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‘New Security Beat’ Goes Mobile and a Guide to ECSP Media Sources
›December 22, 2010 // By Schuyler NullThanks to a handy tool from Blogger, The New Security Beat now has a more mobile-optimized version that will load automatically if you visit the site from your phone. The formatting is lighter to ease your strained, possibly cubicle-choked 3G connections, and it is easier to navigate using touch. Alternatively (or just because it’s so cool) you can scan the QR code to the right to load it right up on your Android or iOS-powered device (no guarantees with Blackberry).
The Environmental Change and Security Program has a wealth of media resources available online which we try to make as accessible as possible straight from the blog, but just in case you’ve forgotten, here’s a comprehensive listing:Be sure to also follow ECSP on Facebook and Twitter to see and comment on posts as they roll out on The New Security Beat and keep abreast of the latest population, environment, and security-related news.
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Evidence, Links, and Solutions
Maternal Undernutrition
›“Maternal undernutrition is often overlooked as a strategy for reducing poverty and as a key intervention to reduce maternal mortality and morbidity,” said Mary Ellen Stanton, senior maternal health advisor at the U.S. Agency for International Development. Stanton was joined by Dr. Doyin Oluwole, director of the Africa’s Health in 2010 program, and Amy Webb Girard, assistant professor at the Emory University School of Public Health, in the final meeting of the Advancing Policy Dialogue on Maternal Health series on December 15 where they addressed the linkages between poverty, undernutrition, and poor maternal health outcomes.
The Cycle of Malnutrition and Poverty
Many factors contribute to a woman’s nutritional status, including lack of capital, access to land, and poverty; thus, said Oluwole, “we must adopt a multi-pronged and multi-sectoral response.”“General malnutrition is usually associated with iron-deficiency anemia, which leads to poor cognitive function and educational achievement, poor health, and fatigue.” Oluwole said. “These three factors lead to low worker productivity, and low worker productivity leads to income poverty.”
“All of these aggravate malnutrition and so the vicious cycle of malnutrition and poverty continues,” said Oluwole. To break this cycle, she pointed out that countries like Malawi and Mexico have implemented various multi-sectoral interventions that have “stimulated economic growth; implemented targeted social, health, and nutrition programs; and put in place safety nets.”
“In the window of opportunity during pregnancy and the first two years of life, we can make a big difference,” Oluwole said. She advocated for an “integrated anemia package” that provides anti-malarials, de-worming medicine, iron folic acid tablets, and extra food during pregnancy. She also noted the importance of family planning and targeted high-coverage interventions, such as salt iodization, vitamin A supplementation, and breastfeeding promotion.
In conclusion, Oluwole provided several recommendations for the development community to improve maternal mortality rates and undernutrition of women:
Maternal Undernutrition: Our Global Disgrace- Promote universal primary and secondary education, especially for girls
- Stimulate economic growth with a focus on gender and equity
- Invest in infrastructure to reduce transportation time to hospitals
- Postpone age of marriage and of first pregnancy
- Provide targeted and effective nutrition and health interventions
- Encourage private sector participation and government leadership
- Integrate the maternal health and nutrition communities and services
“We don’t tend to look at maternal nutrition and its impacts on the woman herself,” said Girard. The lack of data on the relationship between nutrition and maternal health outcomes “hampers our ability to move maternal nutrition onto the health and development agenda,” she added.“Anemia is widespread; worldwide, it is a significant public health burden, both in women of reproductive age as well as in pregnant women,” said Girard. Studies have shown that moderate anemia increases risk of hemorrhage and may also increase the risk of sepsis, while severe anemia has been shown to directly contribute to maternal mortality. Targeted interventions can help reduce these risks greatly. “For every one gram per deciliter increase in hemoglobin level, you can reduce maternal mortality by approximately 25 percent, but the mechanisms by which this occurs are not well elucidated,” noted Girard.
