-
Iran: A Seemingly Unlikely Setting for World’s Fastest Demographic Transition
January 11, 2012 // By Elizabeth Leahy MadsenMOREThis is the second post in a series profiling the process of building political commitment in countries whose governments have made strong investments in family planning. Read the first post, on Rwanda’s recent rapid demographic changes, here.
To date, only 11 countries outside of the developed world, China, and a handful of small island states have reached the end of the demographic transition, with fertility rates declining from more than four children per woman to replacement level or lower.* Of these, only two countries have completed the transition in 15 years or less – and both might surprise you. One is Cuba, whose government dispensed family planning services to its relatively small population in the 1970s through accessible primary health care facilities and legalized safe abortion eight years before the United States did. The other: Iran.
Following the 1979 revolution, Iran’s new theocracy adopted a socially conservative, pro-natalist outlook. Half of the population lived in rural areas, which typically constrains access to health services. In addition, abortion was illegal in most circumstances. According to the UN, Iranian women had an average of 6.5 children each in the early 1980s and the population was growing nearly four percent annually, a rate high enough for it to double in 19 years.
But, by the early 2000s, Iran’s fertility rate had dropped below two children per woman. The swift changes can be attributed to the efforts of government officials concerned about meeting the employment needs of a growing population, supported by public health experts who wanted to rebuild the eroded family planning program.
A Dramatic Policy ShiftThe turning point came after the end of Iran’s eight-year war with Iraq in 1988. With military demands high – several hundred thousand people were killed during the war – population growth was viewed positively. But as the war ended, policy directives did an about-face.
Although public health officials had framed the need for reinvigorated family planning programs in health-related terms for years, the motivation for government officials to change policy appears to have been economic. The national budget agency informed the prime minister that after nearly a decade of conflict, the country lacked adequate funding to both rebuild and to meet the needs of its people. The prime minister responded quickly, directing that demographic factors be integrated into the new development plan and stating that “Iranians’ standard of living was being eroded by the growth of the country’s population.”
“Pragmatism Has Prevailed Over Pure Ideology”
After convincing their superiors, Iranian government officials who supported family planning faced the added challenge of garnering the backing of the influential religious establishment. Shortly after the revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini officially sanctioned the use of contraception, though his perspective was not universal among clerics. Once the prime minister decided to introduce a national family planning program, officials sought support from additional religious authorities. Opposition was minimal after two key institutions offered endorsements. The High Judicial Council determined that there was “no Islamic barrier to family planning” in late 1988, and the Expediency Council approved the government’s plans soon after.
By late 1989, a new family planning program had been officially introduced. The program’s aims were to lengthen spacing between births; limit pregnancies in the early and late reproductive years; and lower fertility by educating the population and ensuring access to free and diverse contraceptive methods. By the mid-1990s, the government had fully integrated family planning into the existing primary health system.
Iran thus followed the example of other majority-Muslim countries where religion was not an impediment to family planning, including Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, and Oman. Just as in countries where highly Catholic populations have low fertility rates (Italy, Poland, Spain, and many others), religious guidance has been interpreted in varying ways in different settings and is not necessarily a central factor in individual fertility decisions. As Akbar Aghajanian and Amir H. Merhyar write in a summary of Iran’s family planning program, “Pragmatism has prevailed over pure ideology when necessary.”
The Contributions of Women’s Education and a Strong Health System
A new policy orientation was the critical first step, but successful implementation was necessary for Iran’s demographic trajectory to change in response. Fortunately, the government had some advantages in rolling out its new program, namely a strong existing health system, a history of past efforts to promote family planning, and an educated female population among whom demand for contraception was high.Rural development became a priority of the government after the revolution and resulted in improved access to an array of services. In rural areas, community health workers receive two years of training to provide family planning services along with other preventative care and treatment. Services are also available at rural health “houses,” urban clinics, and higher-level centers around the country.
The status of women has also played a major role. A research exercise conducted by IIASA estimated that improvements in educational attainment among women were responsible for about one-third of Iran’s fertility decline between 1980 and 2005. Women’s literacy was already rising during the period of the revolution and reached 74 percent by 1996, while attitudes toward female employment became more supportive. By the late 1990s, new classes of university students included more women than men. The response to the 1989 program indicated that women clearly had an unmet demand for family planning. Use of modern contraception jumped from 31 percent in 1989 to 51 percent just five years later, then rose more slowly over the subsequent decade.
