emblematic of the difficulties facing population programs in fast-growing sub-Saharan Africa, particularly political disinterest, mismanagement, opposition from some religious groups, and commodity shortages. But when implemented well, such policies can be very successful. The book offers a thorough summary of research findings on the common features of effective family planning programs (such as leadership, monitoring performance data, and opening access to contraceptive methods at lower levels of the health system), as well as their demographic impact. Several country examples are cited to show that family planning programs reduce lifetime fertility rates by 0.5 to 1.5 children per woman, while also benefiting individual and social health, income, and well-being.
While population policies have been often effective at shaping demographic trends in high-fertility settings, even in changing cultural norms about family size, May notes that their impact has been notably weaker in reversing the trajectory of declining fertility in developed countries. While countries such as France have maintained a fertility rate close to, albeit still below, replacement level thanks to generous paid parental leave, housing initiatives and public child care facilities, policies that try to boost low fertility through financial compensation have been particularly ineffective.
Developed countries are less likely to have formal population policies and tend to address demographic issues through incentives and disincentives implemented by multiple agencies. Aging and immigration are receiving greater attention in such countries, along with low fertility rates. Population aging raises policy concerns that are both economic and social, and May focuses largely on the benefit of reducing incentives for early retirement. He notes that thanks to improvements in health and life expectancy, “today’s 65-year-old persons are young compared to their counterparts” of previous generations (180). Despite their economic soundness, government efforts to raise retirement ages are widely unpopular, and France’s newly elected president has promised to cut the retirement age from 62 to 60 for some workers.
What Comes Next
Some observations are intriguing and could have been further detailed. For example, May notes a recent “fragmentation” of organizations working on population issues, and suggests that “too many institutions and NGOs appear to support their own limited mandates as they also struggle for resources that are less abundant” (5). Decentralization and integration within health systems is a growing trend that could have been discussed in more detail, along with the legacy of pronatalist laws and attitudes by colonial powers in Africa, the effect of recent European efforts to tighten immigration policies, and the achievements of forums designed for collaboration on population policy issues (for example, the United Nations Commission on Population and Development or the Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition).
Looking towards the future, May foresees continued integration of demography with related development issues, such as poverty reduction and equitable growth, gender and youth perspectives, environmental issues, and conflict prevention. He notes a few challenges, including sub-Saharan Africa’s lag in fertility decline and the overall ineffectiveness of policies aimed at addressing the pressures of urbanization on infrastructure and resources.
In high-fertility settings, May recommends that instead of framing reproductive health writ large, policies should more specifically target family planning and women’s empowerment, including education and income-generation opportunities as well as legal rights. Bangladesh is presented as a model for other countries, as a setting where cultural change and economic development laid the groundwork for successful family planning outreach efforts. Most of all, May entreats government leaders to maintain a policy focus on population issues, regardless of where they stand in the demographic divide.
Elizabeth Leahy Madsen is a consultant on political demography for the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program and senior technical advisor at Futures Group.
Photo Credit: “Crowded Shopping District,” courtesy of flickr user EnvironmentBlog. -
Alexandra Cousteau on the Global Water Crisis and Choosing Between the Environment and the Economy
›Above is a short discussion filmed after a full dialogue TV episode last week; for the full interview, please visit the Wilson Center.
“We have serious issues that we need to address, yet we’re largely unaware of them because water seems so abundant,” said Alexandra Cousteau in an interview at the Wilson Center. “That myth of abundance is finally reaching an age of limits.”
Cousteau spoke with John Milewski of the Wilson Center’s dialogue TV program, after an event on the recent global water security assessment by the U.S. intelligence community. She discussed the work of her organization, Blue Legacy, which seeks to raise awareness of the ‘global water crisis’ – from degrading quality to growing scarcity and the proliferation of water refugees.
Global Water Crisis
“Traditionally our understanding of the global water crisis has been very narrow,” said Cousteau. “We have talked about it mostly in terms of the very real water and sanitation crisis that is happening in the developing world.” Without minimizing the severity of the situation in developing countries or oversimplifying the tangled nature of their problems, she characterized these water and sanitation struggles as fundamentally “solvable.”
