But keeping pace with this growth is the increasing south-south cooperation among developing nations who are sharing innovative experiences in reproductive health, family planning, gender empowerment and the integration of population into development planning.

Sethuramiah L. Rao, permanent observer of Partners in Population and Development (PPD) to the United Nations, told IPS, “It is internationally recognised that south-south and triangular development cooperation continues to grow in importance, accounting for around 10 percent of total development cooperation today.”

It is also well appreciated, he said, that south-south cooperation is not a substitute for, but is complementary to north-south cooperation and that south-south cooperation is an important element of international cooperation for development.

Among others, Rao singled out Brazil, China, India and South Africa as some of the countries making significant contributions to south-south cooperation.

The PPD, which he represents in New York, was launched at the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) specifically for promoting and strengthening south-south cooperation in population and reproductive health.

Accounting for close to 70 percent of developing countries’ population, PPD’s current membership comprises 25 developing countries: (Bangladesh, Benin, China, Colombia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Kenya, Mali, Mexico, Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan, Senegal, South Africa, Thailand, Tunisia, Uganda, Viet Nam, Yemen and Zimbabwe), and is growing.

A book titled “Sharing Innovative Experiences”, jointly published by the Special Unit for South- South Cooperation at the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP), the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) and PPD, acknowledges that growth in world population is “phenomenal”.

“While on the one hand it reflects mankind’s enormous success in reducing mortality and improving quality of life for billions of people, on the other, it raises the serious challenge of the social, political, environmental and developmental implications of adding additional billions of people so rapidly,” the book says.

According to the 260-page publication, the world population did not reach one billion until 1804.

It then took 123 years to reach two billion in 1927, 33 years to reach three billion in 1960, 14 years to reach four billion in 1974, 13 years to reach five billion in 1987 and 12 years each to reach six billion in 1999 and seven billion in 2011.

Asked about the highlights of south-south cooperation in reproductive health, Rao said the governments of Egypt, India and Morocco have offered long-term fellowships for graduate education in population and public health.

At the same time, China, India, Thailand, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, and South Africa are offering short-term fellowships to train demographers and population and health experts.

Meanwhile, China, Indonesia, Thailand, Kenya, Egypt and Tunisia have hosted a large number of familiarisation tours of their population and reproductive health programmes for member country professionals.

A successful interregional network of about 25 premier partner institutions (PIs), all active in the area of population, reproductive health, public health and development, have been established by PPD, for capacity building in its member countries and others.

The PIs are collaborating in adapting each other’s training programmes and have signed letters of understanding on collaboration.

Rao said experience indicates that first-rate technical capacities exist in the population and reproductive health fields at the PPD network of PIs, and greater efforts should be made in the future to fully capitalise on such capacities through south-south and triangular cooperation.

In the important area of information exchange and experiences, PPD has succeeded many times in the past and most recently has catalogued, in collaboration with UNFPA and the Special Unit for South-South Cooperation at UNDP, innovative experiences that have led to success in member countries’ addressing population, reproductive health and development challenges.

He also said that advocacy and policy dialogue activities undertaken by PPD on urgent topics in population, reproductive health and development in the form of international conferences and workshops for member and non-member countries have been most successful.

Asked about shortcomings, Rao told IPS, “To my mind, there are at least two programmatic or practical limitations.”

Firstly, the successful experience is almost always documented retrospectively and thus, many important decisions crucial to its success are missed out due to recall lapse, while documenting the experience.

There is often a lack of recorded details, made worse by turnover over time of staff responsible for design and implementation of the practice in the country.

And most importantly, managers and documenters of the practice are not always the same people, making it difficult to achieve a balance in substance and narration.

Secondly, designing and implementation of programmatic interventions are frequently fine-tuned to dovetail with the political, cultural, administrative and human capital imperatives of a given country, making adaptation of the approach to other contexts sometimes challenging, he noted.

By Thalif Deen

Source: www.ipsterraviva.net

The participants appreciated and congratulated PPD for their initiatives. They agreed that these will help them to play greater role in South -South Cooperation and commitment to pursue the goals of ICPD and MDGs.