A Dividend Squandered?
The rapid changes in Iran’s age structure, thanks to declining fertility, have opened a window of opportunity for the country to boost economic growth through lower dependency ratios – a phenomenon called the demographic dividend. However, the dividend is not an automatic bonus, and Iran’s capacity to capitalize on its demographic change is questionable.
The unemployment rate among young people today is over 20 percent, indicating that the economy is not generating sufficient jobs, which is a prerequisite to improving productivity. This inopportune climate may even contribute to a further decline in the fertility rate: Some observers have suggested that the country’s economic troubles and rising costs of living have motivated young people to delay marriage and have smaller families. “Unemployment and high costs of living, coupled with social and political restrictions, have made [life] increasingly difficult for young Iranians,” Farzaneh Roudi of the Population Reference Bureau (PRB) explained in a blog post last year.
Given Iran’s challenges in producing adequate jobs and other economic benefits for its population, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s recent unusual pronouncements on population issues are especially puzzling. Last year, Ahmadinejad introduced a pro-natalist policy offering direct payments to each child born, continuing until they reach adulthood, and later suggested that girls should marry at age 16 or 17.
But despite a high level of international media attention, most observers expect the policy to have little impact. Widespread adoption of family planning has become entrenched in society: 60 percent of Iranian women now use a modern contraceptive method. As PRB’s Roudi wrote in response to Ahmadinejad’s proposal, “Iranian women and men have gotten used to exercising their reproductive rights and would expect to be able to continue to do so.”
*The 11 countries that have achieved replacement fertility or lower outside of developed regions, China, and small island states are Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, Iran, Lebanon, Myanmar, Thailand, Tunisia, and the United Arab Emirates.
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.
Look for related analysis on the political implications of Iran’s changing age structure by Richard Cincotta on New Security Beat soon.
Sources: Abbasi-Shavazi, Lutz, Hosseini-Chavoshi and Samir (2008), Abbasi-Shavazi (2002), Aghajanian and Merhyar (1999), Christian Science Monitor, GlobalSecurity.org, The New York Times, Noble and Potts (1996), Population Reference Bureau, Roudi-Fahimi (2002), UN Population Division, World Bank.
Image Credit: “بیست و پنجم خرداد ۸,” courtesy of flickr user Recovering Sick Soul (Nima Fatemi); charts arranged by Sean Peoples and Elizabeth Leahy Madsen. -
Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues on Durban and the Role of Women in Combating Climate Change
December 23, 2011 // By Wilson Center StaffMOREThe original version of this article, by Ambassador Melanne Verveer, appeared on the White House Council on Environmental Quality blog.
Last week I traveled to Durban, South Africa to participate in the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to highlight the critical and largely untapped potential of women to combat climate change. Studies have shown that it is often women who are on the frontlines of, and suffer disproportionately from, the impacts of climate change. This is certainly important. But we must remember that women are also a powerful force for finding solutions to climate change across the board, including in areas such as agriculture, sustainable forest management, and energy access.
Agriculture, which accounts for approximately 14 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions and is a sector that can be particularly sensitive to climate variability and change, is one key area where women can play a major role. A recent FAO report shows that women, in many places, are the main producers of the world’s staple crops, particularly in developing countries and regions likely to be adversely affected by climate change impacts. However, globally, only a small minority of women farmers have access to land tenure. This is a problem for many reasons – including that it limits women’s potential to combat climate change. Studies have shown that women with the right to property are significantly more capable of investing in climate-smart agricultural productivity; we have a lot of work to do to unlock women’s potential in this area.
Women also have untapped potential for increasing energy access, which directly relates to climate change. For example, nearly three billion people globally still rely on traditional cookstoves and open fires to prepare food for their families. In most instances, women are responsible for cooking – not to mention also spending many hours per week collecting fuel, which often puts women at risk of gender based violence. The resulting smoke exposure causes an estimated two million premature deaths annually, with women and young children the most affected. Cookstoves also impact the climate through emissions of greenhouse gases and short-lived particles such as black carbon. Engaging women is critical to tackling this problem. As we work to build a global market for clean cookstoves, integrating women into the cookstoves supply chain will help increase clean cookstove adoption rates while also creating new economic development opportunities. And as Secretary Clinton has noted, women create a multiplier effect in local communities because they disproportionately spend more of their earned income on food, healthcare, home improvement, and schooling.
