Showing posts from category population.
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‘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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The Role of Population Dynamics in Climate Adaptation
›December 21, 2010 // By Wilson Center StaffThis post is a synthesis of a panel discussion at the UNFPA Population Dynamics and Climate Change conference in Mexico City with Marcia Castro, of the Harvard School of Public Health; Heather D’Agnes, of USAID; and Lori Hunter, of the University of Colorado at Boulder.
It is well-known that environmental change — including climate change — has important impacts on human health. However, it is less well understood how health systems shape the responses of individuals and households to environmental change. Population dynamics — such as fertility, migration, and mortality and morbidity — influence community health and greatly affect community resilience in the face of environmental changes, including the capacity to adapt to climate change.
Mortality and Morbidity
Morbidity and mortality dramatically shape a household’s ability to adapt its livelihood strategies to a changing climate. For example, in areas of high HIV prevalence, such as sub-Saharan Africa, adult mortality seriously undermines livelihood options. In the face of such loss, the household’s reliance on local natural resources intensifies. If environmental change reduces the amount of available resources, the household has fewer options for energy and sustenance.
Morbidity also affects adaptive capacity, and morbidity itself can be shaped by environmental change. For example, environmental scarcity can increase poverty, which can lead to an increase in risky transactional sex, further fueling the HIV pandemic. Malnutrition resulting from drought and environmental shocks can suppress the immune systems of HIV-positive people, making them more vulnerable to illness and less able to adapt to other external changes.
Fertility and Family Planning
Healthier households are more resilient households, so increasing access to health services, including reproductive health services, is essential for building adaptive capacity. High fertility poses challenges to a family’s livelihood and has negative health effects on women and children. Providing reproductive health services is an effective way to improve the capacity of these vulnerable groups to adapt to climate change. For example, a recent study argues that lowering fertility rates in the Himalayan region could increase community resilience to the predicted fluctuations in water quantity.
However, there is a high level of unmet demand for contraception across the globe. How can community adaptation programs help meet this need? Importantly, research from the Philippines suggests that integrating population, health, and environment programs in a package approach to community development is more effective than single-sector interventions. Including family planning and reproductive health services in community-based climate adaptation programs could not only more effectively meet the community’s needs, but could also improve its adaptive capacity better than health or climate programs alone.
Migration
Another population process, migration, can both impact health and affect the capacity for adaptation. For example, internal migration in the Brazilian Amazon appears associated with the spread of malaria, which negatively impacts the adaptive capacity of households. To mitigate climate change’s health impacts, states should more effectively plan settlements and health systems, including health impact assessments for infrastructure and development projects. (Editor’s Note – northern Nigeria and Niger present another example of similar climate-related migratory patterns that significantly impact health and economic resilience.)
In summary, the scientific evidence is clear that population dynamics — such as mortality, fertility, and migration — and environmental trends are linked. Projects intended to improve a community’s ability to adapt to a changing climate should consider and address these linkages in their design and implementation.
Sources: Foundation for Environmental Conservation, UNFPA, USAID.
Photo Credit: “Toureg family in Niger,” courtesy of flickr user ILRI. -
Emily Gertz, Momentum Magazine
U of M’s ‘Momentum’ on Water Scarcity, Population, and Climate Change
›December 20, 2010 // By Wilson Center StaffExcerpted from the original article, “Water Tight,” by Emily Gertz in the University of Minnesota’s Momentum magazine.
The next time you stop off at a pub for a quick bite, think about this: It took around 630 gallons of water to make your burger. Your pint of beer used around 20 gallons. Manufacturing your blue jeans and t-shirt drank up about 1,218 gallons of water: 505 and 713 gallons, respectively.
Total: nearly 1,900 gallons of water – and that’s without fries on the side.
These quantities are the “water footprint” of each product: the total amount of freshwater used in its manufacture, including producing the ingredients.
For many products, that footprint is Paul Bunyan–sized: With water seemingly cheap and plentiful, there has been little incentive to try to keep it small.
