“The landscape has changed since 2007,” says Alexander Carius of the climate change and international security debates now taking place in Europe. In this short video, Carius, who is managing director at Adelphi Research, discusses the progress made by institutionalizing communication within the European Commission as well as the formal and informal channels between the four member states leading the debate, Germany, Britain, Sweden, and Denmark. “Whether this debate is driven by science, I have my doubts,” said Carius.

“Covering Climate: What’s Population Got to Do With It?”—webcast live from the Wilson Center—will analyze the challenges facing science and environmental reporters as they prepare to cover what New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin calls “the story of our time.” Cosponsored by the Society of Environmental Journalists and the International Reporting Project, the panel—including Dennis Dimick of National Geographic and the Nation’s Emily Douglas—will discuss the significant barriers to nuanced reporting, including stovepiped beats, the shrinking news hole, and old-fashioned squeamishness.

However, in the past month, there’s been a veritable baby boom of news coverage on climate change and population. Spurred by three high-profile reports—the study commissioned by the Optimum Population Trust, research in the Bulletin of the WHO, and an editorial in the Lancet—the mainstream media and some key bloggers finally got some condoms in their climate change.

It’s gratifying to finally see this issue pop up in the media, almost a year to the day after the 2008 SEJ conference panel on population and climate change moderated by Constance Holden of Science that attracted a respectable (but not remarkable) audience of 40. The panelists decried the media’s relative silence on the impact of population growth and other demographic dynamics on environmental issues.

NPR’s Steve Curwood pointed out that while it’s “something we don’t talk about at all in America,” U.S. population growth increases emissions faster than developing-country population growth, due to our larger per capita consumption. A lone AP article, “Population growth contributes to emissions growth,” reported on the discussion.

In contrast, a population-climate panel at last week’s SEJ conference drew an overflow crowd of more than 100 people. Former SEJ President Tim Wheeler read off recent headlines demonstrating that the media does mention population. However, he noted that “most of the instances I cited are op-ed opinion pieces, not news coverage or feature stories.” In recent climate coverage, he said, “population gets mentioned as an undercurrent and afterthought; our attention intends to be on the immediate. And it has those challenges of so, what do you do about it, how do you deal with it.” But it is “our constant challenge to continue to wrestle with these issues.”




Here’s a short list of recent coverage:

Associated Press: “Birth control could help combat climate change”
Reuters: “Contraception vital in climate change fight -expert”

Bloomberg: “African Condom Shortage Said to Worsen Climate Impact”

Matt Yglesias: “Population and Climate Change”

The Nation: “Factoring People Into Climate Change”

Inter Press Service: “POPULATION: Where’s Family Planning on Climate Change Radar? Zofeen Ebrahim interviews noted social demographer KAREN HARDEE”

The New Republic’s The Vine: “Abortion: The Third Rail of Climate Policy?”

Treehugger.com: Contraception Five Times Less Expensive Than Low-Carbon Technology in Combating Climate Change

Washington Post: “When It Comes to Pollution, Less (Kids) May Be More”

Inter Press Service: “CLIMATE CHANGE: Rising Seas Demand Better Family Planning”

LA Times Booster Shots blog: “Can condoms combat climate change?”

This week Sweden, the current holder of the European Union Presidency, will convene a conference for EU member states on environment, climate change, and security. The Ministry of Defence and the Swedish Defence Research Agency are serving as organizers, yet they are constructing the conference in broad and inclusive terms. The objective is to highlight and address the links between climate change and security in the “broadest sense of the term.” This framing is perhaps less surprising when one remembers the Swedes have been leaders in both lightening the military’s environmental bootprint and supporting international development through the Swedish International Development Agency’s investments in water, development, and peace. Right now it is the European Union, the UK, the Germans, the Finns, and the Danes joining the Swedes to drive policy action on climate and security links.

The 19th annual Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ) conference began today in the crisp autumn air of Madison, Wisconsin. ECSP Director Geoff Dabelko discusses Al Gore’s keynote address explicitly connecting climate change to national security issues, as well as his questions and expectations as the country’s premier gathering of environmental journalists gets underway.

For students, looking at national security through the lens of demography can be challenging and frustrating, says Jennifer Dabbs Sciubba, a Mellon Environmental Fellow and professor at Rhodes College. “You really have to start at the beginning and explain the fundamentals of, ‘What is population in the first place?’” she told ECSP Director Geoff Dabelko of her undergraduate courses on population-environment and population-security connections.

Here in Morocco, where I am attending the IUSSP conference on population, if you never went to elementary school or if you married at a young age, you are likely to have more children.

A Bangladeshi couple is more likely to have a third child if they have 0-1 sons, but a European couple is increasingly likely to prefer daughters because they take better care of their aging parents.

Globally, a forthcoming Harvard study shows that the “Reproductive Health Laws Index”—which includes the legal framework governing abortion, condoms, IUDs, and birth control pills—can predict fertility (more liberal laws = fewer children) and potentially increase female participation in the labor force.

Such causes of population growth are favorite topics for demographers and family planning experts here at the conference, and were quite well attended. However, perhaps due to the large number of European attendees, the panels on this popular topic were empty in comparison to those examining aging, fertility decline, and migration—issues at the forefront of European policymakers’ agendas.

A Message From His Majesty

“One of the characteristic features of our population policy stems from our firm belief that [its] impact … cannot be determined in isolation from economic, social, cultural and political factors,” wrote Morocco’s King Mohammed VI in a welcome letter delivered to the conference, which also discussed aging, climate change, food security,natural resource scarcity, the economic crisis, and growing levels of income inequality.

Morocco is taking steps to tackle this complicated set of problems. The government has launched a National Initiative for Human Development to fight poverty and social inequalities, and help Morocco meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). He also notes that the country’s “political and social reforms aimed at increasing the scope of democratic participation and ensuring the advancement of women.”

Like all leaders, Morocco’s will be measured not by his words—eloquent as these may be—but by his deeds and the country’s progress. Morocco has some work to do to reach the MDGs and other social and economic goals.

“Although a half million women die each year, that doesn’t get attention, because the victims invariably have three strikes against them: They are poor, they are rural, and they are female,” journalist Nicholas Kristof says in a video interview about his new book, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide.

“If men had uteruses and were dying at this rate, every country would have a minister of paternal mortality, the security council would be meeting, this would be a real international priority,” he says.

“Poor countries can’t begin to deal with food issues, with economic pressures, with conflict and shortages of water and grassland that may lead to social conflict, unless they begin to deal with population problems,” journalist Nicholas Kristof tells ECSP Director Geoff Dabelko in a video interview.