Showing posts from category UN.
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UNHCR Report on East African Environmental Migrants: Long on Anecdotes, Short on Data
›July 6, 2012 // By Graham NorwoodAs part of the recently-concluded Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) presented a new report last week, titled Climate Change, Vulnerability, and Human Mobility: Perspectives of Refugees From the East and Horn of Africa. The report was created in order to “understand the extent to which refugees and IDPs (internally displaced persons) in the East and Horn of Africa have perceived, experienced, and responded to climatic events and trends in recent years.”
In order to achieve this goal, UNHCR and its collaborators (including the United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human Security, the London School of Economics, and the University of Bonn) interviewed approximately 150 refugees and IDPs in parts of Ethiopia and Uganda.
While the narrative is more anecdotal than data-driven, it nevertheless identifies several apparent trends in climate-related migration:Overwhelmingly, stories of mobility associated with moving away from worsening impacts associated with climate variability followed a specific pattern. That is, where movement related to climatic stressors did occur, such movement was taken as a last resort (only after all efforts to remain and adopt other methods of adaptation had been exhausted), particularly where the land being left was self-owned and only after all efforts to remain and try a number of alternative forms of adaptation had failed. Where movement occurred, in most cases it was likely to be internal, circular, and temporary rather than cross-border and permanent.
Stories of international migration were rare, and generally occurred either because migrants already lived near a border and were familiar with the area, or because they had encountered violent conflict (often of a political nature) during an earlier intra-state relocation.
The report also mentions that a majority of those interviewed claimed to have noticed significant changes in weather patterns over a 10- to 15-year period. In fact, many interviewees frequently claimed to be able to distinguish “normal” climate variability from more “permanent” changes.
Significantly, Climate Change, Vulnerability, and Human Mobility highlights several ongoing sources of debate and controversy regarding the issue of climate-induced migration as well.
The links between climate change, migration, and violent conflict are not well understood. And the question of whether climate change precipitates conflict or merely exacerbates it is still unresolved, though research on the subject is ongoing.
The terminology used to describe climate migrants remains a hotly-contested issue as well. While terms like “environmental refugee” and the especially popular “climate refugee” can make for good headlines, the UNHCR report strongly disapproves of such terms, given that the word “refugee” has a very specific legal definition.
Indeed, there is still much debate over how to classify climate migrants. It has been pointed out, for instance, that it is virtually impossible to separate out the various factors that induce migration, and questions as to whether migration is forced or voluntary also persist. For the most part, the UNHCR report shies away from such contentious questions, aiming instead to present a general and “human” narrative designed to call attention to the plight of climate migrants.
Definitional debates aside, the issue of climate-induced migration has been in headlines recently. The Asian Development Bank reported in March that 42 million people were displaced in the region during the last two years due to storms, floods, and other extreme weather events. And Israel signaled a tougher stance on immigration by deporting South Sudanese refugees in the wake of a major Israeli Ministry of Environmental Protection report warning of future climate-induced migration.
The particular vulnerability of women too is drawing increased interest. An article in Environmental Research Letters points out that “women tend to be poorer, less educated, have a lower health status, and have limited direct access to or ownership of natural resources,” and will therefore be disproportionately affected by climate change. Gender disparities must be accounted for in policymaking then, to ensure that future climate migration policies are equitable and inclusive, the author, Namrata Chindarkar, argues.
The challenges of defining and measuring the phenomenon remain – the UN Environment Program’s 2006 prediction of 50 million climate migrants by 2010 has not come true, and has even been a source of some embarrassment for the organization – but the recent UNHCR report is a timely reminder that climate-induced migration remains a major issue with tremendous long-term implications.
Sources: Asian Development Bank, Environmental Research Letters, Human Rights Education Association (HREA), The Jerusalem Post, The New Republic, National Geographic, OECD, Scientific American, Der Spiegel, UNHCR, The Washington Post.
Photo Credit: Displaced Somalis, courtesy of UNHCR. -
Hania Zlotnik Discusses Changes to Latest UN Population Projections
›Former UN Population Division Director Hania Zlotnik spoke recently at the Wilson Center discussing last year’s highly-publicized UN world population projections and explaining the methodology behind the figures. “The latest projections are very special,” she said, adding that “we think that this methodology is a lot better than what we had before.”
