Showing posts from category video.
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Neil Adger: Embrace Community Identities To Improve Climate Adaptation
›April 16, 2012 // By Stuart Kent“On an individual basis, people care about things in their back garden and they also care about global icons of climate change…cultural heritage and natural heritage are two really important things that tie people to place and where the impacts of climate change are really going to be felt,” said Neil Adger, professor of environmental economics at the University of East Anglia and the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research.
Speaking at the Wilson Center, Adger explained that if policymakers don’t think seriously about the cultural dimensions of climate change adaptation they risk implementing measures that significantly, and negatively, impact people’s sense of community and identity.
“For more than a decade we have been looking at the economic costs, and the infrastructure, and the things that policymakers really focus on whenever they think about the impacts of climate change,” said Adger. In doing so “we realized that that doesn’t necessary motivate people in terms of what they believe the impacts of climate change are.”
Drawing from work on adaption in Australian agriculture, Adger explained that culture can be a barrier to effective adaptation where governments and policymakers fail to engage communities on a cultural basis.
More detailed information is needed to identify what people care about, how people construct perceptions of climate risk, and the best ways to engage people locally.
This is not easy, however. “I think the difficulty of looking at the cultural impacts of climate change is that they are very place specific,” Adger said.
But there is a significant payoff from the investment. “The cultural embedded-ness of our relationship with climate is also potentially a huge motivation for action and for change,” he said. This motivation can extend beyond adaptation to actually encourage people to decarbonize the economy, to mitigate the potential for negative climate change impacts in the first place, and to act as “citizens rather than as consumers.” -
Invest in Women’s Health to Improve Sub-Saharan African Food Security, Says PRB
›“Future food needs depend on our investments in women and girls, and particularly their reproductive health,” says the Population Reference Bureau’s Jason Bremner in a short video on population growth and food security (above). Understanding why, where, and how quickly populations are growing, and responding to that growth with integrated programming that addresses needs across development sectors, are crucial steps towards a food secure future, he says.
Reducing Food Insecurity by Meeting Unmet Needs
In sub-Saharan Africa, where nearly one-fourth of the population lives with some degree of food insecurity, persistently high fertility rates help drive population growth, according to the policy brief that accompanies Bremner’s video.
On average, women in the region have 5.1 children, more than twice the global average total fertility rate (TFR) of 2.5. The United Nation’s medium-variant projections (which Bremner notes are often used to predict future food need) show the region more than doubling in size by 2050, but that projection rests on the assumption that the average TFR will drop to three by mid-century.
As many as two-thirds of sub-Saharan African women want to space or limit their births, but do not use modern contraception. While the reasons for not using modern contraception are many, ranging from cultural to logistical, the lack of funding for family planning and reproductive health services remains a serious impediment to improving contraceptive prevalence and, in turn, lowering fertility rates.
“Current levels of funding for family planning and reproductive health from donors and African governments fail to meet current needs, much less the future needs,” writes Bremner.
Almost 40 percent of the region’s population is younger than 15 years old and has “yet to enter their reproductive years,” writes Bremner. “Consequently, the reproductive choices of today’s young people will greatly influence future population size and food needs in the region.”Fertility Assumptions and Population Projections in the Democratic Republic of Congo
Family Planning Is One Piece of an Integrated Puzzle
Increasing funding for family planning services would be a boon to the region, but Bremner cautions that viewing sub-Saharan Africa’s rapid population growth solely from a health perspective and in isolation from other development needs would be inherently limiting.
“Slowing population growth through voluntary family planning programs demands stronger support from a variety of development sectors, including finance, agriculture, water, and the environment,” Bremner writes. A multi-sector approach that addresses population, health, livelihood, and environment challenges could mitigate future food insecurity more effectively than single-track programming that addresses sub-Saharan Africa’s various development needs in isolation from one another.
