Thanks to Lester Brown for this article.  See www.earth-policy.org/book_bytes/2011/wotech11_ss2

SMART PLANNING FOR THE GLOBAL FAMILY
By Lester R. Brown

Earth Policy Release
World on the Edge
Book Byte
April 12, 2011

When it comes to population growth, the United Nations has three primary projections. The medium projection, the one most commonly used, has world population reaching 9.2 billion by 2050. The high one reaches 10.5 billion. The low projection, which assumes that the world will quickly move below replacement-level fertility, has population peaking at 8 billion in 2042 and then declining. If the goal is to eradicate poverty, hunger, and illiteracy, then we have little choice but to strive for the lower projection.

Slowing world population growth means ensuring that all women who want to plan their families have access to family planning information and services. Unfortunately, this is currently not the case for 215 million women, 59 percent of whom live in sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian subcontinent. These women and their families represent roughly 1 billion of the earth’s poorest residents, for whom unintended pregnancies and unwanted births are an enormous burden. Former U.S. Agency for International Development (AID) official J. Joseph Speidel notes that “if you ask anthropologists who live and work with poor people at the village level…they often say that women live in fear of their next pregnancy. They just do not want to get pregnant.”

For the rest of the article, please click here: www.earth-policy.org/book_bytes/2011/wotech11_ss2

Thanks to Lindsey Grant for his latest paper, “The Apocalypse is on Schedule.”  This and other papers by Lindsey can be found on the NPG website at www.npg.org.  For those who feel Lindsey is unrealistically pessimistic, he shows his optimistic credentials by arguing that believers in perpetual growth are believing in a bubble.  That is foolishness, not optimism.

The paper can be downloaded from: https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B5F-idWfw7TeYTQ2MjdlMjYtNzk2NC00Y2Q0LTgxNTUtODJjZWNiMTQzYjA4&hl=en&authkey=CKCY2MoK

The United Nations Population Division is pleased to announce the release of “World Contraceptive Use 2010″.

This set of tables in Excel format includes country data as of December 2010 on contraceptive prevalence for 193 countries or areas of the world and unmet need for family planning for 107 countries or areas of the world. Detailed trend data on contraceptive prevalence (total and by type of method) are available from 1950 to 2010.  Data also highlight patterns in use of long-acting and permanent methods and male methods of contraception.  Unmet need for family planning data (total, spacing and limiting) are available from 1986 to 2009.  Regional and sub-regional time trends in contraceptive prevalence and unmet need for family planning are also presented.

“World Contraceptive Use 2010″ can be downloaded free of charge from the Population Division website, www.unpopulation.org in a format suitable for on-screen viewing.  CD-ROMs (POP/DB/CP/Rev2010) are also available free of charge for distribution limited to libraries and documentation centres of institutions. We particularly welcome requests from institutions in developing countries. Requests should be addressed by mail or fax on the institution’s letterhead to: Director, Population Division/DESA, Room DC2-1950, United Nations, New York, NY 10017 USA; Fax: 212-963-2147. Regrettably, e-mail requests cannot be entertained.

The Economist – May 5th, 2011
http://www.economist.com/node/18648847

In the radio drama “Nau em Taim” (“Now is the time” in Pidgin) aired in Papua New Guinea, a widowed father takes up dynamite fishing—profitable but disastrous for the reef. Then he meets a dashing marine scientist who warns him off. The idea is that by the end of the drama, which debuted in February, both he—and the listeners—will renounce dynamite for sustainable fishing.

The show’s producer, the Population Media Center (PMC) in Vermont, has been a pioneer of programmes with the goal of fostering development. But other groups have increasingly followed suit. In Vietnam Khat Vong Song uses radio drama to teach its listeners about domestic violence. In Kenya Mediae promotes civil rights with a television soap called “Makutano Junction”.

Evidence that radio and television soaps can change behaviour was first spotted in the 1970s. But solid academic research was lacking until a few years ago. In 2008 economists at the Inter-American Development Bank, for instance, found that Brazilians receiving Globo, a television network, had fewer children and got divorced more often. Another study discovered that, as cable television spread, the fertility rate in rural India dropped by as much as if women had received five additional years of education.

Some thought that this was because couch potatoes were less likely to make babies. But research in Ethiopia showed that dramas can have a direct effect. Demand for contraceptives rose by 157% among married women who listened to the soap operas “Yeken Kignet” and “Dhimbibba”. Male listeners sought tests for HIV/AIDS four times as much as male non-listeners.