Cousteau argued that there are also substantial water problems in the United States. Pollution due to runoff and over-utilization of major riverways are threats that are much different from those in the past.
“In Nixon’s time, when he signed the Clean Water Act, it was because rivers like the Potomac were in such bad shape, and they could see it from their office windows,” she said. “But the threats to our water are different today…before, it was industrial effluent, and what we were putting in the water that we could see. The Hudson River would change color daily based on the paper mills and what color paper they were printing that day.”
Today, chemicals may impact water quality without changing the appearance of water: “You don’t see it, the water can be perfectly transparent.”
Blue Legacy Expeditions
Cousteau has taken two expeditions with Blue Legacy to highlight water issues around the world. The first in 2009 was global; Cousteau and her team traveled from India to Botswana and beyond. Throughout the voyage, she worked to make her travels accessible to the general public and was surprised at her success.
“It was an experiment, but it worked. And when we came back to the United States, we got a lot of feedback, and one of the things people said was, ‘Gosh, that was an incredible adventure, thanks for taking us along for the ride! Clearly, there is a global water crisis, now I understand that. I’m just so relieved it’s not happening in America.’ And I thought, ‘Oh my Lord, I guess we have an expedition to do in America!’”
Her 2010 North America expedition focused on issues ranging from the over-exploited Colorado River to the polluted Mississippi, and sought to make water problems personal “at a time when our demand on water is at a tipping point.”
The Environment and the Economy
Cousteau’s interview was particularly timely in light of global economic troubles which have led some to say the environment should take a backseat. Cousteau said this doesn’t have to be the case. She emphasized the interconnected nature of the environment and the economy, saying that policymakers don’t have to choose to focus on one or the other.
“We feel like we have to make a choice between the economy and the environment, and that’s a false dilemma. A healthier environment is a more prosperous economy. And when we fail to realize that we don’t have to sacrifice one to have the other, then I think we wind up sacrificing a lot of the quality of life and the opportunity that we take for granted.”
Video Credit: Dialogue/Wilson Center and Alexandra Cousteau. -
Pop at Rio+20: Reproductive Rights Missing From Outcome Document – Assessing the Disappointment
›June 22, 2012 // By Sandeep Bathala
As heads of state get ready to sign on to the outcome document here in Rio, all eyes are on next steps – especially for the reproductive health and integrated development communities, which have seen their hopes of mainstreaming their issues with the sustainable development agenda dashed.
The final outcome document can be found here. USA Today reports that opposition from a group of countries in the 11th hour stripped the text of critical reproductive rights language:An initial draft of this conference’s outcome document stated, “We are committed to ensure the equal access of women and girls to education, basic services, economic opportunities, and health care services, including addressing women’s sexual and reproductive health and their reproductive rights.”
Absent entirely is any explicit connection between reproductive rights, population dynamics, and sustainable development.
In the final draft, the stronger wording “We are committed to ensure the equal access” was switched to the weaker “We are committed to promote the equal access.” The reference to reproductive rights was deleted altogether, after opposition from the G-77, a negotiating bloc of developing countries at the United Nations, and the Holy See.
But others, as we have heard repeatedly throughout the conference, insist that gender issues and reproductive rights have a strong and vital connection to sustainable development. Yesterday, USAID, the Aspen Institute, and the Center for Environment and Population held a discussion in the U.S. tent on this very issue, titled “Making Population Matter: The Demographic Dividend and Sustainable Development.”
As Vicky Markham of the Center for Environment and Population reports on RH Reality Check, the side-event aimed to demonstrate the effects of population dynamics, both positive and negative:We have the largest youth demographic ever in the history of the world, and most developing nations have a “youth bulge.” This can be seen as a challenge, or opportunity, particularly if the focus is on providing development programs for child survival, family planning, reproductive health, and education. The importance of women’s empowerment was also central. But it’s not a given; it’s an opportunity only if we pay attention to these issues to increase the benefits of the “demographic dividend.”