Recently, a nonprofit organization Social Marketing Company (SMC) has started marketing and distribution of a new low dose oral pill “Combination 3(C3)” with commodity assistance from USAID. C3 is manufactured by Bayer Schering Pharma, Germany and contains the hormonal formulation of Levonorgestrel 0.15mg and Ethinylestradiol 0.03 mg. Being a low dose formulation ‘C3’ easily suits with body. Considering the low income mass population of the country, SMC has placed ‘C3’ in the market at very affordable price.

The introduction of C3 will further strengthen the National Family program of this most densely populated country. This initiative is likely to contribute to achieve CPR rate 72% by 2015.

Rahnuma Afroz
Program Associate, PPD

The plant is called Gandarusa and its medicinal qualities have been known to local people for centuries. Traditionally, its leaves have been brewed into an herbal remedy for stress, something to soothe the nerves.

Scientists of Airlangga University in Indonesia are doing research on mice and they are excited because gandarusa doesn’t alter male hormones but rather changes the chemistry on the tip of each individual spermatozoon, making them unable to pierce the outer wall of a female egg, or oocyte. They are now undergoing testing in human beings. There’s growing confidence that this is a cheap, easy-to-make, over the counter daily birth control pill, for men.

Dr. Sugiri Syarief, MPA PPD Board Member and Chairperson of BKKBN, Government of Indonesia says: “… Family planning is not only for women, but it is a decision made by couples, husband and wives.”

There’s one other big question about how much of a role gandarusa will play in lowering that fertility rate: whether or not it gets the approval of Islamic religious leaders. But Dr. Sugiri says most mainstream imams approve of family planning methods if they are not permanent and do not harm the body.  He is optimistic gandarusa will be available in Indonesian stores as early as next year.

“Numerous experiments have showed that biodiversity has positive effects on several ecosystem processes, although the number of species required to ensure the functionality of a given process is fairly low, as many species often have similar ecological roles,” says Michel Loreau from McGill University, a co-author of the study. “What remains largely unknown, however, is whether the results of experimental studies reflect what happens in real ecosystems.”

To fill this unknown, 55 researchers, in a two-year study, collected the necessary data to determine whether biodiversity influences the efficiency of reef fish systems to produce biomass, and if so, elucidate the role of humans in such a linkage. The team collected demographic data on human populations as well as environmental and biological data on the identity of species, their abundances and body sizes in almost two thousand coral reef locations worldwide. The data on abundance and body size were used to calculate the cumulative weight of all fishes on each reef (also called standing biomass), which is one of the main services reef fishes provide to humanity through food supply but also a very close proxy for how effectively ecosystems produce biomass.

“The results of the study were stunning,” says co-author Kevin Gaston at Sheffield University. “While experimental studies have elucidated that the biomass production of ecosystems stabilizes after a certain number of species is reached, this field study demonstrated that the production of biomass in reef fish systems did not saturate with the addition of new species.”

“This study shows, quite simply, that the more biodiversity, the better,” says co-author Marah Hardt with OceanInk. “The benefits appear limitless, if we allow ecosystems to operate at their full potential.”

“The reasons leading to a non-saturating relationship between diversity and biomass production are intriguing,” says coauthor Michel Kulbicki at the French Institute for Research and Development. “Nevertheless, this strong relationship clearly indicates that species interact in such a way that their combined effect is larger than the addition of their individual parts and that the loss of species can have far-reaching consequences in the functioning of coral reefs.”

The study also demonstrated that standing biomass reduced with increasing human density, although for the same number of people the reduction of biomass was significantly larger in more diverse ecosystems. The authors presume that the stronger deleterious effect of humanity on more diverse reefs is due to the selective extirpation of large fishes, which are often more efficient at turning food into biomass and lack competitors precluding their ecological replacement by other species.

“It’s been usual to expect that diverse ecosystems could lose a few species without it mattering very much because the high redundancy of species should allow to replace any species that is lost,” said Peter F. Sale, assistant director of the Institute for Water, Environment and Health of the United Nations University, who was not involved in the study. “The results of this study now suggest that we do not have such insurance and that reef ecosystems are at greater risk from human pressures than we previously thought.”

