-
From the Wilson Center
Watch: Geoff Dabelko and John Sewell on Integrating Environment, Development, and Security and the QDDR
“We all must check our stereotypes of the other communities at the door…we’re not talking about hugging trees and hugging pandas,” said Geoff Dabelko, director of the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program, in a panel discussion on Foreign Policy Challenges in the 112th Congress as part of the Wilson Center on the Hill series. Dabelko argued for a more multi-dimensional and integrated approach to addressing environmental issues.MORE
“To tackle these problems, these connections between, say, natural resources, development, and security, it really does require that we have an integrated approach to our analysis [and] an integrated approach to our responses,” Dabelko said.
In dealing with climate change, for example, “a more diversified view would be one where we spend more time trying to understand adaptation,” said Dabelko. “How are we going to deal with the expected impacts of these problems?” he asked.
Dabelko called on policymakers to seek “triple bottom lines,” pointing out that “if you’re worried about climate change, or you’re worried about development, or you’re worried about fragile states, some of the same governance interventions and strong institutions in these fragile or weak states are going be the ones that will get you benefits in these multiple sectors.”
The Political Space
Fortunately, the current political environment is one in which “there is political space for integration,” said Dabelko, as demonstrated by, for example, the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR), which Wilson Center Senior Scholar John Sewell addressed in his remarks.
“All of you who are directly or indirectly engaged in Congress are going to be faced with a very important opportunity in the next 12 to 24 months,” Sewell said, “to focus both diplomacy and development on the major challenges that are going to face all of us in the first half of the century.”
Calling the QDDR a “major rethink of both American diplomacy and American development,” Sewell applauded its conceptual alignment, but cautioned that the review leaves many questions unanswered about its implementation.
“The QDDR sets no criteria,” said Sewell. “Are we going to continue to put large sums of money into countries that aren’t developing? Are we going to follow the choice of issues – food, environment, and so on and so forth? It’s a question that is not answered in any of these documents.”
Sewell also pointed to potential clashes over budgeting, USAID/State leadership, and the lack of coordination with other large development agencies, like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
For more on Sewell’s analysis of the QDDR, see his recent blog post “Reading the QDDR: Is the Glass Half Full or Half Empty?” -
Beat on the Ground
Promoting Family Planning and Livelihoods for a Healthy Environment in Uganda
MOREThis PHE Champion profile was produced by the BALANCED Project.
Meet 32 year old Ruth Siyage – a wife, mother, peasant farmer, shop owner, and population, health, and environment (PHE) champion. Ruth, her husband, Siyage Benon, and their three healthy daughters – ages 3, 6, and 11 – live about an hour from Bwindi Impenetrable National Park (BINP) in Uganda’s Kanungu District. The 33,000-hectare BINP is a World Heritage Site known for its exceptional biodiversity – with over 200 species of trees, 100 species of ferns, 350 species of birds, 200 species of butterflies, as well as many endangered species, including the mountain gorilla.
In addition to being a peasant farmer who grows potatoes, millet, beans, and groundnuts to feed her family, Ruth also has a small shop in the nearby trading center where she sells groceries and interacts with most of her friends. Ruth first learned of and embraced the PHE approach through a neighbor and local community volunteer, Mrs. Hope Matsiko – one of 29 PHE volunteers trained by the Conservation Through Public Health (CTPH) programs.
Ruth recalls:Hope used to approach us and tell us about family planning. Others refused to listen, but I took it up. Before, I used to refuse to go to Kajubwe Health Center for services and never got information because it was so far away. However, when Hope, the local volunteer, who is also my neighbor, visited me at home, I got more information about family planning. She also counseled me on the methods I could use, which was best for my health and how to use it. I now use family planning.
As a new champion, Ruth uses several ways to teach her community about family planning and PHE activities. One way is through face-to-face discussions with individuals attending village meetings. She focuses on women she sees often and who she knows have closely-spaced pregnancies. Recently, three of these women started using modern contraceptives.Ruth also spreads her PHE messages through her work with the local women’s association, Kishanda Bakyara Twebiseho (Kishanda Women Livelihoods Association), as an active member of a local church, and as a local village council member. In the council, she is in charge of teaching about agriculture and the environment – a perfect opportunity to share her PHE messages about the linkages between population, health, and the environment. Ruth is a great model of the benefits of taking a PHE approach, with her well-spaced pregnancies – which have helped ensure her own reproductive health and that of her three daughters – and her teaching of others, from what she now knows about the need to keep ourselves and our environment healthy to the impacts of each on the other.
Ruth says she believes that through a PHE approach much can be done and has been done:By teaching people about safe water use, I believe that we can stop diarrhea diseases. And by teaching about sanitation, we can help prevent diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis, and worms. Now my neighbors seldom get sick. We have a fairly healthy life. When we are not sick, we do not have to sell our goats and land to buy medicine. And when we plan our families, we are better able to care for and educate our children. Through our community sensitization, people now even understand the importance of gorilla conservation.
