Population, Family Planning,
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July 05, 2002

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  • May 31, 2001 US DOE/PCI/Global Intersections   World Energy Use to Double by 2020.  Global energy use which is closely correlated with population growth will grow by 59% and CO2 emissions will double during the next 20 years according to a new report, "International Energy Outlook 2001," from the U.S. Department of Energy. The new economies of the developing world will be responsible for more than 80% of emissions by 2010, where the continued use of fossil fuels, coal in particular, might drown any efforts undertaken by the industrialized countries to reduce their emissions. Half of the projected growth is expected to occur in developing nations of Asia, including China, India, and South Korea, and in Central and South America following the economic growth of these areas. Oil is still the primary energy resource but as countries are switching to natural gas, where consumption is expected to double by 2020, the market share of oil is not expected to increase although oil use will increase on an absolute scale. Nuclear power is projected to increase until 2015 after which it will decline. An increase of 53% in renewable energies such as dams is projected, although projected low energy prices (fossil fuels) will tend to hold back investments in renewable energy resources. jlf .000192

  • June 11, 2001 Greenlines/Environment & Energy Daily   Oregon USA: Water Crisis 150 Years in the Making.  "Even in a normal year, the water in the Klamath Basin cannot meet the current, and growing, demands for tribal, agricultural, industrial, municipal and fish and wildlife needs," Oregon Governor Kitzhaber said commenting the feud over the basin's resourcers between farmers and the Ecological Society of America. He further commented that "the current water crisis in the Klamath Basin has been 150 years in the making and serves as a reminder to us all that we are stretching our natural resources beyond their limits."   jlf .000218

  • June 16, 2001 New York Times*   Energy Disruptions Brighten Future of Coal, a Fossil of a Fuel.  Only a year ago, coal was widely considered a fuel of the past, vilified by environmentalists for its links to acid rain and global warming. Yet, with last years power failures and increasing prices on natural gas the new Bush administration has emphasized more on energy security than environmental protection by rejecting strict controls on the emissions of CO2, a green-house gas and a byproduct of coal burning. Approximately 52% of the electricity of the US is now generated using coal which is a big increase compared to 10 years ago. According to projections from a task force led by Vice President Dick Cheney, coal will continue generate about half of electricity for at least the next 20 years. The task force is largely responsible for the increased popularity of increased dependence on coal burning which have received little resistance from environmental groups more concerned about fighting oil drilling in the ANWR. "If rising U.S. electricity demand is to be met, then coal must play a significant role," the task force reported. Now 16% of the planned generating capacity over the next five years is based on coal. A year ago no coal based generators were planned. This signals an increased dependence on coal, whose reserves are estimated to last for 275 years[*]. Government statistics demonstrate that emissions of pollutants such as sulfur dioxide (acid rain) and nitrous oxide (smog and global warming) have decreased by 35% since 1989 either due to the installation of so-called scrubbers which removes these molecules or by using coal with less sulfur in it. However, emissions of carbon dioxide have not been reduced. Although CO2 regulations were one of the promises by President Bush in his electoral campaign, this promise was later broken due to energy concerns. This does not mean that the problem of emission reduction goes away, and because coal-fired power plants are responsible for about 30 percent of CO2 emissions the problem will have to be addressed again in the future. "If the coal industry wants to establish a viable strategy for maintaining its existing role in the energy structure, it's going to have to address these questions about global warming," David Hawkins of the Natural Resources Defense Council said. One of the promising new technologies for reducing CO2 emissions is to gasify coal before it is burned. The carbon is then separated and can be stored deep underground. However, only few coal companies are active in this research, enlisting in projects like one founded by the Pew Center for Global Climate Change, in Washington. Most others are not pursuing this goal which has frustrated companies who think that coal's newly gained popularity will be temporary unless the industry agrees to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases in some way. [* Resource life times are typically calculated by naively assuming that current extraction rates will keep constant until the resource is totally depleted. It does not account for the increasing difficulty in extracting the resource from increasingly lower grade sources and the increased demand which is due to increased population pressure as well as the expenditure due to replacement of other resources, in this case oil and gas.]   jlf .000261

  • June 5, 2001 Associated Press   U.N. Joins 1,500 Scientists to Launch First Study on Health of Planet Earth.  The U.N. and a number of public and private organizations will now cooperate with 1500 of the planet's leading scientists to create the first major study - The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment - of the condition of the Earth. The assessment which is scheduled to last four years and cost $21 million to complete will study grasslands, forests, farmlands, oceans, and fresh waterways. The study is a response to the current lack of comprehensive knowledge which was noted by Secretary-General Kofi Annan at last year's U.N. Millennium Summit. jlf .000276

  • June 20, 2001 Scripps Howard News Service   The Impact of Autos on the Earth.  According to a new report "City Limits: Putting Brakes on Sprawl," by the World Watch Institute, the growing dependence on road transportation due to city sprawl is the fastest growing source of CO2 emissions. Urban planning, particularly in the developing world, will have a large impact on future emissions. Currently the cities in the United States followed by Australia and Canada are the most fuel consuming in the world. Cities in with low fuel consumption and a good public transportation infrastructure are all located in Asia and Europa. The United states consumes 43% of the world's gasoline despite only holding 5% of the world's population. CO2 emissions from transportation went from 17% in 1971 to 23% in 1997. The use of road transportation is also increasing being responsible for 58% of all transport-related emissions in 1990 and 73% in 1997. As people become more poor they tend to move into the cities and now 2.85 billion people live in urban environments, almost for times as many as fifty years ago. In 2030 CO2 emissions from city-related transportation in China could exceed 1 billion tons, which is about the same amount as was released all road transportation worldwide in 1998. As the car is the only viable mean of transportation in some U.S. cities roughly one third of the people [in those cities] are unable to get around since they are either too young, too old or too poor to drive. Copenhagen(Denmark), Portland (U.S., Oregon), and Curitiba (Brazil) are some examples where city-leaders are favoring pedestrians, and cyclists and making plans so that newly developed areas can easily be reached by public transportation. jlf .000342

  • September 2001 Food and Agriculture Organization News   Developing Countries Face Serious Food Shortages.  The Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that 826 million out of the 6.1 billion people living on Earth are undernourished due to a combination of natural and man-made disasters such as overpopulation, civil wars, population displacements, flash floods, water shortages, dry spells, and pasture damage. The seven most affected countries in East Africa are Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda, where millions already depend on food assistance. In western and central Africa affected countries are the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, and Burundi primarily due to a combination of dry spells and insurgence. While the depth of hunger is larger in Africa the total number of hungry people is larger in Asia. Here Afghanistan, Bangladesh, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, and Mongolia top the FAO list but also China (water shortages) and India(flash flood) have problems. Since the 1990s the number of hungry people in the world has been reduced by 8 million annually, however, at this number needs to be reduced by least 20 million annually between now and 2015 to end hunger. The problem requires immediate, effective action and not not emergency responses the FAO says in a report entitled "The State of Food Insecurity 2000". The FAO cites Thailand as an example where the focusing on supporting sustainable rural development and reducing malnutrition has caused poverty to be reduced from one third in 1988 to just over 10% in 1996 and severe malnutrition among young children to be eliminated. jlf .000363

  • July 3, 2001 Reuters   Saving Crop Diversity Key to Winning War on Hunger.  The U.N. estimates that 800 million people still suffer from hunger daily. It is therefore important to retain the genetic diversity of plants and to develop new crops which are resistant to disease and able to grow under dry and arid conditions to keep up with the increasing population and to provide insurance against the effects of global warming. However, this might prove difficult as plant varieties are going extinct at unprecedented rates. According to Geoffrey Hawtin, director general of the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute some 25% of all plant species are threatened in one way or another. This may causes the extinction of 8% of the worlds plant species during the next 25 years. During the last 50 years farmers have replaced thousands of species with high yield monoculture crops across large areas. For instance at the beginning of the green revolution India had some 30000 different types of wheat, yet now 90% of the wheat acreage are covered by just ten different but highly productive varieties. "This reduction in genetic diversity will have notable repercussions in the long term on food security," according to the IPGRI statement. At a recent U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization meeting the framework was laid for sharing and conserving the genetic diversity of plants including access to the world's seed banks. However, it was not possible for the delegates to reach an agreement on patent laws on seed. On one side there are poor countries and environmentalist groups claiming that the patenting of food and seeds threaten food security. On the other side the wealthy countries and companies claim that patent rights are necessary incentives for continued research. A meeting is scheduled 11/2001 to resolve the patent issue. jlf .000399

  • July 19, 2001 Reuters   USA: National Parks Wrestle with Traffic Jams.  It is estimated that 58.2 million Americans will visit the national parks in 2001. Each year two million people visit Cades Cove where as many as 6000 people will drive through on the 11-mile one-lane road each day. "One good bear eating along the road can back up traffic for a while," park spokesman Bob Miller said, and rangers are frequently dispatched to clear up such "bear-jams". At the Great Smokies park officials are now looking into options such as electronic messaging boards to inform about jams on the road ahead. Shuttle busses might also provide a solution, however, one bus would have to leave every 90 seconds to keep up the flow of people, however at $300,000 per bus this solution is expensive. In 1997, the Interior and Transportation Departments agreed to improve park transportation using Yosemite, Zion, Grand Canyon, and Acadia National Parks as demonstration sites. For instance now Zion's visitors are required to leave their cars at the gate and travel the park by bus. At Acadia National Park in Maine the bus system is voluntary, but "With visitor levels growing, the park had to help the parking situation or put up gates to limit the number of people coming into the park," said Tom Crikelair, the transit planning consultant who designed the system. In the first year of the system it is estimated that 42000 vehicle trips were eliminated, the following year nine busses were added to the previous eight busses. "Now that we've found that people would use the system, we've got to find out what to do to keep this running and whether we are going to expand to meet demand," Crikelair said. In 1997 after a flood that destroyed bridges, camp sites, etc., in closing down the Yosemite park for 3.5 months is was suggested that people would require reservations to drive into the park. This plan was resisted and scrapped. In 2001 the park service approved restricted parking for day-travelers and instituted an region-wide bus system. However two counties backed out of the deal claiming a negative economic impact and the Sierra Club criticized the use of diesel buses. With four highways converging into a narrow valley the traffic situation in the summer reaches "gridlock proportions", said Scott Gediman, park ranger and spokesman, "People can look for parking for over an hour. It leads to a damaging of the visitor experience." jlf .000534

  • August 3, 2001 ENN   Earthquakes: Crowding the Rim.  With increasing population many people have now moved into cities around the Pacific Rim - the so-called "Ring of Fire" - an area marked be tectonic shifting causing erupting volcanoes and earthquakes. As economies grow and become more interdependent disasters will impact on more people, yet for each $1 spent on prevention, $7 could be saved in disaster costs, which become more expensive with increased population density. 160 delegates from 40 different countries recently met to discuss how to avoid future major disasters on the Pacific Rim at an international summit called "Crowding the Rim". The idea was to inform policy makers and give them an assessment of hazards and a realistic idea of what can be done to prevent disasters which they subsequently can apply to e.g. building codes and other requirement of different areas. jlf .000536

  • June 5, 2001 U.N. News; World Resources Institute   Four-year "Millennium Ecosystem Assessment" Begins.  The 4 year project entitled "Millennium Ecosystem Assessment" began on the World Environment Day, June 5, 2001. It will provide an extensive study of the health of the world's ecosystems on a global, sub-global, and national level and provide information to governments, industry, and local organizations. Preliminary studies indicate that the capacity to sustain human needs is diminishing in many parts of the world and that the threats to biodiversity and human health are growing. At the same time people are becoming more and more vulnerable to environmental disasters. "Ecosystems have a dual role of providing materials and services to meet human needs for food, water, employment, and health, as well as functioning to regulate environmental conditions and quality that make the Earth habitable for humans and other species," said Angela Cropper, co-chair of the MA Assessment Panel. The MEA will help policy makers to assess long-term consequences of their decisions on societies and ecosystems, and as Kofi Annan said when launching the program: "All of us have to share the Earth's fragile ecosystems and precious resources, and each of us has to play a role in preserving them. If we are to go on living toge jlf .000598

  • September 01, 2001 Christian Science Monitor   World Confronts an Aging Population.  Within the next 50 years, the world’s population will grow much older. There will be nearly 2 billion individuals over 60 in the year 2050. And 379 million over 80 years old. These changes in population will cause strains on public programs such as social services, healthcare and retirement programs because there will be less people in the workforce. There are many economic, political, and social implications that will occur around the globe. Some of them will include; India will become the world’s largest nation with 1.57 billion people, the U.S will remain the third most populous country and will be the only industrialized nation in the tip 10 by 2050. In Europe, North America and Japan there will be no population growth within the next 50 years. In fact, without immigration, populations will decline. The UN indirectly notes that because of shifting population trends, the US could soon set itself apart from other industrialized nations. The US will grow by 114 million by 2050 and Asia will continue to have the largest population. It will contain nearly every 6 out of 10 people on the planer. -rvs .000719

  • September 02, 2001    HIV Program in Thailand Cuts Risk.  Thailand has reduced the risk of mother-infant transmission by two-thirds in a new program that treats women for the AIDS virus. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the test program, run from 1998-2001 reduced the transmission risk from 30% to 10%. Pregnant women are offered the AIDS drug AZT a few weeks before birth and a year’s worth of formula to prevent HIV transmission through breast-feeding. Also HIV testing was given to 100,000 women, of which 1% tested positive. Worldwide, about 2.2 million women and 600,000 infants contract HIV each year. The program is setting a precedent for the rest of the world. Experts from North America, Europe and Africa urged the world's top industrial nations to give more to a new global AIDS fund, saying the $1 billion raised so far is not enough. -rvs .000721

  • August 23, 2001 Christian Science Monitor   'Good Wood' Labeling: Can it Save Asia's Tropical Forests?..  Consumers in the US are unwittingly contributing to the destruction of Indonesia's tropical forests. According to a WWF report seven-tenths of all trees cut down in Indonesia are felled without permit. "Lauan", which is the trade name for tropical hardwood from Indonesia and Malaysia, accounts for 80% of all tropical timber sold in the US. According to the World Bank, deforestation in Indonesia has gone from 2.47 million to 4.2 million acres per year during the past decade. At the current rate of consumption this means that these rainforests will be gone and made into furniture in just four years. This has already happened to the Philippines. "There is no forest left in the Philippines, and Indonesia is going down the same road, just 15 years later," says Lisa Curran from Yale University. Now the world's three biggest buyers of lumber (Home Depot, Lowe's, and IKEA) vow to buy "green". The idea is to follow the practice of "fair trade" which have been successfully employed for coffee, cocoa, and bananas. The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) is the most rigorous one of the various certification systems that are now monitoring which forests are being most sustainably logged. Accordingly to wood coming from these certified areas is higher priced. The strict criterias of certification are hard to achieve. Legitimate companies seeking certification are hampered by illegal loggers trespassing into their forests and as a result they can not get FSC certification. It is a wide-spread problem and in some instances concession owners have even blown up bridges and restricted access in other ways to keep trespassers out. "Market demand can change forest practices," says Rod Taylor, from World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in Asia. Therefore consumers now have to be informed on where the wood comes from and the associated environmental costs. The costs are not trivial. During the past decade the world's population of orangutans have been reduced by half. The Sumatran tiger is close to extinction, and millions of people in Indonesia are now subject to more flooding, mudslides, and wildfires. There is a problem, however: "Something that even the NGO's don't want to accept is that there has to be a dramatic cut in consumption," says Tim Keating executive director of the Rainforest Relief, and continues "There's been this rush to certify, but they're going to have to water down their standards if they're going to meet demand." .. "We're working with suppliers to make sure there are alternatives if there isn't enough certified wood by the end of next year," says Suzanne Apple, vice president for community and environmental affairs, at Home Depot whose 2000 sales were $45 billion corresponding to about a third of Indonesia's gross domestic product. Unfortunately the amount of certified wood is still quite small. Only about 200 patches of global forest (17,000 square miles), representing only a tiny part of the world demand, have been certified. "If Home Depot came on board tomorrow, they'd exhaust the global supply of certified wood in about a day," says Rod Taylor. jlf .000737

  • September 2001    . 
    The Time Bomb
    by George Emmett
    Our population’s steady climb
    Means we are running out of time,
    For, if this earth gets overmanned,
    Nature herself may lend a hand,
    Subject us to some dreadful scourge
    That could our numbers vastly purge;
    Thus better to this problem wise
    Before she cuts us down to size
    And risk she opens some floodgate
    That could Mankind eliminate;
    So, though you might think this a shame,
    We’d only have ourselves to blame.
    .000754

  • September 04, 2001    New PPFA Ad Urges Western Women To Support Worldwide Access To Reproductive Health Care.  "Dream," a new Planned Parenthood Global Partners public service announcement, urges Western women to visit their Web site to find out how to help millions of women around the world who do not have access to basic reproductive health care. The ad features women of several nationalities holding globes, while a female voice-over invites Western women to "dream of a time when everyone can be as fortunate as you" and "discover that millions of women are denied access to regular check-ups, tests and birth control." The ad concludes, "Defy the voice inside that keeps you quiet. Demand that everyone have vital reproductive health care. Millions of women around the world need you to make a difference." .000764

  • August 30, 2001 UN News   Slowing Global Warming Despite Treaty Controversy.  Despite the stalled U.N. Climate Change Convention talks in The Hague last year due political disagreements over the science and the need for legally binding reduction targets, industry and organizations are leading to small but still significant reductions of greenhouse gas emissions the United Nations Environment Programme and the World Energy Council reported. According to WEC projection new initiatives will save at least one billion tonnes of CO2 annually*. A survey of 91 countries suggest that the actual savings might be even twice that. "China has, despite economic growth estimated at 36%, managed to reduce its carbon dioxide emission by 17% since 1997," said Klaus Toepfer, executive director of the UNEP. At the climate talks in Bonn, Germany, government leaders finally reached a compromise on the Kyoto protocol, which was almost scrapped after a U.S. decision not to support the treaty due to the lack of reduction programs for developing countries. Now developing countries are required freeze their production of CFCs at 1995-97 levels and beginning from 2003 they are commited to to reduce consumption of all major ozone-depleting substances: CFCs, halons, carbon tetrachloride, methyl chloroform, and methyl bromide over a three year period. * Currently emissions are about 20 billion tons annually.   jlf .000776

  • September 6, 2001 The Economist   Seed v Seed; Mass-producing Some Drugs May Require Green Fingers.  Epicyte, a company based in San Diego, is growing antibodies designed to kill human sperm and anti-herpes in genetically modified maize. When the seeds have been harvested, the antibodies can be extracted and turned into a gel which can be applied by the woman to prevent pregnancy and/or herpes. .000793