The United States recognizes the power of women’s potential in these areas and many others, and is investing in major initiatives including Feed the Future and the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, where women’s role in generating transformative change is front and center.
I went to Durban to highlight the critical role of women in combating climate change. While there, I worked with U.S. negotiators on the Durban texts and participated in public engagement events. Our efforts to build on the gender equality and women’s empowerment language in the Cancun agreements are reflected in several crucial institutional developments, including language on gender balance related to the composition of the board of the new Green Climate Fund, the Standing Committee, and the Adaptation Committee. We also worked to reflect gender considerations in the mission of the Climate Technology Center and Network. USAID Assistant Administrator Eric Postel and I solicited input during a meeting with leading non-governmental organizations working on gender and climate issues, and I hosted a high-level side event at the U.S. Center focused on unlocking women’s potential to combat climate change. The level of enthusiasm among my fellow panelists and the audience at the event was inspirational.
We made progress in Durban, but we can’t stop here. To achieve the future we all seek, we must do more. As the late Wangari Maathai, founder of the Green Belt Movement and ground-breaking advocate on women and the environment said, “We must not tire, we must not give up, we must persist.” The future of not only women, but our planet, depends on it.
Ambassador Melanne Verveer is U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues.
Sources: Food and Agriculture Organization, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, The White House.
Photo Credit: “Melanne S. Verveer,” courtesy of the U.S. Embassy, Kabul. -
In Somalia, Beyond the Immediate Crises, Demography Reveals a Long-Term Challenge
December 21, 2011 // By Elizabeth Leahy MadsenMOREIn the nearly 20 years since the infamous intervention that resulted in the deaths of dozens of American and UN peacekeeping soldiers on the streets of Mogadishu, Somalia has become the epitome of a “failed state.” Neighboring countries, global bodies, and aid agencies are rushing to respond to the country’s rapidly evolving political, security and humanitarian crises.
Diplomatic attention has focused on decentralized, weak governance that is divided among the Al Shabab insurgency, clan warlords, and a hamstrung and largely ineffective Transitional Federal Government, whose control does not extend beyond the capital. Foreign militaries have had to devote naval resources to curtailing daring and far-reaching acts of piracy against civilian and military vessels from networks based in Somalia. Aid groups have been stymied in their efforts to stem famine as access to populations in the hardest-hit areas has been cut off by Al Shabab and food aid has been stolen. Most recently, Kenyan and, reportedly, Ethiopian forces have crossed the border, extending the reach of the country’s political crisis. Hundreds of thousands of have fled conditions of hunger, illness, and violence into neighboring countries.
Perhaps the deepest woe of a “failed state” is that its problems are deep-seated and cannot be solved during the brief span of a UN meeting or the news cycle following the latest terrorist attack. Amid the extraordinary efforts to battle the country’s crises, one of the most important underlying structural factors is often overlooked: the country’s unusual demographic picture.
A Demographic Outlier
Somalia is a global outlier in demographic terms, with rates of fertility (6.4 children per woman), infant mortality (107 deaths per 1,000 births), and maternal mortality (1,200 deaths per 100,000 live births) all above the already-high averages for sub-Saharan Africa. These demographic indicators are both a reflection of the abysmal state of health care in the country and a warning that its economic and security challenges are unlikely to be easily resolved.Research shows that where at least 60 percent of the population is younger than 30 years old, countries are more prone to outbreaks of civil conflict, and the risk increases as the proportional size of the “youth bulge” grows. In Somalia, 70 percent of the population is younger than 30, a level comparable to Iraq and the Palestinian Territories. With little to no improvements in health care, Somalia’s age structure has remained unchanged over the past 40 years. Unlike dozens of other countries where fertility has declined significantly in recent decades, Somali women have nearly as many children on average today as they did in the 1970s. The current total fertility rate of 6.4 children per woman is only a 12 percent decline from the 1970 rate.