What accounts for such improvement? Zlotnik said it has a lot to do with greater availability of data. “The UN has been…mandated by governments to produce population estimates since the 1950s,” she stated, and they have refined their projections process over the years based on an increasing record of data and identification of some “patterns that can inform the future.”Former UN Population Division Director Hania Zlotnik spoke recently at the Wilson Center discussing last year’s highly-publicized UN world population projections and explaining the methodology behind the figures. “The latest projections are very special,” she said, adding that “we think that this methodology is a lot better than what we had before.”
What accounts for such improvement? Zlotnik said it has a lot to do with greater availability of data. “The UN has been…mandated by governments to produce population estimates since the 1950s,” she stated, and they have refined their projections process over the years based on an increasing record of data and identification of some “patterns that can inform the future.”
The increasingly large dataset accumulated during this process is particularly important because of what Zlotnik called “inertia” in population change. “There’s something called ‘population momentum,’ where the population changes on the basis of how many people have already been accumulated on the planet,” she explained, pointing out that many of the people included in the UN’s population projections for 2050 have already been born.
This inertia helps make population projections fairly accurate, but last year’s projections differed from previous efforts in two significant ways.
First, the UN Population Division provided projections not just to 2050 but also to 2100. These more long-term projections estimated an end-of-century population of more than 10 billion – notably higher than previous reports, which had predicted that population would stabilize mid-century at around nine billion.
Second, the underlying methodology used shifted from a deterministic to a probabilistic approach that, according to Zlotnik, does a better job capturing variability in each country’s fertility rate over the next century. “Essentially,” she explained, “a model was developed for every country that takes into account the past path of fertility change [and] also takes into account changes that have happened in other countries…Then [it] does a simulation for the future for every country, in which 100,000 paths are projected, essentially by throwing dice, and then the central path of those 100,000 is used to project the future.”
Zlotnik cautioned that projecting so far into the future is an inexact – albeit necessary – science: “Of course, as we go further into the future, the numbers are more subject to uncertainty. But [the long-term projections] help us give people a better feeling of how important it is to change trends from here to 2050, so that we ensure that, at the end of the century, the number of people on the planet is sustainable.”
“In order to make sure that the population projections made by the United Nations [are realized],” Zlotnik said, “it’s very important that fertility continues to decline, and especially that fertility decline happens in the countries that still have very high fertility.”
“Fertility decline happens in many ways,” she continued, “but the immediate reason why fertility can be reduced is that more people use modern methods of contraception.” -
Population Projections: Breaking Down the Assumptions
›“The seventh billion [person] was added in 12 years, and that could be the story for the eighth billion – and that gets people who think that growth has stopped,” said Carl Haub, senior demographer at the Population Reference Bureau. Haub was joined by Hania Zlotnik, former director of the UN Population Division, and Rachel Nugent of the University of Washington’s Department of Global Health on June 5 to speak about the assumptions behind the UN population projections. While each of the panelists noted the utility of projections, they also cautioned against seeing them as inevitable. [Video Below]
Meeting the Projections
As a former top official in the UN’s Population Division, Zlotnik spoke about how much is riding on the projections. “The experts tell me that to feed nine billion people, living better than the standards of living that we have today, one needs to increase agricultural production or all the production of food by about 70 percent and that is a challenge, but it might be feasible. But if the numbers go higher…I think it’s impossible,” she said.
The medium variant projection by the UN that gets the world to that nine billion figure is not a given – it builds in expected action on and improvement of many demographic indicators. Zlotnik pointed to the global unmet need for family planning, for example, which “is especially high in the high fertility countries,” and suggested that the current rate of increase in contraceptive use is insufficient.
She calculated the number of years it would take many of these countries to meet their unmet need at their current rate of uptake and found “the number of years for a lot of these poorer countries that have high fertility would be very long – 40 years, some of them, 80 years, 100 years – because the increased contraceptive prevalence has been so small.” At that rate, population growth in these countries will far surpass the UN medium variant.
The perception that population growth is no longer an issue contributes to the problem, Zlotnik said. People see that only 18 percent of the world population lives in countries with high population growth and assume “there’s no longer a population problem.” But she emphasized the power of exponential growth, arguing that even a small proportion growing at a rapid rate can have a large impact.
