Friday Podcasts From ECSP and MHI

As the idea of resilience has received more attention from policymakers as a guiding principle for climate change response and development, so too has it garnered more criticism, says David Lewis in this week’s podcast. By implying a “natural” return to a previous condition, resilience thinking could inadvertently promote limited policies that don’t go as far as they could in aiding those most at-risk. “For people who are most vulnerable and the poorest, they don’t want to build back to that previous state; they want to build back better,” says Lewis, a professor of social policy and development at the London School of Economics. Lewis has been working to better incorporate the perspectives and interests of the most vulnerable as a member of the Global Resilience Academy, a five-year research project sponsored by the Munich Re Foundation, International Center for Climate Change and Development, and United Nations University. In a co-authored paper in Nature Climate Change¬, he and academy colleagues advocate for a closer focus on “livelihood systems,” which encompass all the material, social, and institutional resources that shape the ability of individuals, households, and communities to thrive. Those resources include not only tangible elements like land and agricultural inputs that adaptation and development programs often target, but also forms of human capital (like health and educational attainment) and a range of social and institutional dynamics, such as governance, political stability, and equity. For example, firewood and palm leaf collectors in Bangladesh’s Sundarbans mangrove forests are vulnerable to not only to rising sea levels, but also to criminal networks that extort forest entrance fees and take advantage of poor levels of education, which limit forest users’ understanding of their rights. Considering this perspective may help policymakers avoid falling into what Lewis describes as “top-down trap,” creating programs that are ineffective, ill-suited to address actual needs, or reinforce inequitable status quos. “It provides a way of linking the micro and the macro,” Lewis says. “It looks at both the small-scale aspects of how households work and how they go about trying to build and maintain and strengthen their livelihoods, but it also looks at the different forces which both act upon them at the institutional level.” What’s more, a livelihoods framework can showcase the agency and abilities of groups that may otherwise be missed. Interventions that incorporate and augment existing efforts to adapt– like solar-powered floating gardens, schools, and hospitals in the Sundarbans – may be more successful than those that do not. “If we’re looking at changes to the position of the most vulnerable households, it makes a lot of sense to start with the household perspective and to look at the various types of resources that households are already using to try and improve their position.” David Lewis spoke at the Wilson Center on December 4. Friday podcasts are also available for download on iTunes.

As the idea of resilience has received more attention from policymakers as a guiding principle for climate change response and development, so too has it garnered more criticism, says David Lewis in this week’s podcast. By implying a “natural” return to a previous condition, resilience thinking could inadvertently promote limited policies that don’t go as far as they could in aiding those most at-risk. “For people who are most vulnerable and the poorest, they don’t want to build back to that previous state; they want to build back better,” says Lewis, a professor of social policy and development at the London School of Economics. Lewis has been working to better incorporate the perspectives and interests of the most vulnerable as a member of the Global Resilience Academy, a five-year research project sponsored by the Munich Re Foundation, International Center for Climate Change and Development, and United Nations University. In a co-authored paper in Nature Climate Change¬, he and academy colleagues advocate for a closer focus on “livelihood systems,” which encompass all the material, social, and institutional resources that shape the ability of individuals, households, and communities to thrive. Those resources include not only tangible elements like land and agricultural inputs that adaptation and development programs often target, but also forms of human capital (like health and educational attainment) and a range of social and institutional dynamics, such as governance, political stability, and equity. For example, firewood and palm leaf collectors in Bangladesh’s Sundarbans mangrove forests are vulnerable to not only to rising sea levels, but also to criminal networks that extort forest entrance fees and take advantage of poor levels of education, which limit forest users’ understanding of their rights. Considering this perspective may help policymakers avoid falling into what Lewis describes as “top-down trap,” creating programs that are ineffective, ill-suited to address actual needs, or reinforce inequitable status quos. “It provides a way of linking the micro and the macro,” Lewis says. “It looks at both the small-scale aspects of how households work and how they go about trying to build and maintain and strengthen their livelihoods, but it also looks at the different forces which both act upon them at the institutional level.” What’s more, a livelihoods framework can showcase the agency and abilities of groups that may otherwise be missed. Interventions that incorporate and augment existing efforts to adapt– like solar-powered floating gardens, schools, and hospitals in the Sundarbans – may be more successful than those that do not. “If we’re looking at changes to the position of the most vulnerable households, it makes a lot of sense to start with the household perspective and to look at the various types of resources that households are already using to try and improve their position.” David Lewis spoke at the Wilson Center on December 4. Friday podcasts are also available for download on iTunes.