Despite high infant mortality – more than 10 percent of children die before turning one – this sustained high fertility rate has generated rapid population growth, with each successive generation larger than the next. Somalia’s population has almost tripled since 1970, from 3.6 to 9.3 million, although population density remains low (one-third the world average). If the fertility rate remains constant at the current level – not an unreasonable projection considering how stagnant it has been over past decades – Somalia would be home to 33 million people by 2050. Even if the fertility rate drops to near four children per woman, as projected in the UN’s medium variant, the population would still triple to 28 million by mid-century given the demographic momentum of decades of high fertility.The fertility decline built into the UN’s medium variant projection – which would still place Somalia among the highest total fertility rates in the world by 2050 – is unlikely without steady and major improvements in the country’s health system, particularly women’s health. But with decades of conflict, weak governance and little investment, the environment for reproductive health services is dire.
A recent World Health Organization assessment described “unacceptable levels of unmet need, extreme inequities in access…slow progress…[and] underinvestment and poorly coordinated actions.” Pregnancy and childbirth are major risks to women’s well-being. Somali women have a one in 14 chance of dying from maternal causes over their lifetimes, the second-highest risk in the world. Funding to improve reproductive and maternal health care remains too low to meet demand. The United Nations Population Fund reports that donors spent about $6 million on population and reproductive health programs in 2008, about one-third as much as was spent in Benin and Burundi, which have smaller populations.
The Future for Youth
Instability and violence have become entrenched in Somalia; according to the Armed Conflict Dataset, civil conflict occurred in 12 of the past 20 years. The direct causes of the conflict are typically recorded as struggles for power and resources among competing clans. But in considering the underlying causes of conflict, demographic security scholars have suggested that very young age structures such as Somalia’s can create both motive and opportunity for recruitment into a violent uprising. As ever-growing numbers of young people face adulthood with few prospects for employment, hopelessness or desperation can make them vulnerable to the promise of well-being and identity offered by a political faction or rebel group.
There are 1.7 million people between the ages of 15 and 24 in Somalia today, with another 2.5 million following in the next ten-year age cohort. With opportunities for education, jobs, and equitable participation in society, these youth would represent a promising future for their country. Unfortunately, such opportunities are not afforded to most of them. A United Nations survey found that the secondary school enrollment rate is just six percent, with poverty and early marriage keeping many young people out of school. World Bank data from 2002 show that two-thirds of urban working-age adults and 41 percent of those in rural areas were unemployed. Nearly half of the population lives on less than $1 per day.
Youth Education, Economic Opportunities Could Increase Stability
While global attention centers on the government’s commitment to a new roadmap for peace and the efforts of the African Union’s peacekeeping forces to drive Al Shabab out of Mogadishu, development agencies have recognized demographic security as an important component of Somalia’s future.
The United Nations Children’s Fund is supporting schools for displaced children in Mogadishu, saying in a press release that “providing them with learning opportunities in a safe environment is critical for the country’s long-term stability and growth.”
The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has announced plans for a new program called the Somali Youth Leaders Initiative, which aims to improve young people’s access to secondary education and economic opportunities and to increase their civic participation. In designing the program, USAID noted “the recruitment of boys and men by extremist organizations and piracy networks” and “the common perception that an increasing youth population is a potentially destabilizing force.”
As the October 4 bombing at the Education Ministry in Mogadishu showed, young people are often the victims of the country’s instability. Programs such as those of UNICEF and USAID that empower young people to capitalize on their potential should be a greater focus among initiatives to address Somalia’s long-term future as well as its immediate crises.
Elizabeth Leahy Madsen is a consultant on political demography for the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program and former senior research associate at Population Action International.
Sources: BBC, Population Action International, The New York Times, UCDP/PRIO, UNICEF, UNESCO, UN Population Division, UN Population Fund, Urdal (2006), USAID, World Bank, World Health Organization.