  • September 13, 2001 The Globe and Mail   Hatred of the United States is Rooted in Oil.  Much of the hatred that emanates from militant Islamic terrorist groups such as Mr. bin Laden's can be traced back to a single thing: the U.S. government's desire to maintain control over the vast quantities of oil that exist in the Middle East. Some Islamic groups have said U.S. stationed troops in Saudi Arabia, "the land of the two holy places" (Mecca and Medina), during the Gulf War was an affront to Muslims. Many political analysts believe that the war against Iraq was fought largely to ensure that the oil would continue to flow from Saudi Arabia. Presumably to the protect the Saudi Arabian government of King Fahd from Iraqi attack, the action was designed to justify keeping troops to protect Saudi oilfields. Some Muslim groups believe that the U.S. is in league with Israel in order to control the source of the vast majority of the world's oil. A study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies said the world will become increasingly dependent on the Middle East over the next 20 years. The oil-rich Persian Gulf nations will have to expand their oil production by almost 80% over the next 20 years in order to keep up with demand, particularly demand from China and India. The potential for terrorism, supply interruptions and outright war will remain high, the study says — adding that getting more oil from Iraq will be "crucial" to meeting the world's demands, since Iraq contains 11% of the world's oil reserves, second only to Saudi Arabia's 25%. .000799

  • September 14, 2001 CCMC   U.N. Postpones Children's Summit; Release of State of the World Population Report.  In the wake of Tuesday's terror attacks in the United States, The U.N. General Assembly decided to postpone the Children's Summit, originally scheduled to take place on September 19-21 in New York, to an undetermined date. Also, the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) release of the 2001 State of the World Population Report, "Footprints and Milestones: Population and Environmental Change" has been rescheduled for November 7, 2001. For more information and to enquire about embargoed copies, please contact Corrie Shanahan (Tel: 212-297-5023) or Victoria Rector (Tel: 212-297-5022). Please be advised that telephone voice mail at UNFPA headquarters is still not functioning. .000825

  • September 28, 2001 UNFPA   Un Population Fund Launches Emergency Effort To Save Afghan Women's Lives.  The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) is asking international donors for $4.5 million to counter health risks confronting Afghan refugee women and a total of $584 million for humanitarian assistance, both within Afghanistan and in neighbouring countries. Facing possible military action inside Afghanistan, thousands of pregnant women are among the tens of thousands Afghan civilians who have fled their homes in recent days and are massed along the country's borders, hoping to enter Pakistan, Iran, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan or Uzbekistan. They lack shelter, food and medical care, and face unsanitary conditions, posing a serious risk to these women and their infant children. Even before the current crisis, poor health conditions and malnutrition made pregnancy and childbirth exceptionally dangerous for Afghan women. UNFPA is preparing to position emergency relief supplies and reproductive health care services in the countries bordering Afghanistan and inside Afghanistan, if possible. Without help, "A terribly high number of Afghan women and girls are likely to die from easily treatable pregnancy complications," says UNFPA Executive Director Thoraya Obaid. Afghan women need access to a safe delivery environment and to be protected against sexually transmitted diseases, unwanted pregnancy and violence. United Nations staff and NGOs have been withdrawn from the country, and borders are closed. Relief operations to more than 5 million people have all but stopped. When winter sets in, up to 7.5 million Afghans could require outside aid to survive, the UN estimates. Support would include clean delivery supplies; sanitary napkins and clean undergarments to protect essential hygiene; support for border area hospitals receiving referrals with pregnancy and childbirth complications; and counselling for victims of trauma. Longer-term assistance after the emergency phase will include training for local health-care providers and basic health education for women and young people. UNFPA has worked for several years inside Afghanistan, and with Afghan refugee women in Pakistan and Iran, with support from United Kingdom and Italy. UNFPA is the world's largest multilateral source of population assistance. Since it became operational in 1969, the Fund has provided more than $5 billion to developing countries to meet reproductive health needs and support sustainable development efforts. .000898

  • September 30, 2001 Los Angeles Times*   California: Abstinence-Based Sex Ed Is Failing, Teens Say.  Santa Ana, in southern California, has one of the highest rates of teenage motherhood in the state. Santa Ana students are asking that their schools teach about contraception and relationships, because, they say, the school district's abstinence-focused curriculum for sex education isn't working. They are tired of seeing their friends get pregnant and drop out, and are asking the school board to change the way it teaches about sex. "We want them to teach contraception, and how to deal with relationships," said Maricela Sandoval, a senior. A majority of students are having sex and they need to be told that you can get pregnant the first time. Funded by a grant from the California Wellness Foundation, a Campfire USA Orange County Council Speak Out program to research teenage pregnancy in the city is represent by 15 teenagers who volunteered their time for 18 months, surveying fellow high school students about their sex habits and polling parents and teachers about what they would like to see taught in schools. 12 groups around the state have received such grants from the Wellness Foundation. The Santa Ana students plan to go before the school board next month and demand that health teachers begin giving students more information about prevention of sexually transmitted diseases and how to get birth control pills or condoms in addition to counseling abstinence. Their study found that three out of five teenagers in the district say they are sexually active and 76% of teenagers in the district believe the curriculum needs to be changed, and 90% of Santa Ana parents said they would support efforts to revamp it. Students in Santa Ana are currently given basic biological information, but the programs emphasize abstinence. Teachers can tell students where to find numbers for family planning clinics in the phone book. In 1996 more than 8% of girls ages 15 to 17 had babies each year, UC Berkeley study found. Other hot spots were Long Beach, Watts and San Bernardino. Many of the teenagers surveyed thought girls are pressured into having sex by their boyfriends, and they need more help in saying no. In June, a 2-year study by the U.S. surgeon general found little evidence that teaching abstinence deters teenagers from having sex. Those who had taken sex education courses were more likely to use protection than those who were told only to abstain from sex. Arcy Alvarez, an 18-year-old student didn't think she could conceive the first time she had sex. She, her 19 month old daughter, and her parents and and father of her child now all live together. She had planned to attend a four-year-college but has had to give up that dream. .000900

  • September 30, 2001 Los Angeles Times*   Famished Afghan Children Fade Away.  Twenty-two years of war and four years of drought have devastated Afghanistan, leaving millions facing hunger and the threat of starvation. Now tens of thousands are fleeing cities for fear of bomb strikes from the U.S. which is targeting Afghanistan in its campaign against international terrorism. The U.N. emergency relief coordinator, Kenzo Oshima, called Afghanistan the site of the world's worst humanitarian crisis. Life expectancy in Afghanistan is 46 years and that it has one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world, according to the UN, which has appealed for $584 million to feed 7.5 million Afghans suffering from hunger and displacement due to war and drought. .000902

  • September 5, 2001 John Hopkins CCP   Johns Hopkins POPLINE Database Now Available Online.  Need a journal article on adolescent reproductive health and HIV/AIDS? Trying to track down an article on population and the environment? The answers to these questions and much more are now just a few mouse clicks away at POPLINE, the world's largest bibliographic database on population, family planning, and related issues. .000903

  • September 5, 2001 St. Louis Post-Dispatch   Exporting the Abortion Debate.  At the United Nations Special Session on Children beginning Sept. 14 in New York they discussed child slavery, AIDS orphans, starvation, child soldiers, disease, illiteracy, and child labor. Over than 75 countries were in attendance. At first, the administration of George W. Bush threatened to boycott the conference, attempting to turn the event into a debate on abortion. The State Department sent cables to ambassadors in Central and Latin America, telling them to join the U.S. effort to remove the phrase "reproductive health services" from conference language. In the case of girl soldiers raped or used as sex slaves, the concern was not for the girls, but rather for language that might be construed as providing reproductive health services, which might include abortion. Reproductive health services include AIDS testing and prevention, treatment for sexually transmitted diseases and childbirth, not always abortion. The United States now also objects to explicit sex education overseas, favoring a Sudanese measure supporting abstinence education exclusively. .000906

  • September 7, 2001 Negative Population Growth   USA: School Enrollments Continue to Rise.  USA: School Enrollments Continue to Rise Enrollment in Texas public schools increased by 24% over the last decade and outpaced the national growth rate by nearly 40%, according to a new report from the Texas Education Agency. In Boston, Lowell High School has begun serving lunches at 9:25 a.m. to accommodate an overflowing student population. The schedule may be a violation of federal education regulations, which require that school lunch periods be between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. Headmaster William Samaras said the early lunches were "the best solution to the problem of an overcrowded student population and a jammed schedule." The Philadelphia Inquirer reported Tuesday that five Pennsylvania suburbs doubled in population between 1990 and 2000. "The pressure on school districts has been tremendous," wrote the paper. "The nearly 18,000-student Central Bucks School District, now the third-largest in the state, is growing by an average of 800 to 900 students annually. The 5,500-student Spring-Ford Area School District, which includes Limerick and Upper Providence, has seen an average of 280 to 300 students added to its rolls every year since the mid-'90s." .000918

  • September 5, 2001 Santiago Times/Kaiser Daily Reproductive Health   Chilean Health Ministry Approves Distribution Of Emergency Contraception.  The Chilean Health Ministry decided to uphold the Institute of Public Health's approval of a German company's emergency contraception even though the country's Supreme Court banned a different company from dispensing the pill. Antiabortion groups charge that emergency contraception is similar to abortion. Abortion is illegal in Chile. Antiabortion NGOs also consider intrauterine devices to have abortive effects, but say they have no plans to appeal the legal distribution of IUDs because the device has been used in Chile since the late 1960s. [Note: emergency contraception is no more abortive than contraception - they both prevent pregnancy before the embryo is implanted in the uterus.] .000921

  • September 10, 2001 Population Reference Bureau   2001 World Population Data Sheet from PRB.  PRB's 2001 World Population Data Sheet contains the latest population estimates, projections, and other key indicators for 200 countries, including births, deaths, natural increase, infant mortality, total fertility, life expectancy, urban population, HIV/AIDS prevalence, contraceptive use, GNI PPP per capita, land area, and population per square mile. .000927

  • September 21, 2001 Christian Science Monitor   UN Report Says World's Coral Reefs Dying Faster Than Once Thought..  According to a detailed survey from the World Conservation Monitoring Center of the UN Environment Program coral reefs are both smaller and dying faster than previously thought. The world's reefs occupy just 294,533 km2 (113,720 square miles) corresponding to about 0.1% of the total surface area. "They are rapidly being degraded by human activities", says Klaus Toepfer, the UN Environment Program's executive director. Such activities include the use of dynamite or cyanide to catch fish and the continued dumping of sewage and fertilizer which promote damaging algae growth. A large fraction of the world's reefs are threatened: Thailand and the Philippines(97%), Indonesia(82%), Malaysia(91%), Papua New Guinea(46%), and Australia(32%). The three countries with the largest reefs are Indonesia 52,835 km2(20,400 square miles), Australia 50,722 km2 (19,584 square miles), and the Philippines 25,899 km2 (10,000 square miles). As well as providing vital ecosystems and preventing coastal erosion, reefs also benefit the economy by attracting tourists. Furthermore species living on coral reefs also provide an important source of medicine e.g. the HIV drug, AZT.   jlf .000940

  • September 2001 The Asian Development Bank   Asian Development Bank: Asia Pacific Has Achieved Population Slowdown.  The Asian Development Bank (ADB) reports that the Asia Pacific has achieved a slow-down in population growth rates. The ADB Bank released a report looking at key indicators of growth and change in the region. The report, titled "Growth and Change in Asia and the Pacific - Key Indicators 2001," is available online. .000956

  • September 21, 2001 Negative Population Growth   Residents Fight Population Growth in California.  In California, several civic and environmental organizations filed a lawsuit to block a project that would add at least 4,300 new homes, shopping centers and schools in a rustic area between Beaumont and Calimesa. The lawsuit says the additional population will strain water supplies, clog roads, and destroy important wildlife habitat. A second lawsuit has been filed in Los Angeles, by a coalition of homeowners who say the city’s plan to accommodate 611,000 more residents by the year 2010 fails to adequately protect existing residents from traffic gridlock. The suit also says that the city has insufficient water, sewage facilities, and open space to accommodate the projected population growth. Meanwhile, amid warnings of a looming water crisis, the California Senate gave final approval to legislation requiring that developers of more than 500 homes prove to local officials that there is sufficient water to supply residents of their proposed developments. Governor Davis is thought to be likely to sign the bill. .000966

  • September 21, 2001 Negative Population Growth   Florida Struggles with Population Growth.  As population pressures continue to increase in Broward County, Fla., the area is facing a housing crunch. "Short of posting ‘no vacancy’ signs along Interstate 95, the county is heading for a housing shortage as its population climbs to about 2 million people over the next decade," writes the Sun-Sentinel. "Not only is Broward running out of vacant land for new houses, there are too few existing homes to meet the demand ... Roads are jammed. Schools are crowded. Water resources are stressed." Throughout the state, residents are increasingly up in arms about the effects of overpopulation. The St. Petersburg Times reported recently that "politicians are beginning to hear the cries of soccer moms fed up with overcrowded schools and traffic jams. Specifically: Why do Florida communities keep approving development when schools are already overcrowded? ... Lt. Gov. Frank Brogan said the issue will be ‘a top priority’ of Gov. Jeb Bush in the 2002 legislative session." .000967

  • October 18, 2001 WOA!!   California: Emergency Contraception Bill Signed: to Be Available Through a Pharmacist without a Prescription .  California bill SB116, which would permit a pharmacist to initiate emergency contraception (EC) drug therapy in accordance with standardized procedures or protocols developed by the pharmacist and an authorized prescriber, has been signed into law by Governor Gray Davis. The bill would require a pharmacist who initiates emergency contraception drug therapy to provide the recipient with a standardized fact sheet developed by the California State Board of Pharmacy, in consultation with the State Department of Health Services, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the California Pharmacists Association, and other health care organizations. The bill would also require that prior to performing this procedure a pharmacist complete a specified training program. In the U.S., 3 million unintended pregnancies occur each year in this country, followed by about a million medical abortions, but if the women knew about and used emergency contraception, at least half of these could be prevented. Only 2% of U.S. women have ever used it and only about 11% know of its existence, even though the method - taking multiple doses of oral contraceptives within a few days of unprotected intercourse - has been known for more than a quarter century. Not having the product available over the counter is a problem if exposure occurs on a Friday night and the woman cannot get to a doctor until Monday. The hormones used in EC suppress ovulation and cause changes in the cervical mucus that can make it impenetrable by sperm. If an egg is fertilized, emergency contraception may interfere with its transport down the fallopian tube, causing it to die before it can become implanted in the uterus. If a fertilized egg is implanted in the uterus - the definition of pregnancy - using emergency contraception will not dislodge or destroy it and there is no risk to a developing fetus if the woman should happen to be already pregnant. There has been some concern by some religious groups that EC would be given to teenager girls. However, EC contains the same ingredients that are used in birth control pills, which are already legally given to teenagers without parental consent. The bill, introduced by state Sen. Dede Alpert (D), was signed by the Governor on October 14, 2001. .000978

  • September 26, 2001 International Planned Parenthood Federation   New on the IPPF/WHR Website: Emergency Contraception.  Get the facts about how EC works and what IPPF/WHR and its affiliates are doing to expand access in the region to this important contraceptive option. .000993

  • September 15, 2001 WOA!!/Alan Guttmacher   Once Again, It's Time for an EPICC (Equity in Prescription Insurance and Contraceptive Coverage) Vote in Congress .  The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Hearing (HELP) met September 10th to discuss S. 104, the Equity in Prescription Insurance and Contraceptive Coverage Act, and "Improving Women's Health: Why Contraceptive Insurance Coverage Matters" Sponsored by Olympia J. Snow (R-ME), bill would require health plans that cover prescriptions to also cover presecription contraceptive drugs and devices. According to an August 1998 report by Alan Guttmacher Institute: "Providing coverage for the full range of reversible contraceptive methods would result in a total cost of $21.40 per employee per year. Assuming standard cost-sharing between employers and emloyees, employers would pay $17.12, which translates into a monthly cost of $1.43 per employee. This would increase employers' overall insurance costs by only 0.6%. Employees would contribute $4.28 per year, or 36 cents a month." ..."The cost [increase] would be less for those plans that [already] cover at least some of these methods, and there would be no added costs for the many plans that currently cover the full range of FDA-approved reversible contraceptive methods." .000997

  • September 21, 2001 Dallas Morning News   Most Texas Hospitals Do Not Offer Emergency Contraception to Rape Victims.  Two-thirds (67%) of Texas hospitals do not provide emergency contraception (EC) to rape victims, according to a new report by the Texas Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League. However, about half of these do provide referrals to physicians or clinics that dispense the medication. Many hospitals do not provide EC because of a lack of space, public and private insurance issues and "fear of political must be taken within 72 hours of intercourse to be effective. Texas Right to Life's Courtney Facciponte stated that EC is "tantamount to abortion" and noted that hospitals that do not provide abortions generally do not provide EC. Almost 90% of the hospitals surveyed do not provide abortion. See www.not-2-late.com for details on EC. .001005

  • September 26, 2001 Ipas/Health and Development Networks   Gender or Sex: Who Cares?.  Ipas and Health & Development Networks (HDN) have produced a resource pack/training curriculum in collaboration with the Instituto de Educacion y Salud. The pack is designed for adolescents and youth workers, with an emphasis on violence, HIV/STIs, unwanted pregnancy and unsafe abortion. It includes a manual, curriculum cards and overhead transparencies/handouts, provides an introduction to the topic of gender and sexual & reproductive health using a progressive focus that works from simpler subjects and exercises towards more complex topics and participatory activities. The curriculum included in the pack was developed through a process of field-testing with more than 400 participants at international conferences in Brazil, Colombia, Malaysia, Peru, the Philippines, and South Africa. .001010

  • October 21, 2001 Negative Population Growth   USA: Michigan Communities to Be Overwhelmed by Population Growth.  The Southeast Michigan Council of Governments’ new 2030 Regional Development Forecast, which predicts 30-year trends in population, finds that in some area communities, there isn't enough room to squeeze in more homes. However, these same communities are expected to see tremendous population growth in the next few decades. For instance, Canton Township’s population (which increased by more than 30% percent from 1990 to 2000) is expected to increase by another 46%t in the next 30 years. .001013

  • October 1, 2001 Family Health International   The FamPlan Glossary.  On-line on Family Health International's (FHI) Web site is a family planning terminology glossary in English, Spanish, and French that is shared by the provides a forum for standardizing the translation of family planning terminology in all publications that are produced by member organizations. .001024

  • September 29, 2001 Reuters   Indian Project Hopes to Promote Condom Use.  India's Health Ministry will begin a project that will make condoms available in different sizes rather than the currently used single size specified by the World Health Organization and the International Standards Organization.The goal is to reduce the nation's 15%-20% condom failure rate and encourage more men to wear them. India's growing population is second in size only to China. Currently, only 3% of Indian men wear condoms, while 52% do not use any contraceptive method. .001025

  • September 29, 2001 Reuters   Indian Project Hopes to Promote Condom Use.  India's Health Ministry will begin a project that will make condoms available in different sizes rather than the currently used single size specified by the World Health Organization and the International Standards Organization.The goal is to reduce the nation's 15%-20% condom failure rate and encourage more men to wear them. India's growing population is second in size only to China. Currently, only 3% of Indian men wear condoms, while 52% do not use any contraceptive method. .001025

  • October 1, 2001 Africa News Service   Rwanda; 80% of Women HIV Infected.  The president of the Rwandan Association of Trauma Counselors, Beatrice Karengera said that 80% of Rwandan women are infected with HIV, the virus that leads to AIDS. Most of these women were infected after being raped by Rwandan army troops during the 1994 genocide of one million Tutsi and moderate Hutu. An official of the Ministry of Health, Yvonne Kayitesi, said HIV had dented the country's labour force and increased the army of orphans surviving on the streets. .001027