The study documented that the deleterious effect of humanity on reef fish systems can be widespread, as some 75% of the world’s coral reefs are near human settlements and could worsen, as 82% of countries with coral reefs are expected to double their human populations within the next 50 to 100 years.

“Human overpopulation is a very sensitive topic across endeavors from science to religion and politics,” Mora says. “Unfortunately, we find again and again that our global population cannot be sustainably supported without the deterioration of the world’s natural resources and the resulting backlash on human welfare. Thus, identifying socially and politically acceptable solutions to curb human population growth is at the core of finding ultimate solutions for the protection of biodiversity and the prevention of unnecessary hardship.”

“We found that dense human populations were associated with heavy overfishing, land use, and coastal development,” says coauthor David Booth at the University of Technology, Sydney. “This highlights the challenge behind the management required to adequately protect coral reefs and the need to focus on alternative economic and policy tools that address the root drivers of reef degradation.”

“This is a critical situation,” says coauthor Sebastian Ferse from the Leibniz Center of Tropical Marine Ecology. “It underlines once again that current management approaches are insufficient to protect marine biodiversity on a large scale, and that holistic approaches combining natural and social systems are needed.”

“Not everything was doom and gloom,” says coauthor Maria Beger at the University of Queensland. The study reported that at least 25% of the world’s reefs remain distant from direct human effects. Those reefs are located on small and isolated areas where human habitation is harsh. “These few reefs are in stark contrast with degraded sites, and may still be able to act as sources to replenish others. This is a fortunate situation that can buy us some time while we figure out effective solutions to this coral reef crisis,” she adds.

“Coral reefs are the most diverse ecosystem on the planet, hosting thousands of species and generating numerous goods and services to millions of people worldwide,” says Enric Sala, a National Geographic fellow and co-author of the study. “The future of coral reefs and the services they provide to a growing human population depend on how soon countries become seriously committed to regulating human threats.”

Best wishes,
Bill
—
William N. Ryerson
President
Population Media Center and Population Institute
U.S.A.

Source: http://www.populationmedia.org

]]> http://ppdsec.wordpress.com/2011/07/09/worlds-reef-fishes-tussling-with-human-overpopulation/feed/ 0 ppdsec http://ppdsec.wordpress.com/2011/06/06/manilas-aquino-risks-church-ire-on-contraception-bill/ http://ppdsec.wordpress.com/2011/06/06/manilas-aquino-risks-church-ire-on-contraception-bill/#comments Mon, 06 Jun 2011 02:51:21 +0000 ppdsec http://ppdsec.wordpress.com/?p=51 Continue reading →]]> MANILA (Reuters) – Philippine President Benigno Aquino pledged on Sunday (17 April 2011) to push for the passage of a reproductive health bill in Congress as a tool to fight poverty even at the risk of excommunication from the Roman Catholic Church.

Efforts to enact a law that would promote access to sex education and contraception have been blocked since the 1990s by powerful Roman Catholic bishops. Around 80 percent of the country’s 94 million people are Catholic.

“I remain committed to push the passage of a law for responsible parenthood,” Aquino told graduates of the country’s premier state university.

“I know there are those who oppose it. At risk of excommunication, it is my obligation as leader to explain my principles to them, even if their minds are already closed. But, in the end, I must listen to my conscience and do what is right.”

Last year, Catholic bishops denied threatening to impose canonical sanction against the president due to his plans but reminded him to consider church’s position.

The bishops said some forms of contraception were tantamount to abortion. Abortion is illegal in the Philippines.

Aquino has indicated support for the bill, raising hopes it could be passed, but the measure was not on a list of priority bills submitted to Congress.

During his speech, Aquino spoke of meeting an unemployed 16-year-old boy with two children. He said:

“How will they feed their children when they have no jobs? Who is to blame for their situation? How did such responsibility fall on them? More importantly, how can I help them?”

The church says tackling corruption would do more to reduce poverty than slowing population growth. The Philippines has one of the region’s highest rates of maternal deaths — an average of 11 women a day die giving birth.

