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Pop at Rio+20: Despite Failure Narrative, Progress Made at Rio on Gender, Health, Environment Links
›July 13, 2012 // By Sandeep BathalaA month ago this weekend I boarded a plane to Rio de Janeiro for the UN Conference on Sustainable Development. Over the past few weeks, I have had some time to reflect on the amazing (and exhausting) experience afforded to me. Unfortunately, the final Rio+20 outcome document (considered by some to be misnamed as “The Future We Want”) failed to recognize the connections between reproductive rights and sustainability. However, since I returned I’ve also found myself in conversations with colleagues eager to celebrate the successes of the conference.
Jason Bremner, program director at Population Reference Bureau, reminds me that the initial “zero draft document” that was circulated prior to Rio had absolutely no mention of reproductive health, family planning, or population. “Though the ultimate conference document wasn’t a success by many measures, I commend the efforts of the many advocacy organizations that resulted in the inclusion of reproductive health and family planning as a key aspect of sustainable development,” he said.
Other wins were recognized at Rio as well. On a panel organized by the International Planned Parenthood Federation, Brazilian Minister of Policies for Women Eleonora Menicucci de Oliveira pointed out that the presence of women this year was much stronger than at the 1992 conference. And she stressed that the overall importance placed on the reduction of poverty will have a big impact for women.
Though the official language was weakened in the final outcome document, there was much more support expressed at side events and off the record conversations. Speaking at the same event as Oliveira, Christian Friis Bach, Minister for Development Cooperation in Denmark, said that “one leader after another has stood up for reproductive rights, and we’ve started a campaign which will go on until ICPD+20.”
In fact, as the Wilson Center’s Brazil Institute Director Paulo Sotero points out, there was a great deal of progress made by non-government representatives alongside the main conference:I left Rio more hopeful about the future than the official part of Rio+20 would allow. As governments clearly fumbled in the face of the complex challenges of imagining and building a more equitable and sustainable economic growth model in the decades ahead, I saw senior business executives and leaders of civil society engaged in intelligent and productive dialogue about difficult issues at hundreds of thematic panels held at the Corporate Sustainability Forum and other sessions held in Rio.
I felt the same energy. And many groups there seemed to already be planning for next steps.
On the first day of side events I attended, members of the Population and Climate Change Alliance discussed strategies to ensure that in the post-2015 (i.e. post-Millennium Development Goals) international development agenda sexual and reproductive health and rights are explicitly recognized as core to sustainable development. The panel included Mialy Andriamahefazafy of Blue Ventures Madagascar, Joan Castro of PATH Foundation Philippines, Inc., and Negash Teklu of PHE Ethiopia Consortium, who all shared examples of efforts in their countries to integrate reproductive health with other sustainable development programs.Joan Castro on PATH Foundation’s work in the Philippines
The Rio+20 conference was, at the very least, a re-affirmation of the tenets set down by the ‘92 Earth Summit – that is, that there is middle ground between full-tilt economic development and uncompromising environmentalism, called “sustainable development,” and we ought to be moving towards it. It was also a fantastic gathering place for disparate groups of people to come together on to similar issues and to build momentum and networks on their issues.
For those hoping to see a stronger link recognized between reproductive rights, population, and the environment, the good news is that elsewhere, awareness and momentum seems to be growing. Just this week, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation joined the United Kingdom, United States, France, Germany, the Netherlands, South Korea, Norway, Sweden, and Australia to pledge more than $2.6 billion towards meeting global unmet for contraceptives. And the connection to development was explicit: “Contraceptives are one of the best investments a country can make in its future,” reads the summit website.
Coincidence to have followed so closely behind a “disappointing” Rio outcome? Perhaps not.
Sources: The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Estado, UN Conference on Sustainable Development.
Photo Credit: “UN Women Leaders Forum at Rio+20,” courtesy of UN Women. -
Ingrid Schulze, Mongabay
Local Experts Needed to Protect Congo Basin Rainforests Amid Conflict, Development Challenges
›July 13, 2012 // By Wilson Center StaffThe original version of this article, by Ingrid Schulze, appeared on Mongabay.
This summer, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is expected to approve a new higher education strategy which the country has developed with the World Bank and other international donors. The shape of this educational reform initiative will be critical to Congo’s future in many ways. It could finally offer Congo’s long-suffering people a route into the 21st century. It will also help determine the future of the DRC’s forests.