Ruth is especially appreciative of the CTPH program, which first taught her about and then turned her into an advocate for the integrated PHE approach.
This PHE Champion profile was produced by the BALANCED Project. A PDF version can be downloaded from the PHE Toolkit. PHE Champion profiles highlight people working on the ground to improve health and conservation in areas where biodiversity is critically endangered.
Photo Credit: Silverback mountain gorilla named Mwirima with a juvenille gorilla from the Rusguguar group near Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, and Ruth and her son in their shop in rural Uganda, courtesy of CTPH.Topics: Africa, Beat on the Ground, community-based, conservation, family planning, forests, PHE, PHE Champion -
Guest Contributor
Civilian Power in a Complex, Uncertain World
MORELeading Through Civilian Power: The First Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR) initiates an encouraging process of rethinking and restructuring that is long overdue. It explicitly links itself to the 2010 National Security Strategy and echoes the latter’s commitment to “national renewal and global leadership.” It refers briefly to the obvious companion document, the Quadrennial Defense Review, although it resists engaging with some key aspects.
Topics: climate change, foreign policy, funding, Guest Contributor, military, QDDR, Reading the QDDR, security, State -
Teaching Environment and Security at West Point
February 16, 2011 // By Geoffrey D. DabelkoMOREU.S. strategic assessments like the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review, the 2010 National Security Strategy, and the Director of National Intelligence’s annual threat assessment have placed natural resources, climate change, population, and poverty squarely on the American security agenda. But are these broad statements in doctrine and threat assessments translating into tangible changes, such as new approaches to the education of future military officers? My colleague Sean Peoples and I recently spoke with faculty and cadets at the U.S. Military Academy about how West Point’s Geography and Environmental Engineering Department is integrating these issues directly into their curriculum.
-
From the Wilson Center
Demographic Trends and Policy Implications in Northeast Asia
MOREJapan, the People’s Republic of China, Taiwan, and Korea are all aging societies. On February 26, the Wilson Center’s Asia Program hosted an event to consider issues related to demographic change in Northeast Asia. What will be the effect of aging on economic output in these countries? Can welfare states established for much younger populations in developed economies survive the stress of demographic change, or will governments in Northeast Asia need to radically rethink the provision of care to the elderly? Can immigration reform alleviate many of the problems associated with more elderly populations in Northeast Asia? And will current demographic shifts foster more benign or more belligerent interstate relations in the region?
At the event, Harvard University School of Public Health research associate Jocelyn Finlay noted that demographic trends are often overlooked in explaining economic growth in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan between 1960 and 2000. Demographers estimate that decreases in infant mortality and adult fertility levels, which resulted in an increase of workers relative to dependents, accounted for up to a third of economic growth in these countries during this period. As the age cohort born after 1945 enters into retirement, however, the increase in dependents relative to new workers will be a contributing factor to sluggish growth. Finlay mentioned that pro-natalism and pro-immigration policies, and policies that encourage women and the elderly to participate in the workplace, could help to mitigate the effects of an aging society on economic growth but noted that such policies were all difficult to implement.
These difficulties were examined in further detail by Ito Peng, professor of sociology at the University of Toronto. Peng noted that East Asian democracies have traditionally maintained very lean welfare states, relying instead on private institutions such as extended families to carry much of the burden of, for example, care for the elderly. However, public provision of care for the aged is increasing in these countries, where the nuclear family has become the norm. Governments must actively pursue strategies to increase the number of workers and therefore income tax revenues to pay for the resulting increases in public spending.
However, policies intended to expand the tax base often have unintended consequences. For example, encouraging people to have larger families often has the effect of forcing mothers to stay at home to care for their children, depriving the labor force of a productive worker in the short term. To address this problem, Japan and South Korea have increased the level of public childcare provision. However Peng believes that there needs to be greater integration between the private and public spheres to make Northeast Asian workplaces, still a sphere of male dominance, friendlier to working mothers. Companies that insist on significant overtime duties could, for example, find ways to let working parents maintain a work-life balance that allows them to personally care for their children. Northeast Asian countries can also institute pro-immigration policies to bring more young workers from abroad. However, sustained immigration policies are also difficult in nations, like Japan and South Korea, without a history of accepting newcomers.
For Richard Cincotta, demographer-in-residence at the Stimson Center and consultant for the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program, demographic change will be a major factor in determining the way states in Northeast Asia approach security. To illustrate the relationship between demography and security, Cincotta noted that Japan’s militarist period in the 1930s and 1940s occurred when its population was younger, more ambitious, and more energetic. With older societies, countries in Northeast Asia will be able to recruit fewer males for the military, meaning their foreign policies may shift more towards caution.