  • October 23, 2001 Population Institute   World Population Awareness Week.  U.S. governors, mayors, international and national organizations are uniting to promote awareness about the global population issue, and its vast and compounding consequences, through the 2001 World Population Awareness Week, Oct. 21 through Oct. 27. World Population Awareness Week (WPAW) is an intense educational campaign designed to create public awareness of the patterns in world population growth, its impact on our planet, and the urgent action needed to alleviate the situation. The theme for this year is "Population and the Urban Future," which focuses on the increased global role that cities play. Today, more than half of the urban populations in developing countries live in poverty, subsisting on less than $2 a day. By 2050, two-thirds of the world’s population will live in cities. And by 2015, of the 23 mega-cities with populations of more than 10 million, 19 will be in developing countries such as Nigeria, India and Brazil. Our human population reached the 1 billion mark in 1830; it took from the dawn of human civilization to the 19th century to arrive at this point. Two billion people occupied the world in 1930, then three billion in 1960. We grew to 4 billion people in 1975, 5 billion in 1986 and 6 billion in 1999. We have 6.1 billion people on the planet today, and our global population is projected to grow to 9 billion by 2050. .001030

  • October 25, 2001 National Audubon Society   Population Growth Comes Home to Roost.  Since August Audubon activists have sent over 75,000 letters to Congress in support for family planning. Add you voice to the chorus by going here: www.capitolconnect.com/lastflight/ .001032

  • October 25, 2001 Sierra Club Population News listserve   Senate Passes Its Version of the FY2002 Foreign Operations Appropriations Bill.  The Senate's version of the FY 2002 foreign operations appropriations bill was passed last night. Senator Boxer's (D-CA) provision to remove the global gag rule was included. Additionally, the Senate version is far superior to the earlier passed House version in its reproductive health-related funding levels and family planning policies. The House-Senate Foreign Operation Appropriations Conference Committee could meet as early as the end of next week to set 2002 funding levels and policies for international family planning programs. The President has threatened to veto the Foreign Operations Appropriations bill if it contained Senator Boxer's language trying to negate the global gag rule. .001033

  • September 2001 The Alan Guttmacher Institute   Childhood Abuse Leads to Sexual Risk Later On.  Increased exposure to abuse during childhood raises women's chances of having had sex by age 15, of perceiving themselves as being at risk of HIV and AIDS, and of having had 30 or more partners, says a report, "Adverse Childhood Experiences and Sexual Risk Behaviors in Women: A Retrospective Cohort Stud from September/October 2001 issue of Family Planning Perspectives. The authors note that this risky behavior may be an attempt by women to achieve the intimacy that was lacking in their childhood. .001034

  • September 2001 The Alan Guttmacher Institute   The Effect of Partners' Characteristics on Teenage Pregnancy and Its Resolution.  More than 17% of teenage women become pregnant during their first nonmarital sexual relationship. .001035

  • October 3, 2001 Christian Science Monitor   A New Line on Terrorism [Hang Out Your Clothes; Save the Artic].  This nation's entanglements in Central Asia and the Middle East arise largely from its appetite for oil. This appetite leads to trouble continuously. Already there are efforts in Congress to use the terrorist attacks as an excuse to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil drilling, supposedly to make us "energy independent." But it would provide gas for only about 2% of the nation's cars and trucks. Some 5 to 10% of residential energy use in the US goes to washing and drying clothes. Use cold water to wash, and you cut energy use on the washing side by 85%. Hang the clothes to dry and that's 100%t on the drying side. Together it's the energy equivalent of at least a third of the oil in the Arctic refuge. .001036

  • October 3, 2001 Financial Times (London)   New Farming Techniques Could 'Cut Food Crises in South Asia'.  Agricultural scientists at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre (CIMMYT) has said that the general adoption of "low-till" agriculture, "which increases yields while reducing the use of water and herbicides", could feed the growing population and reduce water shortages in the "bread basket" regions of India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh. This method "minimises soil damage done by traditional ploughing". Its use has spread "in south Asia from 3,000 h in 1998-99 to … 100,000h in 2000-2001" and may rise to 4 million h by 2004. The technique has cut herbicide usage by 50%, water consumption by 30-50% while significantly improving yields. Prof. Timothy Reeves, director-general of CIMMYT, said that working directly with farmers "was crucial to the project’s success and avoided the problem of lack of political will by national governments." The consortium which supported this program included the CIMMYT, the International Rice Research Institute and the Dutch and Chinese government. .001038

  • October 2, 2001 The Boston Globe   World Bank Sees New Peril for Third World.  An estimated 10 million more people will be pushed below the poverty line of $1 a day and tens of thousands of children will die from easily preventable diseases because the flow of private capital into the developing world would fall significantly because of the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington, according to World Bank president James D. Wolfensohn. .001039

  • October 4, 2001 The Washington Post   FDA Approves Monthly Contraceptive Alternative.  NuvaRing consists of a flexible, transparent and colorless ring about 3 inches in diameter that women insert vaginally once a month. The ring releases a continuous dose of the hormones estrogen and progestin, the same ones used in oral contraceptives. Each ring remains in the vagina for 21 days and is then removed and discarded. A new ring is inserted on or before the fifth day of the menstrual period. It was 98% effective towards preventing pregnancy as shown in clinical trials for the FDA in the United States and Europe. Produced by the Dutch company Organon Inc., the new contraceptive will be available by mid-2002. 14% of women in the clinical trials had vaginal infections or symptoms but some would have had them anyway. .001042

  • October 3, 2001 New Orleans Times-Picayune/NPG   Amendment Would Extend Gag Rule to U.S. Family Planning Services.  U.S. Rep. David Vitter (R-La.) has prepared an amendment to a spending bill that would deny federal family-planning financing to groups that perform abortions. The bill would affect agencies that provide family planning services in the U.S. About 40%t of the $250 million in family planning funding provides under Title X each year goes to private agencies, about half of which would be barred from financing under this legislation. .001049

  • October 4, 2001 Seattle Times   USA: Washington State Lowers Birth Rate in Welfare Program.  A family planning focus in Washington state’s welfare program has succeeded in significantly lowering the rate of births to women on public assistance. The birth rate has dropped by nearly 30% since the program was implemented. While case managers don’t tell clients not to have children, they provide extensive family planning services. All welfare applicants visit with on-site public health nurses to discuss contraception, and the state will pay for birth control pills, Norplant implants, and tubal ligation surgery if the client requests it. "These numbers don't look like an accident. said Laurie Cawthon, a public-health researcher at the Department of Social and Health Services, regarding the drop in fertility. "They look like a focused trend of women on welfare who have much greater access about family planning." .001050

  • October 5, 2001 Negative Population Growth   California Links Water Resources to Development.  The California legislature has approved a bill that requires developers planning 500 or more houses to demonstrate that an adequate water supply exists before construction can start. The bill is awaiting the signature of Gov. Gray Davis. .001051

  • October 5, 2001 Xinhua   Phillipine Population Commission Seeks Passage of Reproductive Health Act.  The Philippine Population Commission is urging the Filipino government to implement the Integrated Population and Development Act of 2000, a measure that would allow population and development policies and programmes to improve the reproductive health of women, couples, and individuals. The population of 76.5 million in the Phillippines has created economic pressure on its citizens, with 40% living below the poverty line. The Population Commission provides women with both traditional and modern contraceptives and. aims to reduce infant, early child and maternal mortality and prevent pregnancy and STDs in the young. Most Filipino couples have more than the three children they desire, and with an annual brth rate of 2.23%, the current national population is expected to double by 2035. Currently, 36 infants per 100,000 die each year and 172 women per 100,000 die from pregnancy-related complications. .001053

  • October 18, 2001 World Watch Institute   Human Actions Worsen Natural Disasters.  Janet Abramovitz, Senior Researcher at the Worldwatch Institute and author of Unnatural Disasters, reports that natural disasters are more harmful to humanity than is conflict. "In the 1990s, …hurricanes, floods, and fires affected more than two billion people and caused in excess of $608 billion in economic losses worldwide", more than "the previous four decades combined". The root causes of these catastrophes were destructive ecological practices and overpopulation. Left alone, natural systems tend to be stable and provide a "complex ecological safety net". But "degrading forests, engineering rivers, filling in wetlands, and destabilizing the climate," disrupts this stability and promotes natural disasters. The expansion of population and the concentration of economic activity along coastlines increase the harm done by natural disasters. One third of the world’s population (2 billion) and "13 of the world’s 19 megacities (with over 10 million inhabitants)" are "within 100 kilometers of a coastline". "Unnatural disasters" disproportionately affect the poor; 96% of "recorded disaster fatalities" occurred in developing countries in the past 15 years. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts that this pattern will continue; particularly in Viet Nam and Bangladesh, although the Mediterranean coast and the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf coasts will experience sea level rise. The absolute amount of economic loss will be large in developed countries, although, as a percent of the national economy, the economic impact will be greater among poor countries. Abramovitz suggests several ways of preventing and mitigating these effects of "unnatural disasters". Most importantly, natural systems, such as "dunes, barrier islands, mangrove forests and coastal wetlands", all of which absorb floodwaters, must be protected or restored. . China is restoring forests to prevent overwhelming human and financial losses from floods and Viet Nam is restoring mangroves to "buffer coastal storms" and to restore "needed jobs in fisheries". In addition, early warning and disaster preparedness plans must be set up in communities; governments should encourage development in areas which are not ecologically sensitive; and debt relief for developing nations would release funds for disaster prevention. .001056

  • October 18, 2001 World Watch Institute   Human Actions Worsen Natural Disasters.  Janet Abramovitz, Senior Researcher at the Worldwatch Institute and author of Unnatural Disasters, reports that natural disasters are more harmful to humanity than is conflict. "In the 1990s, …hurricanes, floods, and fires affected more than two billion people and caused in excess of $608 billion in economic losses worldwide", more than "the previous four decades combined". The root causes of these catastrophes were destructive ecological practices and overpopulation. Left alone, natural systems tend to be stable and provide a "complex ecological safety net". But "degrading forests, engineering rivers, filling in wetlands, and destabilizing the climate," disrupts this stability and promotes natural disasters. The expansion of population and the concentration of economic activity along coastlines increase the harm done by natural disasters. One third of the world’s population (2 billion) and "13 of the world’s 19 megacities (with over 10 million inhabitants)" are "within 100 kilometers of a coastline". "Unnatural disasters" disproportionately affect the poor; 96% of "recorded disaster fatalities" occurred in developing countries in the past 15 years. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts that this pattern will continue; particularly in Viet Nam and Bangladesh, although the Mediterranean coast and the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf coasts will experience sea level rise. The absolute amount of economic loss will be large in developed countries, although, as a percent of the national economy, the economic impact will be greater among poor countries. Abramovitz suggests several ways of preventing and mitigating these effects of "unnatural disasters". Most importantly, natural systems, such as "dunes, barrier islands, mangrove forests and coastal wetlands", all of which absorb floodwaters, must be protected or restored. . China is restoring forests to prevent overwhelming human and financial losses from floods and Viet Nam is restoring mangroves to "buffer coastal storms" and to restore "needed jobs in fisheries". In addition, early warning and disaster preparedness plans must be set up in communities; governments should encourage development in areas which are not ecologically sensitive; and debt relief for developing nations would release funds for disaster prevention. .001056

  • November 02, 2001 World Health Organization - UN   New Global Plan to Stop Spread of Tuberculosis; Afghanistan and Pakistan Among the World´s Worst-Affected Countries .  The Stop TB Partnership, a broad coalition which includes the World Health Organization and the World Bank, appealed to governments of developed and developing countries to support their plans to reverse the worldwide tuberculosis epidemic using DOTS or directly observed [tuberculosis] treatment short-course. They consider TB to be "an imminent public health emergency", associated as it is with the HIV/AIDS pandemic, emerging resistance to anti-tuberculous drugs and a growing vulnerable population of the poor, malnourished and refugee populations in the world. The organization will expand access to DOTS, "the internationally accepted strategy" involving administration of a combination of medications to patients with TB by healthcare workers and community volunteers who assure that these medications are taken regularly and for the proper duration. This method has been proven to be successful. By 2005, this group plans to detect 70% of people with infectious TB and to cure 85% of those cases detected. In addition, the "global plan includes prevention of multi-drug-resistance TB (MDR-TB); research and development of new TB drugs with a shortened treatment period; and strategies to better treat people with TB who are HIV positive." WHO Director-General, Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland says that: "22 million people would be cured to TB and 16 million lives would be saved by 2005." World Bank President James D. Wolfensohn said that TB "causes approximately 2 million deaths per year, creates and perpetuate[s] a cycle of poverty and despair." Set up in 1998, the Stop TB Partnership is made up of more than 120 groups including the George Soros’ Open Society Institute which "financed initial development of the plan", which will cost approximately US $9.3 billion to implement and now "faces a funding gap of about US$4.5 billion." "Delegates at the Stop TB Partnership meeting today reaffirmed a commitment made in 1998 by the Group of Seven, the Global Stop TB Partnership, and government ministers from 20 ‘high-burden TB’ countries to meet TB control targets by 2005". .001082

  • November 02, 2001    Better Cars, Cleaner Air.  by Daniel F. Becker, director of the Sierra Club's global warming and energy program   William Clay Ford Jr., the new CEO of Ford Motor Company, may lead the way toward improving fuel efficiency in the American auto industry. "His tenure offers real hope for progress on issues like global warming." He has shown a sense of corporate responsibility in the past. In 1999, he withdrew from the Global Climate Coalition, a group of polluting industries which opposed the science proving global warming. General Motors and Daimler Chrysler soon followed. He also began to publish "corporate citizenship" reports, acknowledging that "Ford’s vehicles and factories" emitted 400 million metric tons of CO2, "a first step in informing shareholders about the corporation’s environmental impact." He committed Ford to increase Ford’s SUV fuel economy by 25% by 2005, an important step in curbing global warming, but also in reducing costs for consumers and reducing our dependence on oil. However, the Ford Motor Company needs to do more – and could. It could raise the average fuel economy of its cars and SUVs to 40 miles per gallon by using "modern technology for engines, transmissions and aerodynamics", saving the US one million barrels of oil per day. The danger in not making these improvements may be the loss of market share to Toyota and Honda, who have put gasoline-electric hybrid cars on the market which are in great demand .001083

  • October 13, 2001 Economist   A Pregnant Pause: Half a Century After Women Got the Pill, Men May Get One, too.  A contraceptive pill for men may become available within a decade if human clinical trials currently being conducted prove successful. Trials of a the male pill are being conducted on 66 men in Edinburgh, Scotland and Shanghai, China by Richard Anderson and a team from the Human Reproductive Sciences Unit in Edinburgh. The men take a daily pill that contains a gestogen, a synthetic hormone that "shuts off" the chemicals in the brain that direct sperm production. To counteract the effects of the "shutdown" of male hormone production, once every three months the participants are also given a shot of a "slow-release testosterone derivative." So far, after four months of therapy, none of their partners became pregnant. A few side effects such as acne, mood swings and weight gain were experienced. In a survey of 5,000 people in Scotland, China and South Africa, 50% to 66% of male respondents said they would use an oral contraceptive if it were available and 98% of women would trust them to do so. Other researchers are looking at ways of altering sperm maturation, sperm mobility and immune response as a means of inhibiting contraception. .001084

  • October 12, 2001 Chicago Tribune/NPG   Paul Simon Warns of Population Growth's Impact on Middle East Water Crisis.  Former Senator Paul Simon warns that population growth in the Middle East will further drain an already dangerously short water supply. "Residents of Amman, the capital of Jordan, can turn their tap water on only one day a week," writes Senator Simon. "Syria faces problems almost as severe, and Israel has had to curtail water use dramatically. Looking at the Mideast population projections, the situation will get much worse. Water is a time bomb and Israeli and Arab leaders know it." .001095

  • October 12, 2001 Kentucky Post/NPG   USA: Population Growth Raises Cost of Living, Says Study.  A University of Kentucky study confirms that new residents increase the cost of living to existing residents in a community, the Kentucky Post reported last week. The study, commissioned by Governor Paul Patton's Smart Growth Task Force, examined what it would cost a family of four if 1,000 new residents moved into its county. Although the cost of adding new services (such as police and fire protection, roads, schools, sewers, etc.) varies, "generally, we found that counties that had population more spread out cost more to provide services for them," said Mark Berger, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. "That's really the bottom line." In Pendleton County, one of the counties examined in the study, researchers estimated that an influx of 1,000 new residents would cost a family of four $1,222.39 more per year. .001096

  • October 12, 2001 Kentucky Post/NPG   USA: Population Growth Raises Cost of Living, Says Study.  A University of Kentucky study confirms that new residents increase the cost of living to existing residents in a community, the Kentucky Post reported last week. The study, commissioned by Governor Paul Patton's Smart Growth Task Force, examined what it would cost a family of four if 1,000 new residents moved into its county. Although the cost of adding new services (such as police and fire protection, roads, schools, sewers, etc.) varies, "generally, we found that counties that had population more spread out cost more to provide services for them," said Mark Berger, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. "That's really the bottom line." In Pendleton County, one of the counties examined in the study, researchers estimated that an influx of 1,000 new residents would cost a family of four $1,222.39 more per year. .001096

  • October 23, 2001  Union of Concerned Scientists   Confronting Climate Change in the Gulf Coast Region .  This detailed report, released by the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Ecological Society of America and written by leading university and government scientists, contains links to information on the "impacts of climate change on the Gulf Coast region, … state specific summaries, and issue-specific fact-sheets." Despite its rich ecological resources, which underpin its economic wealth, human activities including climate change threatens the stability of the Gulf Coast region. Climate change in this area "will lead to more extreme rainfall events and longer dry periods, …sea-level rise, increased coastal flooding … with the projected 3-7 degrees Fahrenheit average temperature increase over the 21st century." This will lead to conflicts over fresh water and will threaten "vital agriculture, shipping and tourism industries". The report discusses ways in which the Gulf States can meet the challenges over the coming century. .001098

  • October 09, 2001 Shadow Synod Press Release/IPPF   Shadow Synod Calls for Withdrawal of Vatican Ban on Contraception.  Over 100 Catholics from around the world, representing the "Synod of The People of God"(SOPOG), gathered in Rome October 4-7 as a parallel meeting to the Synod of Bishops meeting at the same time. The shadow synod claimed that the Bishops' Synod is not addressing the serious problems in the church and the world today. They called for reforms of church policy including remarriage and the sacraments, human sexuality, and the role of both women and the laity. The synod called for the withdrawal of the ban on the use of contraception. Maria Consuelo Mejia, director of Catolicas por el derecho a decidir/Mexico said, "The church's position on contraception is a sin. Thousands of women worldwide die every year in the developing world because they do not have access to contraception. It is no secret inside or outside the Vatican that in the global north Catholics have ignored the hierarchy's ban on contraception as irresponsible. In the global south people suffer from the ban on contraception as the hierarchy lobbies national governments and at the United Nations against contraceptive choice. This action denies people the protection they need against unplanned pregnancy and HIV/AIDS. The ban on condoms is a tragedy that takes a great toll on human life everyday. Catholics want the ban on contraception lifted as it is killing people." .001100

