PMC’s new program in Papua New Guinea was featured in the April 30 edition of WanWok.

WanWok Apri 30, 2010 (PDF 898KB)

Thanks to Susan Gibbs for this link to work by Rachel Nugent at the Center for Global Development (CGD). To see the CGD’s lectures and papers on population issues, visit http://www.cgdev.org/section/initiatives/_active/demographicsanddevelopment

At the following page, Rachel Nugent gives an interesting interview (audio at the bottom of the page): http://blogs.cgdev.org/global_prosperity_wonkcast

Journalist Martin Wolf of the Financial Times has called population “the most important issue confronting humanity in this century.” Important new books on the future of development have devoted significant attention to it. Debates about population policy continue to stir and columnists and academics argue about what lies ahead if global population challenges are ignored. Population—the study of people using the tool of demography—is now appearing across development discourse, with policy implications that reach far beyond family planning and reproductive health.

For full article, visit:
http://www.cgdev.org/section/initiatives/_active/demographicsanddevelopment

PMC’s electronic game project, Breakaway, was recently featured in Champlain College’s Champlain View Spring 2010 edition.

Champlain View Spring 2010 – Breakaway (PDF, 363 KB)

For more information on this project, visit http://www.populationmedia.org/where/worldwide/.

Thanks to Steve Kurtz for this article.

The graph below, sent to me by Greg Morgan, illustrates the link between population size and CO2 emissions.

Population and CO2 (PDF, 24 KB)
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About forty years ago, the world population was only 3.5 billion, or about half of the present population of 6.7 billion people. Most of us seem to ignore or be unaware of the magnitude of this rapid expansion and the vast changes that it is causing throughout the world. Indeed, the daily and even the annual impacts of this growth go unnoticed. Yet the impacts of the growing world population on land, water, energy, and biota resources are real and indeed overwhelming.

What resources are required to secure a quality life for future generations worldwide? Will there be sufficient cropland, water, energy, and biological resources to provide adequate food and other essential human needs? Balanced against the future availability of these basic resources are the escalating needs of an ever-growing population.

For full article, visit:
http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=library&page=pimentel_29_3

Thanks to Jack Martin for this article from the San Diego News.
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Growth is bad. You rarely hear that statement in any context in America these days. But it is true. Americans have been brainwashed into believing that all growth, unless it pertains to cancer, is unquestionably a good thing. But let’s think about that. Would we want the world population to grow until people were standing shoulder to shoulder on all of the Earth’s land? No, right? OK, that means we recognize that population growth must stop at some point, and not just slow down, either. So we’re not debating whether population growth has to come to a complete halt, we’re only talking about when.

Note that though the well meaning Al Gore thinks that global warming is the big thing to worry about, he has completely neglected the root cause. It doesn’t even matter if humans are responsible for global warming. They so clearly are the cause of so much other trouble, and it’s because there are too many people. All the world leaders are concerned about how to feed, clothe, and supply water and energy to the growing multitudes. Sophisticated agricultural, water desalination, and purification, and energy production methods are being researched and developed. But all this effort will prove futile if world population continues to grow. We live on a finite planet. Growth will simply overwhelm the attempted remedies.

For full article, visit:
http://www.sdnn.com

Global Health Council
August 10, 2006

On June 13, 2006, William Ryerson, President of the Population Media Center (PMC), received the Nafis Sadik Prize for Courage at the Annual General Meeting of the Rotarian Action Group on Population and Development in Copenhagen, Denmark. The award recognized Ryerson’s 35 year dedication to the field of reproductive health. The prize is named after the previous Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), Dr. Nafis Sadik, a national of Pakistan. In addition the Rotarian Action Group on Population and Development named Ryerson a Paul Harris Fellow.

Ryerson gave the keynote address at the meeting, which was held as a part of the International Rotary Conference. His talk covered the issue of population, the need for motivational communications to slow population growth, the work of PMC worldwide, and the joint project PMC and Rotary are conducting in northern Nigeria to combat the problem of obstetric fistula (a condition commonly resulting from adolescent childbirth that makes its victims incontinent). In Nigeria, PMC is producing a radio program to promote delaying marriage and childbearing until adulthood and to promote maternal health through having professional birth attendants on hand for childbirth. Rotary is doing surgical repairs for fistula victims.
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Population Media Center was featured in the April 2010 issue of the German Rotary Magazine (see page 8 in the PDF below)

German Rotary Magazine April 2010

Species classified by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as “threatened” increased by 2.1 percent in 2009, as 365 species were added to the organization’s Red List of Threatened Species. Only 2 species were removed from the list. Since 1996, a total of 47,677 species of animals, plants, fungi, and protists (a group that includes protozoans and most algae) have been evaluated by the IUCN, and 17,291 of these are now considered threatened—a full 36 percent.

All species evaluated by IUCN are given a threat rating based on a standardized set of data that includes population size and structure and geographic range. Evaluated species for which data exist are divided into seven groups: least concern, near threatened, vulnerable, endangered, critically endangered, extinct in the wild, and extinct. Species in the three middle categories—vulnerable, endangered, and critically endangered—are collectively referred to as threatened. Species for which data are not available are not included in the seven groups, even if many of them are thought to be threatened.

For full article, visit:
http://vitalsigns.worldwatch.org

The following article highlighting PMC’s new drama in Papua New Guinea, appeared in The National.
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Drama on MDG to be aired soon
By Bosorina Robby

A US-based non-governmental organisation, in co-operation with the United Nations, will soon be airing radio serial dramas dealing with the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) 2015 in an effort to accelerate the achievement process.

The programme is being carried out by Population Media Centre (PMC), which will be responsible for producing two radio dramas for broadcast nationwide in Tok Pisin and English.

The dramas will address a range of inter-related issues as an innovative approach for behaviour change in the country, raise awareness and encourage citizen participation in the promotion and delivery of the MDG.
PMC project co-ordinator Betty Oala said the drama series had 208 episodes, which will run over a two-year period.
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The following story from Natural Resources Defense Council is a follow up to the report a year ago of the Interior Department’s delisting of wolves as endangered in certain states.
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For wolves in the northern Rockies, it was a year of devastation unparalleled in modern history: nearly one-third of the entire population in the region killed, more than 200 of them gunned down by hunters. Entire packs were wiped out, such as the Sage Creek pack that inhabited the Idaho/Montana border. Others were decimated, including Idaho’s long-standing Basin Butte pack, once a favorite of wolf watchers, which lost seven members to aerial gunners. In all, more than 500 wolves died in 2009, a spree fueled by the sort of wanton cruelty that was expressed on a sign outside a restaurant in Idaho: “Tag a Wolf. Get a Free Pizza and a Pitcher of Beer.”

For full article, visit:
http://www.nrdc.org/naturesvoice/feature4.asp