Questioning Assumptions
Haub pointed out several instances where assumptions in the methodology behind the projections create uncertainty.
For example, there is a lack of data in many low-income countries. “A date, let’s say 2000, 2005 – it’s the past, but it may be a projection. It may be based on a census in 1990,” he said. If it’s wrong, that error may not be corrected until another census, but it will still be relied on for country-level projections.
He also noted that certain assumptions about desired family size sometimes do not bear out on the ground. One of the key methods to slowing population growth is to provide women and couples with the means to choose how many children they wish to bear. But in many fast-growing countries, women wish to have large numbers of children. In Niger, for example, women say their ideal family size is over nine children. Such women are less likely to use contraception, no matter how accessible it is, as they value larger families.
“It has been – I guess conventional is a good word – to assume that birth rates are going to come down the way they did in the rich countries,” Haub noted. But there has been a “stall” for many developing countries, which he suggests is caused by fast initial uptake from urban women followed by much slower uptake by rural women. These dynamics, however, are relatively new and therefore are not always well incorporated into current projections.
The Economic Impact of Population Changes
While Haub and Zlotnik looked at the assumptions made before the projections are made and the importance and means to reach these projections, Nugent focused on the economic implications of lower fertility and the demographic transition.
She suggested that increased control over fertility can positively impact a country’s economy. Women are given the opportunity to “invest their time in acquiring skills and investing time in the labor market and that affects their earnings…[and] their ability to control resources and make decisions within the household” as they spend less time caring for children, she said.
The labor market changes as well, as fewer children are born into a given generation. This can reduce “demand on economic resources [and] demand on environmental resources,” and the increased investment in human capital allowed by smaller family sizes can lead to a healthier population.
Nugent concluded by pointing out key areas of intervention most likely to decrease both fertility and mortality and allow countries to reap the positive economic benefits of fertility decline. She suggested a focus on “complementary investments in education and health,” especially with regard to “poor and marginalized populations,” which can in fact impact the country as a whole. Finally, she recommended focusing on proven “evidence-based programs [and] service-delivery programs.”
Educating Policymakers
Each of the panelists cautioned against relying on population projections without taking action to make them come true.
“Maybe the best thing to do if you’re giving a presentation is to show the UN’s constant fertility variant first and scare people half to death and then say, ‘but if 117,000 things go right, [the medium variant projection] is what will happen,” said Haub, addressing the common tendency to view the UN projections as destiny.
Similarly, Nugent warned against viewing the demographic transition as inevitable. “There’s a certain sense…that [the demographic dividend] is kind of an automatic thing that happens, and that really has to be addressed,” she said, adding that “it’d be quite interesting to show some scenarios of what would need to be done…in order to get some benefits from that dividend.” (See also Elizabeth Leahy Madsen’s recent article on achieving the dividend.)
Zlotnik reiterated that the UN does not in fact know what the future will bring. “It’s not that we know what the world is going to do, but we hope that [the projections] will get the message out – if this doesn’t happen, you’re in trouble.”
Event ResourcesPhoto Credit: Sean Peoples/Wilson Center. -
Pop at Rio+20: Reproductive Rights Missing From Outcome Document – Assessing the Disappointment
›June 22, 2012 // By Sandeep BathalaAs heads of state get ready to sign on to the outcome document here in Rio, all eyes are on next steps – especially for the reproductive health and integrated development communities, which have seen their hopes of mainstreaming their issues with the sustainable development agenda dashed.
The final outcome document can be found here. USA Today reports that opposition from a group of countries in the 11th hour stripped the text of critical reproductive rights language:An initial draft of this conference’s outcome document stated, “We are committed to ensure the equal access of women and girls to education, basic services, economic opportunities, and health care services, including addressing women’s sexual and reproductive health and their reproductive rights.”
Absent entirely is any explicit connection between reproductive rights, population dynamics, and sustainable development.
In the final draft, the stronger wording “We are committed to ensure the equal access” was switched to the weaker “We are committed to promote the equal access.” The reference to reproductive rights was deleted altogether, after opposition from the G-77, a negotiating bloc of developing countries at the United Nations, and the Holy See.