“We need to include women not as just targets of nutritional interventions, but as beneficiaries in their own health,” said Girard. Key nutritional interventions such as micronutrient supplementation, fortification, and behavior change communication can help to improve not only fetal, infant, and child health, but can also reduce maternal morbidity and mortality. In addition, Girard recommended the following strategies to achieve greater impact:
Together, these strategies can help improve access to nutrition and health services, as well as adequate food for women throughout their lives. “We need to integrate health and nutrition – they are actually the same pillar, complementing each other,” Girard concluded.- Improve nutrition throughout the life cycle, not just during pregnancy
- Look for alternate strategies for micronutrient delivery
- Integrate maternal nutrition into food security and agricultural strategies
- Collect indicators specific to women’s health impacts
- Recognize and address gender bias
Photo Credit: “Bangladesh mothers, kids,” courtesy of flickr user Bread for the World. -
The Role of Population Dynamics in Climate Adaptation
›December 21, 2010 // By Wilson Center StaffThis post is a synthesis of a panel discussion at the UNFPA Population Dynamics and Climate Change conference in Mexico City with Marcia Castro, of the Harvard School of Public Health; Heather D’Agnes, of USAID; and Lori Hunter, of the University of Colorado at Boulder.
It is well-known that environmental change — including climate change — has important impacts on human health. However, it is less well understood how health systems shape the responses of individuals and households to environmental change. Population dynamics — such as fertility, migration, and mortality and morbidity — influence community health and greatly affect community resilience in the face of environmental changes, including the capacity to adapt to climate change.
Mortality and Morbidity
Morbidity and mortality dramatically shape a household’s ability to adapt its livelihood strategies to a changing climate. For example, in areas of high HIV prevalence, such as sub-Saharan Africa, adult mortality seriously undermines livelihood options. In the face of such loss, the household’s reliance on local natural resources intensifies. If environmental change reduces the amount of available resources, the household has fewer options for energy and sustenance.
Morbidity also affects adaptive capacity, and morbidity itself can be shaped by environmental change. For example, environmental scarcity can increase poverty, which can lead to an increase in risky transactional sex, further fueling the HIV pandemic. Malnutrition resulting from drought and environmental shocks can suppress the immune systems of HIV-positive people, making them more vulnerable to illness and less able to adapt to other external changes.
Fertility and Family Planning
Healthier households are more resilient households, so increasing access to health services, including reproductive health services, is essential for building adaptive capacity. High fertility poses challenges to a family’s livelihood and has negative health effects on women and children. Providing reproductive health services is an effective way to improve the capacity of these vulnerable groups to adapt to climate change. For example, a recent study argues that lowering fertility rates in the Himalayan region could increase community resilience to the predicted fluctuations in water quantity.
However, there is a high level of unmet demand for contraception across the globe. How can community adaptation programs help meet this need? Importantly, research from the Philippines suggests that integrating population, health, and environment programs in a package approach to community development is more effective than single-sector interventions. Including family planning and reproductive health services in community-based climate adaptation programs could not only more effectively meet the community’s needs, but could also improve its adaptive capacity better than health or climate programs alone.
Migration
Another population process, migration, can both impact health and affect the capacity for adaptation. For example, internal migration in the Brazilian Amazon appears associated with the spread of malaria, which negatively impacts the adaptive capacity of households. To mitigate climate change’s health impacts, states should more effectively plan settlements and health systems, including health impact assessments for infrastructure and development projects. (Editor’s Note – northern Nigeria and Niger present another example of similar climate-related migratory patterns that significantly impact health and economic resilience.)
In summary, the scientific evidence is clear that population dynamics — such as mortality, fertility, and migration — and environmental trends are linked. Projects intended to improve a community’s ability to adapt to a changing climate should consider and address these linkages in their design and implementation.
Sources: Foundation for Environmental Conservation, UNFPA, USAID.
Photo Credit: “Toureg family in Niger,” courtesy of flickr user ILRI. -
Emily Gertz, Momentum Magazine
U of M’s ‘Momentum’ on Water Scarcity, Population, and Climate Change
›December 20, 2010 // By Wilson Center StaffExcerpted from the original article, “Water Tight,” by Emily Gertz in the University of Minnesota’s Momentum magazine.
The next time you stop off at a pub for a quick bite, think about this: It took around 630 gallons of water to make your burger. Your pint of beer used around 20 gallons. Manufacturing your blue jeans and t-shirt drank up about 1,218 gallons of water: 505 and 713 gallons, respectively.