But today, that’s changing. Even though much of the water we use for growing food and making products is replenished by natural hydrological cycles, freshwater will be less reliable and available in the coming century. Population growth is increasing both demand for water and pollution of potable supplies. At the same time, climate change is disrupting historical precipitation patterns, shrinking freshwater sources such as glaciers and snowpack, and creating unprecedented droughts and floods.
According to an analysis published in Nature in September 2010, the freshwater supplies of most of the world’s population are at high risk.
“If you look at the global distribution of people and the global distribution of threat levels to human water security, the places with the highly threatened water security represent about 80 percent of the world population, over four billion people,” says study co-author Peter McIntyre, assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin’s Center for Limnology.
In the United States, a 2010 analysis by the consulting firm Tetra Tech for the Natural Resources Defense Council found that more than 1,100 counties – fully two-thirds of all counties in the lower 48 states – will contend with higher water risk by 2050 due to climate change alone. Fourteen states can expect extremely serious problems with freshwater supply, including Florida, Mississippi, New Mexico, and California.
It’s not surprising, then, that businesses are increasingly considering their corporate water footprint. They encounter water risk – and opportunities to reduce it – at many stages of their operations, from growing crops to running retail stores. Factoring such risks into their present and future planning is helping companies present themselves as good environmental stewards to the public, and potentially reduce risks to their earnings from water scarcity.
“It’s often said that water is going to be the oil of the 21st century, in the sense of becoming an ever-more scarce commodity,” McIntyre says. “In the grand scheme of things, you can live without oil, but you can’t live without water. Water is fundamental for all life. And that’s certainly true for business as well.”
Continue reading on Momentum.
Sources: Natural Resources Defense Council, Nature.
Photo Credit: Adapted from “Lake Hume at 4%,” courtesy of flickr user suburbanbloke. -
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.” -
Demographic Security Comes to the Hill
›December 16, 2010 // By Hannah Marqusee“We are now in an unprecedented era of demographic divergence,” said Population Action International’s Elizabeth Leahy Madsen at a September briefing held by Congressman John Tierney’s Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs and Congressman Russ Carnahan’s Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights and Oversight.
Eighty percent of the world’s conflicts occur in places where 60 percent or more of the population is under 30, and 90 percent of countries with young populations have weak governments, said Chairman Tierney in his opening remarks. He said that while such demographic trends “appear to be issues for the future…it is important that we start this dialogue today, so that we can make steps to address [them].” ECSP Director Geoff Dabelko and the Stimson Center’s Richard Cincotta joined Madsen on the panel titled, “The Effects of Demographic Change on Global Security,” at the Capitol Visitor Center.
Youth Bulges and National SecurityThe countries of greatest security threat to the United States are also those with the youngest age structures and rapidly increasing populations, said Madsen. By next year, the world’s population will have reached seven billion, with 95 percent of that growth occurring in the developing world.
Large youthful populations can be a source of national strength because they provide innovation and manpower, said Dabelko, but without significant investment they may also contribute to state instability. When there are often few opportunities to obtain a job or an education for young people, there are low “opportunity costs” to joining a rebel group, said Madsen.
State instability can be affected by youth bulges, shifting religious or ethnic compositions, or food and water insecurity, but age-structural transitions are the strongest indicator of state performance, said Cincotta. Despite conventional wisdom, there is actually little evidence to link state failure with premature adult mortality due to AIDS or a high male-to-female ratio, he added.
It is not only developing countries with high fertility rates that face demographic difficulties, Cincotta noted. Countries such as Japan and Germany will soon have reached a “post-mature” age structure in which their aging populations and comparatively small workforces will tax state institutions and threaten economic stability.
Population Policies: Using “Soft Tools” to Improve National Security
Recently, leaders in the U.S. government have been paying increased attention to the linkages between demography and security through the “three Ds:” diplomacy, development, and defense. In 2008, the National Intelligence Council’s Global Trends 2025 included demographic assessments to analyze security trends, and this year, the National Security Strategy featured demographic trends along with the environment and other non-traditional areas.