Nearly half of the Congo Basin’s remaining rainforest is in the DRC – yet the critical role of Congolese experts in forestry, agricultural science, wildlife management and other rural sciences in protecting this forest is not widely recognized.As one Congolese graduate student observed, the DRC has a “void” in agricultural and forestry research. Due to years of war and decades of economic crisis and mismanagement, most of Congo’s colleges and universities are severely underfunded and in disrepair. The country is short of experts who can investigate the ecology and economic potential of Congo’s forests and their biota, and provide an objective basis for setting priorities for protection and use of forest resources. While universities in Kinshasa and Kisangani do have some internationally funded programs to increase the number of biologists and other specialists, the number of graduates is nowhere near what is needed. Foreign scientists and consultants are not a substitute for Congolese experts.
Moreover, competent rural science graduates who can advise local farmers, communities and administrators on forestry, sustainable agriculture, wildlife management, and rural development issues are also desperately needed. The DRC’s national agricultural extension service, which should be integral to this process, has been broken for decades. A 1990 USAID report described it as underfunded, without the means to provide farmers with proven crop varieties and advice on agricultural practices, and tasked more with imposing particular crops on farmers and collecting taxes than helping them. There is little evidence that this has changed significantly since the end of the Congo war in 2003.
Continue reading on Mongabay.
Image Credit: Depths of Forest, courtesy of flickr user Bobulix. Congo Basin map, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons user Imagico. -
Gates Foundation Spearheads London Summit on Family Planning
›July 12, 2012 // By Carolyn Lamere“Given the option, [women in developing countries] will have fewer children,” said Melinda Gates in a TEDxChange talk in April. “The question is: are we going to commit to helping them get what they want now? Or are we going to condemn them to some century-long struggle, as if this were still revolutionary France and the best method was still coitus interruptus?”
Wednesday, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation followed through on Gates’ pledge, helping to raise more than $2.6 billion at the London Summit on Family Planning as part of an ambitious goal of helping 120 million additional women in developing countries gain access to contraception by 2020. The summit was co-hosted by the UK Department for International Development and garnered support from other foundations and governments, including the United States, France, Germany, the Netherlands, South Korea, Norway, Sweden, and Australia.
To quote the Population Institute’s Robert Walker on Dot Earth, this is a big deal:Many of the challenges that we face (hunger, severe poverty, energy, food, carbon emissions) are seemingly intractable. Population growth, which is a challenge multiplier, is not intractable. Far from it. There are proven highly cost-effective means of lowering fertility rates: providing access to contraceptives, keeping girls in school, ending child marriage practices, and changing social norms (including attitudes toward women and desired family size) through entertainment media.
The focus on family planning for the Gates Foundation – one of the largest philanthropic organizations in the world – is relatively new (though their commitment to global health and development is not). Melinda Gates announced a commitment to maternal health in 2010, and the foundation first issued a family planning strategy in April of this year.
The move has been unwelcome by some, particularly some Catholic institutions who object to family planning. But Gates has been adamant that contraceptives “should be a completely non-controversial topic.” She argues that 90 percent of Americans find contraceptives “morally acceptable,” including herself and many other Catholics, so there is no reason for the taboo around international aid for family planning to continue.
“We’re not going to agree about everything, but that’s OK,” said Gates in a recent interview with CNN.
In the TEDxChange talk, which helped launch this year’s push, she credits her upbringing for instilling a strong sense of social justice. During her travels with the Gates Foundation, one woman from a slum in Nairobi told her, “I want to bring every good thing to this child before I have another.” That statement resonated with Gates: “We all want to bring every good thing to our children,” she said. “But what’s not universal is our ability to provide every good thing for our children.” Gates pointed to contraception as a way for families to plan for their future and manage their resources. She recognized the controversial history of family planning as population control, but argued that this new initiative is about providing choices to individuals, not imposing values.
Gates remains confident that as long as the foundation makes its mission clear, people will rally behind the cause.
“We’re not talking about abortion. We’re not talking about population control. What I’m talking about is giving women the power to save their own lives, to save their children’s lives, and to give their families the best possible future.”