Total: nearly 1,900 gallons of water – and that’s without fries on the side.
These quantities are the “water footprint” of each product: the total amount of freshwater used in its manufacture, including producing the ingredients.
For many products, that footprint is Paul Bunyan–sized: With water seemingly cheap and plentiful, there has been little incentive to try to keep it small.
But today, that’s changing. Even though much of the water we use for growing food and making products is replenished by natural hydrological cycles, freshwater will be less reliable and available in the coming century. Population growth is increasing both demand for water and pollution of potable supplies. At the same time, climate change is disrupting historical precipitation patterns, shrinking freshwater sources such as glaciers and snowpack, and creating unprecedented droughts and floods.
According to an analysis published in Nature in September 2010, the freshwater supplies of most of the world’s population are at high risk.
“If you look at the global distribution of people and the global distribution of threat levels to human water security, the places with the highly threatened water security represent about 80 percent of the world population, over four billion people,” says study co-author Peter McIntyre, assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin’s Center for Limnology.
In the United States, a 2010 analysis by the consulting firm Tetra Tech for the Natural Resources Defense Council found that more than 1,100 counties – fully two-thirds of all counties in the lower 48 states – will contend with higher water risk by 2050 due to climate change alone. Fourteen states can expect extremely serious problems with freshwater supply, including Florida, Mississippi, New Mexico, and California.
It’s not surprising, then, that businesses are increasingly considering their corporate water footprint. They encounter water risk – and opportunities to reduce it – at many stages of their operations, from growing crops to running retail stores. Factoring such risks into their present and future planning is helping companies present themselves as good environmental stewards to the public, and potentially reduce risks to their earnings from water scarcity.
“It’s often said that water is going to be the oil of the 21st century, in the sense of becoming an ever-more scarce commodity,” McIntyre says. “In the grand scheme of things, you can live without oil, but you can’t live without water. Water is fundamental for all life. And that’s certainly true for business as well.”
Continue reading on Momentum.
Sources: Natural Resources Defense Council, Nature.
Photo Credit: Adapted from “Lake Hume at 4%,” courtesy of flickr user suburbanbloke. -
Too Few or Too Many? Joel E. Cohen on How Education Can Address Both
›December 17, 2010 // By Wilson Center Staff“So which is it: Is it too many people or is it too few people?” asks Joel E. Cohen of the Rockefeller University in this interview with ECSP. “The truth is, both are real problems, and the fortunate thing is that we have enough information to do much better in addressing both of those problems than we are doing – we may not have silver bullets, but we’re not using the knowledge we have.”
Cohen has studied the population-resources equation, trying to determine how best to support global demographics in a sustainable, equitable way. He points to the cross-cutting power of education to both curb rapid population growth in the developing world and ease the cost of aging populations in the developed.
“On continuing rapid population growth, we know that more education is associated with reductions in fertility,” said Cohen. And when combined with voluntary family planning, it’s also cheap “compared to the costs of having children that are not well cared for – the opportunity costs,” he said.
On aging, “we know that people who are educated well in their youth – both at primary, secondary, and especially tertiary levels – have better health in old age,” said Cohen. “So the costs of an aging population are diminished when people are educated. They take better care of themselves and they have options – they can use their minds as their bodies mature.”
Education is a long-term solution, but shorter-term policy options, like France’s bump of the retirement age to 62 that prompted rioting this fall, will also be necessary. “Sixty-two is only a way station,” Cohen said. “The retirement age has to move up, because people are living longer, they’re more productive, they’re in better health, and they’re going to have to keep working to take care of themselves.” -
Demographic Security Comes to the Hill
›December 16, 2010 // By Hannah Marqusee“We are now in an unprecedented era of demographic divergence,” said Population Action International’s Elizabeth Leahy Madsen at a September briefing held by Congressman John Tierney’s Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs and Congressman Russ Carnahan’s Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights and Oversight.
Eighty percent of the world’s conflicts occur in places where 60 percent or more of the population is under 30, and 90 percent of countries with young populations have weak governments, said Chairman Tierney in his opening remarks. He said that while such demographic trends “appear to be issues for the future…it is important that we start this dialogue today, so that we can make steps to address [them].” ECSP Director Geoff Dabelko and the Stimson Center’s Richard Cincotta joined Madsen on the panel titled, “The Effects of Demographic Change on Global Security,” at the Capitol Visitor Center.