“Youth in many countries is synonymous to masculinity,” says Chernor Bah in this week’s podcast. “Across governments – and I’ve looked at a lot of youth policies – girls are invisible.” Bah, chair of the Youth Advocacy Group of the UN’s Global Education First Initiative, says that leaders are increasingly willing to discuss the challenges faced by today’s 1.8 billion young people – the largest generation the world has ever seen – but have yet to come to grips with why those challenges exist in the first place. For Bah, many problems faced by young people, including persistently high fertility and HIV infection rates and low rates of literacy and school completion, stem from policies that have continually failed to reach vulnerable and marginalized groups, particularly young girls ages 10 to 14. Most young girls in Sierra Leone, where Bah was born, are far more likely to get pregnant than finish secondary school, he says. However, “it’s not a predetermined, biological outcome. It’s a result of a neglect of policy and programs over time; it’s a systematic neglect.” Many young girls become “invisible” when they drop out of school and leave home to marry or serve as a domestic worker, he explains. No longer in spaces where government programs or outreach initiatives can easily reach them, these girls aren’t included in data used to plan youth programs or policy. “We Cherry-Picked the Low-Hanging Fruits” As a result, says Bah, “youth programs disproportionately benefit males and exclude girls.” For example, efforts to expand education under the Millennium Development Goals appear successful, but when enrollment data is disaggregated, it shows that most of the students added were boys. “We cherry-picked the low-hanging fruits and we left out the people at the bottom,” he says. Policymakers need to make sure their investments are directly reaching young girls, says Bah, and providing “girl only” spaces. “It costs money, it costs time, and you have to be deliberate about it… but most people think we can continue to do business as usual, while saying that the world has changed.” Through his own activism, Bah hopes to build a sense of urgency among leaders by stressing the importance not only of young people’s futures, but of their needs today. “I don’t understand how you can have 1.8 billion people and consider them the future. No – they’re the now.”

“Youth in many countries is synonymous to masculinity,” says Chernor Bah in this week’s podcast. “Across governments – and I’ve looked at a lot of youth policies – girls are invisible.” Bah, chair of the Youth Advocacy Group of the UN’s Global Education First Initiative, says that leaders are increasingly willing to discuss the challenges faced by today’s 1.8 billion young people – the largest generation the world has ever seen – but have yet to come to grips with why those challenges exist in the first place. For Bah, many problems faced by young people, including persistently high fertility and HIV infection rates and low rates of literacy and school completion, stem from policies that have continually failed to reach vulnerable and marginalized groups, particularly young girls ages 10 to 14. Most young girls in Sierra Leone, where Bah was born, are far more likely to get pregnant than finish secondary school, he says. However, “it’s not a predetermined, biological outcome. It’s a result of a neglect of policy and programs over time; it’s a systematic neglect.” Many young girls become “invisible” when they drop out of school and leave home to marry or serve as a domestic worker, he explains. No longer in spaces where government programs or outreach initiatives can easily reach them, these girls aren’t included in data used to plan youth programs or policy. “We Cherry-Picked the Low-Hanging Fruits” As a result, says Bah, “youth programs disproportionately benefit males and exclude girls.” For example, efforts to expand education under the Millennium Development Goals appear successful, but when enrollment data is disaggregated, it shows that most of the students added were boys. “We cherry-picked the low-hanging fruits and we left out the people at the bottom,” he says. Policymakers need to make sure their investments are directly reaching young girls, says Bah, and providing “girl only” spaces. “It costs money, it costs time, and you have to be deliberate about it… but most people think we can continue to do business as usual, while saying that the world has changed.” Through his own activism, Bah hopes to build a sense of urgency among leaders by stressing the importance not only of young people’s futures, but of their needs today. “I don’t understand how you can have 1.8 billion people and consider them the future. No – they’re the now.”