  • October 21, 2001 NPG/Baltimore Sun   USA: "Smart Growth" Failing in Maryland.  Despite Maryland's much-heralded "smart growth" campaign to slow sprawl, two studies released this week find that every county but one in the Baltimore region projects significant development outside of designated growth areas. Each of Baltimore's five suburban counties could lose at least 10,000 acres of farms and forests over the next two decades, according to the studies by the Baltimore Regional Partnership and 1000 Friends of Maryland. An analysis of state and local planning documents and population growth projections shows that nearly 23% of the houses to be built in the region during the next 20 years will be outside the designated growth areas, with the development in rural areas consuming 82,000 acres (an area about the size of Baltimore). The result will be increased pollution of the Chesapeake Bay, strained local government budgets, and less money available to improve already developed areas. "Although the counties designated growth areas, they apparently failed to match them with development plans, which allowed new housing throughout rural areas," reported the Baltimore Sun. .001101

  • October 15, 2001 The Washington Times   Starving Tajiks in Afghans' Shadow.  This winter in Tajikistan, a million people face the threat of starvation. America's new ally in the war on terror may have to stand by and watch as trucks full of food roll through on the way to Afghanistan, according to Ardag Meghdesian, director of the World Food Program (WFP) in this former Soviet republic. $600 million for humanitarian aid has been pledged for Afghanistan, but Tajikistan faces a famine caused by a drought that began in the spring of 2000, affecting a broad swath of Central Asia from Uzbekistan to western China and Afghanistan. Soviet authorities once told the people what to plant and when and now "they just don't know how to cope with it." The hunger is most terrible near the Afghan border, where farmers depend heavily on irrigation, and in the Pamir mountain range. The WFP says 90,000 tons of grain, mostly wheat, are needed to provide the poorest 1 million people with a loaf of bread a day. Apparently the ruling elite, which controls the flow of irrigation water, forces farmers to plant cotton in the expectation that foreign aid will see to the food needs of the farm population. They charge so much for water that effectively the farmers work for free," added Benoit Bichet, of the French humanitarian organization Acted. People are sufferning from malnutrician, and 75% have a serious B-vitamin deficiency, and 90% have some kind of stomach disease from eating bad flour. .001102

  • October 18, 2001 The Straits Times   Couples in Thailand Postpone Having Babies.  With the economic crunch in Thailand, more Thais are choosing sterilization as a birth control technique. Sterilisations jumped from 123,756 in 1996 to 135,774 in 1998, a period that coincides with Thailand's worst economic crisis. Married couples are increasingly postponing having babies and many are consciously stopping at two children. Last year the population growth rate fell to less than 1%. Women - particularly those working in factories - are apparently worried about not being able to keep their jobs after they return from maternity leave. .001103

  • October 17, 2001 Uganda New Vision   Funds for Reproductive Health Programmes in Africa Needed to Reduce Maternal Mortality.  A group in Kampala, Uganda urged African governments to use funds from debt relief to fund reproductive health programmes in order to reduce deaths from pregnancy-related complications, a "common cause as well as a consequence of poverty". Ugandan Health Minister Jim Muhwezi said that his government will establish a "mini-hospital" in every county as a means of ensuring that women who have complications during labour are "rescued promptly." The maternal mortality rate in Uganda is said to be 496 deaths per 100,000 live births or approximately 1 in 200. The world average, according to UNICEF, is 1 out of 75 live births, and for industrialized nations is 1 in 4,085, and for least developed 1 in 16. .001104

  • October 18, 2001 Gambia Multimedia Unit   Gambia FPA Establishes Multimedia Unit.  The Gambia Family Planning Association (GFPA) has established a fully digital audiovisual and graphics production outfit under a bilateral agreement between the Government of The Gambia and The Federal Republic of Germany. Its goal is to produce media materials for the health promotional efforts of the Gambia's Department of State (Ministry) for Health, the GFPA and related NGO's. It has the capability to produce videos, radio programmes, posters and printed T-shirts and face caps to books, calendars, annual reports and magazines. The unit has produced a highly-acclaimed family planning documentary that has been shown nationwide on Gambian television and is now working on two more productions looking at family planning in Islam and the relations between family planning and the environment. They have also been commissioned to make the first ever film on the situation regarding sexually transmitted infections in the Gambia. .001105

  • October 17, 2001 Africa News Service   Uganda; Six Million Have No Food.  The President of the Uganda National Farmers Association, at a conference celebrating World Rural Women's Day, said that 6 million Ugandans do not have access to sufficient food. Children and women in rural areas were the worst affected and that many people were living below the poverty line. Women who lack alternative means to generate incomes often sell food to sustain their families. Oftentimes, howeverm they are beaten by their husbands who take the farming proceeds to use it for other purposes. The first lady, Mrs. Janet Museveni, wanted women to be included in the modernization of agriculture and to provide accessible outlets for the women to market their produce." .001106

  • October 07, 2001 Africa News Service   Ghana; President Markets Family Planning .  President Kufuor said in his "Life Choices" campaign that one of the greatest challenges confronting Ghana is how to manage a high level of population growth. Married couples should plan their families, with the motto "quality not quantity." To this end, he said, the education of women holds the key to development. The youth of the country should take the campaign serious for the plight of street children had become a worrying phenomenon in the country. The USAID Director in Ghana Dr. Frank Young submitted that the support for voluntary family planning and productive health programmes are essential components of US development assistance around the world. However, family planning still remains low in the country, with only 13% of married women using modern methods of contraception. Ghanaian women and their families need to be taught to manage their fertility and determine the timing and number of children they raise. .001107

  • October 18, 2001 www.PLANetWIRE.org -- newsroom for journalists   Saving Women's Lives in Afghanistan: United Nations Population Fund Prepares for Massive Emergency Reproductive Health Effort for Refugee Women.  The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) is seeking $4.5 million of support from international donors for immediate needs - to save the lives of thousands of Afghan women who face severe reproductive health risks. UNFPA is preparing to send emergency reproductive health supplies to assist Afghan women who are fleeing their homes, particularly those who are pregnant. Even before the current crisis, pregnancy and childbirth were exceptionally dangerous for Afghan women due to malnutrition and a lack of access to health care: 99% of births are unattended and the maternal mortality rate of 17 deaths per 1,000 women is the world’s second highest. Women’s life expectancy is only 44 years of age. Of the total population of 23 million in Afghanistan: 5,675,000 women are of reproductive age (15-49 years), 1,140,000 are pregnant, and 20,000 will require medical treatment in the next 12 months for miscarriage or other serious obstetric and gynecological problems. The emergency services will include obstetric care, basic equipment and supplies for safe deliveries, family planning, training and operational support. .001108

  • October 2001 FamilyPlanet.org   You Can Empower the Planet.  This powerful ad is what it is all about. Spread the word! .001109

  • October 10, 2001 Africa News/Agence France Press/TOMRIC News Agency   Tanzania: VP Calls for Adult Literacy Push.  The vice president of Tanzania called on African governments to "invest in adult literacy programs and ensure a privileged position for girls’ education." VP Shein reported high numbers of school dropouts, mostly girls experiencing early pregnancies and marriages. "Parents in our continent have not attached much importance to the education for girls," he said. Over 60% of African women are illiterate. .001110

  • October 2001 FamilyPlanet.org   Family Planning Counts; A Common Denominator to Environmental Destruction.  In the U.S., forests are falling to farms and freeways, wild rivers are being dammed, and increasing numbers of species are making their way on to the endangered species list. Over 50% of all migrant song bird species are now in decline due to population-driven habitat loss. The world over, cars, factories and electricity-generating plants spew forth greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming, even as mile-long gill nets decimate fishing grounds, and raw sewage spills untreated into once pristine waters. Much of this has to do with human population growth, which, when it occurs in countries with weak regulatory systems and little capital for infrastructure investments for land conservation, water treatment, and forest protection, can result in severe environmental damage that reaches beyond borders. The world's population reached 1 billion in about 1830, having taken about 2 million years to reach that number. Yet, it took only 100 more years to add the second billion people, and just thirty more years to add the third billion. Today at six billion, it is predicted that the world population will climb past seven billion within the next 15 years. While it is very likely that population growth will stop sometime, will any part of the natural world that exists today still exist when that inevitability occurs - and how much human misery will accrue while growth has not yet stopped? Countries find it increasingly difficult to house, feed, educate and provide basic health care services to burgeoning populations. Chronic unemployment and poverty lead to dissent, violence and war. With populations doubling every 20 or 30 years, much of the people remain poor,illiterate, and without clean water, health care and transportation; these countries cannot afford to invest in long-term environmental protections. The good news is that we know what works. As the Rev. Martin Luther Kingonce noted, "Family planning, to relate population to world resources, is possible, practical and necessary. Unlike plagues of the dark ages or contemporary diseases we do not yet understand, the plague of overpopulation is soluble by means we have discovered and with resources we possess." So why is it that, while world population has climbed 60% over the course the last 30 years, U.S. support for international family planning has dropped 40% (when calculated as a percentage of the U.S. budget)? The US is only number 21 in the top countries now contributing to international family planning assistance. .001113

  • October 10, 2001 The Boston Globe   Massachusetts Legislature Expected to Pass Bill Requiring Insurance Coverage for Contraceptives, Hormone Replacement Therapy.  Bill H 2193, which would require health plans to provide coverage for contraceptives and hormone replacement therapy, "appears headed for passage" in the state House, according to State Rep. Carol Donovan (D). This year lawmakers say that the "demand" for equal contraceptive coverage has been "bolstered" by a U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruling stating that offering coverage for prescription drugs but not prescription contraceptives is a form of sexual discrimination. The state Senate passed a similar measure last year, but the legislation stalled in the House. Seventeen states have enacted laws requiring health plans to cover prescription contraceptives and hormone replacement therapy. .001114

  • October 21, 2001 Washington Post Magazine   Greener Than You Think; 'The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World' .  by Bjorn Lomborg ... reviewed by Denis Dutton. Bjorn Lomborg, "a young statistics professor and political scientist at the University of Aarhus in Denmark" wrote "The Skeptical Environmentalist" to show that the arguments of "environmental doomsayers" were "deeply flawed". According to David Dutton, a reviewer for the Washington Post, this he has done in "over 500 pages, supported by nearly 3,000 footnotes and 182 tables and diagrams". According to Dutton, Lomborg claims that poverty and starvation has declined as "our capacity to produce abundant quantities of food" has increased. In addition, Lomborg asserts that we are not running out of energy or of mineral resources; that the "population bomb is fizzling" and that "pesticides and chemicals are improving [human] longevity and the quality of life". With regard to loss of species, Lomborg claims that the "United Nations figures … show an actual loss of between a tenth of a percent and a 1 percent loss … of all species for all of the next 50 years" instead of the more generally accepted figure of 40,000 species annually. With respect to deforestation, Dutton reports that Lomborg has demonstrated a world forest loss of only 20% over the past 8000 years, but that the forested area has scarcely changed since World War II. This estimate of forest loss sharply contrasts with the generally accepted estimate of a loss of "two-thirds of its forests since the dawn of agriculture". With regard to global warming, although Lomborg agrees that it is real, he thinks that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change exaggerates its threats and ignores the benefits of increasing carbon dioxide concentrations, which, he believes, "would improve … crop production" in the U.S., China, Canada and Russia. Dutton reports the many other opinions of Lomborg on a range of environmental issues such as waste disposal, environmental contamination, the impact of the Kyoto Treaty on global warming. The reviewer feels that "the book has immense entertainment value".  st.001115

  • October 2001    Birthcontrol.com.  This website is a commercial website - "Helping you make the right choices; Providing information and quality birth control products gathered from around the world." It gives you information on the Today Sponge, Panty Condom, Bioself Monitor, and other interesting family planning products. .001116

  • October 15, 2001 CCMC   Drought and Poverty.  Drought-causing hunger has pushed more people below the poverty line and is forcing people to migrate to better situations elsewhere. On the eve of World Food Day, Jean Ziegler, UN special rapporteur, said 100,000 people were dying of hunger and its effects every day. Data from the World Food Programme (WFP) indicates that over 300 million children suffer from chronic hunger, most of them girls. In Eastern India, starvation-death is a symptom of what some call the "silent creeping crisis" in India's rural areas. An Associated Press October 11 article reported India's federal government figures showing that 325 million people; early a third of India's billion-plus population live below an officially defined "poverty line," and at least 50 million of these are on the brink of starvation. ccmc .001117

  • October 10, 2001 London Guardian   Pakistan: Drought Pushes Another 10% Below Povery Line.  In Pakistan persistent drought along the Indus river has pushed 10% more of the country's population below the poverty line, says the Social Policy Development Centre, an independent think tank based in Karachi. This was in addition to the one-third of Pakistan’s estimated 17 million people who were already living in poverty before the drought. ccmc .001118

  • October 4, 2001 AIDS Pandemic Network /AP/Agence France Press   HIV/AIDS.  A report commissioned by the United Nations found that HIV/AIDS has begun spreading rapidly through Asia and the Pacific after more than a decade of relatively low rates of infection there. "Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Nepal and Vietnam...have all registered marked increases in HIV infection in recent years, while in China - home to a fifth of the world's people - the infection seems to be moving into new groups." Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer told representatives from 35 countries that "HIV/AIDS has the potential to compound poverty and reverse the gains of years of economic and social development." The HIV/AIDS drug bill could reach $5 billion dollars next year. .001119

  • September 26, 2001 Baltimore Sun   Terrorism and Population Pressures.  Werner Fornos, president of the Population Institute, pointed to the 1986 public report of the Vice President's Task Force on Combating Terrorism that warned: "The motivations of those who engage in terrorism are many and varied, with activities spanning industrial societies to underdeveloped regions. Sixty percent of the Third World population is under 20 years of age; half are 15 years or less. These population pressures create a volatile mixture of youthful aspirations that when coupled with economic and political frustrations help form a large pool of potential terrorists." ccmc .001120

  • October 19, 2001 NPG   USA: Domestic Gag Rule Amendment Dropped.  Representative David Vitter (R-La.) has dropped plans to introduce an amendment that would have denied federal family planning money to groups that perform abortions. Vitter said he was several votes short of the number needed to get the House Appropriations Committee to incorporate his amendment into a spending bill for education, health and labor programs, but vowed to try again next year. Representative Melissa Hart (R-Pa.) also pulled an amendment she had introduced; it would have barred federal aid for any school dispensing "morning-after" birth control pills to students. Hart was personally asked by House GOP leaders to pull the amendment; she agreed after being promised a stand-alone vote on the proposal next year. .001121

  • October 09, 2001 BBC News /NPG   Baby Boom in France.  France is experiencing a mini "baby boom" with more babies being born there than in any other country in the European Union. A report by the French Institute for Demographic Studies finds that the number of French births has risen by 5% in one year. Researchers believe the high birth rate in France is linked to "family friendly" government policies. npg .001122

  • November 7, 2001 Reuters   Earth on Edge of a Precipice - UN Report.  The human race is plundering Earth at an unsustainable rate, but the growing power of women over their own futures could save the planet from destruction. The Population Fund's annual report for 2001, "Footprints and Milestones: Population and Environmental Change," revealed that more people were using more resources more intensively than ever before. "It is a crisis of global proportions that needs to be addressed with some urgency," said Alex Marshall, editor of the report. Hope lay in the fact that women were winning the war to control their fertility and had finally gained the ear of government and big business. "Women are getting together as never before and are making changes," Marshall said. "Nearly 60% of women now have access to some sort of family planning -- even if you take China out of that you still have about 40%." The world's population has doubled to 6.1 billion in the past 40 years, and is projected to grow by 50% to 9.3 billion in another 50 years, with all the growth in developing countries whose resources are already overstretched. By 2050, 4.2 billion people will be living in countries that cannot meet the daily requirement of 50 litres (11 Imp gallons) of water per person to meet basic needs. 54% of available fresh water supplies is being used annually -- two-thirds for agriculture. This figure will surge to 70% by 2025 due to population growth alone, and 90% if consumption in the developing countries reaches the levels in the developed world. Water tables in some Chinese, Latin American and South Asian cities are dropping by more than one metre (three feet) a year and water from seas and rivers being diverted with disastrous results. Already 1.1 billion people already do not have access to clean water, and in developing nations up to 95% of sewage and 70% of industrial waste was simply being dumped untreated into water courses. The HIV/AIDS epidemic may swamp Africa and is spreading very rapidly in Asia with four million people already infected in India alone. 15.5 million more people would die from HIV/AIDS over the next five years in the 45 most affected countries than would otherwise be the case. Vital rain forests are being destroyed at the highest rate in history, taking with them crucial sources of biodiversity and contributing to global warming, thereby boosting already rising sea levels. .001123

  • October 19, 2001 San Diego Union-Tribune /NPG   USA: School Overcrowding in San Diego.  A $32 million renovation and expansion project was completed at Fallbrook High School last year, but "signs are everywhere that the student population already has outgrown the new space. Too much time is wasted standing in long lines to use the restroom or buy lunch, some students say. Veteran teachers complain that there are too many teachers without their own classrooms, and too many students crammed into classes. Overcrowding prompted the district to turn a corner of the school's cafeteria into a temporary classroom for math teacher Joe Goss. Alan Saltamachio, who teaches biology, said he is frustrated that at least four students in all but one of his classes must sit on folding chairs." .001124

  • October 17, 2001 Environmental News Network   Environmental News Network Overwhelmed with Commentary on Overpopulation.  The lead story at the Environmental News Network, the largest environmental portal on the Internet, solicited comments from the public about solutions to overpopulation. The site received so many responses that it is printing them in two parts. npg .001125

  • October 2001 Patrick Burns   Immigration the Determinant Factor in U.S. Population Growth.  About 40% of the nearly 33 million increase in the size of the U.S. population during the 1990s is directly attributable to the arrival of new immigrants. This figure is determined by dividing 13 million (the number of new immigrants) by the total increase in the size of the U.S. population (32.7 million). If the figure is 14 million, the immigration impact is 43%. In addition, during the 1990s, immigrant women gave birth to an estimated 6.9 million children. If we add together the number of births to immigrants and the number of new arrivals, then immigration during the 1990s is equal to 20 or 21 million or a little less than two-thirds of the nearly 33 million increase in the size of the U.S. population over the last 10 years. .001126

  • October 24, 2001 Center for Immigration Studies/Patrick Burns   Census Bureau: 8 Million Illegal Aliens in 2000.  New Census Bureau data, released yesterday, puts the number of illegal immigrants in the U.S. at eight million in 2000. The Census Bureau report with the estimated size of the illegal population can be found at http://www.census.gov/dmd/www/ReportRec2.htm (Appendix A of Report 1 contains the estimates). Steve Camarota at the Center for Immigration Studies said: "The Bureau found 8.7 million foreign-born individuals in the 2000 Census who appeared not to have legal status. However, because records for some legal immigrants are not available from the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), the Bureau estimates that 1.7 million of the 8.7 million already had legal status or were likely to gain it soon. If these individuals are excluded, then 7 million illegals were counted in 2000. The Census Bureau also estimates that roughly 1 million illegal aliens were likely missed in last year's count, meaning that the total illegal population stood at 8 million in 2000." Other information from the Census Bureau report, again courtesy of CIS: The total foreign-born or immigrant population (including legal and most illegal immigrants) grew enormously, from 19.8 million in 1990 to 31.1 million in 2000. The 11.3 million or 57 percent increase in the total foreign-born population in just one decade is almost without precedent in American history both numerically and proportionately. Even during the great wave of immigration from 1900 to 1910, the foreign-born population grew by only 3.2 million or 31 percent, from 10.3 million to 13.5 million. The immigrant population more than tripled in size during the last three decades, from 9.6 million in 1970 to 31.1 million in 2000. .001127

  • November 17, 2001 Florida Times-Union   White Powder Mailed to Florida Planned Parenthood Clinic Preliminarily Tests Positive for Anthrax.  A letter addressed to a Planned Parenthood clinic in Stuart, Fla., contains anthrax, preliminary, but inconclusive, testing indicates. Nobody was exposed. Approximately 110 envelopes containing a white powder and a letter stating that the package contained anthrax were sent to private abortion clinics and Planned Parenthood facilities nationwide on Monday, according to the FBI. Ninety Planned Parenthood centers across the country reported receiving such letters. The letters contained a return address from the U.S. Secret Service. .001128

  • October 14, 2001 New York Times*   New Book Confronts the Faceless Enemy of Terrorism.  "Terrorism thrives in an age of weakened states that have been undermined by population growth, resource scarcity and mass movements of people to the cities, producing hordes of angry, unemployed young men whose attraction to radical causes increasingly cows relatively moderate governments in countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia." .001129

  • October 12, 2001 IPPF/WHR Update   IPPF/WHR Promotes Sexual and Reproductive Health Through Technology.  A recently published report "Youth and Technology", evaluates the experience of IPPF/WHR affiliates in the development of programmes that use computer technologies to reach young people with sexual and reproductive health information. The projects in Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala and Peru have involved using emerging computer technologies such as cyber centre, web sites, interactive multimedia CD-ROM programmes, email counselling services, and various chip-based technologies The report identifies key issues for youth-and-technology projects and makes strategic recommendations for future development. The report is availaible on their website in PDF format in English, Spanish and French, or can be ordered direct from IPPF/WHR. .001130

  • October 04, 2001 The Economist   Bangladesh's Election; A Vote for Change .  Khaleda Zia´s Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) won a stunning election victory in Bangladesh. Her four-party alliance, which has a two-thirds majority in the new parliament, contains two hardline Islamic parties, a fact that has made the Americans sit up and take notice. The Awami League, the party of the outgoing prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, claimed that there was little to distinguish the ideology of the Jamaat-i-Islami and the smaller Islami Oika Jote parties from that of the Taliban of Afghanistan. But it looks as if the United States can count on Bangladesh's continued support for its campaign against terrorism, as the BNP promised during the election campaign. Mrs Zia is in a powerful enough position to take decisions without requiring the support of her controversial allies, even should they oppose supporting the United States. She can also count on tradition. In Bangladesh Bengali culture is championed as much as the teachings of the Prophet. A small number of Islamists support bin Laden, but they do so because they approve of his stand against western values rather than his tactics. The Jamaat-i-Islami, which won 16 seats, may have firm views about the role of women and be opposed to western values, but it does not engage in the same level of anti-western talk as counterparts do in Pakistan. It is in favour of working within Bangladesh's democracy. Mrs Zia has other problems to occupy her attention: crime and political violence have escalated over the past five years. In addition, half the population is below the poverty line set by the United Nations, and a third of the workforce is unemployed. Levels of nutrition, sanitation and personal income in the eighth-most-populous country in the world (130 million) are below those of most of Asia. The good news is that Zia has inherited an economy that has grown by around 5.5% a year for the past five years, is self-sufficient in food and has vast yet mostly unexploited natural-gas reserves. .001131

  • October 11, 2001 International Planned Parenthood Federation   Nepal Parliament Takes First Steps Towards Safer Abortion.  Dr. Nirmal K. Bista, Director General of the Family Planning Association of Nepal (FPAN) reports that IPPF's and FPAN's long advocacy campaign against restrictive abortion legislation in the country is at last having a result. "I am pleased to inform you that the House of Representatives of the Nepal Parliament has approved the Property Right Bill which is joined with a liberalization of abortion law. This will become law once it is endorsed by Upper House and gets Royal assent. I believe this is a significant development in the enhancement of reproductive health of Nepali women. We consider that FPAN and IPPF's long advocacy campaign did bring some result." .001133

  • November 10, 2001 National Audobon Society alert - email list   Pro-Drillers to Push for Arctic Drilling This Week!.  On Monday, November 12th, the U.S. Senate will begin debating an economic recovery package - legislation to get the country financially back on track after the terrorist attacks on September 11. And starting November 13th, the pro-drilling contingent in the Senate -- lead by Senator Frank Murkowski (R-Alaska) -- will try and attach provisions to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling to this critical bill! Experts agree that drilling for oil in the Arctic Refuge will do little or nothing to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil, nor will it address America's long-term energy needs. There is only a 6-months supply of oil, and even oil industry officials admit that oil wouldn't be available for 10 years. Even with the most optimistic estimates of Arctic Refuge oil added to the oil fields off our coasts and everywhere else in the U.S., we still have only 3 to 4% of the world's oil reserves. We consume at least 25% of the world's production of oil. At our current rate of consumption, we will go from importing 56% to well over 60% of our oil in coming decades - even including Arctic Refuge oil! Call your two U.S. Senators at (202) 224-3121 and asking for your lawmaker's office by name. For more info, or to let Audubon know of your action call 1-800-659-2622, or e-mail audubonaction@audubon.org .001142

  • November 10, 2001 Union of Concerned Scientists   USA: Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) and a Production Tax Credit (PTC) Urged in Comprehensive Energy Policy.  Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) recently directed committee chairs to forward recommendations to him for a comprehensive national energy bill to be ready to introduce on the Senate floor this year. The "Dear Colleague" letter that Senators Reid and Cantwell are circulating urges Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) to include a Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) and a Production Tax Credit (PTC) in the comprehensive energy package. The RPS requires that a minimum percentage of electricity come from renewable energy sources like wind, solar, geothermal, and biomass. The PTC would provide renewable energy developers with the economic support they need to become competitive with other, dirtier and heavily subsidized forms of energy such as coal, oil and nuclear. Contact your Senators and urge them to sign the Renewable Energy Letter being circulated by Senators Reid (D-NV) and Cantwell (D-WA). Since many Senators have headed to their homes for the holiday, this may present opportunities for contacting them in their district offices this weekend. 17 Senators have signed on to the dear colleague letter, including Sen. Boxer (D-CA) Sen. Cantwell (D-WA) Sen. Dayton (D-MN) Sen. Dorgan (D-ND) Sen. Feingold (D-WI) Sen. Feinstein (D-CA) Sen. Lieberman (D-CT) Sen. Jeffords (I-VT) Sen. Leahy (D-VT) Sen. Mikulski (D-MD) Sen. Kennedy (D-MA) Sen. Kerry (D-MA) Sen. Harkin (D-IA) Sen. Reed (D-RI) Sen. Reid (D-NV) Sen. Schumer (D-NY) Sen. Wellstone (D-MN). Call the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 - Obtain e-mail and fax information by visiting the Senate web site (www.senate.gov) MESSAGE: Tell your Senators that increasing production of renewable energy - such as wind, solar, geothermal, and biomass - is important to provide safe, clean, and affordable power for Americans. A Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) would require that utilities provide some percentage of their electricity from renewable power sources by a certain year. Analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists (Clean Energy Blueprint available at www.ucsusa.org/energy/blueprint.html) shows that a 20% RPS by 2020, when combined with the PTC and additional policies to improve energy efficiency, can save consumers money, improve our environment, and over time reduce risks to national security. For info contact Jeff Deyette jdeyette@ucsusa.org or visit the UCS Clean Energy Program web site at www.ucsusa.org/energy. .001143

  • November 7, 2001 various sources   Population: Reports Says Family Planning Key to Environment.  Coverage by Inter Press Service, Irish Times, Katmandu Post via BBC Worldwide Monitoring, Greenwire, Xinhua News Agency say that the 49 least-developed countries will nearly triple their population size in 50 years, from 668 million to 1.86 billion people. "To accommodate the nearly eight billion people expected on earth by 2025 and improve their diets, the world will have to double food production and improve distribution. Whether world population in 2050 reaches a high projection of 10.9 billion, a low one of 7.9 billion, or the medium projection of 9.3 billion will depend on success in ensuring women's right to education and health, including reproductive health, and in ending poverty. "If women have only the number of children they want, families will be smaller and population growth slower, buying time in which crucial decisions can be made." "Rapid population growth sits at the root of many environmental problems threatening our planet," said Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, which promotes voluntary international and domestic family planning assistance. Pope was one of four featured speakers, including: Thoraya Obaid, Executive Director, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), John Flicker, President and CEO, National Audubon Society and Congressman Joseph Crowley (D-NY), Member of International Relations Committee and former Member of Natural Resources Committee. .001145

  • November 14, 2001 ENN   Satellite Data Confirms Warming of Earth's Climate.  Global warming results when the atmosphere traps heat radiating from Earth toward space. As American space scientists analyze satellite data from 7,2000 weather stations around the world, they have found that the temperature near the Earth's surface has warmed by one degree Fahrenheit (0.6 degree Celsius) over the last century, according to Dr. James Hansen of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. Warming in the past 50 years has been rapid in Alaska and Siberia, but Greenland has become cooler. The lower 48 United States have become warmer, but only enough to make the temperature comparable to what it was in the 1930s. Certain gases, such as water vapor, carbon dioxide, and methane, block Earth's heat from escaping into space. Atmospheric CO2 has increased 25% since the early 1800s, and 10% since 1958, implicating human influence in the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil and the burning or cutting of forests. Urban heat islands created when cities replace fields and forests with asphalt roads and tar roofs tended to throw off the measurements which were then adjusted by using the measurements of neighboring rural stations. The global climate fell into three time segments between 1900 and 2000. From 1900 to 1940, the world warmed. Between 1940 and 1965, the globe cooled by about 0.18 degree Fahrenheit (0.1 degree Celsius), which some scientists attribute to an increase in fine airborne particles, or aerosols, which lead to more cloud cover and block incoming radiation.. Most aerosols originate from volcanoes, dust storms, forest and grassland fires, living vegetation, and sea spray. Human activities, including the burning of fossil fuels and the alteration of natural vegetation cover, generate about 10% of the total amount of aerosols, most it concentrated in the Northern Hemisphere, especially downwind of industrial sites, slash-and-burn agricultural regions, and overgrazed grasslands. The third period, from 1965 to 2000, showed a large and widespread warming around the world. Warming intensified in the El Niño region of the eastern Pacific Ocean, and the Indian, Atlantic, and Arctic oceans also warmed.   cs .001146

  • November 8, 2001 National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Assoc   Senate Passes House Foreign Aid Bill With Amendment to Repeal 'Mexico City' Policy.  The U.S. Senate has voted 96-2 to "overwhelmingly" pass the $15.6 billion House FY 2002 foreign appropriations bill (H.R. 2506) with family planning appropriations, but the Senate version of the bill includes language that would reverse the "Mexico City" policy reinstated by President Bush in January. The legislation, which passed the House in July, earmarks $425 million for reproductive health programs and $474 million for AIDS programs, but the House version of the bill does not include a provision to repeal the Mexico City policy. National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association expects that the legislation will maintain the Senate's language on the repeal when these differences are resolved during House and Senate negotiations. .001147

  • November 14, 2001 Kathmandu Post via Nepalnews.com   Nepal: Population Increased at "Alarming Rate" says UN Official.  The population of Nepal today is 23,214,681, while 10 years ago, in 1991, it was 18,491,097. Nepal's Minister of Health Sharat Singh Bhandari, releasing the UN report subtitled "Footprints and Milestones", said that population, pollution and poverty are unfortunately very much interrelated, once again the imbalance more in the developing world. The density of population in Nepal is 152 person per sq.km. and the annual population growth rate (1991-2001) is 2.27. The age of women at first marriage is 17.1 years and life expectancy at birth of both sexes at 59.7. To combat such devastating growth of population, Minster Singh voiced for strong political commitments among both the developed and the developing nations, among the educated and the uneducated ones and among the industrialized and the less industrialized nation. .001148

  • November 8, 2001 Xinhua/Daily Nation   Kenyan Population to Reach 37.4 Million in 20 Years.  Kenya's Assistant Minister for Environment Stephen Ntutu said, as he launched the UNFPA State of the World Population 2001, that the population in Kenya is projected to increase by 9 million in the next 20 years to 37.4 million. Kenya has one of the lowest individual average incomes in the world, and the bulk of its population has no access to safe drinking water, and at least six out of 100 children born in Kenya die in infancy. Life expectancy in Kenya has fallen by about eight years in the past decade to 48.7 years for male and 49. 9 years for female. However, Machakos villagers not far from the capital Nairobi have been successful by adopting new agro-technology that has checked food insecurity and environmental degradation. The villagers' innovation includes use of terracing, adoption of diverse crops, planting of trees for soil stabilization, water and fuel wood management. .001149

  • November 1, 2001 AMWA Newsflash   Women, OB/GYNs Would Like Additional Birth Control Options that Simplify Their Lives, Survey Shows.  The American Medical Women's Association (AMWA) and Ortho-McNeil Pharmaceutical, Inc. conducted a survey, "Women and OB/GYNs Speak Up," which found that women and obstetricians/gynecologists desire new options that are easy to use and may help to simplify women's lives. More than 38 million American women use some form of contraception, and the majority of the women (56%) are very satisfied with their current contraceptive method. 75% say there is a need for methods that are more adaptable to their lives, and 90% of OB/GYNs agree there is a need for a better match. In addition, women and OB/GYNs agree that contraception should not require daily attention (86% and 87%) or frequent visits to the doctor (67% and 76%). .001150

  • September 7, 2001 Newsday/NPG   USA: Insurance Coverage for Contraception Making Progress. .  A movement to broaden insurance coverage for contraception has made remarkable progress this year in federal courts and state legislatures. In June, "a federal judge ruled that employee insurance plans in a Seattle-based pharmaceutical chain must cover all contraceptives if the plans cover other prescription drugs ... It's believed that the first ruling should set precedence." Sixteen states require insurance carriers to cover all types of contraception along with prescription drug coverage. Publicly-funded contraceptive services help prevent 1.3 million unplanned pregnancies each year. .001152

  • October 16, 2001 Sun-Sentinel (Florida) Op Ed   Margaret Sanger Remembered.  Eighty-five years ago today, Margaret Sanger, a young nurse, opened the first family-planning clinic in the United States. In 1916, it was illegal to distribute information about birth control in the United States. SAnger's daring act helped launch the modern birth-control movement and started what would become the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Sanger said, "can call herself free until she can own and control her own body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not become a mother." Her beliefs - that every child deserves to be planned and wanted, and that loving couples should be able to enjoy sexual pleasure without fear - become mainstream American values. But today fewer than 10% of schools teach medically accurate, comprehensive sexuality education,. And undemocratic gag rules threaten international family-planning efforts. .001153

  • October 10, 2001 eenews.net   Raising Temperatures in Tropics.  New studies by the U.N. Environment Program shows that temperatures in the tropics could increase by 3 degrees Celsius at the end of this century. Previous studies from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the International Rice Research Institute show that yields from crops such as rice, wheat, coffee, and tea decrease by 10% for every one degree of Celsius. According to IRRI's John Sheehy, these forecasts did not include climate-dependent predictions regarding insects and rainfall, which could also be important. Klaus Toepfer of UNEP said that "Billions of people across the tropics depend on crops such as rice, maize and wheat for their very survival." With continued greenhouse gas emissions and the associated increasing temperatures a large number of people are thus facing prospects of acute hunger and malnutrition. This will force them to move production into cooler mountainous regions increasing the pressure on the forests and wildlife there.   jlf .001154

  • October 12, 2001 South China Morning Post   Vietnam: Education and Condom-Promotion Seek to Reduce Numbers of Abortions.  Authorities in Vietnam are trying to discourage the high abortion rate there by distributing condoms and family planning information. Vietnam had the highest abortion rate in the world in 1996, with 80 out of 1,000 pregnancies ending in abortion. China had 25 abortions per 1,000 the same year. The United Nations Population Fund had pledged US$27 million for an education project working alongside Vietnamese health and education officials. Up to 30% of all abortions in Ho Chi Minh City involve girls under 18. One of the reasons for such a high "abortion" rate was a practice called "menstruation regulation," established during Hanoi's alliance with the old Soviet Union, which became common as a form of birth control. The procedure, available in the first four weeks after a woman suspects she is pregnant, is still common in medical clinics and women tend to view it as inducing a late period, or even as a "cleansing," but usually they "don't view it as an abortion," said UN representative Omer Ertur. .001156

  • October 15, 2001 Agence France Presse   Global Hunger a 'Silent Genocide': UN Rights Expert.  Every day 100,000 people die of hunger despite data from the World Food Programme indicating that the world could feed 12 billion people. "There is no fatality in this nor act of god, it is assassination, for every victim of hunger there is an assassin," said Jean Ziegler, UN special rapporteur on the right to food. In a report presented to the UN General Assembly in November 2001 Ziegler wrote that the world "could already easily feed the global population." In 1996 governments set a target to reduce the number of victims of famine and chronic malnutrition by half within 15 years. "The outcome is that not only have efforts to reduce hunger completely failed, hunger has worsened," Ziegler said. The report called the WTO rules on global trade unfair: Developing countries must be given protection to ensure food security. It also called for greater legal recognition for the right to food.     jlf.001157

  • November 14, 2001 Planetwire.org   Are You a Population Reporter?.  Click to visit the Planetwire.org online newsroom .001158

  • October 2001 MSNBC.com   The Terminal Planet.  This MSNBC special web report includes large collection of articles on variety of environmental crises and solutions. It includes Brazil: Earth's laboratory, Surviving the greenhouse, China: The people bomb, The Yangtze's collision course, Will technology save us from overpopulation?, the March of the Desert, Africa, the infectious continent, and Forgotten malaria killing millions. All of these are articles that could be summarized for WOA!!s News Digest if we were not short-handed. If you would like to help, click on the red arrow.001160 .001160

  • October 2001 Island Press   Who Owns the Sky?: Our Common Assets and the Future of Capitalism.  Book review: Global warming has finally made clear the true costs of using our atmosphere as a giant sponge to soak up unwanted by-products of industrial activity. As nations, businesses, and citizens seek workable yet fair solutions for reducing carbon emissions, the question of who should pay-and how-looms large. Author Peter Barnes redefines the debate about the costs and benefits of addressing climate change. He proposes a market-based institution called a Sky Trust that would set limits on carbon emissions and pay dividends to all of us, who collectively own the atmosphere as a commons. .001161

  • October 2001 World Watch Institute   Energy After September 11.  The existing energy and power infrastructure in the United States exhibits vulnerabilities, including the risk of disruption of oil supply from politically volatile regions, the danger of electricity outages if power plants are targeted, and the risk of exposure to nuclear plant accidents. The good news is that there are trends toward dispersed and distributed energy generation. These include micropower, with hundreds of dispersed fuel cells or solar panels in office basements and backyards and on rooftops, and hydrogen, the ultimate energy carrier. Fuel cells are now being vigorously developed as successors to batteries, power plants, and the internal combustion engine. The fuel for the fuel cell will be derived first from natural gas and later from hydrogen, a clean, domestic source of energy that can lessen oil dependence. The difficulties encountered in responding to the events of September 11 illustrate the consequences of not engaging in a more concerted public policy effort to accelerate the introduction of these promising energy solutions. An Apollo-scale effort is needed to develop an infrastructure for producing, delivering, and using hydrogen. In addition to being a domestic solution, a micropower-hydrogen energy system could service the 1.8 billion poor people around the world who lack access to modern energy-a common source of social unrest in many parts - and alleviate urban air pollution problems. .001166

  • September 12, 2001 Atlantic Monthly   Coming to Grips With Jihad.  The word "jihad" is often translated as "holy war" but perhaps more accurately rendered as "righteous struggle." In The Roots of Muslim Rage, Bernard Lewis contended that "fundamentalist leaders are not mistaken in seeing in Western civilization the greatest challenge to the way of life that they wish to retain or restore for their people." Arguing that Islamic fundamentalists are ultimately struggling against the dramatic changes brought about by secularism and modernism, Lewis wrote that "Islamic fundamentalism has given an aim and a form to the otherwise aimless and formless resentment and anger of the Muslim masses at the forces that have devalued their traditional values and, in the final analysis, robbed them of their beliefs, their aspirations, their dignity, and to an increasing extent even their livelihood." In Jihad Vs. McWorld, Benjamin Barber wrote that Kurds, Basques, Puerto Ricans, Ossetians, East Timoreans, Quebecois, the Catholics of Northern Ireland, Abkhasians, Kurile Islander Japanese, the Zulus of Inkatha, Catalonians, Tamils, and of course, Palestinians—people without countries, inhabiting nations not their own, are seeking smaller worlds within borders that will seal them off from modernity. The movement nowadays called fundamentalism is not the only Islamic tradition. Robert Kaplan in The Lawless Frontier, wrote "The Taliban embody a lethal combination: a primitive tribal creed, a fierce religious ideology, and the sheer incompetence, naiveté, and cruelty that are begot by isolation from the outside world and growing up amid war without parents." And Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid in an Atlantic Unbound interview from August, 2000, while discussing his book, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia, wrote "Afghanistan is now a major regional threat not just because the Taliban are harboring Islamic extremists from more than twenty countries in the Middle East, South Asia, and Central Asia but also because of the proliferation of heroin exports, the sales of arms and other weapons, and the cross-border smuggling which is destroying all the economies in the region. Afghanistan is a black hole sucking in all its neighbors." .001168

  • January 1994 University of Toronto   Environmental Scarcities and Violent Conflict: Evidence From Cases.  If scarcities of renewable resources -- such as cropland, forest, fresh water, and fish -- become severe, could they precipitate violent civil or international conflict? This article reports the results of an international research project which shows that environmental scarcities are already contributing to violent conflicts in many parts of the developing world. These conflicts are probably the early signs of an upsurge of violence in the coming decades that will be induced or aggravated by scarcity. The violence will usually be sub-national, persistent and diffuse. Poor societies will be particularly affected since they are less able to buffer themselves from environmental scarcities and the social crises they cause. Countries experiencing chronic internal conflict because of environmental stress will probably either fragment or become more authoritarian. Either outcome could seriously disturb international relations. .001187

  • November 14, 2001 The Washington Post   House Republicans 'Dispute' Funding for U.N. Family Planning Programs After Senate Drops Mexico City Policy Language.  The Foreign Operations appropriations passage of a $15.3 billion foreign aid bill (HR 2506) was stalled in conference committee due to a standoff on international family planning. Earlier in the day it looked like an informal agreement had been reached with both sides giving a little ground. The Senate would have dropped language reversing the Mexico City "Gag Rule" policy and the House would have accepted an increased UNFPA funding level from $25 million to $37.5 million, and an increase in USAID's family planning program to approximately $443 million. However, the GOP leadership balked at the proposed increase for the UNFPA, with Rep. Christopher Smith (R-N.J.) complaining that amount was "too high." Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chair of the Senate Appropriations foreign operations subcommittee,said that a "huge majority" would support an increase in funding for the program "if they could vote in a secret ballot." .001188

  • November 16, 2001 UNFPA website   UNFPA's work in China.  "UNFPA actually works to support voluntary alternatives to China's current coercive policy. The Chinese Government, while still pursuing China's overall national demographic targets, has agreed to lift acceptor targets and birth quotas in areas where UNFPA programs are in existence. For these reasons, it is imperative that we support UNFPA's work in China." said Annette Souder, director of the Sierra Club's Global Population and Environment Program. The UNFPA website reports that UNFPA has provided assistance to China since 1979. The UNFPA Reproductive Health/Family Planning (RH/FP) Project is operated in 32 China counties and 22 provinces. It is executed by the Government, Marie Stopes International (a non-governmental organization from the United Kingdom) and UNFPA. The project seeks to establish a client-oriented reproductive health approach, which will provide a wide range of quality health services, encompassing maternal health care; the treatment of reproductive tract infections and sexually transmitted infections; and extensive family planning services, making available a broad range of contraceptive methods. As part of the RH/FP project, two pilot projects which deal with adolescent reproductive health and social marketing are being undertaken in urban areas. UNFPA projects in China also include Women's Empowerment through Improving Reproductive Health and Development of Micro-Enterprise, which is operated in 15 counties. This project aims to contribute to the improvement of women's economic status and gender equality, the increased utilization of RH/FP services and the provision of information to promote responsible reproductive behaviour. 15,000 rural women in 30 townships of 13 provinces will be given access to credit as well as improved reproductive health services. Another project, the Advocacy Project, focuses on advocacy for client-centred reproductive health, esteem of the girl child, male involvement and adolescent reproductive health. .001189

  • October 2001 Chesapeake Bay Foundation   Efforts to Clean Up Chesapeake Bay Thwarted by Population Growth.  The Chesapeake Bay Foundation reported this week that Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania are allowing aggressive sprawl and its accompanying pollution to undermine years of progress in the Chesapeake Bay cleanup effort. Despite strong efforts to preserve farmland and open space, population-driven sprawl and pollution are undercutting restoration efforts. .001209

  • October 2001 National Geographic News   Costa Rican Cloud Forests Falling Victim to Population Growth.  The clouds over the Monteverde cloud forests of Costa Rica are shrinking as a result of deforestation in the lowlands. "Enveloped almost continuously by fog and mist, cloud forests are hotbeds of biodiversity, harboring innumerable plants and animals that are found nowhere else in the world." "In many regions, cloud forests are also a critical year-round source of clean water for people living in the surrounding lowlands. But cloud forests are high on the list of the world's endangered ecosystems." The problem, it seems, is driven by population growth. "Cloud forests are very wet and very rainy, and people didn't want to live there—you couldn't grow corn and beans there, for instance," explained Robert Lawton, a forest ecologist at the University of Alabama, who was part of the research team studying the problem. "But increasing population pressure has forced people to slowly encroach on areas once considered uninhabitable." npg .001210

  • October 2001 Population Reference Bureau   Are Population Pressures Creating a Fertile Ground for Conflict in the Middle East?.  As the campaign against terrorism focuses on extreme political and religious expression in many Middle East and North African countries, burgeoning populations and high unemployment, particularly among educated young men, are at least some of the factors gaining attention. Document code: POPPRESSURES To obtain, put document code in the body of an e-mail to: documents@prbdocs.org There are some great graphs on the web page. .001211

  • October 2001 Population Reference Bureau   Risks Mount for Afghan Women, Children.  What conditions do Afghanistan's refugees face? For more than two decades, the Afghan population has been shouldering the burden of civil conflict, the brutal effects of which have been exacerbated by acute and prolonged drought, widespread starvation, and especially harsh winters. The result has been massive movements of people within the country and across its borders. Document code: RISKSMOUNT To obtain, put document code in the body of an e-mail to: documents@prbdocs.org .001213

  • November 8, 2001 Reuters/AP   Vatican Blasts U.N. Manual on Refugee Sexual Health.  A U.N. manual for handling sexual issues in refugee camps raised "serious and numerous concerns" for the Vatican, accusing the manual of promoting "without reserve" the morning-after pill for contraception, presenting sterilization as "simple birth control" and taking a "nonjudgmental" attitude on extramarital relations and homosexual relations. The Vatican claimed that the morning after pill was not contraception but a chemical abortion. It also said that sterilization is often "carried out in poor countries without the victim of this procedure always being correctly informed." The field manual was also criticized for promoting the condom as the only means of preventing AIDS. The Vatican document, "The Reproductive Health of Refugees", intended for Catholics who work with refugees, was essentially a restatement of its position on sexual matters when it clashed with the United Nations at the 1994 Population Conference in Cairo. The only method approved by the Catholic church for controlling births is abstinence during a woman's fertile periods. The U.N. manual, printed in 1999, tells "workers in the field on how to limit the danger posed to those, especially women, in messy refugee situations," said Kris Janowski, a spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. He said "We are not advocating contraception as such. Basically we are telling our people in the field they need to give options to those exposed to rape and AIDS." ... "We cannot impose a moral solution. We're just trying to save lives and protect people, trying to make their lives less miserable."   [Note, the medical profession has defined the beginning of pregnancy as the time when the embryo is implanted in the uterus. The Catholic Church defines the beginning of pregnancy to be at the point of conception. The morning after pill, or emergency contraception, acts before the embryo is implanted in the uterus, but after conception. It contains the same ingredients and works the same way as birth control pills.] .001215

  • November 2001 iUniverse.com   Living a Sustainable Lifestyle for Our Children's Children.  Sustainable development -- a way to live comfortably within the confines of one's economic, environmental, and social limits -- has become a widely recognized goal for our society ever since deteriorating environmental conditions in parts of the world suggest we could be facing problems. Recent events are now putting us and our children at serious risk. Since the attacks of September 11th, people worldwide find themselves searching for answers as to why these acts occurred and how they can redisover a sense of security. The new book, "Living a Sustainable Lifestyle for Our Children's Children" offers alternative, comprehensive points of view to consider in which all scales of economy are just, increasing global environmental degradation is reversed, and we are able to discover new ways of helping all our global neighbors achieve a better quality of life. "Living a Sustainable Lifestyle for Our Children's Children" provides candid recognition of the fact that socio-economic health of our communities can not be separated from their environmental health. Not so much an original treatment of the field of sustainability as a thorough effort at research on the writings and opinions of those who have long advocated this lifestyle, the book examines the awareness, understanding, and motion required of all humans to achieve a world that is more economically secure, socially just, and environmentally healthy. This book will move everyone beyond a feeling of powerlessness by surveying relevant truths related to achieving a more sustainable lifestyle that will also secure our children's future. The book's authors review current conditions and discuss the future of our impacts on the land, lakes, rivers, and oceans, without some fundamental human lifestyle changes. With passion, grace, and an occasional sense of humor, the book goes beyond science, technology, and politics to discuss day to day decision making on how and why we live the way we do, addressing the basics of life: how to know what is in our water, air, food, and land. It also challenges the reader to think about how humans and nature interact and how a more sensitive relationship can lead to a more secure world. The book asks a very basic, but strategic question: what are we leaving our children?  cs.001218

  • November 2001 iUniverse.com   Living a Sustainable Lifestyle for Our Children's Children.  Sustainable development -- a way to live comfortably within the confines of one's economic, environmental, and social limits -- has become a widely recognized goal for our society ever since deteriorating environmental conditions in parts of the world suggest we could be facing problems. Recent events are now putting us and our children at serious risk. Since the attacks of September 11th, people worldwide find themselves searching for answers as to why these acts occurred and how they can redisover a sense of security. The new book, "Living a Sustainable Lifestyle for Our Children's Children" offers alternative, comprehensive points of view to consider in which all scales of economy are just, increasing global environmental degradation is reversed, and we are able to discover new ways of helping all our global neighbors achieve a better quality of life. "Living a Sustainable Lifestyle for Our Children's Children" provides candid recognition of the fact that socio-economic health of our communities can not be separated from their environmental health. Not so much an original treatment of the field of sustainability as a thorough effort at research on the writings and opinions of those who have long advocated this lifestyle, the book examines the awareness, understanding, and motion required of all humans to achieve a world that is more economically secure, socially just, and environmentally healthy. This book will move everyone beyond a feeling of powerlessness by surveying relevant truths related to achieving a more sustainable lifestyle that will also secure our children's future. The book's authors review current conditions and discuss the future of our impacts on the land, lakes, rivers, and oceans, without some fundamental human lifestyle changes. With passion, grace, and an occasional sense of humor, the book goes beyond science, technology, and politics to discuss day to day decision making on how and why we live the way we do, addressing the basics of life: how to know what is in our water, air, food, and land. It also challenges the reader to think about how humans and nature interact and how a more sensitive relationship can lead to a more secure world. The book asks a very basic, but strategic question: what are we leaving our children?  cs.001218

  • October 29, 2001 Christian Science Monitor   Time to Get Serious on Global Hunger.  Worldwide 800 million people are chronically undernourished, with devastating consequences for their health and for the welfare of their communities. Social and political stability are threatened and provide a fertile field for those who seek to generate and exploit anti-Western hostility. America needs both to protect itself and to fulfill its highest values - by tackling the problems of poorer nations in a way that demonstrates our bond with them, getting results they can see. At a 1996 World Food Summit the United States joined 185 other countries in a pledge to cut global hunger in half by 2015. The US told the summit that "improving food security is an essential key to world peace" and that "our humanitarian interests, our economic interests, and our national security are at stake." President Bush told the World Bank in July that "a world where some live in comfort and plenty, while half of the human race lives on less than $2 a day is neither just, nor stable." But we have not followed through with effective action - no concrete implementation plans, no commitment of sufficient resources. The administration should focus on programs that will yield tangible results. It should make a resource commitment to achieve the summit goal. And it should give food security greater political priority.   [Note: the same holds true for providing basic health care (including family planning help) for mothers and children.] .001219

  • October 2001 Population Reference Bureau   Urbanization Takes on New Dimensions in Asia's Population Giants.  By 2010, over half of the world's population will be living in urban areas, and the percentage will increase to 60% by 2030, the UN projects. About 95% of this urban growth will take place in less developed countries. An urbanization rate of 55% will occur in Asian countries such as China, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, the Philippines, and Vietnam; 83% in Latin America; and 55% in Africa. Looking at total urban population, Asia's will exceed 2.6 billion in 2030, compared with 604 million in Latin America and 766 million in Africa. Many are concerned that the world may not be able to sustain such large urban populations. The growing concentration of people will challenge the provision of economic opportunity, the development of adequate infrastructure and liveable housing, and the maintenance of healthy environments. In many poor cities, much of the population must live in areas highly vulnerable to natural disasters such as flooding or landslides. But cities also tend to promote economic growth while experiencing lower rates of natural population increase than rural areas. Educational levels are well above those in rural areas. The urban populations of both China and India combined will grow by over 340 million by 2030, promising to create tremendous challenges in the provision of infrastructure, environmental management, and employment. .001225

  • October 19, 2001 Science magazine   The Mexico City Policy and U.S. Family Planning Assistance.  The Mexico City policy is named for the United Nations (UN) conference at which the Reagan administration announced the policy. Also refered to as the 'Global Gag Rule' by opponents, the policy prohibits private overseas grantees of U.S. family planning funding and technical assistance from using their own non-U.S. funds to provide legal abortions, to counsel on abortions "as a method of family planning," and to promote less restrictive laws pertaining to abortion in their own countries. The Mexico City policy restrictions do not apply to grants to foreign governments and the policy does not include abortions induced in response to rape, incest, or conditions threatening the life of the woman. However, in countries where abortion is permitted in circumstances other than rape, incest, or life-threatening conditions, the Mexico City policy does prohibit health workers in USAID-funded NGOs from "actively promoting" abortion as an option or referring women to an abortion provider, even if the woman has health problems that might suggest a termination of the pregnancy. Workers, however, may "passively respond" to clients' specific questions about where to obtain a safe abortion, but only after the counselor has ascertained that the client is pregnant, that she has already decided to have a legal abortion, and the counselor "reasonably believes that the ethics of the medical profession in the country require a response regarding where it may be obtained safely". If the United States were a minor donor to international reproductive health efforts, its actions might be of little consequence. But the U.S. remains the largest single donor (43%) to international population assistance, including family planning, maternal and child care, and sexually transmitted diseases, and thus the Mexico City Policy is very important. On 22 January 2001, the Mexico City policy was revived by President Bush, with implications that the policy was being restored as a means of keeping U.S. family planning aid from paying for abortions and activities that promote abortions. However, since 1973, the Helms amendment has already prohibited the use of U.S. family planning funds for abortion overseas. In USAID-program countries where abortion is permitted under a wider range of circumstances than the policy permits (including India, Bangladesh, South Africa, Ghana, Jordan, Russia, and other former Soviet states), the Mexico City policy forces the most competent and affordable private family planning providers to close their abortion services or become ineligible for USAID funding. Thus women seeking an induced abortion may be forced to seek out unsafe providers or to self-induce abortion. Government services and private providers which are not funded by USAID often offer lower quality of care and are often unable or unwilling to follow up with family planning counseling and an adequate choice of contraceptives. Also, with the chilling effect of the policy, NGOs are discouraged from providing post-abortion care (treating botched and septic abortions), and research, discussion, and dissemination of data about unsafe abortions is stifled. On the other hand, 350 foreign family planning NGOs have agreed to comply with the Reagan-Bush-era Mexico City policy. When a similar U.S. policy was applied in fiscal year 2000, only 9 out of more than 450 international and foreign NGOs receiving USAID money for family planning or related reproductive health services refused to comply or indicated their inability to comply. Proponents of the policy say that foreign organizations are not prohibited from providing post-abortion care. Although both sides are passionate about the issue, neither position is well informed by systematic research on the consequences of the policy, including its health consequences for the clients of U.S.-funded family planning NGOs. Science magazine found only two studies on the issue, in one of them, resulting in the Blane-Friedman report, USAID employed a two-person team which visited 49 subproject sites in six developing countries, and published the most carefully documented evaluation of the Mexico City policy to date. It found that most of the subprojects visited were not significantly affected by the Mexico City policy, but the authors encountered several subprojects in which personnel had, afraid losing funding, engaged in actions not mandated by the policy. Science magazine concludes that the studies as designed were not adequate to fully assess the policy's broad consequences for access to contraceptive or abortion services, much less for women's health. In additon, the studies did not look at whether or not the previous Mexico City policy reduced the incidence of induced abortion. With some 20 million unsafe abortions each year, resulting in more than 70,000 women dying annually, and more than 99% of them in the developing world, unsafe abortion is a serious public health issue that USAID is prohibited from addressing. While U.S. policy-makers will likely remain deeply divided over policies that affect women's access to safe abortion, there is significant room, and need, for bipartisan agreement on family planning, post-abortion care, HIV/AIDS prevention, and programs for adolescents, since over 1 billion young people worldwide are entering their childbearing years, many not fully aware of the risks of sex and reproduction. President Bush, in pursuing his goal to "find common ground to reduce the number of abortions" should continue to support what public health experts conclude are the only strategies proven effective in reducing the demand for abortion: improving couples' access to family planning services, and expanding educational and communications efforts that inform adults and adolescents about reproductive risks, responsibilities, and contraceptive choice. .001250