Dabelko said that while this growing recognition signals progress, the “hard tools” of the traditional security community must be bolstered with “soft tools” commonly used by the international aid community, such as female empowerment, education, health services and youth employment.
Madsen argued that empowering the 215 million women with an unmet need for family planning worldwide through increased funding for voluntary family planning programs is a cost-effective way to shape population trends and ultimately reduce security threats.
“Demography is not destiny,” said Madsen. “Family planning has been an unsung signature of U.S. foreign assistance for decades.”
Similarly, Cincotta said that policies should help states transition out of youth bulges, and help countries with aging populations reform social institutions to protect older people.
Dabelko added that while progress has been made in acknowledging the linked nature of population trends and national security, there is significant room for improvement. Pointing to the successes of integrated population, health, and environment (PHE) programs, which provide environmental conservation and family planning services simultaneously, he called for similar programs to address population dynamics and conflict prevention. Long-term solutions call for coordinated resources and integrated strategies, he said.
Read the speakers’ full remarks: Chairman John F. Tierney, Richard Cincotta, Geoff Dabelko, and Elizabeth Leahy Madson (slides).
Sources: Guttmacher Institute, Population Action International, National Intelligence Council.
Image Credits: “World Age Structure 2005” and “Risk of Civil Conflict by Age Structure Type, 1970-2007,” courtesy of Population Action International. -
Judith Bruce on Empowering Adolescent Girls in Post-Earthquake Haiti
›“The most striking thing about post-conflict and post-disaster environments is that what lurks there is also this extraordinary opportunity,” said Judith Bruce, a senior associate and policy analyst with the Population Council’s Poverty, Gender, and Youth program. Bruce has spent time this year working with the Haiti Adolescent Girls Network (HAGN), a coalition of humanitarian groups conducting workshops focused on the educational, health, and security needs of the country’s vulnerable female youth population.
Gender-based violence has long been an issue in Haiti, but the problem became even more pronounced in the wake of the January earthquake. HAGN has sought to address the problem by concentrating its community-based programming on “high priority” groups, including girls who are disabled, serve as de facto heads of households, or are aged 10-14.
Bruce asserted that protecting and empowering young girls is critical because upon reaching puberty, “their access to a safe world shrinks dramatically.” With the post-disaster environment adding another layer of challenge, she said “there could be no ambiguity in anyone’s mind that we have to create dedicated spaces for girls who, at least for a few hours a week, feel secure to be themselves and to plan for their long-term safety as well as their development.”
The “Pop Audio” series is also available as podcasts on iTunes. -
The World’s Toilet Crisis
›Forty percent of the world’s population – 2.6 billion people – do not have access to toilets, and some in the international aid community are finally dispensing with the euphemisms and calling this sanitation crisis what it is: “shit.”
In “The World’s Toilet Crisis” (trailer above), Adam Yamaguchi sets off in an episode of Current TV’s Vanguard program to tell the story of “the deadliest killer in the world…something no one wants to talk about.” All around the developing world, thanks in part to rapid population growth and poor development and environmental standards, “people are literally eating their own shit,” he said.
His journey takes him to India, where more people own cell phones, than toilets. The 55 percent of Indians who practice open defecation have contributed to another grim statistic: an estimated 840,000 children under the age of five die in India each year from diarrheal diseases.
India’s water quality is especially affected by lack of sanitation. In the documentary, Yamaguchi visits the Yamuna River, which is Delhi’s primary source of drinking water, and has become a “giant toilet” literally bubbling with methane gas. This phenomenon is not unique to India. Approximately 80 percent of sewage in developing countries goes untreated, polluting local water resources.
But it is women who feel the effects of lack of access to clean water and toilets most keenly. In 72 percent of households around the world, women are the primary water collectors, often travelling long distances for drinkable water. They face shame and harassment when going to the bathroom, causing them to suppress their need until dark, causing negative health effects. Waiting until nightfall also means that when women openly defecate, they often face molestation, violence, and rape. Teenage girls also often drop out of school once they begin to menstruate because toilets are not private, unsafe, or are simply nonexistent.