Sources: BBC, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, CNN, Catholic Family and Humans Rights Institute, Catholics For Choice, Dot Earth.
Video Credit: TEDxChange. -
World Population Day 2012: Looking Beyond Reproductive Health
›How should the seven billion or so of us on Earth mark World Population Day? Today, major global players are focusing on increasing access to family planning around the world. But there are other important aspects to population that also deserve our sustained attention.
The links between demography and development have come into the limelight over the last few months, first as advocates decried the last minute removal of reproductive rights language from the Rio+20 outcome document and now as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation prepares a massive funding push for reproductive health (starting today, not coincidentally).
“Multiple crises – food, fuel, and financial – have caused significant suffering and served as a wake-up call about the need to pay far more attention to the building blocks of sustainable development,” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says in an address for today. “Reproductive health is an indispensable part of the sustainable development equation.”
The sustainable development connection is fairly obvious. Environmental destruction in some of the most biodiversity-rich parts of the world has complex but significant population drivers, as Wilson Center consultant Laurie Mazur explains:Human impact on the environment is mediated by a host of factors, including culture, technology, institutions, and market forces. And inequitable socioeconomic systems mean that some human beings have far greater impact than others.
“Often, the value of biodiversity becomes apparent only when it is lost,” Mazur continues. “For example, with the global decline of honeybee populations, growers can now calculate the monetary value of pollination services that were once provided for free by nature. ‘Bee pollination is worth $190 billion,’ said Pavan Sukhdev, a Yale environmental economist, in an interview with Bloomberg. ‘But when did a bee ever send you an invoice?’”
But some generalizations can be made. We live on a planet dominated and transformed by human activity. As we have become more numerous, we have also become more adept at altering ecosystems for human use, replacing species-rich natural landscapes with simpler monocultures.
In other areas, population drivers threaten more basic scarcities: food and water, which in turn impede development and cost human lives. Some of the most successful efforts to address these relationships have combined women’s empowerment, family planning, and basic health interventions with site-based conservation and livelihood efforts.
But besides reproductive rights, there are other important aspects of population that deserve attention on this day.
The demographic dividend – a concept that marries population dynamics and development economics – requires more than just fertility decline to take effect in countries. Economic and social policies that prepare and enable young people to enter the workforce are just as important.
And the Arab Spring helps illustrate the complex relationship between population and democracy. “Among the five countries where revolt took root, those with the earliest success in ousting autocratic leaders also had the most mature age structures and the least youthful populations,” writes Wilson Center consultant and demographer Elizabeth Leahy Madsen. The work of fellow Wilson Center consulting demographer Richard Cincotta shows that countries with very young age structures are prone both to higher incidence of civil conflict and undemocratic governance. What happens next in Egypt, Libya, Yemen, and Syria will further test the connection between youth and democracy.
In South Asia, Madsen finds that as Afghanistan and Pakistan’s political circumstances have become more entwined, their demographic paths are more closely parallel than expected. “For Afghanistan, given its myriad socioeconomic, political, cultural, and geographic challenges, this is good news. But for Pakistan, where efforts to meet family planning needs have fallen short of capacity, it is not,” she writes in the first issue of the newly re-launched ECSP Report, “Afghanistan, Against the Odds: A Demographic Surprise.”
In more developed countries, population aging is a concern. At the Wilson Center last year, economists Andrew Mason and Ronald Lee explained the challenges that those on the other side of the “demographic divide” will face in the near future. From 2010 to 2015, 85 countries are projected to witness the largest absolute increase in history of their populations aged 60 and over, straining public welfare systems and reducing labor forces. It’s not the “catastrophe” that it has been portrayed to be in the media, they said, but like many demographic issues, it is a challenge that will require planning for.
These connections demonstrate the wide importance of population dynamics to understanding how the world works today. Demography is the study of us – all seven billion of us. Demography affects – and is affected by – economics, political stability, health, the environment, food security, foreign policy, development, and conflict. Let’s not overlook that breadth on this World Population Day 2012.