But others, as we have heard repeatedly throughout the conference, insist that gender issues and reproductive rights have a strong and vital connection to sustainable development. Yesterday, USAID, the Aspen Institute, and the Center for Environment and Population held a discussion in the U.S. tent on this very issue, titled “Making Population Matter: The Demographic Dividend and Sustainable Development.”
As Vicky Markham of the Center for Environment and Population reports on RH Reality Check, the side-event aimed to demonstrate the effects of population dynamics, both positive and negative:We have the largest youth demographic ever in the history of the world, and most developing nations have a “youth bulge.” This can be seen as a challenge, or opportunity, particularly if the focus is on providing development programs for child survival, family planning, reproductive health, and education. The importance of women’s empowerment was also central. But it’s not a given; it’s an opportunity only if we pay attention to these issues to increase the benefits of the “demographic dividend.”
The demographic dividend, as described by USAID Deputy Administrator and panelist Donald Steinberg in blog post earlier this week, “is an opportunity that arises when a country transitions from high to low rates of fertility and child and infant mortality.” But it’s not just about ensuring access to family planning and reproductive health; youth-focused economic and education policies are also needed: “Maximizing the dividend requires social and economic policies that reinforce inclusion, equity, and opportunity across the entire population,” he writes. USAID is making a point of creating youth-focused policies for this reason, he said in Rio.
Carmen Barroso, regional director of the International Planned Parenthood Federation’s Western Hemisphere Region, pointed out that Latin American countries could not take advantage of the demographic dividend before recent societal changes occurred, including decreased fertility, increased urbanization (which leads to smaller families), and greater schooling and employment of women.
Seventy percent of world population growth is likely to be generated by Africa this century, said Eliya Msiyaphazi Zulu, executive director of the African Institute for Development Policy – and it is the only continent projected to continue to grow in the next century, he said. He called for redefining growth as more than GDP as that measure does not consider environmental degradation and its costs: “We must have other means to measure development.”
As heads of state and negotiators consider their positions at this conference – which many were hoping would make a much stronger statement – they might do well to ponder today’s comments from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton:While I am very pleased that this year’s outcome document endorses sexual and reproductive health and universal access to family planning, to reach our goals in sustainable development we also have to ensure women’s reproductive rights. Women must be empowered to make decisions about whether and when to have children. And the United States will continue to work to ensure that those rights are respected in international agreements.
Sources: RH Reality Check, UN, U.S. Department of State, USA Today, USAID.
Now none of this is an abstract discussion. There is just too much at stake, too much still to be done. And many of you visited the U.S. Center here in Rio and saw practical solutions related to some of the work I’ve discussed and other goals we hold in common. We believe solutions require action by all of us. Governments, yes; let’s do our part. Let’s do more than our part.
Photo Credit: YouthPolicy.org. -
Pop at Rio+20: Text Finalized, Population-Sustainable Development Links Left Out?
›June 21, 2012 // By Sandeep BathalaWhile I was visiting with youth peer educators yesterday with the Brazilian Society for Family Welfare in the Cachoeirinha favela (see Vicky Markam’s post for details – we were on the same trip), UN member states reached consensus in the Rio+20 negotiations. But, according to reports, although the outcome document includes some mention of reproductive health, gender equality, and women’s empowerment, it fails to explicitly recognize the link between reproductive rights and sustainable development.
Many women’s rights and health observers have, from the start, encouraged this link.
Karen Newman, speaking to ECSP in April during the Planet Under Pressure conference – a precursor to Rio – said she hoped this week would offer an opportunity to look at “sustainable development in the round” and “re-identify family planning as a core development priority,” given its human rights and health implications and relationship to population growth.
Jenny Shipley (Former Prime Minister of New Zealand) wrote just yesterday on CNN that “we are at a moment in history where we still have time to make a difference. It is essential that the global discussion in Rio not be blind to the potential solutions that access to voluntary family planning could offer to many of the world’s problems.”
“We can no longer afford this outrageous oversight, driven by old-fashioned tradition, discrimination, and pure ignorance,” said Gro Harlem Brundtland (Former Prime Minister of Norway and Former Head of the World Health Organization) at a side event on Monday. “Now is the time to agree to unleash the largest untapped potential for sustainable development and stop all discrimination against women and girls.”