“The best results are when people identify with characters,” says Betty Oala of the PMC. This is why the organisation does extensive research, takes on local writers and uses native languages.

Not only are soaps effective, but they are also cheap. Radio programmes can cost as little as three cents to reach a listener in Africa. Yet trying to influence the poor can be controversial. Although producers do not hide their agendas, Charles Kenny, an economist, thinks that there could be a “quagmire of a debate over morals and a tangle of regulation”. An increase in divorces, say, may seem like good news to a woman activist, but bad to a Catholic priest.

From http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704559904576231830543885082.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

March 31, 2011

By JAMES HOOKWAY

ALABANG, Philippines-Buying a packet of condoms in a drugstore in this posh Manila suburb isn’t as straightforward as it might appear.

“Do you have a prescription for that, sir?” the sales clerk at Mercury Drug asked a visitor recently as retirees waited in line for diabetes pills and other medication.

Demonstrators in Manila rally in support of a new reproductive health bill that would expand the availability of condoms and other forms of contraception.

Welcome to the latest battleground in the Philippines’ culture wars: a row over whether this conservative, overwhelmingly Roman Catholic country should introduce a family-planning program.

The local council here in Alabang, one of the Philippines’ wealthiest areas, where houses regularly fetch $1 million or more, is taking a stand against a growing clamor for family planning among many Filipinos, especially the poor. District officials in January enacted an ordinance which, among other things, requires people seeking condoms or other contraceptives to get a prescription.

“It was a way to stir a bit more debate,” says Luis Sison, the Alabang council’s spokesman.

Mission accomplished.

To read the full article, please click here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704559904576231830543885082.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Thanks to Shyla Nelson for this article from Huffington Post.  See http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/22/environmental-refugees-50_n_826488.html

50 Million Environmental Refugees By 2020, Experts Predict

The Huffington Post

Joanna Zelman, posted 2/22/11 02:29pm

This past week, at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), experts warned that, “In 2020, the UN has projected that we will have 50 million environmental refugees,” the AFP reports.

A refugee is currently considered by the UN High Commissioner on Refugees to be a person who is fleeing persecution due to their race, religion, nationality, etc. There is no mention of the environment as a reason to flee. And yet, if you have no water from a drought, have no food due to flooding, or if your home is quite simply underwater, what other option do you have but to flee?

This is not a distant concern that can be put on the backburner, categorized by deniers as just another hyped up global warming fear. This is happening. Now.

For example, there is currently a drastic increase in migrants flooding Southern Europe. Why? Food shortages have a lot to do with it, according to a report by Karin Zeitvogel of the AFP. Professor Ewen Todd explains, “Already, Africans are going in small droves up to Spain, Germany… but we’re going to see many, many more trying to go north when food stress comes in. And it was food shortages that put the people of Tunisia and Egypt over the top.”

To read the full article, please click here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/22/environmental-refugees-50_n_826488.html

From the Bulletin of the World Health Organization.  See http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/89/2/10-077925/en/index.html?utm_source=MHTF+Subscribers&utm_campaign=06c7949f67-MH_BUZZ10_12_2010&utm_medium=email

Family Planning in Sub-Saharan Africa: Progress of Stagnation?

John G Cleland ^a, Robert P Ndugwa ^a & Eliya M Zulu ^b

a. Department for Population Studies, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, Keppel Street, London, WC1E 7HT, England.

b. African Institute for Development Policy, Nairobi, Kenya.

Correspondence to John G Cleland (e-mail: john.cleland@lshtm.ac.uk).

(Submitted: 22 March 2010 – Revised version received: 22 October 2010 – Accepted: 02 November 2010 – Published online: 04 November 2010.)

Bulletin of the World Health Organization 2011;89:137-143. doi: 10.2471/BLT.10.077925

Introduction

Fertility and future projected population growth are much higher in sub-Saharan Africa than in any other region of the world, and the decline in birth rates, which was already modest, has slowed even further over the past decade.^1-3 Concern that uncontrolled population growth will hinder the attainment of development and health goals in Africa led to the present study, which rests on the assumption that fertility will decline only if the population at large adopts effective modern methods of contraception, as witnessed in other parts of the world.

The objective of this study is to review progress towards the uptake of modern contraception in Africa. We use as our framework Ansley Coale’s succinct summary of the preconditions for the European fertility transition, as amended by Lesthaeghe & Vanderhoeft.^4,5 Fertility is not likely to decline at a fast sustained pace unless a large and growing number of couples is “ready, willing and able” to use modern contraception.

