Below is a write up from PMC’s Program Assistant, Wendi Stein. She is with our country representative for Eastern Caribbean , Alleyne Regis, and the team from Emergent Media Center (EMC). They are in St. Lucia for the week testing episode one of our electronic game to end violence against women.

For more information on this project, please visit our site or EMC’s blog.
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December 15, 2009
On Tuesday the team met to walk through the tests and do a practice run. It turned out to be a very late night for some of the students who were fixing parts of the test straight into early morning.

December 16, 2009
On Wednesday we went met with students from the Dennery Primary School on the east coast of the island and in the small fishing village where PMC’s regional representative, Alleyne Regis, is from and still lives. It was a beautifully sunny and hot day. Continue Reading »

A perfect storm in the Rocky Mountains driven by population growth, a warming climate, and economic development has put the region’s ecosystems and its economies in jeopardy, according to World Watch magazine. These changes put many species with specific habitat and temperature needs at risk and also threaten to destroy the very natural areas that are sustaining the region’s prosperity.

From WorldWatch Magazine. See http://www.worldwatch.org/node/6160

by Lina Barrera

Portraits of Climate Change: The Rocky Mountains
People have been moving westward in North America since the earliest European settlement of the continent. For many early migrants, the Rocky Mountains simply impeded progress toward California and the Pacific coast, but more recent arrivals have come to the Rockies to stay, drawn by their spectacular beauty, agreeable weather, livable communities, and seemingly endless options for outdoor recreation. Between 1990 and 2000 these amenities attracted well over 2 million new residents to the area, and the in-migration has continued into this decade (50,000 came to Colorado last year alone). The area has become a rapid-growth zone; six of the top ten fastest-growing U.S. states lie along the Rockies.
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In the Lancet Commission, “Managing the health effects of climate change” (May 16, p 1693), Anthony Costello and colleagues give a timely and balanced review of the key social implications of climate change, recognising the complexity of its connections with population.

World Bank

Future population growth in developing nations could accentuate climate change. A reduction in growth rates would, therefore, help mitigate climate change while speeding up poverty reduction and development. Costello and colleagues observe-as the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has repeatedly pointed out-that a substantial decline in population growth rates can be achieved by empowering women, reducing poverty, and meeting family planning needs.

For full article, visit:
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(09)61449-5/fulltext

Thanks to Thato Ratsebe for this article from Yahoo News. The statement that “200 million women across the world want contraceptives, but cannot get them” is incorrect. Of the non-users of contraception who do not want another pregnancy in the next two years (between 100 million and 200 million), fully one-third to one-half have no intention to use contraception because of fear of health risks, personal opposition, male opposition, religious opposition, and fatalism. Less than 2% of the reasons given for non-use by this group have anything to do with lack of access or cost. This data is not correctly understood by many people in the fields of family planning and population.
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Contraception advice is crucial to poor countries’ battle with climate change, and policy makers are failing their people if they continue to shy away from the issue, a leading family planning expert said on Friday.

Leo Bryant, a lead researcher on a World Health Organization study on population growth and climate change, said the stigma attached to birth control in both developing and developed countries was hindering vital progress.

For full article, visit:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090918/hl_nm/us_climate_contraception

A rising population and climate change need to be considered together in an integrated policy, experts demanded at a forum on sexual and reproductive health and development held in Berlin Sep. 2-4.

Family planning is not at present being considered in the context of climate change, even though national adaptation programs to climate change of the less developed countries point out the link between population growth and pressure on the environment within the context of climate change.

The governments of the 40 poorest countries have recently linked population growth and environmental catastrophes, but few directly address population growth in their adaptation strategies to climate change.

For full article, visit:
http://www.allbusiness.com/science-technology

Thanks to Peter Friedman and Scott Connolly for this article from the New York Times.
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If you scan the most recent drafts of the climate agreement that delegates here are trying to complete, you’ll have a hard time finding the word population. I’m quite sure it’s not there. (Please let me know if you find it.) This is politically unsurprising, given how discussions of population growth inflame those fearing control measures, those with religious concerns about contraception and sometimes those seeing underpopulation where others see a problem. (There are other interesting reactions when the intersection of climate and population is explored.)

The importance of population size in gauging emissions trends was raised by Chinese officials here, who noted that their one-child policies reduced births by 400 million and emissions of carbon dioxide by some 18 million tons a year. In the first week of the meeting, Zhao Baige, vice minister of the National Population and Family Planning Commission, said the policies had some mixed consequences, with the country now aging and facing a paucity of girls. “I’m not saying that what we have done is 100 percent right, but I’m sure we are going in the right direction and now 1.3 billion people have benefited,” she said.

For full article, visit:
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009

Thanks to Kathleen Mogelgaard of Population Action International for the report, Population and Reproductive Health in National Adaptation Programmes of Action, by Clive Mutunga and Karen Hardee. See http://www.populationaction.org/Issues/Population_and_Climate_Change/NAPAS_1006_v2.shtml to download the report.

The report reviews 41 National Adaptation Programmes of Action (NAPAs) submitted by Least Developed Countries (LDCs) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and identifies the range of interventions included in countries’ priority adaptation actions. The review found near-universal recognition among the NAPAs of the importance of population considerations as a central pillar in climate change adaptation.
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Below is an article written by Tim Murray
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In the wake of his scathing indictment of Canada’s irresponsible record in fighting climate change, George Monbiot was interviewed on CBC Radio on December 7th (2009). Any guest that who will join in a politically gang-bang of the Harper government is welcome on CBC Pravda—not that Harper hasn’t got it coming. But then, so do the opposition parties, but more.

What makes Monbiot so potently dangerous is that the kernel of misunderstanding inherent in his analysis is shrouded by several good points. He referred to an article in Nature Magazine that stated that if we are to avoid the 2 degree tipping point that most proponents of man-made climate change (AGW) cite as the fulcrum point between manageable and catastrophic global temperature increase, we must leave 40% of known conventional fossil fuel reserves (oil, gas and coal) in the ground. Since the oil in the Alberta tar sands is the dirtiest (with a CO2 footprint some 30-40% higher than conventional oil), he argued, it should be the first among the 40% left untouched, followed by coal. He observed that Canadian climate change policy was being driven by Albertan policy, that is, by the determination to exploit the tar sands. Not quite.
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Thanks to Tim Murray for this article.
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I am frankly sick and tired of growth-promoters raising the spectre of “coercive population measures” whenever a suggestion is made that we must promote family planning or smaller families. Is there some sacred reason why fertility should not be limited if deemed necessary? In a world of 6.8 billion people going on 9 or 10 billion, or in any nation suffering from exponential population growth, there can be no “pro-creative” right.

This must not be confused with “reproductive” rights. Women should have the right not to have children. But they have no right, in the context of overshoot, to have as many children as they or their husbands want. The “right to choose” cannot be the right to abuse. Even the most jealously guarded right must be measured against equally fundamental rights, most especially the right of our species, and others, to live.

For full article, visit:
http://candobetter.org/node/1715

Thanks to Laurie Mazur for letting me know about the launch of her new website, which has information about her forthcoming book and various related events around the country: www.popjustice.org. Also, thanks to Laurie for her op-ed in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, entitled “A Neglected Climate Strategy: Empower Women, Slow Population Growth.” See http://thebulletin.org/web-edition/op-eds/neglected-climate-strategy-empower-women-slow-population-growth.

A neglected climate strategy: Empower women, slow population growth
By Laurie Mazur | 12 October 2009

Article Highlights

• While scientists pursue high-tech, high-cost solutions for climate mitigation such as geoengineering, there are low-tech, high-reward programs that can be put in place right now.
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