The exception, however, is China, where the number of potential male recruits far outnumbers those of its neighbors. This means that Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan will come under more pressure to intensify the use of human capital by promoting more professionalized and better equipped militaries. They will also have incentives to resolve any differences with their key ally, the United States, as well as among each other. Cincotta suggested that we may be seeing the start of a new type of Cold War, where Pacific Northeast Asian states cooperate to check a potential Chinese regional hegemon.
Bryce Wakefield is a program associate with the Asia Program at the Woodrow Wilson Center.
Photo Credit: “Mouth wide open,” courtesy of flickr user Azzazello.Topics: aging, Asia, China, conflict, foreign policy, From the Wilson Center, gender, migration, population -
Friday Podcasts
Eliya Zulu on Population Growth, Family Planning, and Urbanization in Africa
MORE“The whole push for population control or to stabilize populations in Africa in the ’70s and the ’80s mostly came out of the West,” said Eliya Zulu of the African Institute for Development Policy (AFIDEP) in this interview with ECSP. Then new research brought to light the fact that many women in Africa actually wanted to control their fertility themselves, but they didn’t have access to family planning.
“It kind of put the African leaders who really didn’t want to talk anything about fertility control and so on in a fix,” Zulu said. “Because all of sudden now it was the African women themselves who are saying we need these services – it was not an imposition from the West.”
Based in Nairobi, Kenya, Zulu said that part of what he does at AFIDEP is “try to get African countries to think about the future.” Current economic growth in parts of Africa simply can’t match population growth, but improving access to family planning and child/maternal health infrastructure can greatly reduce fertility rates – and quickly.
“The question for Africa is: Are we going to be ready? And we need to prepare,” said Zulu. “For that to happen it’s not just about saying ‘let’s have fewer children.’ I think we also need to do this from a social developmental perspective where we also look at ways in which we can improve the quality of the population, empower women, invest in education, and so on.”
Four Factors of Success
There are several factors that are critical for successful family planning and child/maternal health efforts, said Zulu: strong political leadership, sustained commitment over time, financial investment (research has shown that over 90 percent of women in sub-Saharan Africa cannot afford contraceptives), and strong accountability mechanisms for monitoring performance of programs and use of resources.
“There are a number of countries that have shown that, even with the limited resources that Africa has, that with all the problems that Africa has, if you really emphasize those four factors that I mentioned, you can actually achieve very, very positive results,” Zulu said.
Rapid Urbanization and the Growth of Urban Poverty
Rapid urbanization is one of Africa’s biggest challenges, said Zulu. “Africa is the least urbanized region of the world now, but it’s growing at the highest rate.” If you look at historical examples from the West and Asia, “urbanization is supposed to be a good thing; urbanization has been a driver of economic development,” he said, but “the major characteristic of urbanization in Africa has been the rapid growth of urban poverty.”
“If the economies are not going to develop the capacity to absorb this population and create enough jobs for them, there’s going to be chaos, because you can’t have all these young people without having jobs for them,” said Zulu. “The challenge for many African governments is how to have sustainable urbanization and how to transform our cities into agents of development.”
The “Pop Audio” series is also available as podcasts on iTunes.Topics: Africa, demography, development, economics, family planning, Friday Podcasts, gender, global health, podcast, poverty, urbanization -
Guest Contributor
Food Price Shocks and Instability Highlight Weaknesses in Governance and Markets
MOREUnrest across the Middle East has been front-page news for weeks, with commentators searching for explanations to account for the shifting political winds. Many, such as Thomas Friedman and Kevin Hall, have drawn connections between food prices and instability. But, as they point out, high food prices do not deterministically lead to unrest. Instead, rising prices highlight the degree to which governments and governance processes provide and ensure sustainable livelihoods for their people. What these and other commentators point to is that recognizing the role of government in providing food and security is vital: high food prices, they argue, don’t directly cause unrest, but high food prices in poorly managed countries creates a dangerous environment in which unrest may be more likely.
Topics: economics, Egypt, food security, foreign policy, Guest Contributor, media, Middle East, population, security, Tunisia -
Guest Contributor
First Steps on Human Security and Emerging Risks
MOREThe 2010 Quadrennial Development and Diplomacy Review (QDDR), the first of its kind, was recently released by the State Department and USAID in an attempt to redefine the scope and mission of U.S. foreign policy in the 21st century. Breaking away from the Cold War structures of hard international security and an exclusive focus on state-level diplomacy, the QDDR recognizes that U.S. interests are best served by a more comprehensive approach to international relations. The men and women who already work with the U.S. government possess valuable expertise that should be leveraged to tackle emerging threats and opportunities.
Subscribe:
