Showing posts from category video.
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National Geographic’s Population Seven Billion
›The short feature above and accompanying cover article in the January 2011 issue launch National Geographic’s seven-part year-long series examining global population. The world is set to hit seven billion this year, according to current UN projections, and may reach nine billion by 2045.
The authors point out that today, 13 percent of people don’t have access to clean water globally and 38 percent lack adequate sanitation. Nearly one billion people have inadequate nutrition. Natural resources are strained. Is reducing population growth the key to addressing these problems?
Not according to Robert Kuznig, author of National Geographic’s lead article, who writes that “fixating on population numbers is not the best way to confront the future…the problem that needs solving is poverty and lack of infrastructure, not overpopulation.”
“The most aggressive population control program imaginable will not save Bangladesh from sea-level rise, Rwanda from another genocide, or all of us from our enormous environmental problems,” writes Kuznig. Speaking on NPR’s Talk of the Nation last week, he reiterated this message, saying global problems “have to be tackled whether we’re eight billion people on Earth, or seven, or nine, and the scale for them is large in any case.”
Instead, the challenge is simultaneously addressing poverty, health, and education while reducing our environmental impact, says Kuznig.
“You don’t have to impose prescriptive policies for population growth, but basically if you can help people develop a nice, comfortable lifestyle and give them the access to medical care and so on, they can do it themselves,” said Richard Harris, a science correspondent for NPR, speaking with Kuznig on Talk of the Nation.
Kuznig’s article highlights the Indian state of Kerala, where thanks to state investments in health and education, 90 percent of women in the state can read (the highest rate in India) and the fertility rate has dropped to 1.7 births per woman. One reason for this is that educated girls have children later and are more open to and aware of contraceptive options.
Whither Family Planning?
In a post on Kuznig’s piece, Andrew Revkin, of The New York Times’ Dot Earth blog, points to The New Security Beat’s recent interview with Joel E. Cohen about the crucial role of education in reducing the impact of population growth. Cohen asks: “Is it too many people or is it too few people? 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.”
Although the National Geographic article and video emphasize the connections between poverty reduction, health, education, and population growth, both give short shrift to family planning. It’s true that fertility is shrinking in many places, and global average fertility will likely reach replacement levels by 2030, but parts of the world – like essentially all of sub-Saharan Africa for example – still have very high rates of fertility (over five) and a high unmet demand for family planning. Globally, it is estimated that 215 million women in developing countries want to avoid pregnancy but are not using effective contraception.
Development should help reduce these levels in time, but without continued funding for reproductive health services and family planning supplies, the declining trends that Kurznig cites, which are based on some potentially problematic assumptions, are unlikely to continue.
As Kuznig told NPR, “you need birth-control methods to be available, and you need the people to have the mindset that allows them to want to use them.”
At ECSP’s “Dialogue on Managing the Planet” session yesterday at the Wilson Center, National Geographic Executive Editor Dennis Dimick urged the audience to “stay tuned – you can’t comprehensively address an issue as global and as huge as this in one article, and within this series later in the year we will talk about [family planning] very specifically.” Needless to say, I look forward to seeing it, as addressing the unmet need for family planning is a crucial part of any comprehensive effort to reduce population growth and improve environmental, social, and health outcomes.
Sources: Center for Global Development, Dot Earth, NPR, Population Reference Bureau, World Bank.
Video Credit: “7 Billion, National Geographic Magazine,” courtesy of National Geographic. -
Watch: Cynthia Brady on Natural Resources, Climate Change, and Conflict at USAID
›“While we know that natural resources alone are neither necessary nor sufficient to drive conflict, we do know that competition over resources and their revenues often helps to drive conflict and to sustain it over time,” said Cynthia Brady, a senior conflict advisor at USAID’s Office of Conflict Management and Mitigation. “We also know that climate change impacts are going to interact with those dynamics, so we need to better understand how, in order to really program effectively against it in the future.”
Brady spoke to an audience of peacebuilding professionals at the 2010 Alliance for Peacebuliding Conference in Annapolis, Maryland, this fall. She noted that the issue of climate security is a relatively new one and when talking about the risks of climate-related conflict, it’s important to avoid hyperbole.
“The science of analyzing both the risks of climate impacts and the risks of conflict is pretty uncertain – they’re both still evolving,” Brady said. “There’s a very limited evidence base of real-world analysis from which we draw about this intersection.”
“I think it’s really important that we avoid over-simplification and we really focus, as peacebuilding and conflict practitioners, on the reality that conflict is such a complex phenomenon, and that opens a lot of opportunities for various points of intervention,” said Brady. -
Integrated Development in PHE: Updates From Ethiopia and the Philippines
›“All protected areas in Ethiopia are being threatened by population pressure,” said Negash Teklu, executive director of PHE Ethiopia at an event at the Wilson Center co-sponsored by ECSP and the Africa Program. The best way to address this pressure is by implementing integrated population, health, and environment (PHE) programs that combine natural resource management with family planning services, said Teklu. “Without the family planning component, they cannot solve the protected area problems,” he said.
Teklu was joined by Joan Regina Castro, executive vice president at PATH Foundation Philippines, Inc., and Annie Wallace, PHE technical advisor with the USAID Global Health Fellows Program, to compare PHE projects in Ethiopia and the Philippines and identify best practices. [Video Below]
The Population-Climate Connection
To address population growth in areas of high biodiversity, Teklu created PHE Ethiopia, a consortium to coordinate PHE projects in the country and increase awareness of the value added by integrating them.
“The population-climate connection is easily seen in Ethiopia,” said Teklu. The country’s deforestation, loss of biodiversity, poverty, high maternal and child mortality, and vulnerability to climate change are linked to the rapid growth of its population, which is currently 85 million. Building community resilience in this kind of environment is “critical,” he said.
Bridging Gaps: Gender, Youth, and Religion
Wallace, in her assessment of the Packard Foundations’ PHE projects in Ethiopia, found the projects bridged gender gaps. By integrating health and environmental education in PHE youth groups and in outreach by extension workers, the projects increased male involvement in health and family planning (a traditionally female activity) and increased women’s involvement in agriculture and environmental activities (traditionally male). This cross-gender success increased the total number of family planning users, said Wallace.
But for any of this work to succeed, “community ownership and participation are very critical and essential,” said Teklu. Both youth and religious leaders were primary stakeholders in this process. “Youth are the next leaders. By targeting youth you can get them to think about livelihoods and make these connections,” said Wallace.
PHE has proven to “transcend religion,” said Castro. Despite traditional opposition to abortion and family planning, support from Christian and Islamic leaders in Ethiopia and the Philippines was critical in determining a project’s success. “When religious leader buy-in comes in, the community really responds to that,” said Wallace.
In addition, religious leaders understand the population-environment connection. “Our livelihoods are affected when we have too many mouths to feed…family planning and reproductive health makes sense,” an Ethiopian religious leader told Wallace.
Securing Sustainable Support for Scaling Up
IPOPCORM, the PHE initiative in the Philippines, is now “the biggest [PHE] project, modesty aside, in the world,” said Castro, because it has succeeded in working at all levels of government. To scale up its work in the “priority areas” of high biodiversity and rapid population growth, where the “poorest of the poor” live, IPOPCORM first scaled up its advocacy work. To be sustainable, “you have to have a lot of PHE leaders and champions” at all levels, from village to national government, she said.
Ethiopia faces a significant challenge in securing sustainable support and funding from the national government and other sources. “While there is buy-in for the local approach, there isn’t funding,” Wallace said. “A lot of work is donor-driven, whether we like it or not,” she added. “There needs to be a more sustainable strategy” to ensure the survival of these projects, she said, which means garnering national and international support.
But it also means conducting research to provide empirical evidence of PHE’s added value, the speakers agreed. A new paper in the journal Environmental Conservation, coauthored by Castro, uses evidence from IPOPCORM’s projects to conclude that integrating family planning and coastal resource management offers benefits over single-sector approaches. But elsewhere, there is a “big need for monitoring and evaluation” to “strongly gather data to show our success on the ground,” said Teklu.
However, communities on the ground “don’t need the empirical evidence,” said Castro. “The community and the people say their lives are linked and so the solutions should be linked,” she said. “The life that they live speaks of integration.”