But now that preliminary agreement on the outcome text has been reached, reports have filed in that the connection many were hoping for is absent. Zonibel Woods, blogging on RH Reality Check, wrote:From the start of the negotiations, gender equality and women’s human rights, including reproductive rights, have continuously been challenged by a few governments, claiming that [these] had “nothing to do with sustainable development.”
The lack of consensus among the wider international community may also undercut efforts to highlight reproductive rights in the post-2015 Millennium Development Goals/Sustainable Development Goals framework and as governments ready for the follow-on to the International Conference on Population and Development in 2014. A concrete link to “sustainable development,” whatever form that takes, would help ensure that reproductive health is not side-lined.
This debate continued until the last few hours of the negotiations. In the end, the text includes a re-affirmation of both the Cairo and Beijing agreements, but it falls short by failing to recognize that reproductive rights are also critical to the achievement of sustainable development. If a woman cannot decide if and when to have children and if she is not provided with the reproductive health care that is her human right, it is challenging to contribute to sustainable solutions for the planet.
Immediately following the adoption of the text, women gathered and protested at Rio Centro, the main venue for the conference, and advocacy continues.
Heads of state will in all likelihood sign on to the outcome document by tomorrow (it could technically still be changed, but that appears unlikely). I will keep you posted on the final outcome and will be taking notes at a side-event this afternoon by USAID, the Aspen Institute, and Center for Environment and Population on the demographic dividend and sustainable development, which promises to be spirited given today’s news. You can tune in live to the webcast of that event at 2:30 EST on Ustream.
Sources: AllAfrica, Aspen Institute, CNN, IRIN, RH Reality Check, U.S. Department of State, USAID.
Photo Credit: United Nations Photo. -
Pop at Rio+20: Getting Women’s Rights on the Agenda
›June 19, 2012 // By Sandeep BathalaHere we are on my second day of side events at Rio+20 and the Aspen Institute, International Planned Parenthood Federation, and the United Nations Foundation convened a high-level moderated dialogue this morning to raise the profile of human development, gender, and reproductive health at the main conference.
Rio+20 is an unprecedented opportunity to draw attention to sustainable development and the role women’s rights and voices play in it. The Aspen/IPPF/UN Foundation event was timely as some negotiators are questioning the link between women and sustainable development in the 11th hour instead of reaffirming the commitments made 20 years ago at international conferences in Rio, Cairo, and Beijing.
High-level leaders, including Gro Harlem Brundtland (Former Prime Minister of Norway), Musimbi Kanyoro (President and Chief Executive Office of the Global Fund for Women), Tewodros Melesse (Director General of the International Planned Parenthood Federation), Mary Robinson (Former President of Ireland and President of the Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice), and Tim Wirth (President of the United Nations Foundation), spoke to the role of women’s empowerment and family planning in the global discussion of sustainable development.
Some highlights from the meeting:
Brundtland noted that the next increment of economic growth could come fully from women’s empowerment. Family planning is a cross-cutting and cost-effective way to ensure this possibility.
Kanyoro further emphasized that for development organizations, women, more than any other partner, have the potential to enable sustainable growth.
Melesse discussed the role of addressing the special needs of young women. “If they are not met, we will have failed at sustainable development,” he said.
Robinson argued that family planning must be mainstreamed in international conferences, like Rio+20 and the annual UN climate COPs, as a human rights issue. Women’s issues cannot be add-ons in outcome documents – they have to be front and center. “We know what works,” she said, referring to effective reproductive health efforts and their ability to advance human rights and sustainable development
Wirth spoke passionately about the basic rules of diplomacy: do no harm and no backsliding. He remarked that hard earned gains from previous UN documents, although limited, must not be lost. They must be considered as statements from governments around the world and as resounding affirmation of the rights of women, he said.
For more, see Vicky Markham’s thoughts on the meeting at RH Reality Check too.
Stay tuned to see whether official negotiations in Rio – which start tomorrow – will heed these calls.
Photo Credit: “Etiopía,” courtesy of flickr user subcomandanta. -
Pop at Rio+20: Cairo, Rio, and Beyond
›June 18, 2012 // By Sandeep BathalaGreetings from Rio de Janeiro! I will be blogging from the UN Conference on Sustainable Development throughout the week, tracking the inclusion of reproductive health and rights in the agenda.