Reflecting on his motivations for making the documentary, Yamaguchi said that in order to expose this “global public health crisis,” he needed to be as graphic, shocking, and disgusting as possible.If you’re not grossed out by, or incensed by the fact that there is shit everywhere, you’re not really moved to act or change your ways. And that’s ultimately what’s happened in many places in the world. It’s a normal fact of life. You see it everywhere, and you think nothing of it. There are causes out there that are deep sexy causes or marketable causes. Shit or toilets – not the most marketable thing in the world.
“The World’s Toilet Crisis” forms part of a broader trend among sanitation advocates to use crude language to address a problem the international health and development community has traditionally shied away from talking about directly.
Tales of shit: Community-Led Total Sanitation in Africa, published shortly before World Toilet Day by the International Institute for Environment and Development, takes an equally direct approach to sanitation.
Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) is an approach begun with great success by Dr. Kamal Kar in Bangladesh that relies on “triggering” to change community behavior. The report, which is prefaced by a three-page “International Glossary of Shit” listing the words for shit in other languages, emphasizes the need to “explicitly [talk] about and [make] visible the shit that is normally hidden beneath taboos and polite language.” By almost literally thrusting people’s shit right under their noses, communities learn what they have been ignoring: that they are “eating each others’ shit.”
Traditional sanitation programs often fail because “a high proportion of latrines constructed with subsidies are never used as toilets, but as storage space, animal shelters, or prayer rooms – the buildings are too high quality to be wasted on toilets!” says the report. CLTS, on the other hand, focuses on changing behavior at the community, rather than the individual level to create sustainable change that responds and adapts to a community’s distinct culture and needs.
“The World’s Toilet Crisis” shows the promise CLTS has of meeting the needs of the billions without toilets. In East Java, Yamaguchi joins a community leader to collect a “specimen” from a well-traveled river bank near the town, which he proceeds to show to a group of women in the town who are, predictably, revolted. The community then takes collective action to become “open-defecation free” and invest in toilets.
“The World’s Toilet Crisis” is not easy to watch, nor was it easy to film – seven minutes in, Yamaguchi vomits on the banks of the polluted Yamuna River. Disgust, however, is central to raising awareness and affecting change on both the community and global levels. As Yamaguchi explains, “You’re going to get grossed out by seeing this piece, and that’s part of the point.”
Sources: Community-Led Total Sanitation, Current TV, Earth Times, IIED, Water.org, World Toilet Organization, WHO, United Nations University.
Video Credit: “The World’s Toilet Crisis – Vanguard Trailer,” courtesy of Current TV’s Vanguard. -
Watch: Joel E. Cohen on Solving the Resource-Population Equation in the Developing World
›December 14, 2010 // By Wilson Center Staff“It’s very hard to put a number on a quantity that depends on future events, processes we don’t understand, and values that may change over time,” said Joel E. Cohenof the Rockefeller University in this interview with ECSP. “That doesn’t mean we have no problems and it doesn’t mean there’s nothing we can do.”
There are three schools of thought or proposed “panaceas,” when it comes to balancing natural resources and population, said Cohen: a bigger pie (new technology to increase productivity), fewer forks (reduced consumption), and better manners (reduced irrational market inequities and better governance).
In the 15 years since his book How Many People Can the Earth Support? was published, Cohen’s approach has changed. While the 1996 book lacked a definitive policy recommendation, he is now analyzing options. “The evolution of my thought has moved from ‘how many people can the Earth support?’ to ‘what do we need to solve problems?’” he said.
You need adequate child and maternal nutrition to produce potential problem solvers and you need education to give them the tools to do it with, said Cohen, who studied the impact of universal primary and secondary education with colleagues at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
“If you look at a map of stunting in the world, there are parts of South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa where more than half the children are stunted – that means two standard deviations [of] height below normal for their age,” said Cohen. “Those populations are handicapped at the starting gate because they don’t have the problem solvers.”