Image Credit: “Somalia Suffers from Worst Drought in Century,” courtesy of flickr user United Nations Photo/Stuart Price; charts arranged by Elizabeth Leahy Madsen, data from the UN Population Division and World Health Organization.Topics: agriculture, demography, development, food security, global health, humanitarian, population, poverty, security, Somalia, USAID -
Climate Diplomacy in Perspective
December 20, 2011 // By Lukas RüttingerMOREClimate policy on the international level often seems to be largely limited to negotiations within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). However, in the shadow of these negotiations, a new approach merging climate and foreign policy is developing. Calling it “climate diplomacy,” proponents of this approach argue that tackling climate change is inherently a political struggle and one in which classic diplomatic instruments should play a role. This is especially true, since the challenges posed by climate change are so huge and the solutions so far reaching that the climate conversation also has to be a diplomatic one. Yet negotiations and treaties are just one instrument of foreign policy and they are only as successful and strong as the political foundation upon which they are built.
The German Federal Foreign Office, supported by adelphi, invited representatives from the European Union, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and the United Nations, as well as over 30 countries for a two-day conference in Berlin this October, “Climate Diplomacy in Perspective – From Early Warning to Early Action,” to discuss what climate diplomacy looks like in practice, what its added value is, and what challenges it is best suited to address.
In working groups on water diplomacy, food security, and coastal stability, common themes and questions quickly emerged. In particular, the value and danger of securitizing the climate change discourse was a prominent issue.
On the one hand, the securitization of issues such as transnational water sharing can raise threat perception to a level that makes it very hard to tackle and may even foster conflict. On the other hand, participants noted that framing climate change as a security challenge might help to finally create the political leverage needed for far-reaching action.
Confronting Complexity
Another common theme was the complexity and linked nature of the climate challenges faced. Although covering different aspects, each working group quickly recognized systems with multiple feedback loops, such as the water-food-energy nexus. The same point was underlined in discussions around complex emergencies and crises, such as the 2010 floods in Pakistan.
However, the discussion did not stop at an analysis of challenges, the working groups also developed many suggestions of what climate diplomacy could and should look like.
One shared recommendation was that the complexity of and links between issues require sectoral policies and institutions to reach beyond their traditional, thematic, and even geographic focus. In regards to cross-border water cooperation, for example, this means that regional political institutions are often better suited than water institutions because of their broader mandate and focus. Where classic diplomacy and regional cooperation do not work, for example because national governments are blocking these efforts, participants proposed that informal diplomacy, track two initiatives, and cooperation on lower administrative levels such as municipalities can provide alternatives.
The complexity of the challenges is daunting but when asked to summarize why diplomats should tackle climate change, John Ashton, the special representative for climate change for the British Commonwealth Foreign Office, summed up his understanding in a simple but to-the-point answer: “Because it is our job.”
Lukas Rüttinger is a project manager for adelphi, mainly focusing on the fields of conflict analysis and peacebuilding as well as resources and governance.
Photo Credit: German Federal Foreign Office. -
From Dakar: Explaining Population Growth and Family Planning to Environmentalists
December 19, 2011 // By Sandeep BathalaMORE“There is a growing recognition that population is a key driver of environmental, development, governance, and security challenges; however, family planning is not a traditional tool, nor is it often considered an ‘appropriate’ one, for responding to food, water, climate, or conflict,” said Roger-Mark De Souza at a November 30 panel discussion at the 2011 International Conference on Family Planning in Dakar, Senegal. “This presents a challenge for us: How can we change perceptions of family planning so that it becomes part of the solution to wider problems, including natural resource scarcity, lack of economic development, gender inequity, and instability?”
De Souza, vice president of research and director of the climate program at Population Action International (PAI), was joined by Sandeep Bathala, program associate with the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program; Robert Engelman, president of Worldwatch Institute; and Daisy Magaña, fellow with the GoJoven Program, for a session on “Reaching Out at Rio: Explaining Population Growth and Family Planning to Environmentalists.”
Population Dynamics Part of Climate Vulnerability
“Advocates…need to communicate that empowering women to make their own reproductive choices will improve both their individual well-being and our collective environment,” said Engelman. According to research conducted on behalf of Americans for UNFPA, messages that focus on women – their health or empowerment – resonate well with American environmentalists, as they do with broader audiences.
PAI’s interactive mapping website shows that high levels of unmet need for family planning and rapid population growth rates are common in countries with low levels of resilience to climate change and high levels of projected decline in agricultural production, said De Souza. “Family planning services can be one element of a multi-pronged strategy to reduce especially women’s vulnerability to these interlocking vulnerabilities,” he said.