To read the full article, please click here: http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/89/2/10-077925/en/index.html?utm_source=MHTF+Subscribers&utm_campaign=06c7949f67-MH_BUZZ10_12_2010&utm_medium=email

Thanks to Lester Brown for this article.  See www.earth-policy.org/plan_b_updates/2011/update93

Can The United States Feed China?

By Lester R. Brown

Earth Policy Release
Plan B Update
March 23, 2011

In 1994, I wrote an article in World Watch magazine entitled “Who Will Feed China?” that was later expanded into a book of the same title. When the article was published in late August, the press conference generated only moderate coverage. But when it was reprinted that weekend on the front of the Washington Post’s Outlook section with the title “How China Could Starve the World,” it unleashed a political firestorm in Beijing.

The response began with a press conference at the Ministry of Agriculture on Monday morning, where Deputy Minister Wan Baorui denounced the study. Advancing technology, he said, would enable the Chinese people to feed themselves. This was followed by a government-orchestrated stream of articles that challenged my findings.

The strong reaction surprised me. In retrospect, although I had followed closely the Great Famine of 1959-61, during which some 30 million people starved to death, I had not fully appreciated the psychological scars it left. The leaders in Beijing are survivors of that famine. As a result of that traumatic experience, no leader could acknowledge that China might one day have to import much of its food. China, they said, had always fed itself, and it always would.

As party leaders assessed the situation, they decided to launch an all-out effort to maintain grain self-sufficiency. The government quickly adopted several key production-boosting measures, including a 40 percent rise in the grain support price paid to farmers, an increase in agricultural credit, and heavy investment in developing higher-yielding strains of wheat, rice, and corn, their leading crops.

They offset cropland losses in the fast-industrializing coastal provinces by plowing grasslands in the northwestern provinces, a measure that contributed to the emergence of the country’s massive dust bowl. In addition to overplowing, they expanded irrigation by overpumping aquifers.

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Thanks to Charles Hall for this article.  See http://www.energybulletin.net/node/33164

Published Aug 13 2007 by Energy Bulletin, Archived Aug 13 2007

Peak phosphorus

by Patrick Déry and Bart Anderson

Peak oil has made us aware that many of the resources on which civilization depends are limited.

M. King Hubbert, a geophysicist for Shell Oil, found that oil production over time followed a curve that was roughly bell-shaped. He correctly predicted that oil production in the lower 48 states would peak in 1970. Other analysts following Hubbert’s methods are predicting a peak in oil production early this century.

The depletion analysis pioneered by Hubbert can be applied to other non-renewable resources. Analysts have looked at peak production for resources such as natural gas, coal and uranium.

In this paper, Patrick Déry applies Hubbert’s methods to a very special non-renewable resource – phosphorus – a nutrient essential for agriculture.

In the literature, estimates before we “run out” of phosphorus range from 50 to 130 years. This date is conveniently far enough in the future so that immediate action does not seem necessary. However, as we know from peak oil analysis, trouble begins not when we “run out” of a resource, but when production peaks. From that point onward, the resource becomes more difficult to extract and more expensive.

To read the full article, please click here: http://www.energybulletin.net/node/33164

Thanks to Lester Brown for this article.  See www.earth-policy.org/plan_b_updates/2011/update92

WHY WORLD FOOD PRICES MAY KEEP CLIMBING
By Lester R. Brown

Earth Policy Release
Plan B Update, March 9, 2011

In February, world food prices reached the highest level on record. Soaring food prices are already a source of spreading hunger and political unrest, and it appears likely that they will climb further in the months ahead.

As a result of an extraordinarily tight grain situation, this year’s harvest will be one of the most closely watched in years. Last year, the world produced 2,180 million tons of grain. It consumed 2,240 million tons, a consumption excess that was made possible by drawing down stocks by 60 million tons. (See data at www.earth-policy.org.) To avoid repeating last year’s shortfall and to cover this year’s estimated 40-million-ton growth in demand, this year’s world grain harvest needs to increase by at least 100 million tons. Yet that would only maintain the current precarious balance between supply and demand.

To get prices back down to a more acceptable level, it would take perhaps another 50 million tons for a total increase of 150 million tons. Can the world boost this year’s grain harvest by 150 million tons or even 100 million tons? It is possible, because we have had annual harvest jumps of 150 million tons twice over the last two decades, but this year it does not appear likely.

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