Below is an article on PMC’s work. It appeared in the winter 2008 issue of the Stanford Social Innovation Review.

For full article, download:

Population Media Center 2008 Smart Soaps (PDF, 172 KB)

We recently entered a new century, but we are also entering a new world, one where the collisions between our demands and the earth’s capacity to satisfy them are becoming daily events. It may be another crop-withering heat wave, another village abandoned because of invading sand dunes, or another aquifer pumped dry. If we do not act quickly to reverse the trends, these seemingly isolated events will occur more and more frequently, accumulating and combining to determine our future.

Resources that accumulated over eons of geological time are being consumed in a single human lifespan. We are crossing natural thresholds that we cannot see and violating deadlines that we do not recognize. These deadlines, determined by nature, are not politically negotiable.

Nature has many thresholds that we discover only when it is too late. In our fast-forward world, we learn that we have crossed them only after the fact, leaving little time to adjust. For example, when we exceed the sustainable catch of a fishery, the stocks begin to shrink. Once this threshold is crossed, we have a limited time in which to back off and lighten the catch. If we fail to meet this deadline, breeding populations shrink to where the fishery is no longer viable, and it collapses.

For full article, visit:

http://www.comminit.com/en/node/265376

Launched in 2002, Dramatool is a web-based platform described as “an international meeting point for drama/theatre education”. Available in Amharic, Chinese, English, French, Kiswahili, and Spanish (as of this writing), this website is an effort to empower drama and theatre practitioners through networking. Dramatool is run by a team of 11 people from 5 countries (Ethiopia, Kenya, Sweden, Tanzania, and Uganda) who have experience in working with drama and theatre as a tool for an inclusive and humane society.

Dramatool aims to be an open forum, which is available to anybody who is interested in and works in the area of drama education and performing arts.

Contact: info@dramatool.org

For full article, visit:

http://www.comminit.com/en/node/265376

Interesting statistics here: http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm

Many thanks to Lester Brown for sending me Chapter 1 of his latest book, Plan B 3.0, for distribution to this list. In it, he looks at the numerous environmental and political tipping points facing human civilization today. He recognizes the role of population growth in this mix, as follows:

“Population growth, which contributes to all the problems discussed here, has its own tipping point. Scores of countries have developed enough economically to sharply reduce mortality but not yet enough to reduce fertility. As a result, they are caught in the demographic trap—a situation where rapid population growth begets poverty and poverty begets rapid population growth. In this situation, countries eventually tip one way or the other. They either break out of the cycle or they break down.”

For full chapter, download:

Lester Brown Plan B3 0 Chapter 1 (PDF, 105 KB)

Copies of the book can be ordered at:

http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/PB3/Contents.htm

or by contacting:

Earth Policy Institute
1350 Connecticut Ave., NW, Ste 403
Washington, DC 20036
tel: 202.496.9290

Full-title: Population and Development Curriculum Kit: A resource kit for secondary school students and teachers to learn about issues of population, development, the environment and gender equity.

The Australian Reproductive Health Alliance (ARHA) is a non-government organisation whose major function is to monitor the Australian Government’s response to the Cairo Plan of Action, which was the outcome of the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development. Within this context, the core of ARHA’s mission statement is to promote public support for enhancement of the status of women and reproductive health rights. ARHA is also committed to provision of education on issues related to sustainable development, population and the environment. Over the past few years ARHA has run a series of youth conferences titled “Planet Without a Plan”.

For full article, visit:

http://www.arha.org.au/Publications/Curriculum%20Kit%20on%20Population%20and%20Development.pdf

Thanks to Felix Kloman for this article.

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From the monthly newsletter of the Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado:

Climate Change May Lead to War

A new study finds that long-term climate change with its resulting food shortages, population shifts, and economic instability can lead to war and population decline.

The study, published November 19 in the early edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, revealed that as temperatures decreased centuries ago during a period called the Little Ice Age, the number of wars increased, famine occurred, and the population declined.

Peter Brecke, an associate professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology and a co-author of the study said that even though temperatures are increasing now, the same resulting conflicts may occur, as 80 percent of the world’s wars from 1400 to 1900 were triggered by ecological disasters, like food shortages and famine caused by extreme weather.

For full press release, visit:

www.gtresearchnews.gatech.edu/newsrelease/climate-war.htm.

Geneva, Switzerland, UNAIDS, 2007 Dec. 50 p. (UNAIDS/07.27E / JC1322E)

Every day, over 6800 persons become infected with HIV and over 5700 persons die from AIDS, mostly because of inadequate access to HIV prevention and treatment services. The HIV pandemic remains the most serious of infectious disease challenges to public health.

Nonetheless, the current epidemiologic assessment has encouraging elements since it suggests: the global prevalence of HIV infection (percentage of persons infected with HIV) is remaining at the same level, although the global number of persons living with HIV is increasing because of ongoing accumulation of new infections with longer survival times, measured over a continuously growing general population; there are localized reductions in prevalence in specific countries; a reduction in HIV-associated deaths, partly attributable to the recent scaling up of treatment access; and a reduction in the number of annual new HIV infections globally.

Examination of global and regional trends suggests the pandemic has formed two broad patterns: generalized epidemics sustained in the general populations of many sub-Saharan African countries, especially in the southern part of the continent; and epidemics in the rest of the world that are primarily concentrated among populations most at risk, such as men who have sex with men, injecting drug users, sex workers and their sexual partners.

For full article, visit:

http://data.unaids.org/pub/EPISlides/2007/2007_epiupdate_en.pdf

A new report from Malawi shows that comprehensive sex education plays an essential role in protecting young people from unintended pregnancy and HIV. The report is based on data from a 2004 nationally representative survey of 4,031 adolescents aged 12-19. Additionally, it draws on findings from 102 in-depth interviews and 11 focus group discussions with adolescents from both urban and rural areas.

For full report, visit:

http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/2007/12/10/PNG_Malawi.pdf

In Ethiopia, it can be dangerous for a girl to leave the house. Not because of war, or weather, but “weddings”—specifically the long-standing cultural tradition of marriage by abduction.
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