“Currently, population growth is viewed as a challenge to addressing climate change-related vulnerabilities, but family planning services are commonly left out of conversations about ways to reduce these vulnerabilities.” This is a lost opportunity, said De Souza: “We can integrate family planning into wider environmental, development, and peace-building efforts.”
At the recent UN Climate Change Conference in Durban, a side event on reproductive health and climate was well-attended. However, as panelist Esther Agbarakwe of the Africa Youth Initiative on Climate Change noted, population was not part of the conference‘s official discussion, due to lack of knowledge and fears of population control. PAI is currently working with UNFPA to produce a series of training modules on population and climate change that will help environmentalists, climate change activists, and researchers better understand and explore these connections.
Tapping the Youth Base
Bathala, formerly the Sierra Club’s Global Population and Environment Program director, discussed how the Sierra Club, one of the only major grassroots conservation organizations with a population program, uses youth outreach to raise awareness on the links between the environment, reproductive health, and women’s rights.
Because young people constitute over half of the world’s population, the Sierra Club focuses on empowering youth leaders to make the connection between environmental issues and sexual and reproductive health and rights. The Population and Environment Program reaches youth directly by organizing summits and multi-state campus tours featuring young people from around the world sharing compelling stories with their peers.
“The program provides youth and adult activists with materials, communication strategies, and leadership training,” Bathala said. “With these tools, the activists then educate their community members, campus, and decision-makers about the need for measures that increase access to family planning while addressing poverty, women’s empowerment, and environmental protection.”
In April, fellow panel member and Belize-native Daisy Magaña joined one of the Sierra Club’s U.S. tours to discuss the GoJoven program, which convenes and support youth reproductive health champions throughout Latin America. Through GoJoven, Magaña has worked to expand adolescent reproductive and sexual health choices, services, policies, and programs in Belize.
In a blog post, Magaña discussed how her message was simple: Don’t give up. “If you think being active on environmental and sexual rights issues is hard to do here, imagine doing it in a deeply conservative [Catholic] country like mine,” she told U.S. students.
Sierra Club also leads story tours to functioning population, health, and environment programs in the field, including a 2009 trip to Guatemala and Belize in conjunction with GoJoven. Through visits to 10 project sites, two U.S.-based youth advocates witnessed first-hand the challenges and opportunities associated with community-based sexual and reproductive health programs, significantly enhancing their ability to be pro-active messengers in their own communities. The tour helped the Sierra Club build an international network of young people committed to social and policy change in their countries.
Looking Forward: Finding Ways To Highlight Integration
While recognition of the connections between population growth and environmental impacts is growing, the experience of the panelists shows that it takes innovative methods to reach both the environmental and family planning communities. A similar panel later this winter at the Wilson Center will include representatives of Americans for UNFPA discussing their research on talking to environmentalists about reproductive health and population growth.
With the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) coming in June of next year, highlighting successful strategies is crucial in order to pave the way for better integration in the future.
Event ResourcesImage Credit: Roger-Mark De Souza/Population Action International.Topics: conservation, COP-17, education, environment, family planning, funding, global health, ICFP, Latin America, PHE, population, Rio+20, Senegal, UN, youth -
How Much Did the Climate Talks in Durban Accomplish?
December 16, 2011 // By Wilson Center StaffMOREThe original version of this article, by Ruth Greenspan Bell and Barry Blechman, appeared on Foreign Affairs.
The outcome of the recent Durban climate conference represents a victory, of sorts, for a particular vision of how the community of nations might eventually gain control over greenhouse gases. But that vision is flawed, perpetuating an approach that, after more than 20 years of negotiations, has not reversed warming trends. Of particular concern is the continued insistence on a comprehensive deal negotiated by all nations through a UN process. The degree to which the meme of a “legally-binding” agreement has dominated thinking is likewise troubling.
Our October article, “Beyond the Durban Climate Talks,” examined an alternative negotiating pathway – one based on the effective model of nuclear arms control. There, specific issues were opportunistically segmented for resolution. And, in some cases, negotiators achieved progress by working in alternative fora that were not wedded to the UN ground rules, especially the ones that give every country, no matter how small, a potential veto on the results. Unfortunately, the Durban result continues the well-trod UN pathway.
