Meeting with world economic ministers in Washington, DC, this past weekend, International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said that IMF and World Bank officials “now need to devote 100 percent of our time” to ensuring political and democratic stability in the countries hit hardest by the global spike in food prices. He added that development gains made in the last five or ten years are in danger of being “totally destroyed.” Recent unrest in a number of developing countries—including Haiti, where the president was ousted last week, partially due to anger over food prices—underlines the urgency of this crisis.

Asian countries like the Philippines and Vietnam, which have spent the last decade working to strengthen their economies, may see their significant gains erased under this new economic strain. And they may be among the relatively lucky countries, with government ministries in place to provide subsidies and shield their populations from the worst effects of sky-high prices. In contrast, many sub-Saharan African countries have no safety net beyond reliance on international organizations like the World Food Program.

In many developing countries, where families typically spend between half and three-quarters of their total budget on food, World Bank President Robert Zoellick says that there “is no margin for survival.” Citizens in developing nations may abide corrupt governments while they are at least marginally able to feed their families, but when even that becomes impossible, “normally passive citizens can very quickly become militants with nothing to lose,” reports Time magazine. “What Haiti’s riots show,” argued an op-ed in the Jamaica Gleaner, “is that there cannot be a secure democracy without food security.”

Integrated population-health-environment (PHE) development programs can often produce greater improvements—at lower total cost—than multiple programs that each target only one sector. ECSP Director Geoff Dabelko recently interviewed Lori Hunter, an associate professor of sociology and environmental studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder, about her work evaluating integrated PHE programs with colleague John Pielemeier. In the following ECSP podcast, Hunter discusses the challenges associated with encouraging men’s involvement in family planning, implementing integrated development projects on the ground, and designing projects that are sensitive to local residents’ livelihoods and other priority needs.

A report by Filipino TV journalist Melclaire R. Sy-Delfin—recent Global Media Award winner and subject of an ECSP podcast—warns that a water crisis could threaten the 88 million residents of the Philippines as early as 2010. According to Delfin, 27 percent of Filipinos still lack access to drinking water, despite successful government programs to increase supply.

Henrik Urdal, a senior researcher at the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO), spent several weeks at the Woodrow Wilson Center this autumn as a visiting fellow. At PRIO, Urdal researches the relationships between demography and armed conflict, focusing particularly on population pressure on natural resources. ECSP Director Geoff Dabelko sat down with Urdal to discuss his current research interests, including the implications of a rapidly urbanizing global populace, sub-national demographic trends in India, and the extraordinary Iranian fertility decline.

More evidence against treating natural resource management as a luxury item in post-conflict settings comes from the November edition of the New Agriculturalist. Seven short pieces on agriculture after conflict highlight the necessity of utilizing agriculture as part of a post-conflict recovery strategy.

They say that a good man is hard to find. But in some countries, the opposite is true: a good woman is hard to find—because it’s hard to find women at all. According to a recent article by the BBC, the Chinese city of Lianyungang has eight men for every five women. Ninety-nine cities in China have gender ratios as high as 125 (125 men for every 100 women, or a 5:4 ratio).

But China is not alone. India has a gender ratio of 113, and the ratio in Asia as a whole is 104.4. In the United States, by contrast, the rate is 97, meaning that there are more women than men.

Gender imbalances are caused by cultural and economic preferences for male children, which contribute to sex-selective abortion and female infanticide. Over 60 million girls are “missing” in Asia as a result of these practices.

Furthermore, some government policies may intensify these gender preferences. China’s one-child policy, for example, may cause concern among parents, particularly in rural areas, that having a female child endangers their family’s future. Government policies intended to combat skewed gender ratios, such as bans on prenatal ultrasounds for the purpose of determining the baby’s sex and bans on sex-selective abortion, have proven ineffective.

Unbalanced gender ratios have consequences that reach beyond just the mothers and children involved. According to Valerie Hudson, high gender ratios leave many men without prospects for marriage, which may mean these men have fewer incentives to contribute peacefully to society. The men with the slimmest prospects for marriage are likely to be unemployed, poor, and uneducated, so they are already at increased risk for violent behavior. Hudson cites statistical evidence showing links between high gender ratios and higher rates of violent crime, drug use, trafficking, and prostitution.

Hudson and co-author Andrea den Boer cover these links in greater detail in their book Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia’s Surplus Male Population. In the 11th issue of the Environmental Change and Security Report, Richard Cincotta takes issue with some of the statistical methods that Hudson and den Boer use. He argues that what is important is not nationwide gender ratios, but the number of “marriage-age men” (25-29 years old) and “marriage-age women” (20-24).

While there may be some debate over whether the relationship between gender ratios and violent behavior is a causal one, there is little doubt about what causes the gender imbalances in the first place. An end to preferences for female children will be beneficial not only to girls and women, but to societies as a whole.

Photo Credit: A subway in China, courtesy of flickr user 俊玮 戴.

Flooding causes massive damage each year in South Asia, but this destruction will not be diminished without more comprehensive disaster preparedness, says a new report by Oxfam International entitled Sink or Swim: Why Disaster Risk Reduction is central to surviving floods in South Asia. The report comes halfway through a monsoon season that has already harmed the livelihoods of 20 million people in Bangladesh, Nepal, and India, crumbling homes and schools, sweeping away crops, and crippling the region’s already-weak infrastructure.

Current flood control efforts are often ineffective and can even exacerbate the problem, says the report. For instance, poorly designed and broken culverts and embankments often flood roads and downstream areas. One embankment in Bihar, India caused a flood-prone area to expand from 2.5 to 6.9 million hectares over the course of fifty years.

In the report, Oxfam recommends that governments implement local emergency plans; avoid building additional dams and embankments; equip communities with preparedness capacities such as early warning systems and first-aid skills; provide community assets such as flood shelters, raised homesteads, and motorized boats; and mainstream disaster preparedness into government policy. Furthermore, the report urges donors to increase funding for disaster risk reduction, which is a strong long-term investment.

Governments and NGOs should also note that lower-income groups and women are more vulnerable to disasters—and tailor their programs accordingly. Poorly built houses are easily destroyed, the landless have reduced access to post-flood aid, and women struggle with malnutrition and disease in displacement camps. Reducing disaster risk—especially for the most vulnerable members of the population—is an important step in raising the standard of living in South Asian countries afflicted by flooding.