Improving women’s role in agriculture, for example, could help minimize food insecurity on a regional scale, Bremner writes. Women make up, on average, half the agricultural labor force in sub-Saharan Africa, and yet it is more difficult for them to own arable land, obtain loans, and afford basic essentials like fertilizer that can help boost agricultural productivity. Furthermore, women’s traditional household responsibilities, like fetching water, often cut into the amount of time they are able to give to farming. With those limitations lifted, women could offer enormous capacity for meeting future food needs.
Given the complex and interconnected nature of the development challenges facing sub-Saharan Africa, integrated cross-sector programming, with an emphasis on meeting family planning needs, is essential to reducing total fertility rates while improving food security over the long-term, according to Bremner.
“Investments in women’s agriculture, education, and health are critical to improving food security in sub-Saharan Africa,” he writes.
“Improving access to family planning is a critical piece of fulfilling future food needs,” he adds, “and food security and nutrition advocates must add their voices to support investments in women and girls and voluntary family planning as essential complements to agriculture and food policy solutions.”
Sources: Population Reference Bureau.
Video Credit: Population Reference Bureau. -
Impressions of London’s Global Change Conference
›April 11, 2012 // By Wilson Center StaffThe ECSP delegation to the 2012 Planet Under Pressure conference in London kept a keen eye on discussions of population and demographic dynamics during plenary and breakout sessions. And while the European frame of these topics resembles a much more open discussion of population pressures, presentations repeatedly looked at a broad suite of development challenges, avoiding the urge to elevate one challenge over another.
Out of the hundreds of panels during the week, we counted four that explicitly addressed population (one was hidden in the “Climate Compatible Development” program).
We polled a few participants on their take-aways from the conference, including Bishnu Upretti of the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research (above). Upretti’s focus is on South Asia, where water and food insecurity, poverty, population, and political tensions – all of which fit under the conference’s broad “global change” heading – are major issues. He came away with an overall positive impression, particularly in the conference’s potential as input for the upcoming Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development.
But some were not so optimistic about the overall global picture. “It’s all been a bit of a failure really,” said Chris Rapley of University College London on environmental change (below). “Humanity has proved itself incapable either of believing it, or even…getting a grip on the impact that it’s having on the planet.”
Though upbeat about progress in the natural sciences, Rapley argued that without better defining and communicating the consequences, threats, and risks at play, other political and economic concerns will continue to trump the climate and environment concerns.
“We can talk…in very general terms, but to both people and politicians and business people – all three parts of society that have to work together…really coherently to solve this problem – that sort of rather vague ‘gosh it looks a bit gloomy down there but we can’t tell you precisely what’s going to happen’ doesn’t cut the ice,” he lamented.
A Bridge Too Far?
At a conference like this, where topics are wildly diverse and overwhelming, distilling an easy narrative is difficult. Planet Under Pressure was a dizzying collection of natural scientists, inventors, students, journalists, professors, social scientists, and more. Collecting a group like this can shed light on dynamic and innovative work, not to mention foster collaboration on a tangible scale. However, finding grand solutions to the sheer number of challenges, or pressures, placed on the planet isn’t easy.
Yes, the planet is under pressure and this means the international community needs to talk about sustainability, climate change, and overall development in order to ensure a healthy planet for future generations, but nuanced discussion of difficult topics like population dynamics and human health are still a periphery part of the conversation.
The Planet Under Pressure Declaration – the collaborative statement intended to reflect the key messages emerging from the conference – leaves a lot to be desired in this regard. Sarah Fisher, a research and communications officer at the Population and Sustainability Network, suggested text for the declaration that included mention of population dynamics, including growth, urbanization, aging, and migration, in its framing of sustainable development, as well as explicit reference to the importance of human health and wellbeing.
But the final draft of the declaration was largely devoid of these issues, instead focusing more narrowly on environmental degradation and straightforward natural resource management.
For those looking to bridge the gap between the social and natural sciences, then, the focus shifts to the upcoming Rio+20 summit. The specter of the Earth Summit was tangible throughout the conference. From panels to informal discussions, the message was clear: there’s a lot more to be done.
For full population-related coverage from the conference, see our “Planet 2012 tag”. You can also join the conversation on Twitter (#Planet2012). Pictures from the event are available on our Facebook and Flickr pages – enjoy a few below.