Population dynamics have significant influence on sustainable development but the two have not always been seen as connected.
This year’s conference is the follow-on to the original UN Earth Summit held in Rio in 1992 (thus Rio+20). The resulting documents from that conference – Agenda 21, the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, and the Statement of Principles for the Sustainable Management of Forests – were adopted by more than 178 governments and have done much to set the sustainable development agenda over the last two decades. Population dynamics were largely left off the table and instead were taken on separately, and in parallel, at the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo in 1994.
This year, watchers from across the spectrum are eager to see these two issues talked about in a more integrated fashion. The official proceedings don’t start until the 20th, but side events have already begun.
At the first of Population Action International’s side events, appropriately named “From Rio to Cairo to Rio…and Beyond,” Eliya Zulu, executive director of the African Institute for Development Policy, said that virtually all development policies in sub-Saharan Africa cite population growth as an inhibitor to sustainable development and efforts to alleviate poverty, ensure food security, and preserve the environment. Furthermore, climate change is increasingly seen as a major threat to sustainable development in Africa. Policymakers in the region recognize the linkages between population, climate change, and sustainable development; however, little integration of these issues – operationally or conceptually – has been achieved.
Michael Herman, a technical adviser on population and economic development at the United Nations Population Fund, reminded audience members that demographic projections, like those predicting 10 billion by mid-century, are not destiny: population growth or decline is affected by policies, which should include human rights-based access to voluntary family planning.
Doris Mpoumou, an international policy officer at International Planned Parenthood Federation’s Western Hemisphere Regional Office, concluded the event by describing efforts to ensure that the Rio+20 outcome document being negotiated recognizes several key points. First, that population dynamics influence production and consumption rates; second, that population dynamics are relevant to the management of resources and sustainable development planning; and third, that population dynamics should be carefully integrated into development strategies and environmental planning with a focus on human rights.
Stay tuned here for more updates from Rio+20 and follow us on Twitter. I’ll be at every population-environment event I can get to and will also be visiting a favela with IPPF to see first-hand the ways Brazilians cope with the challenges of sustainable development.
Photo Credit: View of Rio de Janeiro from a mountain in Tijuca National Forest, courtesy of Michos Tzovaras/UN Photo. -
The Year Ahead in Political Demography: Top Issues to Watch
›June 8, 2012 // By Elizabeth Leahy Madsen2011 and the first half of 2012 have been a remarkable period for political demography, with theories about the relationships between age structure and governance validated in real time by the events of the Arab Spring. Although such game-changers are rarely predictable, the year ahead promises to be eventful as well, with new demographic research and major policy initiatives on the horizon. Below are brief assessments of some of the top issues to watch between now and next summer.
1. The Evolving Story of the Arab Spring
The Arab Spring was anticipated by few observers, but for a handful of political demographers it was a watershed of sorts. As readers of this blog know, political demography research shows that countries with very young age structures are prone both to higher incidence of civil conflict and – most relevant to the outcomes of the Arab Spring – to undemocratic governance. This nuance escaped many observers of the region’s drama. Violence and conflict erupted not from raging citizens in the streets but from military and militia forces unleashed by autocrats unwilling to cede their grip on power. Young people, and their fellow protestors of all ages, were acting as a force for positive change in their demonstrations against corrupt and unrepresentative leadership. The difference in outcomes across the region, according to Richard Cincotta, can be attributed to the fact that as age structures mature, elites become less willing to trade their political freedoms to autocratic leaders in exchange for the promise of security and stability.
When considered with this important distinction in mind, the initial events following the uprising in Tunisia that quickly spread across the region played out in a neatly linear fashion. Among the five countries where revolt took root, those with the earliest success in ousting autocratic leaders also had the most mature age structures and the least youthful populations.
In Tunisia, with a median population age of 29, one month passed between a fruit seller’s self-immolation and Zine El Abedine Ben Ali’s flight to exile. In Egypt and Libya, where median age is close to 25 years (identified by Cincotta as a threshold when countries are at least 50 percent likely to be democratic), Hosni Mubarak and Moammar Gaddafi took three weeks and eight months, respectively, to lose their titles. Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen (median age 17), took one year to be convinced to formally resign, while in Syria (median age 21), the 15-month uprising continues to be brutally repressed by Bashar Assad’s forces.