Youth Bulges and National SecurityThe countries of greatest security threat to the United States are also those with the youngest age structures and rapidly increasing populations, said Madsen. By next year, the world’s population will have reached seven billion, with 95 percent of that growth occurring in the developing world.
Large youthful populations can be a source of national strength because they provide innovation and manpower, said Dabelko, but without significant investment they may also contribute to state instability. When there are often few opportunities to obtain a job or an education for young people, there are low “opportunity costs” to joining a rebel group, said Madsen.
State instability can be affected by youth bulges, shifting religious or ethnic compositions, or food and water insecurity, but age-structural transitions are the strongest indicator of state performance, said Cincotta. Despite conventional wisdom, there is actually little evidence to link state failure with premature adult mortality due to AIDS or a high male-to-female ratio, he added.
It is not only developing countries with high fertility rates that face demographic difficulties, Cincotta noted. Countries such as Japan and Germany will soon have reached a “post-mature” age structure in which their aging populations and comparatively small workforces will tax state institutions and threaten economic stability.
Population Policies: Using “Soft Tools” to Improve National Security
Recently, leaders in the U.S. government have been paying increased attention to the linkages between demography and security through the “three Ds:” diplomacy, development, and defense. In 2008, the National Intelligence Council’s Global Trends 2025 included demographic assessments to analyze security trends, and this year, the National Security Strategy featured demographic trends along with the environment and other non-traditional areas.
Dabelko said that while this growing recognition signals progress, the “hard tools” of the traditional security community must be bolstered with “soft tools” commonly used by the international aid community, such as female empowerment, education, health services and youth employment.
Madsen argued that empowering the 215 million women with an unmet need for family planning worldwide through increased funding for voluntary family planning programs is a cost-effective way to shape population trends and ultimately reduce security threats.
“Demography is not destiny,” said Madsen. “Family planning has been an unsung signature of U.S. foreign assistance for decades.”
Similarly, Cincotta said that policies should help states transition out of youth bulges, and help countries with aging populations reform social institutions to protect older people.
Dabelko added that while progress has been made in acknowledging the linked nature of population trends and national security, there is significant room for improvement. Pointing to the successes of integrated population, health, and environment (PHE) programs, which provide environmental conservation and family planning services simultaneously, he called for similar programs to address population dynamics and conflict prevention. Long-term solutions call for coordinated resources and integrated strategies, he said.
Read the speakers’ full remarks: Chairman John F. Tierney, Richard Cincotta, Geoff Dabelko, and Elizabeth Leahy Madson (slides).
Sources: Guttmacher Institute, Population Action International, National Intelligence Council.
Image Credits: “World Age Structure 2005” and “Risk of Civil Conflict by Age Structure Type, 1970-2007,” courtesy of Population Action International. -
Judith Bruce on Empowering Adolescent Girls in Post-Earthquake Haiti
›“The most striking thing about post-conflict and post-disaster environments is that what lurks there is also this extraordinary opportunity,” said Judith Bruce, a senior associate and policy analyst with the Population Council’s Poverty, Gender, and Youth program. Bruce has spent time this year working with the Haiti Adolescent Girls Network (HAGN), a coalition of humanitarian groups conducting workshops focused on the educational, health, and security needs of the country’s vulnerable female youth population.
Gender-based violence has long been an issue in Haiti, but the problem became even more pronounced in the wake of the January earthquake. HAGN has sought to address the problem by concentrating its community-based programming on “high priority” groups, including girls who are disabled, serve as de facto heads of households, or are aged 10-14.
Bruce asserted that protecting and empowering young girls is critical because upon reaching puberty, “their access to a safe world shrinks dramatically.” With the post-disaster environment adding another layer of challenge, she said “there could be no ambiguity in anyone’s mind that we have to create dedicated spaces for girls who, at least for a few hours a week, feel secure to be themselves and to plan for their long-term safety as well as their development.”