The demographic dividend, as described by USAID Deputy Administrator and panelist Donald Steinberg in blog post earlier this week, “is an opportunity that arises when a country transitions from high to low rates of fertility and child and infant mortality.” But it’s not just about ensuring access to family planning and reproductive health; youth-focused economic and education policies are also needed: “Maximizing the dividend requires social and economic policies that reinforce inclusion, equity, and opportunity across the entire population,” he writes. USAID is making a point of creating youth-focused policies for this reason, he said in Rio.
Carmen Barroso, regional director of the International Planned Parenthood Federation’s Western Hemisphere Region, pointed out that Latin American countries could not take advantage of the demographic dividend before recent societal changes occurred, including decreased fertility, increased urbanization (which leads to smaller families), and greater schooling and employment of women.
Seventy percent of world population growth is likely to be generated by Africa this century, said Eliya Msiyaphazi Zulu, executive director of the African Institute for Development Policy – and it is the only continent projected to continue to grow in the next century, he said. He called for redefining growth as more than GDP as that measure does not consider environmental degradation and its costs: “We must have other means to measure development.”
As heads of state and negotiators consider their positions at this conference – which many were hoping would make a much stronger statement – they might do well to ponder today’s comments from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton:While I am very pleased that this year’s outcome document endorses sexual and reproductive health and universal access to family planning, to reach our goals in sustainable development we also have to ensure women’s reproductive rights. Women must be empowered to make decisions about whether and when to have children. And the United States will continue to work to ensure that those rights are respected in international agreements.
Sources: RH Reality Check, UN, U.S. Department of State, USA Today, USAID.
Now none of this is an abstract discussion. There is just too much at stake, too much still to be done. And many of you visited the U.S. Center here in Rio and saw practical solutions related to some of the work I’ve discussed and other goals we hold in common. We believe solutions require action by all of us. Governments, yes; let’s do our part. Let’s do more than our part.
Photo Credit: YouthPolicy.org. -
Laurie Goering, AlertNet
Pop at Rio+20: Brazil a Model for Slowing Population Growth, Say Experts
›June 21, 2012 // By Wilson Center StaffThe original version of this article, by Laurie Goering, appeared on AlertNet.
Rosimere Lopes knows what she does not want in life.
The 23-year-old, who lives in Cachoeirinha, a hillside slum in Rio’s gritty North Zone, was born when her mother was just 16, and grew up taking care of her five younger brothers and sisters while her mother worked.
As a result of missing so much education, she’s still trying to finish high school. But she has accomplished one important thing – she has no children of her own yet, despite having a regular boyfriend.
“My mother got pregnant at 16 so I know the consequences. I don’t want that,” she said. “I want to do better.”
In the last decade, Brazil has undergone a family planning revolution. In 2000, the country’s birthrate was 2.4 children per woman, already dramatically down from decades past. Today it has dropped to 1.9 children, below replacement level and on a par with many developed countries.
That slowdown, built on making available better information and contraceptives, and on growing urbanization, is increasingly looked at as a model by experts around the world trying to find ways to dampen population growth and consumption – both linked to accelerating climate change and resource scarcity.
Continue reading on AlertNet.
Sources: UN Population Division.
Photo Credit: A grandmother, mother, and child in Brasilia, courtesy of flickr user babasteve (Steve Evans). -
African Nations Pioneer Natural Resource Accounting With ‘Gaborone Declaration’
›June 20, 2012 // By Graham NorwoodIn a move with potentially substantial ramifications for future sustainable development, 10 African nations have agreed to begin assigning monetary value to the benefits provided by non-commodity natural resources, including ecosystems such as forests, grasslands, and coral reefs.
Botswana, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, South Africa, and Tanzania each affirmed their support for the “Gaborone Declaration” during last month’s Summit for Sustainability in Africa, co-hosted by Conservation International and the government of Botswana. The goal, according to Botswanan President Ian Khama, is to include these new valuations in national accounting, providing policymakers a clear perspective on the costs and benefits associated with the development or conservation of their natural resources for the first time.
Coming just prior to the Rio+20 conference, the signatories said they hoped assigning calculable costs to resource usage would encourage more sustainable development by bringing hitherto “invisible” costs and externalities into the open and onto the balance sheet.
Though the challenges of properly assessing the values of various ecosystem services are understandably many, the potential benefits of natural capital accounting are substantial.
