In China’s campaign to get its population of 1.4 billion vaccinated against COVID-19, the magic number is 77.6 percent. Government agencies all over the country, from Inner Mongolia to Jiangsu, uniformly pledge to get this exact percentage of their populations vaccinated. A rural township in Harbin boasts that it’s fully vaccinated 11,025 of its population of 14,198, 0.05 percentage point above the sacred target of 77.6 percent. So, just what is the significance of 77.6?

“This COVID-19 pandemic has reminded us, albeit in a devastating way, of the interconnected nature of things, most particularly between economies, the environment, human and wildlife health and welfare,” said John Scanlon AO, the former Secretary-General of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) and Chair of the Global Initiative to End Wildlife Crime, at a recent Wilson Center event on wildlife crime’s connection to human health and security. Despite its serious implications for a broad swath of issue areas, wildlife crime and trafficking remain under-studied and under-regulated. At the event, experts from diverse fields in defense, global health, and conservation highlighted the need for international cooperation to mitigate wildlife crime’s impact on environmental degradation, the spread of zoonotic disease, and transnational security threats. 

Globally, the demographic transition from high to low fertility and mortality has improved quality of life for billions of people over the past several decades. The average number of children born per woman worldwide decreased from nearly 5 in 1950 to 2.47 by 2020. Improvements in infant and child mortality boosted life expectancy at birth from a global average of 47 years in 1950 to over 72 years today. These gains in fertility and mortality were a result of rising incomes and significant investments and improvements in public health, education, and family planning access—18 months into a global pandemic, it’s becoming increasingly apparent that COVID-19 has disrupted these gains, slowing progress along the demographic transition for those countries in the earliest stages. This World Population Day is therefore an important opportunity to recommit to investments in health and education and resume our progress in improving lives for the world’s poorest and most vulnerable.

In our top post for June, Steve Gale shares 5 consequences out of the National Intelligence Council’s recently released Global Trends report that development actors should be particularly attuned to. In addition to the “long tail” of the COVID-19 pandemic, the report recognizes the environmental consequences of climate change, including unprecedented numbers of wildfires, increased intensity of tropical storms, and sea-level rise. As a result, migration will be more pronounced and require more targeted aid approaches as demographics shift.

Whether marginalized populations, such as adolescents, LGBTQ+ people, migrant workers, and sex workers are included in health services can be a “litmus test” of our progress towards universal health coverage (UHC), said Sivananthi Thanenthiran, Executive Director of Asian-Pacific Resource and Research Centre for Women (ARROW). Thanenthiran spoke at a recent Wilson Center event with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the World Health Organization (WHO) Department of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Research about the importance of engaging stakeholders in sexual and reproductive health (SRH) to achieve UHC for all. In SRH services, the most marginalized and most vulnerable populations are often left out, she said. When engaging stakeholders, representatives from these groups must be included to ensure equity in healthcare services.

“Spoiler alert: COVID made it even worse,” said Natascha Braumann, Director of Global Government and Public Affairs for Fertility at EMD Serono, of declining fertility trends across the globe. Braumann spoke at a recent Wilson Center event highlighting pre-pandemic fertility, demographic trends, and the impact of COVID-19. The panel was co-sponsored by EMD Serono, the healthcare business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany.

Pride month 2021 is underway, with parades, celebrations, and advocacy movements all over the world. Given the month’s celebratory nature—along with the increasing acceptance of and recent victories for LGBTQ+ * (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning, and others) communities in some countries—it might be easy to assume that most lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals are “out.” However, according to a study by the Yale School of Public Health, this is far from the case. The vast majority of lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals remain in the closet, concealing their sexual orientation from “all or most” people in their lives.