The meetings saw protracted debate about how precisely to characterize the “legal” and “binding” nature of a future agreement that might emerge in 2015 from yet another “new” round of negotiations. Indeed, the supposed distinction between “political” or “voluntary” and “legally binding” agreements has dominated United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change negotiations for years. Yet such distinctions break down upon closer examination.
Continue reading on Foreign Affairs.
Ruth Greenspan Bell is public policy scholar at the Wilson Center.
Photo Credit: “Oxfam hungry for climate action at Durban Climate Conference,” courtesy of Oxfam International and Ainhoa Goma. -
On the Beat
Pulitzer Center Launches Collaborative Reporting Project on Reproductive Health
MOREThe original version of this article, by Jake Naughton, appeared on the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting blog.
The Pulitzer Center launched its collaborative reproductive health-reporting project at this year’s International Conference on Family Planning (ICFP) in Dakar, Senegal. The project brings together four journalists from Africa and four from the United States who will collaborate to enhance local and international reporting about reproductive health across the continent.
The African journalists are Mae Azango of Liberia, Estelle Ellis of South Africa, Sam Olukoya of Nigeria, and Ken Opala of Kenya. Their U.S. counterparts are Christian Science Monitor correspondent Jina Moore; New Yorker editorial staffer Alexis Okeowo; and the Pulitzer Center’s managing director Nathalie Applewhite and visual media coordinator Jake Naughton.
More than two thousand reproductive health professionals and hundreds of journalists from all over the world participated in the conference, which sought to shine a spotlight on the unmet need for family planning services worldwide, and to focus on integrating family planning into general health services.
Continue reading on the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting blog.
Video Credit: “Meet the Journalists: Dakar,” courtesy of the Pulitzer Center.Topics: Africa, global health, ICFP, Kenya, Liberia, maternal health, media, Nigeria, On the Beat, population, poverty, South Africa, video -
Beat on the Ground
Watch: Dr. Vik Mohan on Integrating Family Planning and Conservation in Madagascar
The integration of population, health, and environment programming “enables us to create synergies that mean we are more effective at achieving both health and conservation goals,” said Dr. Vik Mohan, director of sexual and reproductive health programming for Blue Ventures, in an interview with ECSP at the 2011 International Conference on Family Planning.MORE
After Blue Ventures established their first clinic in 2007 in the village of Andavadoaka, on Madagascar’s southwest coast, “we felt immense pressure to scale up our intervention,” said Mohan. “We started with one clinic in one village, and now we have a multi-site service covering all 40 villages that we partner with for our community-based conservation work,” he said.
According to data compiled by Blue Ventures, the average total fertility rate in the region is 6.7 children per woman. The London-based eco-tourism-turned health and environment NGO offers a variety of family planning services to meet local demand, including mobile outreach clinics and community-based distribution of contraceptives. They also partner with Marie Stopes International to offer long-acting and permanent methods of contraception for those that want it.
“This Model Can Be Taken to Scale”
By integrating conservation and reproductive health messaging and service delivery, “we are getting greater buy-in from the community because they all see the added value of the breadth of things that we offer them,” Mohan said. “Men who came to hear about fisheries management get to hear about family planning technologies, practically for the first time in their lives.”
The fishermen are able to see the links between food security and population growth through their own experience, he added. “We believe very passionately this model can be taken to scale,” Mohan said. “This is something that could be easily replicated in other regions. Definitely in other coastal regions, but almost certainly in other remote areas – perhaps areas of high biodiversity where there are existing projects, perhaps conservation projects – but where there is an unmet need for healthcare and family planning in particular.”
“My advice to other organizations, whether you are doing healthcare or whether you are doing conservation, is just think holistically,” said Mohan. “If you are a conservation organization that recognizes that there is an unmet healthcare need for the communities that you work with, then…don’t be afraid to ask those questions, and don’t be afraid to build capacity to meet the need, if you find one. Or, don’t be afraid to partner with health NGOs to enable that need to be met.”
For more on Blue Ventures’ integrated efforts, see also ECSP FOCUS Issue 23, “To Live With the Sea: Reproductive Health Care and Marine Conservation in Madagascar,” co-authored by Vik Mohan.
Subscribe:
