This mini-course covers the basics of program monitoring and evaluation in the context of population, health, and nutrition programs. It also defines common terms and discusses why M&E is essential for program management. This Handbook/Manual was created by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Carolina Population Center, Jan 2007.

http://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PNADJ235.pdf

You can hear an interview with me on the work of Population Media Center by Tom Keefe. Tom is a member of the International Association of Business Communicators whom I met at their convention in New Orleans in June. He serves as Enterprise Communication Manager of VW Credit, Inc.

http://commakazi2.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=234470

You can hear an interview with me on the work of Population Media Center by Tom Keefe. Tom is a member of the International Association of Business Communicators whom I met at their convention in New Orleans in June. He serves as Enterprise Communication Manager of VW Credit, Inc.
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This paper is taken from a much longer paper I wrote in the 1990s, with updated data in the table on page 2. It focuses on the fact that non-use of contraception by the 46 percent of the world’s married women who do not use modern contraceptives results primarily not from lack of access to supplies of family planning methods, but instead from cultural and informational barriers to use of existing supplies.

Even though use of family planning has grown from 10 percent of married women in 1960 to 54 percent today, the number of non-users exceeds the number of non-users in 1960 – because of population growth. During this 47-year period, the reason for non-use has shifted from lack of access to attitudinal factors. Clearly, “unmet need” is different from “unmet demand.” The paper makes the point that communication strategies are now central to recruiting additional users of family planning.

Unmet Need Lack of Access or Lack of Information (Word doc., 44 KB)

Lester R. Brown

In 1938, Walter Lowdermilk, a senior official in the Soil Conservation Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, traveled abroad to look at lands that had been cultivated for thousands of years, seeking to learn how these older civilizations had coped with soil erosion. He found that some had managed their land well, maintaining its fertility over long stretches of history, and were thriving. Others had failed to do so and left only remnants of their illustrious pasts.

In a section of his report entitled “The Hundred Dead Cities,” he described a site in northern Syria, near Aleppo, where ancient buildings were still standing in stark isolated relief, but they were on bare rock.

For full article, visit:

http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/Seg/PB2ch05_ss3.htm

You can find the power point from the presentation I made in June at the international conference of the International Association of Business Communicators at http://www.iabc.com/education/pdf/Ryerson_M8.pdf.

The one by Dr. Negussie Teffera is at http://www.iabc.com/education/pdf/Teffera_M8.pdf.

Because these are large documents, they take some time to open.

Best wishes,
Bill

Thanks to Al Bartlett for forwarding the message below from author Peter Salonius, as well as Peter’s article below.

——————————

Hello to all,

I have been reading Albert Bartlett’s paper entitled ‘REFLECTIONS ON SUSTAINABILITY, POPULATION GROWTH, AND THE ENVIRONMENT —-2006, published IN ‘ The Future of Sustainability’ (Marco Keiner, Ed.), pages 17-37. Springer, Dordrecht, The Netherlands, 257 p. 2006.

Bartlett’s Sixteenth Law of Sustainability reads “Humans will always be dependent on agriculture” and he says that “The central task in SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE is to preserve agricultural land – from urbanization and development, erosion, and poisoning by chemicals.”

I and many others have come to understand that we humans have continued to eat and reproduce ourselves into a ‘cull-de-sac’ as each increase in our ability to produce food has been swallowed up by the propensity of human reproduction excesses to go above and beyond even the enormous (but temporary) increases in carrying capacity offered by fossil fuel driven technological and cultural improvements in agricultural production.

Meanwhile my short paper – attached as FORCHRON07final (151 KB) – suggests that there is a basic flaw in our food production culture.

The paper starkly suggests that AGRICULTURE IS UNSUSTAINABLE in the long term because it opens up and simplifies virgin, nutrient conservative ecosystems and allows massive leaching of fertilizer elements to the sea so that over time the productive capacity of these lands decreases irreversibly in the absence of inputs of exogenous nutrient supplements.

NOTE: The Amerindian practice of using fish (reversing to flow of nutrients to the sea) to fertilize, beans, corn and squash — in temporary clearings in the forest (before the soil carbon had been burnt off by microbial activity) may have worked for a very long time to support a STABLE and SMALL population of shifting agriculturalists.

Peter Salonius

Research Scientist, Canadian Wood Fibre Centre

Natural Resources Canada – Canadian Forest Service
P. O. Box 4000, 1350 Regent Street South,
Fredericton, New Brunswick, E3B 5P7, Canada
Tel.:(506) 452-3548, Fax: (506) 452-3525
Email: psaloniu@nrcan.gc.ca

Peter Salonius Article (PDF, 152 KB)

Thanks to Tod Preston of Population Action International for this article.
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“In an increasingly interconnected world, progress in the areas of development, security and human rights must go hand in hand. There will be no development without security and no security without development.”

These words, contained in a comprehensive 2005 report by former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, underscore the reality that the threats to the well-being and security of our world—from HIV/AIDS and terrorism to climate change and poverty—require a bold mix of interventions and partnerships that combine elements of both ‘hard’ and ’soft’ power.

For full article, visit:

http://www.populationaction.org/Publications/Reports/The_Shape_of_Things_to_Come/Summary.shtml

As is evident from my frequent emails to this list, and blog postings, population is a subject of great interest to many journalists and other writers – even if many get the story wrong. Attached is a new fact sheet from Population Action International focused on disabusing people of the notion that rapid population growth is no longer a problem.

Thanks to Tod Preston for providing this very useful item. If you see an article on population that misses the mark on factual content, send the author – and the editor – a copy of this fact sheet.

Population Growth Fact Sheet (PDF, 952 KB)

Below is a fact sheet on population & global warming that Tod Preston of Population Action International prepared for congressional staff prior to Al Gore’s House and Senate testimony in March.

Population and Global Warming (Word doc., 167 KB)