Of course, overthrowing a dictator, while inspiring and liberating to those whose rights have been repressed, is only the first step in achieving democracy. In the coming year, the countries that have already taken steps toward solidifying regime change will face continued tests as internal tensions surface. Even in Tunisia, recent clashes signal that political divisions and economic uncertainty have not been resolved. With potentially divisive elections ahead in Egypt and Libya, a holdover from the Saleh regime leading Yemen, and Syria’s fate unknown, the coming year should offer political demographers further evidence of the soundness of the age structure and democracy thesis.
2. New Commitments to Family Planning
Reproductive health and demography go hand-in-hand, and two milestones for family planning advocates are fast approaching: the 20th anniversary of the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, and the 2015 endpoint of the Millennium Development Goals.
These historic commitments by governments will be joined by a major initiative to generate new funding and political will this summer at an international family planning summit in London on July 11. The summit will be co-hosted by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (Melinda made an impassioned TEDxChange speech in support of the issue in April), and the UK’s Department for International Development, for whom family planning is a priority in efforts to reduce maternal and child mortality.
Details of the summit have yet to be finalized and publicly released, but financial commitments from donors and developing countries are anticipated toward meeting a new and ambitious goal of generating $4 billion to fund contraceptives for 120 million women in developing countries by 2020. Assuming these are new users, rather than those who would be expected by projecting recent growth in contraceptive use forward, this would represent more than half of the estimated 215 million women with an unmet need for family planning.
Why does new family planning funding matter for political demography? Rates of contraceptive use are lowest and fertility highest in countries with youthful age structures. Such population dynamics exacerbate the challenges governments face in providing education, health, and basic infrastructure services, as well as supporting an economic climate conducive to industry diversification and job creation. In turn, the likelihood of civil conflict and undemocratic governance is higher in such countries.
While policies that recognize the benefits of family planning may be solid, funding and implementation often fall woefully short. In the least developed countries, less than one-third of reproductive-age women are using any contraception, and the rate has grown by just 0.4 percentage points annually over the past decade. Meanwhile, funding from all sources is less than half the amount required to meet unmet need. If the July summit motivates a new groundswell of financial support, 2012 could incite major strides toward improvements in individual health and well-being as well as demographic momentum in the remaining high-fertility countries.
3. Demographic Diversity in Sub-Saharan Africa
The current era of global demographic diversity has been distinguished by both record-low fertility rates in parts of Europe and eastern Asia and persistently high fertility across most of western, central, and eastern Africa. More than one-quarter of women in sub-Saharan Africa would like to postpone or avoid pregnancy, but are not using contraception, demonstrating a large unmet need for family planning.
The U.S. government-funded Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) program is the largest single source for detailed data on health status and behavior in high-fertility developing countries, and in turn informs estimates and projections of demographic trends. Recently, DHS reports have been released showing that contraceptive use over the past five years is growing much faster than the regional average in Ethiopia, Malawi, and Rwanda. In turn, fertility rates have dropped, ranging from a relatively modest 0.3 children per woman in Malawi and an unprecedented 1.5 children per woman in Rwanda.
These findings suggest that the pattern of demographic stagnation in sub-Saharan Africa may be shifting, perhaps due to governments’ and donors’ investments in family planning. However, newer survey results for Mozambique, Uganda, and Zimbabwe present a more mixed picture, with modest gains in contraceptive use in Uganda, offset by declines in the other two countries.Click here for the interactive version (non-Internet Explorer users only).
Additional recent survey results show that use of modern contraceptive methods has barely increased in Senegal (from 10 percent in 2005 to 12 percent in 2010-11). And while modern contraceptive use increased in the Republic of Congo from 13 percent in 2005 to 20 percent currently, fertility also rose slightly, from 4.8 to 5.1 children per woman.
Approximately 10 countries in sub-Saharan Africa are slated for DHS fieldwork this year, including one of the continent’s giants, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and several of the highest-fertility countries in the region. (Outside of sub-Saharan Africa, the demographic heavyweights in this year’s group of DHS reports are Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Pakistan.)