Photo and Video Credit: Sean Peoples/Wilson Center. -
Peacemakers or Exclusion Zones? Saleem Ali on Transboundary Peace Parks
›“Traditionally, natural resources have been thought of as a source of conflict…but what we’ve been trying to do is look at the other side of the story, which is that natural resources, in terms of their quality, can create that impulse for conservation and cooperation,” said Saleem Ali, professor of environmental studies and director of the Institute for Environmental Diplomacy and Security at the University of Vermont, while speaking at the Wilson Center.
This narrative around peace parks or transboundary conservation areas that are used for peacebuilding is a relatively recent field of research, said Ali. “It’s one thing to have a protected area on a border and have cooperation between friendly parties – like the U.S. and Canada,” he said, “and it’s a totally different thing to explore this in areas where there’s a history of protracted violent conflict.”
Yet, Ali said, we have “a good institutional framework for understanding what kind of parks could potentially be developed.” Cooperation between Ecuador and Peru in the Cordillera del Condor protected area, for example, is an incidence where transboundary conservation was actually written into the peace process between two warring states. Recent tragedies on the Siachen glaciers highlight another case where calls have been made to use peace parks as a way to demilitarize a contentious border over which India and Pakistan have long argued.
Questions remain though about the capacity of conservation processes to sustain peace, and “whether micro-conflicts that might arise through any conservation being practiced can be managed effectively.” Peace parks established in South Africa after apartheid, for example, produced “micro-conflicts between the haves and the have-nots – the classic conflict between conservation as an exclusionary arena versus a more inclusionary vision.”
“A lot of those organizations have learned from those past mistakes and we’re moving in the right direction,” Ali said, “but that’s still an area that requires far more research, and also more applied work, to find the right mix of conservation and economic development.” -
Taking Stock of Past and Current Demographic Trends
›March 29, 2012 // By Kayly OberECSP is at London’s 2012 Planet Under Pressure conference following all of the most pertinent population, health, and security events.
“Demography is a science of assumptions,” said Sarah Harper, a demographer at the University Oxford, during a panel at the Planet Under Pressure conference. Thirty years ago, she said, demographers believed the world would reach 24 billion by 2050, now the latest UN median projections predict 10 billion. That means a lot of progress has been made for families and development as a whole, but there are some obstacles yet.
Harper stressed that the development community should focus on parts of the world with stubbornly high fertility rates, particularly sub-Saharan Africa. If total fertility rates came down there by 2050, below the expected four children per woman, the region could be home to as many as a billion fewer people than current projections. The earlier we acknowledge this growth, the easier it will be to offer interventions like family planning and reproductive health to hedge it, she said.
Additionally, demographers need worry about important changes in modern population and environment dynamics.
As Harper notes in an interview with ECSP (video below):There has been so much hype around population growth that I think we’ve ignored the other characteristics of population…that it’s changing in its density – we’re all becoming more urban; it’s changing in its distribution – we’re becoming more mobile; and it’s also changing in its composition – the world is getting older.
Sir John Sulston of the Royal Society agreed: population is a more-nuanced subject than many can digest. “Population has been much too ignored because it’s difficult,” he said.
I think it’s very clear that these changes are going to interact with the environment and be affected by environmental change but are also going to impact upon future environmental change.
Sulston urged us to look not just at the diversity of the world, but also the inequity. Today, there is “inequity in countries, between countries, and between generations.”
There is no silver bullet – the international community need to look at three components in concert if we want to make a difference, he said: first, bring down infant mortality; second, invest in family planning; and third, emphasize education for women.“It’s not about surviving, it’s about flourishing,” Sulston said.
When the ECSP delegation isn’t attending plenary and breakout sessions here at the conference, we’re manning our Wilson Center information booth. And over the last few days, we’ve had the pleasure of introducing our work to a number of new faces, including curious faculty, energetic students, and hopeful doctoral candidates. If you’re attending please feel free to stop by.