For more, be sure to read some of our additional resources from the recent archives:- Food Security in a Climate-Altered Future: More Than a Supply Problem
- Taming Hunger in Ethiopia: The Role of Population Dynamics
- Uganda’s Demographic and Health Challenges Put Into Perspective With Newfound Oil
- New Surveys Generate Mixed Demographic Signals for East and Southern Africa
- In Building Resilience for a Changing World, Reproductive Health Is Key
- Demographic Security 101 (video)
- Yemen: Revisiting Demography After the Arab Spring
- Hania Zlotnik Discusses Latest Changes to UN Population Projections (audio)
- Book Review: ‘World Population Policies’
- Tunisia’s Shot at Democracy: What Demographics and Recent History Tell Us
- Joel E. Cohen on Solving the Resource-Population Equation in the Developing World (video)
Photo Credit: UN Day Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon with students in October celebrating the seven billion mark, courtesy of Eskinder Debebe/UN Photo. -
Nancy Lindborg, The Huffington Post
Chronic Crisis in the Sahel Calls for a New Approach
›July 10, 2012 // By Wilson Center StaffThe original version of this article, by Nancy Lindborg, appeared on The Huffington Post.
It is the lean season in the Sahel, a spine of arid and dry lands that runs from Senegal to Chad in western Africa, and once again we are seeing the devastating images of children gaunt with hunger. This is a region that faces high childhood malnutrition and underdevelopment even under the best of circumstances so one poor harvest can push millions of the most vulnerable into severe risk. In the aftermath of poor rains, and with food prices stubbornly stuck on high since the food crisis of 2008, some 18.7 million people across eight affected countries in the Sahel are at risk of food insecurity this year alone. At least eight million people are already in need of emergency assistance.
At USAID, we are determined to get ahead of these kinds of chronic crises. We know that millions of Africans living in the dry lands of the Horn and Sahel regions need new solutions. Last year, the worst drought in 60 years ravaged the Horn of Africa, driving 13.3 million people into crisis. And this summer, families in the Sahel are feeling the peril of depleting food supplies, high food prices, and rising malnutrition.
We can’t prevent what appears to be increasing cycles of drought, but we can and are working to create better solutions and build greater resilience among the most vulnerable.
Every crisis is complex, and the Sahel is no exception. A regional drought has been overlaid with instability stemming from the coup in Mali and conflict in the northern part of that country where armed militant groups have forced the suspension of critical relief operations. More than 184,000 refugees have fled to communities in neighboring countries that are already deeply stressed from drought. Though still functioning, local and regional markets have been disrupted, driving food prices even higher. And as of mid-June, swarms of locusts from southern Algeria and Libya had arrived in northern Mali and Niger; now expected to move southward, these infestations could result in crop destruction exacerbating an already worsening situation.
Continue reading on The Huffington Post.
Image Credit: West African medium-term food security outlook, courtesy of the Famine Early Warning Systems Network.
Nancy Lindborg is the assistant administrator of the Bureau for Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance at the U.S. Agency for International Development. -
Geoff Dabelko at the Aspen Environment Forum: “We Have to Find Ways to Do Things Differently”
›July 9, 2012 // By Graham NorwoodECSP Director Geoff Dabelko was in Colorado last month to participate in the fifth annual Aspen Environment Forum, a three-day series of discussions about some of the world’s most vexing environmental concerns, hosted jointly by the Aspen Institute and National Geographic. Dabelko took part in two panel discussions, considering recent efforts to “green” the U.S. military in one and addressing the nexus of climate change and conflict in the other.
The U.S. Department of Defense is currently pursuing an ambitious strategy to minimize its dependence on oil, aiming to produce 25 percent of its power from renewable energy sources by 2025. During the 75-minute “Is the Military a Model?” panel, Dabelko joined Sharon Burke of the Department of Defense, Sherri Goodman of CNA, and U.S. Army Major General Joseph Anderson to discuss the extent to which the military’s embrace of more efficient and alternative technologies can spur wider innovation and adoption. Many have previously cited the military’s role in developing technologies like the Global Positioning System and the internet as a reason for optimism in this regard.
The “Climate and Conflict” panel, meanwhile, addressed how and to what degree climate change might affect future conflicts. According to Scientific American, “the consensus was that climate change per se will not cause conflict, armed or otherwise, but will exacerbate existing conflicts and instabilities.”