Foreign missions and international agencies have been urging the Philippine government to adopt a reproductive health legislative framework as an anti-poverty strategy.

The European Union has also called for the passage of a maternal health law, saying slower population growth would improve health and lower poverty. It has promised $50.5 million health package to raise contraceptive usage in low-income, rural communities.

Source : Thomson Reuters

Women make up a large number of the poor in communities that are highly dependent on local natural resources for their livelihood and are disproportionately vulnerable to and affected by climate change. Women’s limited access to resources and decision-making processes increases their vulnerability to climate change. They are likely to become direct victims (mortalities and injuries) of climate change disasters, such as hurricanes and flooding. During natural disasters, often more women die than men because they are not warned, cannot swim or cannot leave the house alone. Women made up 55-70% of the Banda Aceh (Indonesia) tsunami deaths, and in the worst affected village Kuala Cangkoy, in the North Aceh district, 80% of the deaths were women. When poor women lose their livelihoods, they slip deeper into poverty and the inequality and marginalization they suffer from because of their gender, increases. Therefore, climate change presents a very specific threat to their security. (for more see: Empty Promises: Gender Scorecard of World Bank-Managed Post-Tsunami Reconstruction in Indonesia by Suzanna Dennis & Warisha Yunus)

Women in rural areas in developing countries have the major responsibility for household water supply and energy for cooking and heating, as well as for food security, and are negatively affected by drought, uncertain rainfall and deforestation. Women’s hardship in the face of climate change can also have a negative effect on reproductive health. For example,   during the dry season in parts of rural India and Africa, 30 percent or more of women’s daily caloric intake is spent on fetching water alone. The enormous physical strain placed on women’s bodies because of those tasks has resulted in higher reproductive health risk among these populations. In rural Peru women typically have low access to education, specialist technical assistance, healthcare, or control over the family’s productive resources. These widespread and profound inequalities put poor women in and their children in a situation of particular vulnerability to food insecurity during El Niño. Widespread malnutrition exposed women and children disproportionately to epidemics (acute respiratory and diarrhoeal infections, malaria, dengue, and cholera), which increased significantly during El Niño. (for more information , see Gendering responses to El Niño in rural Peru, Rosa Rivero Reye, Oxfam publication)

Gender differences in property rights, access to information and in cultural, social and economic roles, and the effects of climate change are likely to affect men and women differently. Long-term climate change will have an impact on agriculture, and ecological and human systems, and is therefore likely to have ramifications for gender relations. Obviously, adaptation mechanism must reflect recipient’s needs constraints and priorities. Therefore, it is important to identify gender-sensitive strategies for responding to the environmental and humanitarian crises caused by climate change.

Rahnuma Afroz
Program Associate, PPD

At the same time as academics and journalists talk of the demographic dividend, they also continue to talk of India’s population problem. India’s population currently estimated at 1.2 billion is expected to grow to 1.9 billion by 2050. It could even grow to 1.9 billion if fertility decline did not continue at the current rate. Demographers predict that India will have by 2050 a population larger than that of China.

Six months ago, the Indian Parliament debated the topic of population stabilization. Almost all the major parties in India agree on the need to reduce the population growth rate in India, and during the debate there was general support for the goal of population stabilization. Some of the parliamentarians even talked of the need for severe ‘population control’ measures. Population control has not gone out of vogue in India, though nobody can clearly define what population control would mean in practice.

Those who are in favour talk of incentives and disincentives. A couple of states have adopted legislation in regard to government officials, withdrawing certain financial benefits from them and even denying promotion if they have more than two children. However, as far as I know, none of this legislation has been put into effect. It is being challenged in courts or has not received the assent of the state Governor. Besides, we do not know of any country where such legislation has had the desired effect.

More important, the central government in India is pushing a package of child survival, family planning and reproductive health measures, to reduce maternal and child mortality and increase access to family planning and related health services. Of course, its implementation varies from state to state. Advocacy of coercive measures fell into disrepute after the Emergency in 1975-1977, and it is unlikely that any coercive measures can be adopted, under the democratic set-up in India.