“Our responsibility is to call attention to the fact that there’s an invisible crisis happening,” says John Welch of Partners in Health in this week’s podcast. “Ebola is a huge issue for women’s health.” In Liberia, where Welch recently returned from working to strengthen and open new Ebola clinics, the deadly epidemic has decimated a national health system weak from decades of conflict and chronic poverty, he says. As health infrastructure crumbles and doctors are killed, already-limited funding is being diverted to contain the virus, leaving pregnant women with fewer options than any time in recent history. “Everyone wants to talk about Ebola, but…before this outbreak, only 50 percent of women in Liberia had access to skilled birth attendants,” he says. “The estimate is now that’s down around 30 percent.” Similarly, says Welch, access to prenatal care and malaria treatment – 40 percent and 50 percent respectively before the crisis – has dropped to 25 percent. The crumbling of these and other services has reversed progress made by Liberia’s Ministry of Health. “All of that advancement is gone,” says Welch. Given that across the afflicted West African countries 800,000 women are expected to deliver in the next 12 months and an estimated 1.2 million already lack access to family planning, it is essential that clinics recommence the provision of essential services as soon as possible, he says. Safe Delivery Nearly Impossible “Seventy percent of Ebola patients are women,” says Welch, “and that’s because they’re the caretakers; they’re the ones who stay by the side of their family member, who provide those traditional burials and try to provide for the dignity of their family.” Women face a higher likelihood of death not only because Ebola poses serious health risks throughout the course of pregnancy (rather than just in the third trimester like most hemorrhagic fevers), but because it creates such a risk for those who could help them, says Welch. “Safe delivery is virtually impossible at the moment. The volume of blood and amniotic fluid that a health care worker is exposed to puts them at enormous risk,” he says. That risk has fanned fears among health workers, leading to the shuttering of some clinics and leaving those that remain open severely understaffed. Several NGOs working in Ebola-affected areas in Liberia estimate the mortality rates of infected pregnant women to be between 96 and 100 percent (the mortality rate nationwide is around 41 percent, according to recent World Health Organization estimates). Even women who are not infected struggle to deliver safely; the symptoms of miscarriage and complications like eclampsia are nearly identical to those of Ebola, Welch says, and test results to determine if someone is infected take days – far longer than expecting mothers can survive without undergoing Caesarean sections. There are those working to find a way to test women for Ebola more quickly, he says, but humanitarian groups and the ministries of health should also focus their energies on rebuilding the very fundamentals. “The Ebola response has to be tied to health system strengthening, so we don’t have to see this again.”

“Our responsibility is to call attention to the fact that there’s an invisible crisis happening,” says John Welch of Partners in Health in this week’s podcast. “Ebola is a huge issue for women’s health.” In Liberia, where Welch recently returned from working to strengthen and open new Ebola clinics, the deadly epidemic has decimated a national health system weak from decades of conflict and chronic poverty, he says. As health infrastructure crumbles and doctors are killed, already-limited funding is being diverted to contain the virus, leaving pregnant women with fewer options than any time in recent history. “Everyone wants to talk about Ebola, but…before this outbreak, only 50 percent of women in Liberia had access to skilled birth attendants,” he says. “The estimate is now that’s down around 30 percent.” Similarly, says Welch, access to prenatal care and malaria treatment – 40 percent and 50 percent respectively before the crisis – has dropped to 25 percent. The crumbling of these and other services has reversed progress made by Liberia’s Ministry of Health. “All of that advancement is gone,” says Welch. Given that across the afflicted West African countries 800,000 women are expected to deliver in the next 12 months and an estimated 1.2 million already lack access to family planning, it is essential that clinics recommence the provision of essential services as soon as possible, he says. Safe Delivery Nearly Impossible “Seventy percent of Ebola patients are women,” says Welch, “and that’s because they’re the caretakers; they’re the ones who stay by the side of their family member, who provide those traditional burials and try to provide for the dignity of their family.” Women face a higher likelihood of death not only because Ebola poses serious health risks throughout the course of pregnancy (rather than just in the third trimester like most hemorrhagic fevers), but because it creates such a risk for those who could help them, says Welch. “Safe delivery is virtually impossible at the moment. The volume of blood and amniotic fluid that a health care worker is exposed to puts them at enormous risk,” he says. That risk has fanned fears among health workers, leading to the shuttering of some clinics and leaving those that remain open severely understaffed. Several NGOs working in Ebola-affected areas in Liberia estimate the mortality rates of infected pregnant women to be between 96 and 100 percent (the mortality rate nationwide is around 41 percent, according to recent World Health Organization estimates). Even women who are not infected struggle to deliver safely; the symptoms of miscarriage and complications like eclampsia are nearly identical to those of Ebola, Welch says, and test results to determine if someone is infected take days – far longer than expecting mothers can survive without undergoing Caesarean sections. There are those working to find a way to test women for Ebola more quickly, he says, but humanitarian groups and the ministries of health should also focus their energies on rebuilding the very fundamentals. “The Ebola response has to be tied to health system strengthening, so we don’t have to see this again.”