According to SciDev.Net, the World Bank’s Vice President for Sustainable Development Rachel Kyte spoke in support of the declaration at the summit. She pointed out, for example, the advantage of knowing that a hectare of mangrove trees in a certain region of Thailand has been calculated to provide approximately $16,000 of flood protection when considering whether to clear-cut and sell the raw wood (worth about $850), convert the region into a shrimp farm ($9,000), or preserve it.
Such accounting may be particularly beneficial to the Gaborone signatories and other African nations, given growing concern among experts about foreign investment in land, natural resources, and even water on the continent.
But the declaration – and the very idea of natural capital accounting – is not without controversy.
Some argue that commodifying such resources will actually encourage their destruction rather than protect them by ascribing monetary values to previously free and shared resources, thus advantaging richer stakeholders and nations at the expense of poorer ones. As Hannah Griffiths of the UK-based World Development Movement recently wrote in The Guardian, “the result [of natural resource accounting] would be the further privatisation of essential elements of our planet to which we all share rights and have responsibilities.”
Along these lines, Nigerian environmental activist and chair of Friends of the Earth International, Nnimmo Bassey, has voiced his strenuous opposition to the plan made at the summit. “This declaration is blind to the fact that the bait of revenue from natural capital is simply a cover for continued rape of African natural resources,” he said in SciDev.
However, the signatories of the Gaborone Declaration dismissed these concerns and pointed to the value of natural resource accounting for sustainable development.
“Africa is where sustained and sustainable economic growth and stewardship of natural wealth become one and the same thing,” said Kyte at the summit. “By endorsing natural capital accounting as a tool for delivering on more inclusive green growth, Africa is showing the way for the rest of the world.”
Conservation International CEO and Chairman Peter Seligmann agreed, calling the declaration “a very big deal, a very big moment, and a big step forward.” He connected it to the imminent Rio+20 conference as well, saying the pledge is “truly a beacon on the hill for the rest of societies” and that “it will be held up on top of that hill in Rio de Janeiro.”
Indeed, the World Bank has listed natural capital accounting as one of six key issues for Rio+20, and in a report last month titled Inclusive Green Growth: The Pathway to Sustainable Development, noted that “it is vital that economic values for environmental assets be comparable to other economic values.”
The World Bank has already made significant progress in promoting the practice through its Wealth Accounting and the Valuation of Ecosystem Services (WAVES) global partnership, encouraging at least 24 countries to use some form of natural resource accounting to date. WAVES aims to sign up 50 more nations and 50 private corporations beginning at Rio+20, as a part of its “50:50 Campaign.”
WAVES and the Gaborone Declaration show that natural capital accounting is gaining momentum as a means to incentivize more sustainable development. The international news media is beginning to take notice as well. The results of the Rio+20 conference will be a good opportunity to gauge just how far the idea has come and what the extent of its future application might be.
Sources: Conservation International, The Guardian, SciDev.Net, World Bank.
Photo Credit: “Saving the Sacred Rock,” courtesy of flickr user isurusen (Isuru Senevi); video: The World Bank. -
Royal Society Launches ‘People and the Planet’ Study
›“This is a time of rapid and multifaceted change in both population and the planet,” said Parfait Eloundou-Enyegue, a member of the U.K. Royal Society’s People and the Planet working group and contributing author to the report of the same name launched at the Wilson Center on June 4. “The question that the report is trying to address is whether we can actually envision a world in which we can sustainably and equitably meet the consumption needs of seven billion people, and the more to come.” [Video Below]
The Royal Society is a self-governing fellowship of scientists that fosters research to address pressing social issues and better inform policy on a global scale. Eloundou-Enyegue, also an associate professor of development sociology at Cornell University, was joined by fellow working group member and African Institute for Development Policy Director and Founder Eliya Msiyaphazi Zulu to discuss their assessment of growing population and consumption pressures on global wellbeing.
Current Trends Are Unsustainable
“The current trends of global population growth and material consumption and the concomitant changes in the environment are unsustainable,” said Zulu.
On the population side, “you have changes that are affecting not just the size, the growth of the population, but also changes in family structure, in the population distribution, [and] population movement,” said Eloundou-Enyegue.
