PMC was recently featured in Earth Island Journal
http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/eij/article/sex_sells/

Sex Sells: A Tiny Nonprofit Uses Mass Media to Encourage Family Planning

Fikrite is a girl in trouble. Her grandfather has just died and now a neighbor, a man named Damte, has taken over the house and is trying to turn the place into a bar and brothel. Fikrite says she won’t allow it, so Damte starts spreading rumors about the girl and soon everyone, including her boyfriend, thinks that she is hiding a child born out of wedlock. Damte then seduces Fikrite’s stepsister, Lamrot, gets her hooked on booze and drugs, and knocks her up. When Lamrot tries to abort the pregnancy, she almost bleeds to death and lands in the hospital, where she finds out that she is HIV-positive.

If this sounds like overcooked melodrama – well, that’s the point. The story comes from “Yeken Kignit” (“Looking Over One’s Life”), a radio soap opera that gripped much of Ethiopia for 257 episodes beginning in 2002. The show had all of the elements that make serial dramas popular: sex, romance, mischief, betrayal, suspense. But the wildly successful program – which reached more than one half of Ethiopian adults during its two-year run and sparked a craze for naming baby girls Fikrite – wasn’t designed just for entertainment. Produced by a small US organization called the Population Media Center (PMC), the show was written with the express purpose of encouraging family planning, women’s empowerment, and HIV/AIDS awareness. Not all the listeners knew this, however, and that was also the point.
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The cost benefit analysis (shown in the PDF below) of family planning in Kenya by USAID could be done for most countries of the world. It shows the savings in meeting the Millennium Development Goals that can be achieved by family planning. The paper does not spell out what is required to meet the “unmet need” for family planning, but as I summarize below (in a commentary I was invited to give on the BBC program, One Planet), information is needed along with family planning services in order to achieve this goal. An edited version of my commentary can be heard at http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/science/2009/03/000000_one_planet.shtml in the 28 May podcast (starting at 16:55 minutes).

Kenya Family Planning Cost Benefit Analysis (PDF, 534 KB)

How to solve the population problem

The world’s population is now growing by 82 million people a year, which is the equivalent of adding the population of a new Egypt every year. This growth is not sustainable economically or ecologically.
This is a problem that needs urgent attention, both for environmental reasons and to lift people out of poverty. Since World War II, no country has gone from developing status to developed status without first reducing its population growth rate.
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The document below is from International Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health Volume 35, Number 1, March 2009. See http://www.guttmacher.org/journals/toc/ipsrh3501toc.html

Response to Critics of Family Planning Programs (PDF, 173 KB)

Many thanks to Rei Ravenholt, who served as Director of USAID’s Office of Population from 1966 to1979, for his response to yesterday’s distribution regarding the World Bank’s population health and nutrition programs. Rei had the following comment:

The World Bank has been far more of a hindrance than a help in the world movement to extend birth control throughout the less developed world. Loans are entirely inappropriate for this task, and when intruded into a multi-country family planning support project they invariably slow and likely derail the assistance action. Attached are several relevant communications from the years I directed the USAID program.

Birth Control Must Lead Development Assistance (Word Doc., 27 KB)

Loans Threaten Population Program Progress (Word Doc., 251 KB)

Thanks to Phil Thorson, former Director of Administration of the International Monetary Fund, for this article. See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content

Last Friday, I met with a Vice President of the World Bank and discussed this report. She indicated that the evaluation had been made of programs that were following a previous strategy that was scrapped over a year ago. The Bank is using new strategies now. In addition, the Bank previously adopted as its indicators of success the indicators the country had adopted, whether they were realistic or not. Now the Bank will be using indicators that it believes are achievable. The family planning funding will be focused on high fertility countries.

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For a paper by Susan Gibbs on “Population and Environment: A Review of Funding Themes and Trends,” see http://www.wilsoncenter.org/topics/pubs/gibbs.pdf

Nearly $65 billion worth of investment is required next year for population programmes to combat poverty, promote development and slash maternal death rates, according to the United Nations Commission on Population and Development.

One-third of this sum, or $22 million, will come from international donors, while the rest will be in the form of domestic investments by developing nations.

The $64.7 billion figure for 2010 is an upwards revision of the $20.5 billion that was adopted at the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo, marking the first time in 15 years that cost estimates have been reviewed.

For full article, visit:
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=30409&Cr=population&Cr1=mdg

Thanks to Mike Cair for this article from New Statesman.
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Who’s afraid of declining population? Only politicians, obsessed with power and prestige. The rest of us, particularly the workers, would be better off, argues Anthony Browne

It’s been a part of the ebb and flow of human society since we raised ourselves up on our two hind legs. But now, after an almost total absence since the industrial revolution, it’s threatening to come back with a vengeance across the western world. And we don’t like it one little bit.

For full article, visit:
http://www.newstatesman.com/200211040019

Thanks to Larry Jordan for reminding me of this excellent OpEd by Jack Hart, former Managing Editor of the Oregonian, which I distributed last June, but which is no longer easy to find at www.oregonlive.com
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TREADING ON A TABOO: OVERPOPULATION IN AMERICA
Sunday, June 15, 2008
JACK HART

Each Tuesday I carry the recycling to the curb and look out over a city bristling with light rail, streetcars, bicycles, eco-roofs, and little yellow bins like mine. The greenest of the green, my city styles itself, filled with good citizens leading the way to Earth’s salvation.

If only it were true. The sad fact is that unless we do something drastic, out-of-control population growth will wipe out the gains made by the most ambitious recycling and conservation programs, both here and across the planet.
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Many thanks to Chris Clugston for sending me the attached summary of his paper – “On American Sustainability.” The full paper can be downloaded from the following website: http://www.wakeupamerika.com/PDFs/On-American-Sustainability.pdf It contains the models, evidence, and references for the conclusions reached in the attached.

Chris Clugston on American Sustainability Summary (PDF, 218 KB)