“How does climate change affect people by age and sex, and where they live?” asks William Butz, director of coordination and outreach at the Wittgenstein Center for Demography and Global Human Capital, in this week’s podcast. “And how to do they respond? How do they adapt or fail to adapt?” Most climate research and policy is focused on emissions rates and the physical effects of climate change, overlooking the idea of differential vulnerability – that individuals may have different levels of vulnerability to or resilience in the wake of extreme weather events based on their age, gender, location, socioeconomic status, or level of schooling, says Butz. Of these characteristics, scientists know the least about the effects of education. To fill that gap, the Wittgenstein Center commissioned 11 studies, published in a special issue of Ecology and Society last March, that explore the relationship between educational attainment and adaptive capacity in a number of low- and middle-income countries. The Wittgenstein Center released the studies in conjunction with a larger research effort on the effect of education on countries’ population growth, public health, and development trajectories. Each study examines a different natural disaster and how individuals, households, communities, and countries responded to it, says Butz. Together, they demonstrate that education enhances resilience on each of these scales, he explains. Smarter Decisions Education generally mitigates the severity of disasters based on how it affects life decisions and trajectories. In aggregate, individuals who are better educated are less likely to live in high-risk areas or rely heavily on local natural resources for their livelihoods, Butz says. They are also better able to understand disaster preparedness plans and information about risk. Additionally, education equips people to bounce back more quickly after disasters occur, he explains. The studies demonstrate that those with more education are at lower risk for mortality and malarial infection and tend to recover more rapidly from traumatic stress. They are also less prone to adopting coping strategies that reduce human capital investment, like taking their children out of school. As leaders try to hammer out a global climate deal at the COP-20 in Lima this week and COP-21 in Paris next year, they will debate how billions of dollars in adaptation financing should be allocated in the coming decades. Directing funding mostly towards place-specific infrastructure, as many observers expect them to, would be a mistake, Butz says. “Our data suggests that some substantial part of that should instead be redirected to investment in human capital through schooling and through health, which moves wherever people move and is shown to increase their resilience and increase their capacity to react.”

“How does climate change affect people by age and sex, and where they live?” asks William Butz, director of coordination and outreach at the Wittgenstein Center for Demography and Global Human Capital, in this week’s podcast. “And how to do they respond? How do they adapt or fail to adapt?” Most climate research and policy is focused on emissions rates and the physical effects of climate change, overlooking the idea of differential vulnerability – that individuals may have different levels of vulnerability to or resilience in the wake of extreme weather events based on their age, gender, location, socioeconomic status, or level of schooling, says Butz. Of these characteristics, scientists know the least about the effects of education. To fill that gap, the Wittgenstein Center commissioned 11 studies, published in a special issue of Ecology and Society last March, that explore the relationship between educational attainment and adaptive capacity in a number of low- and middle-income countries. The Wittgenstein Center released the studies in conjunction with a larger research effort on the effect of education on countries’ population growth, public health, and development trajectories. Each study examines a different natural disaster and how individuals, households, communities, and countries responded to it, says Butz. Together, they demonstrate that education enhances resilience on each of these scales, he explains. Smarter Decisions Education generally mitigates the severity of disasters based on how it affects life decisions and trajectories. In aggregate, individuals who are better educated are less likely to live in high-risk areas or rely heavily on local natural resources for their livelihoods, Butz says. They are also better able to understand disaster preparedness plans and information about risk. Additionally, education equips people to bounce back more quickly after disasters occur, he explains. The studies demonstrate that those with more education are at lower risk for mortality and malarial infection and tend to recover more rapidly from traumatic stress. They are also less prone to adopting coping strategies that reduce human capital investment, like taking their children out of school. As leaders try to hammer out a global climate deal at the COP-20 in Lima this week and COP-21 in Paris next year, they will debate how billions of dollars in adaptation financing should be allocated in the coming decades. Directing funding mostly towards place-specific infrastructure, as many observers expect them to, would be a mistake, Butz says. “Our data suggests that some substantial part of that should instead be redirected to investment in human capital through schooling and through health, which moves wherever people move and is shown to increase their resilience and increase their capacity to react.”

“When you turn on the tap in any community in Israel, water will always flow. That’s not the case in Palestine, and it’s not always the case in Jordan either,” says Gidon Bromberg, Israeli director of EcoPeace Middle East, in this week’s podcast.   Water-related disparities, including quality and quantity, lurk behind many of the seemingly intractable conflicts in the Middle East. EcoPeace Middle East, which Bromberg says is the only organization jointly run by Palestinians, Jordanians, and Israelis, strives to advance peace along the Jordan River by bringing communities together around their shared water resource. Convincing opposing leaders to work together can be difficult, he says, but a combination of top-down research and advocacy and bottom-up community engagement can create political will for change. “Anywhere in the world – and certainly in the Middle East – no one survives without water,” Bromberg says. “So working together on water speaks to the self-interest of each side. It’s effective when we advance mutual interest and there’s mutual gain.”  Some of the organization’s successes include the implementation of sewage treatment facilities, environmental education initiatives, and the release of fresh water into the river. In the Palestinian village of Battir, joint efforts by Israelis and Palestinians prevented the construction of an Israeli separation barrier that threatened a historic area, which later became a UNESCO World Heritage site. At the grassroots level, the Good Water Neighbors initiative promotes transboundary environmental stewardship and facilitates direct interaction between youth, adults, and government officials from 28 communities across the region. EcoPeace hopes to build on these efforts by partnering with Sister Cities International and Citizen Diplomacy Initiatives to link communities in the Middle East with counterparts in the United States. Building trust around water is just the beginning, says Bromberg. “There’s no limitation as to where that trust can take you.” Whatever the pretext, people-to-people interaction is critical for peacebuilding, he says. “It’s that bottom-up effort that creates the absolutely necessary constituencies – in your communities, in our communities – to get to that signing ceremony, to get to the peace that we all so desperately desire.” Gidon Bromberg spoke at the Wilson Center on October 17.  Friday podcasts are also available for download on iTunes.

“When you turn on the tap in any community in Israel, water will always flow. That’s not the case in Palestine, and it’s not always the case in Jordan either,” says Gidon Bromberg, Israeli director of EcoPeace Middle East, in this week’s podcast.   Water-related disparities, including quality and quantity, lurk behind many of the seemingly intractable conflicts in the Middle East. EcoPeace Middle East, which Bromberg says is the only organization jointly run by Palestinians, Jordanians, and Israelis, strives to advance peace along the Jordan River by bringing communities together around their shared water resource. Convincing opposing leaders to work together can be difficult, he says, but a combination of top-down research and advocacy and bottom-up community engagement can create political will for change. “Anywhere in the world – and certainly in the Middle East – no one survives without water,” Bromberg says. “So working together on water speaks to the self-interest of each side. It’s effective when we advance mutual interest and there’s mutual gain.”  Some of the organization’s successes include the implementation of sewage treatment facilities, environmental education initiatives, and the release of fresh water into the river. In the Palestinian village of Battir, joint efforts by Israelis and Palestinians prevented the construction of an Israeli separation barrier that threatened a historic area, which later became a UNESCO World Heritage site. At the grassroots level, the Good Water Neighbors initiative promotes transboundary environmental stewardship and facilitates direct interaction between youth, adults, and government officials from 28 communities across the region. EcoPeace hopes to build on these efforts by partnering with Sister Cities International and Citizen Diplomacy Initiatives to link communities in the Middle East with counterparts in the United States. Building trust around water is just the beginning, says Bromberg. “There’s no limitation as to where that trust can take you.” Whatever the pretext, people-to-people interaction is critical for peacebuilding, he says. “It’s that bottom-up effort that creates the absolutely necessary constituencies – in your communities, in our communities – to get to that signing ceremony, to get to the peace that we all so desperately desire.” Gidon Bromberg spoke at the Wilson Center on October 17.  Friday podcasts are also available for download on iTunes.

If you want to understand global population dynamics, you have to look past quantity and look at quality, says Wolfgang Lutz, founding director of the Wittgenstein Center for Demography and Global Human Capital, in this week’s podcast. The education level of a population is a critical to its future, he says, but is often overlooked in favor of focusing purely on age structure (e.g., the number of young people). Lutz cited the case of Singapore, where rapid fertility declines accompanied an economic boom last century. It wasn’t only that there was better access to reproductive health services or declining poverty levels that created such a “demographic dividend,” it was also that young people, almost universally, had primary and secondary schooling – something very few of their parents did. Learning Changes You In a new book, World Population and Human Capital in the 21st Century, Lutz and colleagues from the Wittgenstein Center explore this “education effect” on population growth, finding that access to primary and secondary schooling is just as important as access to family planning and economic growth in how many children people choose to have. Although there are a myriad of things that go into individual choices (or lack thereof) about family size, Lutz says they were able to demonstrate “functional causality” between education and fertility. Going to school, he says, physically changes the brain, enhancing critical cognitive skills, including the ability to plan more carefully, learn from mistakes, and avoid risky behavior. These changes, coupled with the expanded employment opportunities that education opens, lead to more people living stable, healthier lives, and planning to invest more resources in fewer children. Secondary education is particularly important for women, he explains. “It empowers women within the family and society to exercise their reproductive rights, which almost universally leads to women wanting fewer children and having fewer children.” 1 Billion Fewer People These findings have important implications for the future, Lutz says. The age structures of many sub-Saharan African countries, which are the youngest and most rapidly growing in the world, look less intimidating when you factor in strides in educational attainment. Despite persistent poverty in the region, there are far more children going to school than in previous generations, with substantial gains in secondary enrollment. As healthier and more educated generations move into adulthood, African countries may experience rapid declines in fertility and mortality. Lutz’s team determined that between best and worst-case scenarios of future educational expansion, there’s a difference of more than 1 billion people in accompanying population growth. In contrast to recent projections from the UN that world population could grow to 10 to 12 billion by the end of the century, demographers from the Wittgenstein Center project that, based on expected levels of investment in education, world population will peak around 9.4 billion in 2070 and stabilize around 9 billion in 2100. A Key Driver of Development By building data on educational attainment into population projections, Lutz hopes to give policymakers a clearer picture of how investments in human capital will shape the future. Human capital, built through education, “is a key driver of development, ranging from public health to economic growth, to quality of institutions and governance and democracy, and even adaptive capacity to climate change,” Lutz says. “It’s a crucial determinant of individual empowerment.” Further, improving education is a development goal that is valid for all countries, he says, fully consistent with human rights, and already at the heart of the Millennium Development Goals and forthcoming Sustainable Development Goals. “The main point is that national human resource management for sustainable development could be the main parad(continued)

If you want to understand global population dynamics, you have to look past quantity and look at quality, says Wolfgang Lutz, founding director of the Wittgenstein Center for Demography and Global Human Capital, in this week’s podcast. The education level of a population is a critical to its future, he says, but is often overlooked in favor of focusing purely on age structure (e.g., the number of young people). Lutz cited the case of Singapore, where rapid fertility declines accompanied an economic boom last century. It wasn’t only that there was better access to reproductive health services or declining poverty levels that created such a “demographic dividend,” it was also that young people, almost universally, had primary and secondary schooling – something very few of their parents did. Learning Changes You In a new book, World Population and Human Capital in the 21st Century, Lutz and colleagues from the Wittgenstein Center explore this “education effect” on population growth, finding that access to primary and secondary schooling is just as important as access to family planning and economic growth in how many children people choose to have. Although there are a myriad of things that go into individual choices (or lack thereof) about family size, Lutz says they were able to demonstrate “functional causality” between education and fertility. Going to school, he says, physically changes the brain, enhancing critical cognitive skills, including the ability to plan more carefully, learn from mistakes, and avoid risky behavior. These changes, coupled with the expanded employment opportunities that education opens, lead to more people living stable, healthier lives, and planning to invest more resources in fewer children. Secondary education is particularly important for women, he explains. “It empowers women within the family and society to exercise their reproductive rights, which almost universally leads to women wanting fewer children and having fewer children.” 1 Billion Fewer People These findings have important implications for the future, Lutz says. The age structures of many sub-Saharan African countries, which are the youngest and most rapidly growing in the world, look less intimidating when you factor in strides in educational attainment. Despite persistent poverty in the region, there are far more children going to school than in previous generations, with substantial gains in secondary enrollment. As healthier and more educated generations move into adulthood, African countries may experience rapid declines in fertility and mortality. Lutz’s team determined that between best and worst-case scenarios of future educational expansion, there’s a difference of more than 1 billion people in accompanying population growth. In contrast to recent projections from the UN that world population could grow to 10 to 12 billion by the end of the century, demographers from the Wittgenstein Center project that, based on expected levels of investment in education, world population will peak around 9.4 billion in 2070 and stabilize around 9 billion in 2100. A Key Driver of Development By building data on educational attainment into population projections, Lutz hopes to give policymakers a clearer picture of how investments in human capital will shape the future. Human capital, built through education, “is a key driver of development, ranging from public health to economic growth, to quality of institutions and governance and democracy, and even adaptive capacity to climate change,” Lutz says. “It’s a crucial determinant of individual empowerment.” Further, improving education is a development goal that is valid for all countries, he says, fully consistent with human rights, and already at the heart of the Millennium Development Goals and forthcoming Sustainable Development Goals. “The main point is that national human resource management for sustainable development could be the main parad(continued)

