Congratulations to Rosamund McDougall for this article sent to members of Mission Valley Rotary Club.
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For three days last week 60 international experts met in Abu Dhabi to discuss tactics in the war against global warming. The forum held at the Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research looked at the issues at the centre of negotiations to replace the Kyoto Protocol and, most importantly, how the estimated US$100 billion needed to limit the increase in global mean temperatures to 2°C would be met. The conference, organised by the NYU School of Law, is symptomatic of just how seriously climate change and the devastating effects it threatens are being taken.

Many countries, not least the UAE, are making valiant efforts to reduce their carbon footprint yet an important part of the environmental equation continues unchecked – the incessant rise in the number of people occupying the planet.

For full article, visit:
http://www.thenational.ae/article/20090509/WEEKENDER/705089799/1311

Thanks to Joe Bish for this article.
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“Egypt is one of the most challenging countries for any literacy programme,” a literacy programme administrator at Catholic relief agency CARITAS told IPS. “You can’t afford to step off the pedal for a minute.”

One in every four Egyptians is illiterate. Despite free education and long- running literacy programmes, the number of illiterates has changed little in over two decades. Nearly 17 million adult Egyptians can neither read nor write, according to recent government data.

Development experts prefer to see the glass half full. Ghada Gholam, an education programme specialist at UNESCO Egypt, has no illusions about the extent of the problem, but says progress in reducing Egypt’s illiteracy rate should not be overlooked.

For full article, visit:
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50641

Many thanks to Simona Carniato for this article from Al-Ahram Weekly.
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For half a century experts have cited population growth as a major obstacle to sustainable development, and overpopulation has been blamed for just about every social and economic ill in the country. On Sunday Mrs Suzanne Mubarak, head of the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood (NCCM), once again threw the spotlight on this perennial problem during a meeting with Minister of State for Population and Family Mushira Khattab, Minister of Health Hatem El-Gabali, the newly appointed Minister of Education Ahmed Zaki Badr, Minister of State for International Cooperation Fayza Abul- Naga, Minister of Religious Endowments Hamdi Zaqzouq, Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni, members of the executive committee of the National Council for Population and experts in the field of population and family planning.

For full article, visit:
http://www.emmabonino.it/press/world/7980

Thanks to Val Allen for this first article.
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The population of Saudi Arabia has more than tripled over the past 34 years, the Al-Hayat daily said on Sunday, quoting a report issued by the country’s state statistics department.

The report showed the pace of population growth in Saudi Arabia was one of the highest in the world. The country’s population has risen by 333% in the period of 1975-2009, from some 7 million to around 25 million, of which some 18 million are Saudi citizens and other 7 million are foreigner workers. About 70% of Saudi residents (13.3 million) are under 34 years of age, the report said.

For full article, visit:
http://en.rian.ru/world/20100328/158338529.html

Greetings from Pakistan. I am traveling here with my longtime friend, Mehtab Karim, to explore setting up a Population Media Center program. Mehtab and I have known each other since we attended the International Youth Population Conference in Bucharest in 1974, just before the first World Population Conference. He is now the Senior Research Advisor at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life at the Pew Research Center in Washington, DC. The Pew Research Center recently released a report on “Mapping the World Muslim Population” to which Mehtab made a major contribution: http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1370/mapping-size-distribution-worlds-muslim-population. He also chairs the Population Association of Pakistan.
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Greetings from Islamabad. On the plane here, I finished reading the May-June issue of Mother Jones. The article “Tall is Beautiful” (see http://motherjones.com/toc/2010/05) outlines why environmentalists should embrace urban development. Three years ago, Jack Marshall wrote the following paper, which is posted at http://www.stopgrowthasap.org/library-articles.php#library-reading-Smart-Growth, pointing out some of the limitations of “Smart Growth.”
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Some thirty years ago the concept of “smart” growth represented cutting edge thinking among community planners. Twenty years ago it was still innovative and provocative, and by about ten years ago it had become conventional wisdom among most progressive planners.

Today “smart” growth should be considered a valuable component of a larger, more comprehensive and visionary strategy for growth management. By itself, though, “smart” growth is not enough. When done right, it offers short-term solutions to sprawl, but it simply does not guide us over the long haul toward sustainable communities.

For full article, visit:
http://www.stopgrowthasap.org

Thanks to Sarah Bergman of the Center for Biological Diversity for this article from the Santa Fe Reporter. See http://www.sfreporter.com/stories/apocalypse_soon/5120/. See below an earlier article from South Africa on the same theme and a recent article on a book and film about collapse. We know from these examples not all journalists shy away from addressing population and the related problems facing the world community.
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Within the short stories and novels penned by science fiction writer Paolo Bacigalupi, the planet has fallen apart and humans confront unimaginable moral challenges. His most recent novel, The Wind Up Girl, is set in a post-oil world in which genetically engineered plants and animals are the norm and “calorie companies” control not only food distribution, but the plagues and diseases that destroy crops.

The most frightening aspect of all the stories he tells, however, is their genesis: Bacigalupi examines current environmental conditions and events, then extrapolates those into the future. Within those futures, readers experience a world in which the consequences of our present-day choices-consumption, environmental degradation and loss of community-play out in often grotesque ways.

For full article, visit:
http://www.sfreporter.com/stories/apocalypse_soon/5120/

Here is a link to an audio of the population panel at the Society of Environmental Journalists conference: http://www.sej.org/initiatives/sej-annual-conferences/AC2009-coverage. The panel included Paul Ehrlich, Tim Wheeler (journalist with the Baltimore Sun), Peter Seidel (journalist and book author), and me.

The session is about two-thirds of the way down the page among the “Concurrent Sessions #1″ on Friday, October 9 just following Al Gore’s opening keynote address. An easy way to find it is to search the page for “POLLUTION AND ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH: 6.8 Billion Reasons to Ask: Population, Pollution and Human Health”

Thanks to Eric Rimmer for this summary of Tim Wheeler’s comments at a seminar for the Environmental Change and Security Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
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“We journalists tend to deal with the immediate crisis,” Tim Wheeler, an environmental reporter with the Baltimore Sun, told an October gathering of the Society of Environmental Journalists in Madison, Wisconsin. Because the effects of population growth largely won’t be felt until the future, the subject is challenging for journalists who, as a whole, “tend not to look down the road too far.”

There are, however, other challenges, ranging from funding to ideology. Falling profits have pushed newspapers into expanding “hyperlocal” coverage at the expense of other stories and editorial boards are reluctant to risk increasingly important readership over a topic that, when brought to its logical conclusion, can enflame sensitivities over immigration and abortion.

For full article, visit:
http://newsecuritybeat.blogspot.com/2010/01/on-beat-challenges-to-covering.html

Thanks to Peter Seidel for this article from 2003.
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Why is it so hard for journalists covering the environment to address population?

Do we lack the guts to tackle really tough, controversial issues? Or do we lack the smarts to sort out the complicated and often-indirect role population growth plays in problems such as water shortages, declines in biodiversity and suburban sprawl?

We’ve been talking for years about how population growth is one of the major under-reported stories on our beat. I remember sitting on a panel at a Society of Environmental Journalists conference in 1994, offering tips for “localizing” what many perceived then as a global issue. That wasn’t the first, or last, how-to session.

For full article, visit:
http://www.environmentwriter.org/resources/articles/pop93a.htm