  • November 7, 2001 PlanetArk.org/Reuters   Climb Every Mountain.  Greenpeace warned that Mount Kilimanjaro could lose all of its glaciers by 2015. At 19,341 feet, Tanzania's Mount Kilimanjaro is one of the world's most recognizable landmarks and one of the few snowy spots on the equator. But 80% of its ice field has been lost since 1912, at least one-third of that in the last 12 years alone. The Himalayas, the Andes, and mountains in Alaska suffer similar fates. .001253

  • October 26, 2001 Grist magazine   Chinese Water Table Torture; China's Water Table Levels are Dropping Fast.  Over-pumping has caused the water table under the North China Plain, which produces over half of China's wheat and a third of its corn, to drop by almost 10 feet last year. In some cities it fell by more than twice that. It cannot be replenished. A new World Bank report suggests that "deep wells around Beijing now have to reach 1,000 meters [more than half a mile] to tap fresh water, adding dramatically to the cost of supply." In 1997, 99,900 out of 3.6 million wells were abandoned as they ran dry and 221,900 new wells were drilled to replace them. Due to excessive use, rivers that flow eastward into the North China Plain -- the Hai, the Yellow, and the Huai -- are going dry for part of the year, sometimes for extended periods of time. The flow of the Yellow River into the last province it passes before entering the sea has dropped from 40 billion tons a year in the early 1980s to 25 billion tons during the 1990s. Hebei Province once had 1,052 lakes; now only 83 remain. In the North China Plain, irrigated agriculture could largely disappear by 2010, forcing a shift back to less productive rain-fed agriculture. By 2010 while the population grows by an estimated 126 million people, the World Bank predicts that the country's urban water demand will jump from 50 billion to 80 billion tons, an increase of 60%. At the same time, industrial water demand will increase 62%. Water is worth 70 times as much to industry as it is to agriculture, so farmers usually lose out to cities in the competition for an ever-scarcer resource. Weak prices, falling water tables, and severe drought together caused the grain harvest in 2001 to drop to 335 million tons, down from the all-time high of 392 million tons in 1998. This year's harvest will fall short of projected consumption by 46 million tons, easily the biggest grain shortage in China's history. China's options include: a south/north diversion of water from the Yangtze River Basin at a cost tens of billions of dollars and displacing hundreds of thousands of people; water conservation involving equally costly water-efficient household appliances, and more-efficient irrigation practices; and grain imports. Since it takes 1,000 tons of water to produce one ton of grain, importing grain is the most efficient way to import water. If it imports even 10% of its grain supply -- 40 million tons -- it will become the world's largest grain importer overnight, putting intense pressure on exportable grain supplies and driving up global prices. If this happens, we won't need to read about it in the newspapers. We'll learn the hard way, at the grocery store checkout counter. .001254

  • September 17, 2001 Planetizen.com   The End of Tall Buildings.  After the September 11th terrorist attacks, New York Mayor Rudolph Guiliani vowed the "skyline will be made whole again." But authors Kunstler and Salingaros argue that skyscrapers are relics of a 20th-century architectural experiment that prized symbolic representations of potency over practical concerns about urban and environmental health. Tall buildings actually contribute to sprawl by preventing the development of healthy, mixed-use neighborhoods outside city centers. New York should promote buildings that combine office space, residential space, and retail storefronts, thereby bringing some much needed relief to depressed areas of the city that looked bombed out long before last month's attacks. .001255

  • November 2001 The Progressive   Farmers Fight to Save Organic Crops.  Consumer backlash in Europe and Japan against genetically modified foods has boosted revenue for organic growers in the U.S. But it is becoming difficult for U.S. farmers to guarantee that certain crops are GM-free. Corn, for example, is pollinated by airborne spores that can travel for miles thanks to wind and insects. As agribusiness grows ever-more partial to genetic modification and as it becomes tougher for organic farmers to obtain non-GM seed, organic farmers will be in deep trouble. [Note: proponents of GM foods argue that GM foods are becoming necessary to feed the world's hungry people as population grows.] .001256

  • September 2001 Utne Reader/Grist magazine   Land of the Free .. Parking; The pay lot could be the key to our energy future.  Americans spend more to store their vehicles in "free" parking than to keep their tanks full.If local governments got rid of antiquated zoning laws and tax codes mandating acres of free parking, developers would choose to devote the land to higher-value uses. And drivers, faced with paying the full environmental and social costs of car trips, would choose to drive less. .001257

  • November 6, 2001 United Press International   UNFPA: Cut Consumption To Feed Hungry.  There are 1.6 billion people in the world, but only 20% of them are responsible for 86% of private consumption. Environmental damage must be reversed to fight poverty among the poorest 20%, which account for only 1.3% of private consumption, the UNFPA said in its annual report, Footprints and Milestones: Population and Environmental Change. "Human activity has affected every part of the planet, no matter how remote, and every ecosystem, from the simplest to the most complex. Our choices and interventions have transformed the natural world, posing both great possibilities and extreme dangers for the quality and sustainability of our civilizations, and for the intricate balances of nature." Since 1970, consumption expenditures have more than doubled with increases mostly in richer countries. While some of us have created wealth on an unimaginable scale, half the world exists on less than $2 a day. And we have not how learned to deal our waste: emissions of carbon dioxide, for example, grew 12 times between 1900 and 2000. Population is key, one of the areas where action to broaden choices is universally available, affordable and agreed upon, said the UNFPA. The report explored the inter-relationships between affluence, consumption, technology and population growth, gender roles and relations, political structures and governance at all levels. It found that women's empowerment is a development end in itself, a means to end poverty. "Reproductive health is part of an essential package of health care and education. It is a means to the goal of women's empowerment, but it is also a human right and includes the right to choose the size and spacing of the family." Yet the existing needs of women who want to prevent or delay pregnancy are not being met, and demand is expected to increase rapidly in the next 20 years. The same countries where population growth is highest are among the most severely challenged by soil and water degradation, and the most severely lacking food. "In some ecologically rich but fragile zones, known as 'biodiversity hotspots,' population growth is well above the global average of 1.3 per cent a year." To end on a optimistic note: fertility in developing countries has dropped, on average, to just under three children per woman, about half what it was in 1969. .001259

  • November 7, 2001 San Francisco Chronicle   One Woman's Work to Stop Child Prostitution in Nepal.  Approximately 10,000 Nepali girls, ages 9 to 16, are sold each year into the sex trade of India. Dr. Aruna Uprety, a physician in Kathmandu, Nepal, confronts this problem every day: Uprety founded the Rural Health and Education Trust, funded by the American Himalayan Foundation, in 1995 to try to stem the flow of Nepalese girls to India with information and education. The Trust enables 500 girls in towns and villages in western Nepal to go to school. Only 25% of Nepal's women and girls can write their own names and only 5% can read and write in their own language. "Girls and their parents are often lured into sending them to India by promises of a nice apartment or a beautiful life," says Dr. Uprety. One procurer's promised to marry each girl and take her away on a honeymoon. Until he was arrested, he had brought 1,400 girls into prostitution. Nepal has 12 million ultra-poor people, with no child protection laws or prohibitions against sex with minors. Girls in rural areas begin marrying at age 9. Almost no one outside of Katmandu has a TV. Barely 15% of the people have access to any kind of medical care, and only 8% of women deliver their babies in a hospital or clinic. Nepal has the second-highest maternal mortality rate in the world, with Afghanistan being the highest. 1,500 of 100,000 Nepalese women die of pregnancy-related ailments, according to the World Health Organization. 92% of deliveries take place where no one keeps statistics, so the actual mortality rate is probably astronomical.  cs.001260

  • November 1, 2001 E/The Environmental Magazine   The Gold Crush; With Its Population Growing Faster Than That of Bangladesh, California’s Environment is Approaching a Crisis Point.  Though considerable attention has been focused on California's agonizing electricity shortage and water woes, very few people have recognized that these problems stem from a dramatic population explosion. In 2000, California added 571,000 people, resulting in a 1.7% growth rate, one that is higher than that of Bangladesh. California is 40% more densely populated than Europe. Los Angeles alone has a population of 3.8 million. With it's diversions of water from Owens Lake, seen near Lone Pine, California, it has nearly dried up the lake, creating health hazards from wind storms laced with arsenic. [In recent years,] the huge increase in population did not occur because Californians decided to have large families or because people moved there from other states. Of California’s 35 million people, nine million of them are immigrants. One third of the immigrants who enter the United States every year come to California. California has one of the highest fertility rates in the U.S.: 2.4 births per woman. [Many of the births are to immigrant women who import their birth rates from their native country.] The national fertility rate is still just above 2.0. Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS) estimates that, when all factors are weighed, immigration accounted for 96% of California’s population growth from 1990 to 1997. The U.S. Census Bureau says the state will have nearly 54 million people by 2025. While rolling blackouts were paralyzing the state earlier this year, Ric Oberlink in a San Diego Union-Tribune wrote: "California doesn’t have a power shortage, ... it has a population ‘longage.’" Between 1970 and 1990, Los Angeles grew 25.1% in land area, Oxnard-Ventura 40.9%, Fresno 67.8%, Riverside-San Bernardino 48.6%, and Stockton 57.7%. In the same period, the state’s per capita electricity use declined from 7,292 kilowatt-hours per year to 6,952 kilowatt-hours, while the population grew from 23 to 33 million, easily obliterating any gains from conservation. From 1996 to 1999, power demand grew 12%. The newspaper The San Francisco Chronicle made this statement based on projections Department of Water Resources: "California is teetering on the edge of a profound water shortfall that experts say could rival this year’s power shortages for economic and social disruption." By 2020 the Chronicle predicts, "the dams and aqueducts that make up the world’s most elaborate water-moving network will fall short of California’s needs by as much as 4.2 million acre-feet in a good year and nearly twice that in a drought." The Department of Water Resources estimates a modest increase in supply, but soaring demand. In the 1780s California had an estimated five million acres of wetlands. After just two centuries of population growth, there has been an increase from hundreds of thousands to more than 32 million people and only about 454,000 acres of wetlands, a 90% loss. According to the Water Education Foundation (WEF), wetlands support 41 of the state’s rare and endangered species. This includes 55% of the animal and 25% of the plant species designated as threatened or endangered. One of every three vertebrate species in the state and one in 10 native plant species are in serious danger of extinction. The Nature Conservancy says the Bay-Delta has become the second densest hot spot of imperiled species in the U.S. Simultaneously, the lands around the Bay-Delta support 6.8 million Californians, one of the greatest concentrations of humanity in North America. State air quality has also suffered. Southern California, where population growth is concentrated, has the highest density auto population in the world, and it has produced what is often measured as the second highest smog levels in the U.S. .001264

  • November 20, 2001    UK and France Delay Approval of Vaginal Contraceptive Ring.  The Dutch company Organon has produced and tested NuvaRing, the first monthly vaginal ring for contraception. The ring releases a continuous low dose of oestrogen and progestin over a 21-day period. The Netherlands and most other European countries and the US Food and Drug Administration have granted approval. France and the UK had asked additional questions during the mutual recognition procedure. The safety and efficacy of NuvaRing has been studied in worldwide clinical trials in which 2,322 women were exposed to 23,289 treatment cycles. .001267

  • October 2001 EC/UNFPA Asia Initiative website   Information, Education, and Communication (IEC) Database: EC/UNFPA Asia Initiative.  This newly developed, comprehensive database gives you direct access to more than 90 selected EC/UNFPA-funded information, education, and communication (IEC) materials produced in the more than 40 projects of the EC/UNFPA Initiative for Reproductive Health in Asia. Catalogued by type, country, organisation, and target group, most of the materials are available upon request. The database features IEC materials in 10 different languages (English, Bangla, Khmer, Lao, Nepali, Sindhi, Urdu, Pushtu, Sinhala, and Vietnamese). .001270

  • October 30, 2001 Sierra Club Population News listserve   Congress to Determine Funding for International Family Planning.  Congress will soon determine funding for international family planning programs for 2002. Now is the time to take action! .001271

  • November 2001 Sierra Club release   Representative Pelosi a Winner.  "Representative Pelosi's election is among the best news for America's environment this century," says Carl Pope, Sierra Club executive director proclaimed. "..we look forward to continuing to work with her to protect our most fragile places and defend human rights around the world. We are thrilled that House Democrats selected her as their second in command." ... "From the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to the redrock canyons of Utah to all of our national forests, she has been a leader in protecting our pristine places." "To slow the threats our growing population has on our environment, Rep. Pelosi has been a key supporter of family planning initiatives both at home and abroad." .001272

  • November 4, 2001 DallasNews.com   Experts Warn of Pregnant Afghans' Plight; U.N. Works to Provide Proper Medical Care to Women as War on Terrorism Continues.  Thousands of pregnant women in Afghanistan who have no access to medical care. Wariara Mbugua, chief of the gender issues branch of the U.N. Population Fund said that about 820 of every 100,000 pregnant women in Afghanistan die each year from complications related to pregnancy or childbirth, compared with 12 per 100,000 in the United States and eight in Israel. Afghanistan women live in tents and have limited food and water and little access to medical care and sanitary delivery is nearly impossible. Ms. Mbugua, a Kenyan citizen, spoke along with women's rights advocate Alexander Sanger at "Saving Women's Lives," the fifth annual North Texas U.N. Conference on Women, at the University of Texas at Dallas. The UNFPA wants to supply pregnant woment with clean delivery kits which include a small piece of soap for hand washing, three pieces of string for tying the umbilical cord, a stainless steel blade for cutting the cord, a small plastic sheet, and pictorial instructions on how to use the items. While very fundamental, they make childbirth much safer in emergency situations. Between 60,000 and 70,000 of the refugees are reported to be pregnant. About 10,000 of those are high-risk pregnancies in which the women may need emergency care. Alexander Sanger, chairman of the International Planned Parenthood Council cited a CIA study over 50 years that reported that the No. 1 predictor of a country's instability was its infant mortality rate. Afghanistan's infant mortality rate is 154 per 1,000 births, nearly three times higher than the worldwide rate of 56 per 1,000. .001281

  • November 2, 2001 Star-Telegram (Fort Worth TX)   Water, Water (Not) Everywhere.  In Afghanistan a woman draws water for drinking from a stream that is heavily polluted by untreated sewage. The stream also is used for bathing. But Afghanistan isn't the only country with this scenario. In the year 2000, 31 countries with a combined population of 508 million people were deemed "water-stressed" or "water-scarce" according to "The State of World Population 2001" report (United Nations Population Fund). Peter Gleick, an expert on global freshwater problems, in an article in the February edition of Scientific American wrote 'Roughly half the world's population of nearly 6.2 billion "suffers with water services inferior to those available to the ancient Greeks and Romans." Due to the continued increase in population in developing countries the numbers are expected to rise to about 3 billion people living in 41 countries in 2025. About 2.6 billion people in developing countries lack basic sanitation and almost 1.5 billion do not have access to clean water. These factors together with preventable water-borne diseases kill over 12 million people each year. Improved water and wastewater treatment systems may help to alleviate these problems. Family planning will also help to reduce the increasing population pressure on the water supplies.   jlf .001282

  • November 2, 2001 Rep. Tom Tancredo webpage   US Congress: Immigration Reform Caucus Fifty Members Strong.  The Caucus has focused increasingly on the need to reform our nation’s immigration laws and the need to secure America’s borders. Two weeks ago, the Caucus released its fourteen-point proposal list for immigration reform, and this week called for the creation of a new Border Security Agency to replace the Immigration and Naturalization Service’s enforcement responsibilities. Click here for a list of the Caucus members. Note: WOA!! does not see border security as a major issue, but does see the threat to the environment from continued high population growth in the US, particularly in California, Florida, and New York. .001286

  • November 15, 2001 Earth Policy organization   Rising Sea Level Forcing Evacuation of Island Country.  For the first time since civilization began, sea level has begun to rise at a measurable rate. During the 20th century, the sea level rose by 20-30 centimeters (8-12 inches). A rise of up to 1 meter is predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for this century. Lowland flooding, saltwater intrusion, coastal erosion, and destructive storms have caused the leaders of Tuvalu--a tiny island country in the Pacific Ocean midway between Hawaii and Australia-- to decide to abandon their homeland, asking Australia, and New Zealand to accept its 11,000 citizens. Australia has turned them down. The rising atmospheric levels of CO2, largely from burning fossil fuels is causing the melting of glaciers and the thermal expansion of the ocean, which in turn is causing the sea level to rise. When the surface water temperatures rise in the tropics and subtropics more energy radiates into the atmosphere, which drives storm systems. During the last decade there has been an unusually high level of tropical storms. The Maldives, a country of 311,000 on 1,196 tiny islands barely 2 meters above sea level, is jeopardy with even a 1-meter rise in sea level in the event of a storm surge. Millions of others living in low-lying countries are similarly threatened by rising sea levels. Millions more in low-lying coastal countries such as Bangladesh are also threatened. A rise in sea level of (up to) 1 meter forecast for this century would inundate half of Bangladesh's riceland. Bangladeshis would be forced to migrate by the millions. Where will these climate refugees go? Rice-growing river floodplains in India, Thailand, Viet Nam, Indonesia, and China would also be affected. Over one third of Shanghai would be under water with a 1-meter rise in sea level. Also, 70 million people in China would be vulnerable to a 100-year storm surge. From estimates by Donald F. Boesch, with the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Sciences, if the sea level rises by 1 meter, coastline will retreat by 1,500 meters, or nearly a mile, resulting in a loss of 14,000 square miles in the U.S. - mostly in the middle Atlantic and Mississippi Gulf. Large portions of Lower Manhattan and the Capitol Mall in Washington, D.C., would be flooded with seawater during a 50-year storm surge. Even a half-meter rise in sea level could bring losses ranging from $20 billion to $150 billion in the U.S. Beachfront properties, much like nuclear power plants, are becoming uninsurable--as many homeowners in Florida have discovered. But while Americans face loss of valuable beachfront properties, low-lying island peoples in developing countries face something far more serious: the loss of their nationhood. They feel terrorized by U.S. energy policy, viewing the United States as a rogue nation, indifferent to their plight and unwilling to cooperate with the international community to implement the Kyoto Protocol. Paani Laupepa, a Tuvaluan government official, is bitterly critical of the United States for abandoning the Kyoto Protocol, told a BBC reporter that "by refusing to ratify the Protocol, the U.S. has effectively denied future generations of Tuvaluans their fundamental freedom to live where our ancestors have lived for thousands of years." .001287