“We’re living in a time of unprecedented change,” says Jon Foley, executive director of the California Academy of Sciences. “Just in the last 50 years, our population itself has more than doubled in size, the economy grew about seven-fold during the same time, and the combination of those two…has led to about a tripling of global food consumption and water consumption and a quadrupling of fossil fuel combustion.” Such rapid growth poses major challenges for meeting food demands in a way that sustains natural resources for future generations, says Foley in this week’s podcast. Running Out of Land “Agriculture is by far the biggest thing we do in the world, in terms of land area,” Foley says. Farmland takes up between 30 and 40 percent of all land on Earth. “By comparison, about one percent of the Earth’s land surface is in cities and suburbs today, yet half of us live there.” Land isn’t the only natural resource being consumed in massive quantities for agriculture. Foley says about 70 percent of water withdrawals are used to irrigate crops and 90 percent of that is not returned to its original source. In the United States alone, the U.S. Geological Survey estimates 39 percent of all freshwater is used for crop irrigation, the majority of which evaporates or transpires in the fields. Many crop irrigation systems, particularly spray irrigation, are inefficient, says Foley. “This is an evaporation machine, not an irrigation machine…it’s only by accident that some of that water enters the soil.” Agriculture is also one of the largest human contributors to climate change, responsible for approximately 30 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, he says. “If you want to tackle economic sectors that contribute to climate change, you would have to start, every single time, with agriculture first.” Not Only a Supply Problem The environmental footprint of agriculture makes achieving food security a daunting challenge, but equally important are politics and poverty. Foley says that the estimated 850 million to 1 billion people who face food insecurity today do so not because there isn’t enough food, but because of social and political barriers to accessing or affording food, such as disenfranchisement or disempowerment. “Essentially, it’s a problem of poverty and institutions, not one of agronomy.” Institutional poverty, conflict, and even gender inequities are all social contributors to food insecurity. Changing Consumption Patterns “We’re certainly bumping into the limits of what our planet can comfortably do to sustain the human enterprise,” Foley says, and we have to find innovative ways to feed a growing population in a sustainable way. “Feeding the world is not optional, but neither is sustaining our planet.” One technique Foley suggests is to increase the efficiency of agriculture. He says that even in the United States, converting plant material into animal material (e.g., feeding cows corn) yields very low returns. The conversion from grains to milk is about 40 percent, he says, which is “remarkably good.” Eggs yield about 22 percent, pork and chicken about 10, and “for every 100 calories of corn that we could eat, you’ll get about 3 on a plate of boneless beef.” “Eighty-seven percent of the farmland in Minnesota is growing something for non-human consumption, mainly animal feed,” Foley says. Using some of that land for direct human consumption is one way to get more for less. Changes in consumption patterns may necessarily have to follow. Greater demand for meat products means less plant-based foods will be available for human consumption. This is already a challenge and it’s getting even bigger as a global middle class emerges for this first time – driven by higher incomes  in Chi(continued)