The “Pop Audio” series is also available as podcasts on iTunes. -
Rebuilding Stronger, Safer, Environmentally Sustainable Communities After Disasters
The GRRT Toolkit for Humanitarian Aid
›Natural disasters present an immediate humanitarian crisis but are also an opportunity to rebuild societies to be more resilient and environmentally sustainable than they were before. The “Green Recovery and Reconstruction Training Toolkit” (GRRT), created by World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the American Red Cross and launched at the Wilson Center on November 19, will help future humanitarian efforts integrate principles of environmental conservation into their disaster recovery strategies. This strategic partnership has been “an incredible effort and marriage between organizations that have different operating styles, different approaches to situations,” said WWF Chief Operating Officer Marcia Marsh. While implementing the GRRT may not be easy, “we need integrated solutions for integrated problems,” said Erika Clesceri, bureau environmental officer at USAID.
A Critical Partnership
In the midst of a crisis, humanitarian workers on the ground often do not have the time, skills, or funding to incorporate environmental concerns into relief efforts, said Robert Laprade, senior director for emergencies and humanitarian assistance at CARE. Humanitarian workers are “going a hundred miles an hour, they’re going on adrenaline and they’re there to save people’s lives – and the environment is just of secondary importance,” he said.
But “environmental sustainability is critical to the achievement of long-lasting recovery results,” said Roger Lowe, senior vice president of communications at American Red Cross. The Red Cross Principles of Conduct state that “relief aid must strive to reduce future vulnerabilities to disaster as well as meeting basic needs” and “avoid long-term beneficiary dependence upon external aid,” he said.
From Damnation, Purgatory, and Armageddon to Redemption
For many crisis-stricken regions, lack of an emphasis on environmental sustainability during disaster recovery efforts can mean “damnation in the present, purgatory in the near future, and Armageddon in the long term,” said Peter Walker, director of the Feinstein International Center at Tufts University. Stress on the environment caused by climate change or unsustainable resource consumption can often contribute to conflict, he explained.
In Darfur, “the environmental change was part and parcel of what led to that conflict,” Walker said. At one time an “environmental Eden” of diverse ecological zones, Darfur gradually became an environment that could not support a society of livestock herding. As the environment changed, some former herders became salaried, armed gunmen, known as the Janjaweed who felt they faced “a choice of no choice,” Walker said, to either “die as pastoralists or become pariahs as mercenaries.”
The challenge for humanitarian aid organizations is to not only help communities recover from disasters, but help them adapt to future environmental stress caused by globalization, climate change, or other factors. “If you cannot adapt,” Walker said, “that’s going to lead to violence.” To avoid aid dependency or resurgence in conflict it is critical to integrate environmental sustainability into disaster relief efforts from the beginning, he said:We used to believe that our world in the aid business was divided between relief on the left and long-term development on the right, and one would gradually go into the other in this relief-development continuum. But the reality is that you have a significant population – a population of millions of people – who are effectively trapped in a form of aid purgatory. They’re basically on a drip feed. Humanitarian assistance does not get you forward, it keeps you alive.
The GRRT offers organizations guidelines for implementing integrated disaster relief to provide a sustainable solution. While every crisis is different, the GRRT’s guidelines should be as applicable to “flooding in Boston as they are to flooding in Aceh,” said Walker.
Implementing Integrated Solutions
Securing funding for this integrated approach will be a challenge, as a significant portion will go towards staffing and training people on the ground, said Clesceri. A stand-alone, dedicated budget for environmental issues within humanitarian assistance programs must “be fought and re-fought for on a continual basis,” she said.
Local partnerships are essential. “Replicate” should be “stricken from the lexicon,” said Marsh. “You can’t replicate, and this toolkit isn’t meant to be a one-size-fits-all.” Instead, she said, the goal of the GRRT is to “create very practical approaches with communities.”
The key to helping communities recover from disasters is to form the kinds of strategic partnerships demonstrated by WWF and the American Red Cross in the creation of the GRRT. “Interdisciplinary groups are always, in my mind, going to get you a better solution in the end, but the risk is that they take more time…but it’s absolutely worth it,” she said.
Photo Credit: “Dark Clouds from Haiti’s Hurricane Tomas Loom over Camps,” courtesy of flickr user United Nations Photo.
A Publication of the Stimson Center.