The upcoming surveys will provide greater clarity about whether the promising signs of family planning adoption and the potential for progress through the demographic transition in Ethiopia, Malawi, and Rwanda are initiating widespread change across the continent, or whether the need for commitments such as those generated by the London summit is even stronger.
4. New Population Projections
DHS reports are critical inputs for the world’s most comprehensive and readily accessible set of demographic data, the UN Population Division’s World Population Prospects. This database is fully updated and revised biannually, in large part due to the steady stream of newly available estimates from the DHS and related sources, such as national censuses. The next revision of World Population Prospects, based on estimates for mid-year 2012, is expected to be published in spring 2013.
The previous revision of World Population Prospects was notable for its methodological overhaul. In addition to extending the projections until 2100, the Population Division shifted to a probabilistic technique (as opposed to assuming convergence at a single fertility rate of 1.85 children per woman) that generates 100,000 possible fertility trajectories for each country and selects the median as the medium fertility variant, commonly cited as the most likely projection. Still, the basic parameters remain the same: With fertility rates the strongest driver of population projections, low, medium, and high fertility variants are constructed around the assumption that countries will converge towards replacement level fertility, around 2.1 children per woman.
In some cases, this results in projections that are vastly at odds with recent trends. For example, in Japan, fertility has fallen by 38 percent, from replacement level in the early 1970s to 1.3 children per woman in 2010, but the UN projects it to immediately reverse course and begin rising to 1.8 by mid-century. If the projection holds, Japan’s population will decline relatively modestly, from 127 million to 109 million. But if fertility stays constant at current levels, the population will fall below 100 million. For low-fertility countries like Japan, all UN scenarios assume constant or rebounding fertility rates, even though continued decline may be a plausible outcome in some cases.
When next year’s projections are released, a cluster of media articles will report the projected world population for 2050. In last year’s revision, the medium fertility variant resulted in a projection of 9.3 billion, an increase from the 9.1 billion projected two years earlier based on higher projected fertility in the future. Such reports often overlook the range of population totals possible depending on fertility paths: If the global fertility rate varies by 0.5 children per woman in either direction, the total population could be more than one billion higher or lower in 2050, with an even wider range possible by 2100.
Most of the projected growth in world population, and its potential range, will be driven by the high-fertility countries concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa. Population projections for these countries vary tremendously based on fertility scenarios informed by the recent DHS results described above.
In Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, fertility has fallen over the past 40 years, but by a gradual 15 percent. The UN projects it to drop more than twice as fast, by more than two children per woman (39 percent), in the next four decades. In any scenario, Nigeria is on track for rapid population growth, but the potential range based on fertility outcomes is wide. If fertility declines as projected in the medium variant, the country would grow from 158 million to 390 million. And although unlikely, the constant fertility projection of 504 million Nigerians in 2050 should be kept in mind given the slow pace of fertility decline to date.
Population projections are highly wonky, but their careful production and regular revision are essential for accurate planning of economic and social needs in countries around the world. While governments with dedicated census agencies, such as those in the U.S., Japan, or India, rely on internally-generated estimates, the UN projections serve as the primary indication of population trends in countries with spottier data coverage and have tremendous utility in gauging future needs for infrastructure, housing, health care across the life cycle, education, jobs, and other investments.
By no means is this an exhaustive list of factors that will affect political demography research and policy over the coming year. Other events to watch for include the Rio+20 conference on sustainable development in June, where the priority issues of jobs, energy, infrastructure, and resources will be shaped by demographic trends, and continued attention to prospects for the demographic dividend in Africa. Political demography is inherently cross-disciplinary, and the field’s researchers and practitioners will be engaged on multiple fronts in the year ahead.
Elizabeth Leahy Madsen is a consultant on political demography for the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program and senior technical advisor at Futures Group.
Sources: Al Jazeera, Bongaarts (2008), Cincotta (2008), Cincotta (2012), Cincotta and Leahy (2006), Grist, Guttmacher Institute, MEASURE DHS, The New York Times, NPR, Population Reference Bureau, UN Population Division, The Washington Post.
Image Credit: “The Face of a Tyrant,” courtesy of flickr user freestylee (Michael Thompson); video courtesy of TED; chart created by Schuyler Null, data from UN Population Division.