This was Dabelko’s third trip to the Aspen Environment Forum, and he spoke enthusiastically about the event in a brief interview with genConnect, which was covering the event. “The experience has been excellent,” he remarked, highlighting the diversity of participants as one of the forum’s greatest strengths.Dabelko acknowledged that much work remains to be done to achieve environmental and energy-related goals, but praised the realistic and grounded approach of attendees: “We have a tremendous set of challenges, and we’re not yet really succeeding in addressing them. So there’s a self-reflection that what we’ve been doing isn’t necessarily getting us where we want to get, and so we have to find ways to do things differently.”
One way to improve, according to Dabelko, is to work on communications. “[We need to have] conversations about complex issues, [and we] need to understand how to make them more accessible and more simple. But ‘simple’ does not mean ‘dumb’ or ‘incorrect’…we need to get smarter about how to have these conversations with wider and [more] diverse audiences.”
Photo Credit: Geoff Dabelko, courtesy of the Aspen Institute. Video: genConnect. -
USAID Turns to Crowdsourcing to Map Loan Data
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The original version of this article, by Aaron Lovell, appeared on the Wilson Center’s Science and Technology Innovation Program Commons Lab blog.
On June 28, officials from USAID met at the Wilson Center to discuss a recent experiment in using crowdsourcing to help clean up and map data on development loans. The agency had 117,000 records on private loans made possible by their Development Credit Authority, which theoretically could be mapped and made available to the public. The problem? Location data for the loans was not standard and was difficult to parse. USAID decided to turn to “the crowd” and recruit interested volunteers from the Standby Task Force and GISCorps – two online volunteer communities – to help clean the data, making it available for additional analysis.
Shadrock Roberts, Stephanie Grosser, and D. Ben Swartley – all with USAID – discussed the results of the project. They were able to clean up the information at virtually no cost to the government, noting that they hope it will be an example for further collaboration between government and engaged volunteers.
“Our hope is that the case study will provide others in government with information and guidance to move forward with their own crowdsourcing projects. Whether the intent is opening data, increased engagement, or improved services, agencies must embrace new technologies that can bring citizens closer to their government,” the officials wrote in a recently released case study focused on the exercise. While the exercise resulted in high-quality output, Roberts et al. did provide advice for other agencies considering similar work. Grosser stressed the need to “crawl, walk, [then] run” – that is, start small with a few hundred records and then expand on that, as the system is refined.
But USAID sees crowdsourcing becoming a key part of improving government data. “We need to be working as hard to release relevant data we already have as we are to create it,” Roberts concluded, when discussing how the experience could apply more generally. “The crowd is willing to do research, data mining, and data cleanup.”
Sources: USAID. -
Guttmacher Updates Unmet Need Estimates, and West Africa’s Demographic Dividend Examined
›The Guttmacher Institute has updated their estimates for global contraceptive services, putting the number of women around the world who have an unmet need for modern family planning at 222 million (up from 215 million). Authors Susheela Singh and Jacqueline E. Darroch, in Adding It Up: Costs and Benefits of Contraceptive Services Estimates for 2012, also examine the estimated current costs of contraception, cost of meeting the current unmet need, and the money saved from having fewer unintended pregnancies. An estimated four billion dollars is currently spent on contraception in the developing world, and “the total cost of fully meeting the contraceptive needs of all women in the developing world with appropriate services would…be $8.1 billion per year.” Singh and Darroch note that there are substantial benefits to increasing access to contraception, including reduced infant and maternal mortality and lower education and health costs as smaller populations put less strain on existing systems. They conclude that “the gains that derive from meeting the contraceptive needs of all women in the developing world more than outweigh the financial costs.”How Can We Capitalize on the Demographic Dividend?, by Jean-Pierre Guengant of the Institute of Development Research, explores the connection between population age structure and economic growth in 12 West African countries (the West African Economic and Monetary Union plus Ghana, Guinea, Mauritania, and Nigeria). While much of Africa has recently experienced economic growth between four and six percent, Guengant notes it has been “too low to allow for any substantial increase in per capita income levels” due to continued population growth. And he suggests that projections of declining fertility in much of Africa are overly optimistic. “Contrary to popular belief,” he writes, “the demographic future of sub-Saharan Africa has not been written.” Guengant extrapolates his own fertility projection using data beginning in 1960. If fertility declines rapidly, he writes, the larger proportion of people in the labor force could increase the GDP per capita and drive up the standard of living.
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