What then is the prognosis for the future? The annual population growth rate for India has declined to 1.4 per cent, and may decline further in the years to come. The Southern states (Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh) have reached or are reaching population stabilization. Several other states (such as Maharashtra and North Eastern states) have also registered significant progress…

Even in the Hindi speaking belt of the North which suffers from higher rates of illiteracy, poorer health services and lower status of women, there are signs of progress. In particular, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh have registered, in the last decade, lower maternal mortality and a lower fertility rate… It is only in Bihar and some parts of Uttar Pradesh that the population growth rates have not come down in any significant manner. Bihar, however, has recorded significant economic and social progress in the past five years, and this may have had an impact in the health sector as well.

Several states in India are now offering cash incentives to couples for delaying marriage and the first child. Scholarships for female children and other incentives for the families that have female children are being offered in states like Haryana .These measures are aimed at reducing the gender imbalance and may also help delay marriages and promote spacing of children.

Many demographers and economists remain somewhat pessimistic about India’s chances to grow faster and to lift hundreds of millions more above absolute poverty, unless more urgent measures were adopted. There is certainly a clear need to bring family planning and other reproductive services to all the couples and individuals who need them. This requires significantly increasing and improving the outreach, quality and efficiency of health services.

Education for women, particularly young girls, and other measures to promote empowerment of women also need priority attention. Beyond these areas, there is no agreement on what additional measures should be adopted unless policy makers were thinking of coercive measures; and adoption of any coercive measures, in my opinion, is extremely unlikely.

I am among those who still feel optimistic about the future. I believe, in the final analysis, that India is moving slowly but steadily towards population stablization. In this context, I am looking forward to the result of 2010-2011 census in India. These, to be available in a few months, may provide clearer indications in this regard.

By Jyoti Shankar Singh

Jyoti Shankar Singh is the author of Creating a New Consensus on Population (Earth scan, London, 2009).He can be reached at at jyotissingh@ hotmail.com

Source: ipsterraviva.net

The question is not of space. The total 7 billion of the world, shoulder to shoulder will fill only an area of the size of Los Angeles. The question is: Can the world sustain the population? We do not want to create a population alarmism as did Thomas Malthus. Right now on earth, water tables are falling, soil is eroding, glaciers are melting, fish stocks are vanishing. About 1 billion people go hungry each day. Please read “The Bottom Billion” of Paul Collier to understand why the poorest countries are becoming more and more destitute and cannot afford the basic necessities. In 2025 there will be two billion more mouths to feed and these will be mostly in poor countries.

It is time for all of us to reconsider our position and act. A single act by single person in a single country will make a difference, and if we all put together our hands, we would be able to meet the challenge of lifting billion of people out of poverty and bridge the gap between the haves and the haves-not.

We need imperatively to control and manage population growth if we are to promote better quality of life to our citizens. It is wrong to assume that developed countries have attained their demographic objectives and so it is not their concern. The quality of life of all on Planet Earth depends on partnership and coalition building, knowledge, experience and resource sharing. After all, we are all the members of the same family with common genes. While brothers and sisters from the developing world should promote greater South-South Cooperation, brothers and sisters from the developed world should also promote greater North-South Cooperation.

Harry S. Jooseery, Executive Director, PPD

“…there is no tool for development more effective than the empowerment of women.”

Former UN Secretary General Mr. Kofi Anan

Women’s empowerment refers to providing the crucial rights to women in order to make them self-reliant. It is a process in which women gain better share of control over resources – material, human and logical like knowledge, information, ideas and financial resources. It also helps to get control over decision-making in the home, community, society and nation, and to gain ‘power’.  Empowering Women aims to encourage women with the courage to break free from the chains of restraining belief patterns and societal or religious conditioning that have traditionally kept women suppressed and unable to see their true beauty and power.

The empowerment of women, and improvements in their social, economic and health status are strongly acknowledged by the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) as highly important and are seen as indispensable for the achievement of sustainable development. Empowerment of women also requires participation and co-operation of men. It is well thought-out that the socio-economic empowerment of women will raise women’s self esteem, awareness, skill development, creative decision making, and this may lead to produce better citizens and thereby a better world.