On the consumption side, “beyond the increase in consumption itself, there’s also a dramatic rise in aspiration,” he continued. “People are in greater contact and this tends to encourage…an increasing aspiration to mimic or to emulate the consumption standard of the more industrialized countries.”
Limits to Equitable Growth
When measuring consumption, which itself tends to be a misplaced barometer of wellbeing, according to Eloundou-Enyegue, there is a “disproportionate focus on GDP.”
Using GDP growth as a measure of consumption and wellbeing both “misses a lot of the economic production that’s not mediated through the market,” and “counts as positive things that are damaging to the planet,” he said.
The People and the Planet report marks a departure from the traditional consumption framework by asking “about the relevance of growth – is growth what we ought to be after?”
“The report tried to make a distinction between two types of consumption – the consumption of material resources and the consumption of goods and services – that are all relevant to wellbeing but have different implications for the environment,” Eloundou-Enyegue said. “So there is a need to think about how to shift or to favor consumption that is less damaging to the environment.”
Not an “Either-Or” Proposition
There is “a tendency to look at population and consumption when you’re addressing the impact of the environment in an either-or format, as if you had to choose either population as being the main culprit or consumption,” said Eloundou-Enyegue. “The reality is that they all have to be integrated and considered jointly.”
At the same time, there is “a tendency to shy away from population issues when you set development goals because they tend to be controversial,” he said. And yet, said Zulu, “there’s no question about it, the global population growth needs to be slowed down and ultimately stabilized for both people and the planet to flourish.”
The vast majority of future population growth is expected to come from Africa. Based on the United Nation’s medium variant projection, 70 percent of global population growth over the rest of the century will come from the continent.
That projection, however, belies a big assumption: “that the high fertility countries now will follow the same pattern in decline in fertility as the countries that have [already] achieved lower fertility had [in the past],” said Zulu, which “may actually not be the case.”
“You might actually find a situation where fertility might stabilize around three to four children in some of the…least developed countries,” he said, “and if that happens, it means that actually we stand a much, much bigger chance of getting to the high variant [of 15.8 billion by 2100] than we often tend to assume.”
In spite of that dire warning, however, Zulu said that “we should recognize that demography is not destiny, that through…appropriate socioeconomic and health policies and investment, we can actually slow down population growth.”
The report concludes that voluntary and non-coercive “reproductive health and family planning programs are urgently required,” said Zulu. “There is also a need for strong political leadership and financial commitment to make sure that these programs and services reach out to all women around the world who need them.”
Have We Missed the Boat Again?
Part of the urgency from the working group is because, so far, commitments to reproductive health appear to be falling short. It is the international community’s responsibility “to make sure that women have the contraceptives that they need in order to achieve their fertility aspirations,” said Zulu, but some of the most important agenda-setting events in global development over the past 20 years have sidelined population, reproductive health, and family planning.
The Millennium Development Goals, for instance, “tried to stay clear of population,” said Eloundou-Enyegue, even though “all the indicators that I see are either intrinsically demographic or have a strong demographic component.”
“If you think about stratification and the reproduction of inequality and poverty across generations and the role that differential fertility and reproduction plays, there’s no way you can sidestep population,” he continued. “If you’re talking about maternal mortality and child mortality…it doesn’t make sense to set population aside.”
Now, as the international community prepares for the upcoming Rio+20 summit, “there’s been a big struggle to get…consideration of population issues” on the agenda, said Zulu.
“Population is at the peripheral of all those discussions,” said Zulu. When in Nairobi for a preparatory conference earlier this year, Zulu said UNFPA Executive Director Babatunde Osotimehin “told me that he was quite alarmed that there was hardly any mention of population in all those discussions. And he asked me the question, ‘have we missed the boat again?’”
That concern reinforces the main argument of People and the Planet, said Zulu: there is an “urgent need to reduce material consumption of the richest, and increase consumption and healthcare for the poorest 1.3 billion people.”
“We’re talking about having the majority of people in the world being able to flourish, being able to lead decent lives.”
Event Resources:Photo Credit: “Market_Kampala, Uganda,” courtesy of the Hewlett Foundation.