Expect more updates from East London, including more short video interviews, in the next three days as ECSP highlights the unique perspectives coming out of the Planet Under Pressure conference.
Pictures from the event are available on our Facebook and Flickr pages, and you can join the conversation on Twitter (#Planet2012) or watch the livestream here.
Photo Credit: Sean Peoples/Woodrow Wilson Center, -
One Country, Two Stories: Marc Sommers on Rwandan Youth’s Struggle for Adulthood
›Almost an entire generation of Rwandans is confronting the prospect that they are going to be failed adults, said Marc Sommers, a fellow with Woodrow Wilson Center’s Africa Program and visiting researcher at Boston University’s African Studies Center.
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PBS ‘NewsHour’ and Pulitzer Center Examine Water Shortage and Health Issues in Ghana and Nigeria
›The PBS NewsHour continued its collaboration with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting on international reporting last week with an episode on water infrastructure in Ghana and Nigeria. The coverage is especially apropos on World Water Day.
Correspondent Steve Sapienza spoke to reporters in Ghana and Nigeria to highlight long-running access and sanitation issues in both countries caused by poor infrastructure that has not kept up with growth.
Ameto Akpe is a local reporter for Nigeria’s BusinessDay, where her stories “target the contradiction of a country with immense oil wealth and great water resources that are not reaching their citizens.” In the city of Makurdi, capital of the north-central Benue State, she reports on the hundreds of thousands of people who rely on either high-priced water delivery or untreated water drawn straight from the Benue River.
“The previous attempt to build a water treatment plant ended in scandal in 2008,” says Sapienza, “with an unfinished treatment facility and city officials unable to account for $6 million.”
“Unfortunately, the waterworks is only half of the solution to Makurdi’s water problem,” writes Akpe on the Pulitzer Center. “The other half is a system of pipes to deliver the water to the people – and that project is just a twinkle in the eye of a handful of contractors and bureaucrats.”
In Ghana, metro TV reporter Samuel Agyemang explains similar access and sanitation issues in the capitol of Accra and its suburb of Teshie, where some residents have waited decades for piped water, despite substantial foreign investments.
The Pulitzer Center’s Peter Sawyer explains in a companion piece that “the population of Accra has grown enormously in the past several decades. But the water supply system has not grown with it.” As a result, the Ghana Water Company is constantly playing catch-up to provide water to communities, many of whom do not understand how to demand accountability from their officials, says Agyemang.
According to UN estimates, Ghana’s population has increased by more than 10 million people since 1990. Nigeria is one of the fastest growing countries in the world, with 158 million people currently and the UN medium projection estimating a possible 389 million by mid-century.
Reporter Ameto Akpe will be speaking about Nigeria’s water and sanitation problems at an upcoming all-day event on Nigeria at the Wilson Center, scheduled for April 25.
Sources: PBS NewsHour, Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting, UN Population Division. -
Food Security in a Climate-Altered Future, Part Two: Population Projections Are Not Destiny
›March 20, 2012 // By Kathleen MogelgaardRead part one, on the food-population-climate vulnerability dynamics of Malawi and other “hotspots,” here.
Too often, discussions about future food security make only a passing reference to population growth. It is frequently framed as an inevitable force, a foregone conclusion – and a single future number is reported as gospel: nine billion people in 2050. But adhering to a single path of future population growth misses the opportunity to think more holistically about food security challenges and solutions. Several recent food security reports illustrate this oft-overlooked issue.
Accounting for Population a Challenge
Oxfam International’s Growing a Better Future: Food Justice in a Resource-Constrained World is a thorough and fascinating examination of failures in our current food system and future challenges related to production, equity, and resilience. It reports newly-commissioned research, carried out by modelers at the Institute of Development Studies, to assess future agricultural productivity and food prices given the anticipated impacts of climate change.