Photo Credit: “Safia Fungie Hasenna – Climate witness from Ethiopia” by Zeresenay Berhane Mehar courtesy of flickr user Oxfam International -
Watch: Annie Wallace on Connecting PHE Approaches With Climate and Poverty
›“It’s really important to link the integrated PHE approach with the policies and strategies of the country,” says Annie Wallace, who worked as a PHE technical advisor with USAID’s Global Health Fellows Program in Ethiopia. “Because if you don’t have political buy-in from the decision-makers and the leaders, then it’s going to be really difficult to justify the allocation of different funds for these projects to be expanded to other regions, or expanded in scale, or even to expand outside of the country.”
With Ethiopia in particular, Wallace stressed the importance of PHE practitioners connecting their integrated approach with how it will help address the country’s poverty alleviation and climate change adaptation strategies. “The prime minister is a leader in Africa talking about climate change,” Wallace said, “and we really need to talk about how an integrated approach can help with adaptation and reducing a community’s vulnerability to climate change.”
On the funders’ side, Wallace noted that as monitoring and evaluation becomes more important, donors also need to be able to support building capacity in organizations in order to meet the new requirements. During her work with The David and Lucile Packard Foundation (via USAID), Wallace helped set up the PHE Ethiopia Consortium to facilitate such capacity-building efforts. -
Research Findings and Programmatic Implications
Gender-Based Violence in the DRC
›In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), “armed conflict has resulted in mass displacement and widespread sexual violence; the problem is that it hasn’t always been quantified,” said Dr. Lynn Lawry, senior health stability and humanitarian assistance specialist at the U.S. Department of Defense. Presenting findings from the first cross-sectional, randomized cluster study on gender-based violence in the DRC, Lawry was joined at the Wilson Center by Heidi Lehmann, director of the Gender-based Violence Unit at the International Rescue Committee, and Dr. Nancy Glass, associate professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing and associate director at the Johns Hopkins Center for Global Health. “We found that sexual violence in these areas is conflict-related, prevalent, systematic, and widespread,” said Lawry. [Video Below]
Study Finds “Female Perpetrators”
The first of its kind in the region, the population-based, quantitative study covers three districts in the DRC and a total of 5.2 million adults. It comprehensively assesses gender-based violence, including its prevalence, circumstances, perpetrators, and physical and mental health impacts.
Overall, the study found that 2.1 million women and 1.3 million men in the region had suffered sexual violence. Nearly three-quarters of all sexual violence reported was a direct result of conflict. In the study region, 20 percent of the population fought in conflicts, and 48 percent of these combatants were female.
Further, 39 percent of female survivors and 15 percent of male survivors reported female perpetrators. “These findings challenge the paradigm of male perpetrator and female victim,” said Lawry. “Policymakers and donors should adjust societal paradigms of sexual and gender-based violence and also direct attention to female perpetrators and male survivors.” Survivors of sexual violence in conflict, both male and female, are more at risk of later becoming perpetrators, particularly if unrecognized and untreated. To “break the cycle of violence,” prevention and response programs should address the needs of survivors and combatant perpetrators of both genders.
“Community-related violence is a general crime; conflict-related violence is a war crime,” Lawry said. While many efforts have focused on the Congolese military, she called for the DRC government and the International Criminal Court to also investigate and prosecute members of rebel groups, who were found to be the main perpetrators of sexual violence and other human rights abuses in this study.
Prevention: The Best Response
“Meeting the immediate consequences of violence is not enough,” said Lehmann. To effectively address gender-based violence, programs must provide medical and social services, promote social empowerment, respond to emergencies, and take part in advocacy and coordination efforts.
In the DRC, programs supported by the International Rescue Committee serve approximately 350 to 400 survivors per month, 75 percent of whom report that the perpetrators are members of armed groups.
Scaling up is a major challenge. “Providing essential services alone require enormous investment, and there is no common understanding of comprehensive programming,” said Lehmann. “We recognize that a program alone cannot solve all of these problems, especially in the DRC.”
“Good response is about prevention,” concluded Lehmann. She recommended supporting robust, long-term programming; integrating gender-based violence prevention efforts into other sectors; and investing in partnerships. “We are not going to end the violence unless Congolese women and girls are part of the conversation.”
Pigs for Peace: A Holistic Approach
Health care, economic development, and social programs should be integrated “to provide a holistic and comprehensive approach” to the problem of gender-based violence, said Glass. “Rape destabilizes families and communities,” she said.
