The authors of an article in the most recent issue of Science report that population tends to grow, not decline, around protected areas. Population growth means increased donor funding for conservation programs, they say, but high population density can negatively impact the effectiveness of such programs.

The latest volume of the journal Population and Environment, featuring contributions from former ECSP speakers Lori Hunter, Roger-Mark De Souza, and Judy Oglethorpe, examines the links between the environment and HIV/AIDS in Africa, calling for greater attention to the connections between these seemingly disparate issues.

Population growth rates and conservation are closely and inextricably linked, says a new UN Population Fund fact sheet that argues that slowing growth rates worldwide through family planning programming is a vital, and currently underfunded, component of the fight against environmental degradation.

“Countries have historically been quick to rattle their sabers over water, but they have nevertheless been content to keep them sheathed,” write ECSP Director Geoff Dabelko and ECSP Program Assistant Karin Bencala in “Water Wars: Obscuring Opportunities,” published in the Spring/Summer 2008 issue of Columbia University’s Journal of International Affairs (PDF previews), which focuses on global water issues.

Mark Jenkins explores the July 2007 murders of the Virunga mountain gorillas in a piece in National Geographic. The piece is accompanied by a stunning photo slideshow by photographer Brent Stirton.

The Toronto Star takes a look at female feticide and infanticide in India, and how young women are now being trafficked from rural areas to serve as brides in areas where the gender gap is widest.

Climate change is responsible for an upswing in malaria in Kenya’s highlands, reports IPS News. “There is a clear correlation between climatic variations and malaria epidemics,” said Dr. Willis Akhwale, head of Kenya’s National Malaria Control Programme.

A New York Times article explores the causes of low birthrates in Europe—and particularly low ones in southern Europe.

The World Health Organization has released Safer water, better health, the first report to provide country-level estimates of the burden of disease caused by unsafe water and inadequate sanitation and hygiene.

“The geopolitics of the twenty-first century may well be the geopolitics of scarcity—of land, of food, of water, of energy,” write the authors of Environmental Change and the New Security Agenda: Implications for Canada’s security and environment, a new report from the International Institute for Sustainable Development. The report says current approaches to environmental issues are “short-sighted” and calls for international acknowledgement that the environment is not a “soft” security issue.

“Climate change is today one of the main drivers of forced displacement,” UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres told The Guardian in an interview. He warned that the number of people displaced is rising dramatically and will continue to do so, and that global funding has failed to keep pace with the growing challenge. He also noted that existing legal structures to manage refugee flows are out of touch with the increasing influence of climate change.

“The world’s poorest of the poor live in the toughest areas of the planet—the drylands,” says recent ECSP speaker Masego Madzwamuse in the BBC’s latest Green Room feature. She argues that “humanitarian and food relief follow the TV headlines,” and that only sustained and concerted efforts respecting indigenous experience and wisdom will be able to ease the plight of the world’s “dryland dwellers.”

The 2008 EPD WaterAid Madagascar team at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs presented its findings in WaterAid Madagascar: Valuating Economic and Social Impacts of Improved Water and Sanitation Services. The team found that “Madagascar’s development goals could be significantly advanced by adequate water and sanitation services” and encouraged increased public awareness of the links between access to safe water and sanitation services and economic development.

The Population Council has released a new working paper, “Fertility transitions in developing countries: Progress or stagnation?” While recent declines in fertility levels in developing countries have led many to assume that the trend will continue, the paper finds that fertility rates in many countries have in fact stalled, a trend that could have long-term security implications worldwide.

An alert from USAID’s Famine Early Warning Systems Network warns that despite generally good rains, “conflict, livestock disease, and high prices for cereals and other essential goods have minimized the extent to which pastoralists can benefit from these rains, undermining their recovery from drought and elevating their food insecurity, which is evidenced by alarming rates of child malnutrition in several areas.”

The UN Security Council held a special session on gender-based violence this week, and the New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof applauded the Council’s (belated) attention to the issue. ECSP recently sponsored an event on gender-based violence in conflict and post-conflict situations.

East Timor’s citizens are demanding that the government revoke an MOU signed with an Indonesian company that would grant the company 100,000 hectares of land to plant sugarcane.

New Day, New Way: U.S. Foreign Assistance for the 21st Century, a report from the Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network, was unveiled at a packed House Foreign Affairs Committee event this week.

The Economist continues to brush off those who worry that there are too many people consuming too many resources on Earth: “If global growth and development continue, worries about overpopulation may, in hindsight, seem a uniquely 20th century phenomenon.”

“Countries that stagnate are less able and sometimes less willing to help address transnational issues, many of which originate within their borders, including illegal migration; trafficking in narcotics, weapons, and persons; health threats such as HIV/AIDS and avian flu; and environmental concerns such as loss of biodiversity,” says USAID’s economic growth strategy.

“We know that the cruel indignities of life without clean water, adequate sanitation, sustainable livelihood, or democratic governance can deny us our basic freedoms as surely as any despotic regime,” says Condoleezza Rice, quoted in USAID’s report Expanding the Impact of Foreign Assistance Through Public-Private Alliances.

The Commission on HIV/AIDS and Governance in Africa, headed by Wilson Center collaborator K. Y. Amoako, presented its report Securing Our Future to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon earlier this week.

“Climate change is potentially the greatest challenge to global stability and security, and therefore to national security. Tackling its causes, mitigating its risks and preparing for and dealing with its consequences are critical to our future security, as well as protecting global prosperity and avoiding humanitarian disaster,” says the UK’s first National Security Strategy report.

A water-sharing deal will be essential to achieving Israeli-Palestinian peace, reports National Geographic magazine.

In the BBC’s Green Room, Gonzalo Oveido, a senior social policy adviser with IUCN, argues that the global food crisis will only be ameliorated if policymakers put greater emphasis on biodiversity and overall ecosystem health.

USAID has released The United States Commitment to the Millennium Development Goals, which outlines the U.S. government’s contribution toward meeting the eight goals by 2015. Fragile states face some of the steepest challenges to achieving the MDGs.

An article in Nature Conservancy magazine asks five conservation experts whether—and if so, how—conservation organizations should contribute to poverty alleviation.

The Effects of Climate Change on Agriculture, Land Resources, Water Resources, and Biodiversity in the United States, the long-awaited report from the U.S. Climate Change Science Program and the Subcommittee on Global Change Research, was released this week.

The Worldwatch Institute’s Robert Engelman discussed his recent book More: Population, Nature, and What Women Want on NPR’s Talk of the Nation.

Natural Security: Protected areas and hazard mitigation, a new report from WWF and Equilibrium, explores how protected areas might have prevented some of the worst impacts of recent floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, and tsunamis.

The Economist reviews Matthew Connelly’s new book, Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population, which Connelly discussed recently at the Wilson Center, and weighs in on Malthus, calling him a “false prophet.”

The Council on Foreign Relations has a new Daily Analysis that takes Malthusian worries of food and energy shortages more seriously.

In an article featuring recent ECSP speaker Brian O’Neill, Nature explores whether a smaller global population would help solve the challenge of climate change.