“We’re living in a time of unprecedented change,” says Jon Foley, executive director of the California Academy of Sciences. “Just in the last 50 years, our population itself has more than doubled in size, the economy grew about seven-fold during the same time, and the combination of those two…has led to about a tripling of global food consumption and water consumption and a quadrupling of fossil fuel combustion.” Such rapid growth poses major challenges for meeting food demands in a way that sustains natural resources for future generations, says Foley in this week’s podcast. Running Out of Land “Agriculture is by far the biggest thing we do in the world, in terms of land area,” Foley says. Farmland takes up between 30 and 40 percent of all land on Earth. “By comparison, about one percent of the Earth’s land surface is in cities and suburbs today, yet half of us live there.” Land isn’t the only natural resource being consumed in massive quantities for agriculture. Foley says about 70 percent of water withdrawals are used to irrigate crops and 90 percent of that is not returned to its original source. In the United States alone, the U.S. Geological Survey estimates 39 percent of all freshwater is used for crop irrigation, the majority of which evaporates or transpires in the fields. Many crop irrigation systems, particularly spray irrigation, are inefficient, says Foley. “This is an evaporation machine, not an irrigation machine…it’s only by accident that some of that water enters the soil.” Agriculture is also one of the largest human contributors to climate change, responsible for approximately 30 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, he says. “If you want to tackle economic sectors that contribute to climate change, you would have to start, every single time, with agriculture first.” Not Only a Supply Problem The environmental footprint of agriculture makes achieving food security a daunting challenge, but equally important are politics and poverty. Foley says that the estimated 850 million to 1 billion people who face food insecurity today do so not because there isn’t enough food, but because of social and political barriers to accessing or affording food, such as disenfranchisement or disempowerment. “Essentially, it’s a problem of poverty and institutions, not one of agronomy.” Institutional poverty, conflict, and even gender inequities are all social contributors to food insecurity. Changing Consumption Patterns “We’re certainly bumping into the limits of what our planet can comfortably do to sustain the human enterprise,” Foley says, and we have to find innovative ways to feed a growing population in a sustainable way. “Feeding the world is not optional, but neither is sustaining our planet.” One technique Foley suggests is to increase the efficiency of agriculture. He says that even in the United States, converting plant material into animal material (e.g., feeding cows corn) yields very low returns. The conversion from grains to milk is about 40 percent, he says, which is “remarkably good.” Eggs yield about 22 percent, pork and chicken about 10, and “for every 100 calories of corn that we could eat, you’ll get about 3 on a plate of boneless beef.” “Eighty-seven percent of the farmland in Minnesota is growing something for non-human consumption, mainly animal feed,” Foley says. Using some of that land for direct human consumption is one way to get more for less. Changes in consumption patterns may necessarily have to follow. Greater demand for meat products means less plant-based foods will be available for human consumption. This is already a challenge and it’s getting even bigger as a global middle class emerges for this first time – driven by higher incomes  in Chi(continued)

The past year brought not only an end to political instability in Madagascar but a new surge of interest in integrated population, health, and environment (PHE) development, says Caroline Savitzky of Blue Ventures in this week’s podcast. “Madagascar has a very wide range of habitats, both terrestrial and marine, and these are all experiencing significant degradation,” says Savitzky, a community health program coordinator with the London-based NGO. Eighty percent of the flora and fauna are found nowhere else in the world and there’s “very high dependence on natural resources among local communities.” “We’re also seeing a very significant unmet need for family planning. About three-quarters of a million women in Madagascar want to be able to plan their families but are not currently using modern methods of contraception,” Savitzky says. The country’s population is estimated to double by 2040. Blue Ventures started working in Madagascar focused on marine conservation along the southwest coast. But in response to an overwhelming demand for health services – in some communities people had to walk the length of a marathon to reach basic care, Savitzky says – they added reproductive health services to their natural resource management and livelihood programs. After seven years implementing this PHE approach, Savitzky says Blue Ventures has seen a five-fold increase in the number of women using contraceptives. In addition, communities have a stronger voice in managing their natural resources. Now Blue Ventures is replicating the model further north around Belo-sur-Mer, where they are reaching 10,000 people across 10 villages. They are also exploring the feasibility of bringing health services to communities in the remote Maintirano Barren Isles. In Andavadoaka, where Blue Ventures has been operating longest, Savitzky says they’ve begun a “realist evaluation” to learn why their approach has been successful. We’re now looking to prove both scalability and sustainability of these models and then of course transition to complete handover of these programs, so that they’re not just community-based programs but obviously completely community-led and community-driven programs. But most importantly, says Savitzky, Blue Ventures would like to help other organizations use the PHE approach. “We don’t see Blue Ventures as becoming this huge organization implementing PHE projects all over the place, but rather we see ourselves as being in a position to support other organizations, both large and small, that want to implement these models.” And there seems to be an audience for such support. This summer, representatives from 35 different development and conservation organizations – including the Duke Lemur Center and Marie Stopes, which started a new PHE program this year – met in Antananarivo to form a Madagascar PHE Network. Members agreed to work together to expand the integrated approach to development by exchanging technical knowledge and jointly engaging policymakers and donors. The new, democratically elected government – the first since 2006 – has also pledged its commitment to PHE, says Savitzky. And most importantly, there’s great support among the communities they work with. “This is an approach to sustainable development that meets [community] needs and the way they’re felt,” she says. “People don’t live their lives in silos; PHE addresses health, it addresses conservation, and livelihoods all together.” Savitzky spoke at the Wilson Center on October 14.  Friday podcasts are also available for download on iTunes.