But both the modeling work and the report text utilize a single projection for population growth: the UN’s 2008 medium variant projection of 9.1 billion by 2050 (which has since been revised by the UN up to 9.3 billion). Early on, the report does recognize some degree of uncertainty about this number: “Greater investment in solutions that increase women’s empowerment and security – by improving access to education and health care in particular – will slow population growth and achieve stabilization at a lower level.” But such investments do not appear in the report’s overall recommendations or Oxfam’s food security agenda. This is perhaps a missed opportunity, since the range of possibilities for future population growth is wide: the UN’s low variant for 2050 is 8.1 billion, and the high variant is 10.6 billion.
Food Security, Farming, and Climate Change to 2050: Scenarios, Results, and Policy Options is another frequently-cited report published by the International Food Policy Research Institute in 2010. In recognizing that economic growth and demographic change have important implications for future food security, IFPRI researchers modeled multiple scenarios for the future: an “optimistic” scenario which embodies high GDP growth and low population growth, a “pessimistic” scenario with low GDP growth and high population growth, and a “baseline” scenario which incorporates moderate GDP growth and the UN’s medium population projection. Each of these scenarios was then combined with five different climate change scenarios to better understand a range of possible futures.
Using different socioeconomic scenarios enabled researchers to better understand the significance of socioeconomic variables for future food security outcomes. The first key message from the report is that “broad-based economic development is central to improvements in human well-being, including sustainable food security and resilience to climate change.” This focus on economic development is based in part on the “optimistic scenario,” which counts on high GDP and low population growth (translating to high rates of per capita GDP growth).
Unfortunately, the socioeconomic scenario construction for this analysis doesn’t allow for an independent assessment of the significance of slower population growth, since high population growth is paired only with low GDP and lower population growth is paired only with high GDP. Therefore, none of the report’s recommendations includes reference to reproductive health, women’s empowerment, or other interventions that would contribute directly to a slower population growth path.
Expanding the Conversation to Better Inform Policy
Without a more nuanced treatment of population projections in technical analysis and popular reporting on food security, decision-makers in the realm of food security may not be exposed to the idea that population growth, a factor so critical in many areas where food security is already a challenge, is a phenomenon that is responsive to policy and programmatic interventions – interventions that are based on human rights and connected to well-established and accepted development goals.
There are some positive signs that this conversation is evolving. A new climate change, food security, and population model developed by the Futures Group enables policymakers and program managers to quickly and easily assess the impact of slower population growth on a country’s future food requirements and rates of childhood malnutrition. In the case of Ethiopia, for example, the model demonstrates that by 2050, a slower population growth path would make up for the caloric shortfall that is likely to arise from the impact of climate change on agriculture and would cut in half the number of underweight children.
And recently, we’ve begun to see some of this more nuanced treatment of population, family planning, and food security linkages in a riveting, year-long reporting series (though perhaps unfortunately named), Food for 9 Billion, a collaboration between American Public Media’s Marketplace, Homelands Productions, the Center for Investigative Reporting, and PBS NewsHour.
In January, reporter Sam Eaton highlighted the success of integrated population-health-environment programs in the Philippines, such as those initiated by PATH Foundation Philippines, that are seeing great success in delivering community-based programs that promote food security through a combination of fisheries management and family planning service delivery. Reporting from the Philippines in an in-depth piece for PBS NewsHour, Eaton concluded:So maybe solving the world’s food problem isn’t just about solving the world’s food problem. It’s also about giving women the tools they want, so they can make the decisions they want – here in the world’s poorest places.
Making clear connections of this nature between population issues and the most pressing challenges of our day may be the missing link that will help to mobilize the political will and financial resources to finally fully meet women’s needs for family planning around the world – an effort that, if started today, can have ongoing benefits that will become only more significant over time. Integrating reproductive health services into food security programs and strategies is an important start.
Back in Malawi, just before we turned off the highway to the Lilongwe airport, I asked the taxi driver to pull over in front of a big billboard. We both smiled as we looked at the huge government-sponsored image of a woman embracing an infant. The billboard proclaimed: “No woman should die while giving life. Everyone has a role to play.” Exactly. The reproductive health services that save women’s lives are the same services that can slow population growth and bring food security within closer reach.