Survivors rarely get immediate treatment for their injuries and trauma, or the risk of HIV, STIs, and infertility. “Many rural primary health centers and hospitals have been looted of medicines and materials by rebels and soldiers,” said Glass. Conflict in the DRC has also caused health care professionals to leave unstable rural areas, and poor roads and limited transportation make it unsafe and expensive to seek care.
To rebuild families and communities, “women and men need to regain their economic resources to provide for the future of their family and community,” said Glass. Pigs for Peace, for example, has supplied more than 100 women — many of them rape survivors — and their families with pigs to set them on the path to recovery through psychological, social, and economic empowerment. This program aims not only to supplement household income, but to reduce the stigma of rape as survivors become productive parts of their families and communities.
Photo Credit: “Congo kivu,” courtesy of flickr user andré thiel. -
New Insights Into the Population Growth Factor in Development
›“We have not found any country that has developed or gotten out of poverty while maintaining high birth rates,” said Martha Campbell, president of Venture Strategies for Health and Development. “Family planning is not a cost to a Ministry of Finance – it’s an investment,” said Malcolm Potts of the University of California Berkeley.
Campbell and Potts were joined by panelists Eliya Msiyaphazi Zulu, director and founder of the African Institute for Development Policy, and Jotham Musinguzi, director of the African Region at Partners in Population and Development, for a Wilson Center discussion of the implications of rapid population growth on human and economic development. [Video Below]
Africa’s Key Population Growth Challenges
“Africa’s population of one billion can reach between 1.8 and 2.3 billion by 2050, depending on how well the continent actually does in reducing fertility,” Zulu said. In 2010, Africa accounted for 15 percent of the total world population, but current estimates suggest this will grow to 23 percent by 2050.
“Rapid growth, young age structures, and urbanization are Africa’s main population challenges,” said Zulu. “Addressing these concerns is increasingly seen to be the key to the continent’s development prospects and realization of the Millennium Development Goals.” With 40 to 50 percent of populations in Africa under the age of 15, there is “high momentum for further population growth,” he said.
“Africa has a very high demand for fertility control, and the demand will undoubtedly increase,” said Zulu. “The main challenge, therefore, is not that of demand, but how to ensure those who are in need actually have access to contraception.” In many African regions, current rates of contraception use are as low as seven percent. In some areas, as many as 97 percent of women cannot afford the full cost of contraception, he said.
“It’s not just about reducing fertility,” said Zulu. Improving education and increasing labor force opportunities will not only help populations develop economically, but will also allow African countries to take full advantage of the demographic dividend, he said.
“The international development community should build on Africa’s success stories and support efforts to achieve universal access to family planning, expand public education on reproductive matters, improve the status of women, and improve the situation in urban settings,” Zulu concluded.
Family Planning and the MDGs
“Women are dying; children are dying. They shouldn’t be,” said Musinguzi. “By investing US$1 million in family planning, you can prevent 800 maternal deaths, 11,000 infant deaths, 14,000 deaths in children under five, and 360,000 unwanted pregnancies.”
“Women are clearly saying they have a need for family planning,” Musinguzi said. Presenting statistics from sub-Saharan Africa, he noted that 31 countries have a total fertility rate of more than five. Fourteen million unintended pregnancies occur each year, but only 25 percent of women use family planning. In Uganda, for example, the population has more than doubled in less than 20 years; women on average have more than six children each; and only 18 percent of married women use modern contraception.
“For a country trying to achieve the MDGs…the question of addressing total fertility rate is very important,” said Musinguzi. Reducing unmet need for family planning services can help African countries reduce the costs of achieving several of the Millennium Development Goals, including offering universal primary education; reducing child mortality; improving maternal health; combating HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases; and ensuring environmental sustainability.
Policy Implications
“This is an urgent message – waiting 10 years to get family planning back on the international agenda will be enormously costly,” Potts said. “Of all the medical interventions that exist, contraception is the single most powerful. It is the only one that can have an impact on maternal and infant mortality, on the autonomy of women, on economic progress, on social stability and the rate at which we destroy the environment,” he said.
“Education and family planning are the driving mechanisms of development – they’re synergistic,” said Potts. “One of our needs is to get economists, family planning, and development experts on the same page.”
Sources: Guttmacher Institute, Population Action International, Population Reference Bureau.
Photo Credit: Untitled, courtesy of flickr user stttijn. -
‘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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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.”