  • November 13, 2001 The Washington Post   No Time to Be Shortchanging Foreign Aid.  House Republicans have held our dues payment to the United Nations hostage to their provincial views on international family planning. While the House did recently agree to pay $582 million in back payments to the United Nations, our budget for foreign aid is still less than it was 15 years ago. The foreign aid budget is capped at $15.3 billion this year, one third of which goes to Egypt and Israel. The rest will be used to provide economic support to poor countries, to help feed and shelter refugees, to combat AIDS and other health problems and to help develop infrastructure that can lead to stability. Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the appropriations subcommittee for foreign operations, says the foreign aid budget is not nearly enough - less than $40 per year for each American. "We should be spending at least five times as much." ... "We are failing the American people, and we are failing future generations," he said. Leahy wants to go to the source of the problem, to countries that are failing -- from AIDS, from ignorance, from poverty, from injustice. He said that 70% of the world's population is nonwhite, non-Christian and illiterate, with half suffering from malnutrition while a privileged 5% own more than half the world's wealth. In the meantime the House wants to spend an additional $657 million on the Colombian drug war, which Leahy characterized as wrongheaded and an administrative nightmare. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) pointed out that of the $119 million appropriated for reforms in Colombia, only $8 million has been spent. Leahy's committee has repeatedly asked the administration where the appropriated funds have gone but has not received an answer. While we are bombing Colombian peasants with herbicide, we are ignoring the 1.2 billion of the world's people who are eking out an existence on the equivalent of $1 a day. One hundred million of the world's children, two-thirds of them girls, don't go to school. Aid programs do work. In Nepal, the United States started a literacy program in 1991, and the women's literacy rate has gone 22% to 40%. Infant mortality rates have decreased by 10% in countries aided by the United States. The Senate has taken money from the Colombia drug war and redistributed it so that it provides $20 million more than the House for refugee assistance, $70 million more for AIDS and $40 million more for family planning, for example. Hopefully the House will realize some sense and the Senate version will win. .001296

  • November 12, 2001 Associated Press   One Billion People at Risk from World's Shrinking and Polluted Lakes.  Half the world's lakes and reservoirs - representing 90% of all liquid fresh water on the Earth's surface - are degraded by pollution and drainage. "Lakes are among the most vulnerable and difficult to restore of all natural ecological systems, but they have been widely ignored even as they have deteriorated," said Masahisa Nakamura, director of Japan's Lake Biwa Research Institute. Up to 1 billion people worldwide depend on endangered nearby lakes for drinking water, sewage, fishing, irrigation, transportation or tourism, said World Water Forum vice president William Cosgrove. A growing population is overtapping them for irrigation and drinking water or overpolluting them with sewage and industrial runoff. In China between 1950 and 1980, 543 large- and medium-sized lakes have disappeared when their water was diverted for irrigation. Global warming is expected to raise average lake temperatures by 2-3 degrees Celsius (3.6-5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) over the next 50 years, meaning the lakes will be less capable of cleansing themselves when the water warms up. The Great Lakes of North America, Lake Okeechobee in Florida, Lake Victoria in Africa and the Aral Sea between Kazakstan and Uzbekistan are on the watch list. One of the solutions would be to encourage local people to take a bigger stake in the health of local lakes. Remarks were made at the International Conference on Conservation and Management of Lakes in Japan, in preparation for the Third World Water Forum to be held in the city of Kyoto in 2003. 8,000 researchers and government officials are expected to attend. .001302

  • October 31, 2001 NPG/Los Angeles Times   Traffic Nightmares Grow in California.  Dramatic population increases in Riverside and San Bernardino mean that the area's traffic headaches "will only grow worse--despite millions of dollars being spent on freeway construction, carpool lanes, mass transit and other transportation programs." The amount of time drivers in the two counties spent sitting in traffic increased 190% over the last five years, according to a study by the California Department of Transportation. The population in Riverside and San Bernardino counties increased by 660,000 residents from 1990 to 2000--a 25% increase--and is expected to grow 74% more by 2025, according to Census Bureau figures and regional governments. Studies predict that in 25 years, the average speeds on the Inland Empire portions of the Riverside Freeway will drop into the single digits during peak commuting times. .001305

  • October 2001 Journal of Family Planning and Reproductive Health Care   Knowledge and Practice of Contraception in the United Arab Emirates.  Only 41.5% of the women in the United Arab Emirates use contraception, according to a study of 400 women attending community and primary health care centres. Sociocultural traditions, religious beliefs and poor knowledge account for the low numbers. The most common methods being used were the safe period and coitus interruptus. The most commonly used modern method was the IUD. Sterilisation was only used by 6.6%, with most women choosing sterilization only if there was a strong medical indication. 74% of the women did not think it was appropriate to use contraception before the first pregnancy. There was a significant association between contraceptive use and the age and level of education of the woman and a positive corrrelation with low family income. Contraceptive methods that cause abnormal bleeding patterns were not used by half of the users because of the asociated inability to pray or to have sexual intercourse. .001306

  • October 17, 2001 Africa News/Agence France Presse/Washington Times   Populations Affected by Food Shortages.  Six million people in Uganda do not have access to sufficient food says the president of the Uganda National Farmers Association. First Lady Janet Museveni urged the government to reduce maternal deaths as one way to ensure food security. A devastating cyclone in early 2000, a January drought, and war--caused about 20% of Zimbabwe’s population to request food relief. In Somalia, 40,000 tons of food are urgently needed to feed some 300,000 people at risk of immediate starvation after seasonal rains failed to materialize. After 6 years of food aid, North Korea will continue through next year to need aid - about 7.6 million (1/3 of the population) people are affected by starvation and malnutrition. .001335

  • November 30, 2001    Laying the Groundwork for a Sustainable Energy Future.  Writer David Suzuki introduces the World Energy Assessment report (a collaboration between the United Nations and the World Energy Council). The report depicts different future scenarios which in many cases, including as business-as-usual case, do not meet the criteria for sustainability. Overall global energy efficiency is only 37% where the remaining 63% is lost as heat and pollution. The pollution which is mainly due to the burning of fossil fuels causes about 3 million premature deaths worldwide each year or about 5-6% of global mortality. If conservation policies were pursued industrialized countries could increase efficiency by 25-35% over the next 20 years with an even greater increase in developing countries. Such policies would include a transfer to renewable resources such as wind (and solar) which according to a recent article in Science are cheaper than coal if the externalized costs are included. Emphasis is placed on the importance of starting this transfer as soon as possible to minimize future costs.   jlf .001340

  • December 1, 2001 Science/Interpress Service   China Cuts Greenhouse Gases, Contradicting U.S..  During the past few years China has decreased it's carbon dioxide emissions decreased despite any legal obligations to do so, a new study in the magazine "Science" shows. This contradicts one of the U.S.'s main objections against the Kyoto treaty, namely that the treaty does not place emission limits on developing countries which as the argument goes would eventually surpass the emissions of the industrial countries. However, while China's emissions have dropped during the past five years the emissions of industrialized countries have gone up. Between 1996 and 2000 China's CO2 emissions fell by 7.3% with that coming from fossil fuels falling by 8.8%. The methane emissions fell by 2.2% between 1997 and 2000. In contrast to that Western Europe increased emissions by 4.5% from 1995 to 1999 and the United States increased its emissions by 6.3%. Chinese emission reductions are due to closing of small and inefficient industrial plants, improved efficiency of energy use, improved coal quality, the switching from coal to gas in residential use, technological progress in energy-intensive sectors, and the opening up of coal and electricity markets. A reverse of the forest logging practice has also resulted in more trees to absorb the CO2. "These reductions, achieved through sweeping energy pricing and policy reforms, as well as the promotion of energy efficiency (are) equal to the 400 million tons of carbon that the U.S. transportation sector emitted last year," said Nancy Kete, director of the World Resources Institute. According to the study "There is some room for optimism, however, that further increases in greenhouse gas emissions in China might be averted for several years if energy efficiency improvements continue, markets continue to open up and lead to price reforms, persistent inefficiencies in the coal industry are removed, and natural gas continues to penetrate at a rapid rate." However, much depends on evolution of China's economy. The Pew Center on Global Climate Change, the Beijing Energy Efficiency Center, and the China Energy Research Institute said in a report last year that an increase of efficiency by 10% cold cut CO2 emissions by 19% by 2015 and by expanding use of of low-cost natural gas in China through market reform CO2 emissions could be cut by 35% with only an increase of 4% relative to the business-as-usual baseline. jlf .001343

  • November 9, 2001 BBC News   40% of Boys in the UK Have Never Heard of HIV or AIDS.  A survey 42,000 young people aged between 10 and 15, compiled by the United Kingdom Schools Health Education revealed that two in five boys have never heard of Aids or HIV, that more boys than girls said they would not take care to avoid infection with the virus, and that 57% of older males said they did not know where they could go to get free condoms. .001345

  • November 13, 2001 WCAX-TV Channel News 3 (Burlington, VT)   Travelling Forum in Vermont, USA Discusses Problems with Overpopulation.  A travelling forum on population growth was in Middleburg, Vermont in November to discuss the issue of what many see as a growing problem. Currently there are 6 billion people living in the world. Many environmental scholars attribute the world's air pollution problems and sprawl conditions to this overpopulation. Paul Micou of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) said that the way to reduce population growth is by providing women in Third World countries contraceptives, as well as prenatal and antenatal care for their children. Environmental scholar and author Bill Mckibben, on the other hand, tackled the population and environmental problems from a different angle, proposing a solution that entails not only slowing population growth but also reducing consumption of polluting goods. McKibben contended that "Our population multiplied by what we consume is the key variable."   rs .001348

  • October 2001 Population Reference Bureau   Healthy People Need Healthy Forests - Population and Deforestation.  9.4 million hectares a year are deforested a year, posing a major threat to human communities and natural ecosystems. Forests cover about 27% of the world's land area, compared to about 50% 10,000 years ago according to PRB policy analyst Jonathan Nash. During the 1990s an area the size of Colombia and Ecuador combined was deforested by human activities; a third of that was regained due to reforestation efforts and natural regrowth - with forest cover expanding in temperate, less developed countries, declining in tropical, less developed countries, and remaining relatively stable in more developed countries. .001353

  • October 2001 Population Today (PRB)   Urbanization Takes on New Dimensions in Asia's Population Giants.  60% of the world's people will be living in urban places by 2030, up from 47% in 1999, according to the United Nations. Author Terry McGee, professor of geography at the University of British Columbia said that 60% of the growth will occur in Asia, particularly in China and India, but also in Pakistan, Bangladesh, the Philippines, and Vietnam. .001356

  • November 08, 2001 Baltimore Sun   USA: Coastal Population Growth Endangering Bays.  Bays on the USA East Coast are being threatened by coastal population growth. The population of Worcester County (Maryland) increased by nearly 33% in the last decade and by more than 50% in the area closest to the bays. From 1987 to 1995, Worcester lost 20% of its coastal farmland. Enough land is currently zoned for housing around the bays to more than double Worcester's population to 110,000 people. "In Isle of Wight Bay (Maryland), where almost all waterfront sites have been developed, underwater grasses that provide vital habitat for crabs and fish have all but vanished. The population around that bay has increased 71 percent since 1990, from 11,000 to 19,600 last year. Similar growth is occurring around Sinepuxent Bay (Maryland), where the population almost doubled in the last 10 years, and around Assawoman (Virginia), which experienced a 59 percent increase." .001358

  • November 14, 2001 The East African Standard (Nairobi)   HIV/AIDS Nairobi: 'I Chose The Lesser Evil'.  Mary Atieno, 28, did not wish to be inherited after the death of her husband. She narrates to Ochieng' Ogodo how relatives invoked customs to demand that she looks for another man to re-marry. .001373

  • November 20, 2001 Christian Science Monitor   Let the Sun Fight Terrorism.  With oil prices dropping, the United States may avoid investing in alternative energy sources, but the recent influx of terrorist activity creates a new intriguing rationale: Developing alternative energies sources alleviates our dependency for Saudi oil and a dispersed power structure makes for a difficult target. Are alternative energies worth the investment? The price of a kilowatt-hour of electricity produced from wind turbines and solar cells has dropped due to recent advances in technology. And economists are getting better at calculating the long-term costs of burning coal. Europe is moving faster than the US toward alternative energies, with 22% of the European Union's electricity coming from renewables by 2010. Denmark currently gets 14% of its power from the wind and Britain is increasing its public investments in solar and wind. Nevertheless, some measures are being considered and passed by voters in the United States. In San Francisco public buildings, officials plan to produce 20 megawatts from solar panels and wind generators. A measure passed by city voters allows the local government to underwrite widespread residential and commercial use of solar power. Seattle encourages utility consumers to voluntarily contribute to an alternative energy fund. In the early 1990's, California mandated that car manufacturers develop hybrid automobiles in order to reduce air pollution. Hopefully, this thinking finds its way to our nation's capital. jl  jl.001374

  • November 20, 2001 Scripps Howard News Service   Packed Planet.  During the next 50 years world population will increase from 6.1 billion to 9.3 billion with 85% living in the developing countries, and at that point nearly half of the population will suffer from water scarcity, reported former Sen. Tim Wirth of Colorado, now president of the United Nations Foundation. If food production is not increased many will also go hungry. Greenhouse-gases will increase the global temperature by nearly 6 degrees centigrade leading to more severe weather patterns causing relocation and associated forest stripping with resulting species extinction. Although the western world will not show any significant increase in numbers they can be blamed for most of these problems. Although they only number 20% of the total population they represent 85% of the total consumption and 65% of the total green-house gas emissions while the poorest 20% only represent a mere 2% of the total. In order to avoid this calamity fossil fuel use must be reduced, but apart from that even small amounts of cash from the rich part of the world can help the UN to assure schooling for all children, access to family-planning for women, and that all families are able to feed themselves - factors which have been demonstrated to be the surest way to control population.   jlf .001379

  • November 16, 2001 BBC News   Hopes Rise For China's Pandas.  Loss of habitat and human development pressure continue to squeeze China's estimated 1100 wild pandas into smaller and more fragmented groups according to an article in the magazine Science by authors from the WWF and Beijing University. The pandas live in about 24 groups at the edge of the Tibetan plateau. Group populations are generally below 50 which the authors consider unviable. Over 50% of the pandas habitat is protected, but these areas need to be expanding and linked to decrease the chances of extinction of individual sub-populated groups. One policy change which has been effected is the Natural Forest Conservation Programme (NFCP) with the goal of increasing forest cover in river basins to prevent floods. As side-effect this will provide strict protection to all the remaining forest in the pandas' range. Another project is the Grain-to-Green policy which aims to restore hillside agricultural land to forest or grassland by distributing seedlings for planting to local communities in exchange for grain and cash subsidies depending on how much land they convert. According to the authors "The NFCP and the Grain-to-Green policy provide a historic opportunity to move panda conservation from individual reserves to habitat conservation across landscapes." but note that integrating western China's development programme, which plans to increase infrastructure, hydropower, eco-tourism and investment, with conservation needs will be challenging. jlf .001381

  • October 19, 2001 National Wildlife Federation   NWF Warns: World Water Consumption Threatens Wildlife.  National Wildlife Federation has produced a report. From the Executive Summary: There is no more water on Earth now than there was 2,000 years ago. This limited supply of freshwater must meet the needs of a human population that has tripled in the last century and continues to grow at almost 80 million people per year. With this growing population has come increased demand for water to support industrialization, agricultural development, urbanization and sprawl. Population growth and rising water use have put the squeeze on available resources, causing wildlife and freshwater ecosystems to disappear at alarming rates. Currently, the human population consumes approximately 54% of all the accessible freshwater contained in rivers, lakes and underground aquifers. By 2025, population growth alone could push this figure to 70%. Caught between limited and increasingly polluted water supplies and rapidly rising demand from population growth and development, many countries face difficult choices. .001388

  • December 07, 2001 Audubon population news listserve   Senate Letter Calling for Increased 150 Budget; Help Build Support in the Senate.  A Dear Colleague is being sent to members of the Senate asking them to sign on to a bipartisan letter to President Bush urging him to request additional funding for the FY2003 International Affairs Budget, which includes funding international family planning programs. Your help is needed. Click on the link above to support this effort. .001400

  • December 07, 2001 Audubon population news listserve   Senate Letter Calling for Increased 150 Budget; Help Build Support in the Senate.  A Dear Colleague is being sent to members of the Senate asking them to sign on to a bipartisan letter to President Bush urging him to request additional funding for the FY2003 International Affairs Budget, which includes funding international family planning programs. Your help is needed. Click on the link above to support this effort. .001400

  • November 22, 2001 The Daily Telegraph   Nun Told to Remove AIDS Posters by Archbishop.  Southwark. 77-year-old Sister Dorothy Bell was asked to remove posters and to apologize to priests for "any anxiety". The posters mark World Aids Day on December 1, and give a helpline number and website address offering explicit information about how to use condoms for all forms of sex. Artificial contraception is forbidden under Catholic teaching. She said: "If somebody is going to be promiscuous then let them protect themselves." She was concerned that people thought AIDS had gone away because there was little in the media about it. .001401

  • November 23, 2001 The East African Standard (Nairobi)   East Africa: Rape and Gender Violence Victims Narrate Tales.  Harrowing testimonies by victims of sexual and gender-based violence marked the opening of meeting in Nairobi sponsored by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Sexual and gender-based violence against women was increasingly inhibiting growth in African states, said Deputy Regional Director UNHCR, Mr Anoushiravan Deneshvar. Such violence caused over 50% of school-going girls to drop out of school, and women were leaving employment due to insecurity. A large percentage of HIV/AIDS infected patients were victims of rape. .001402

  • November 21, 2001 InterWorld Radio News Bulletin   Nepal: Women Surviving Violence.  In a survey, 9 out of 10 women said that they had either been involved in domestic violence themselves or knew someone who had. Campaigners point out that as long as domestic violence in Nepal is legally and socially acceptable it's almost impossible for women to choose to leave home and survive on their own. For more, see www.interworldradio.org .001403

  • November 16, 2001 The Washington Times   USA: House Members Debate 'Narrowness' of Federal Funding That 'Limits' States to Abstinence-Only Sex Education.  The "pigeonhole" funding in Title V of the welfare reform law "limits" states' options for teen pregnancy prevention and prevents states from implementing their own "innovative programs, says Rep. Benjamin Cardin (D-Md.), spokesperson at the hearing of the House Ways and Means subcommittee on human resources. On the other hand, Rep. Wally Herger (R-Calif.), said that abstinence-only programs such as these are "welcomed by many teens, parents, schools and communities." It will be a year or more before results from studies examining the effectiveness of the current federally funded abstinence-only programs are available. Elayne Bennett, founder of the Best Friends Program, a teen prevention program that encourages sexual abstinence but is not covered by Title V, stated that many girls simply want to know "how to say no" to the pressure to have sex. Bennett said that study results show that girls who are part of her program are "far less sexually active" than their peers. .001410

  • November 26, 2001 Los Angeles Times   Pope Offers Apology to Sexually Abused Nuns.  In instances covering 23 countries, including the United States, some priests and missionaries forced nuns to have sex with them, and in some instances the women were forced to have abortions, according to the National Catholic Reporter. In a message sent via the internet to Catholics in Australia and New Zealand, the pope said that "sexual abuse by some clergy ... has caused great suffering and spiritual harm to the victims." .001413

  • October 2001 IUCN-World Conservation Union   Species Extinction on a Large Scale.  1/4 of the world's species of mammals are threatened with extinction and about half of those may be gone in as little as a decade, plus as much as 29% of the known plant species in the U.S. and at least one out of every eight known plant species worldwide is now threatened with extinction or nearly extinct. This is according to 1996 and 1998 reports by the IUCN-World Conservation Union. The main factor threatening species survival is fragmentation and degradation of habitat by humans. .001419

  • November 28, 2001 The Deseret News (Salt Lake City, UT)   Unity Leads to a Better World.  Humanity, by virtue of its size and capacity to harness and consume resources, is leaving footprints on the Earth and its environment. The international community urgently needs to work together on this problem. In the annual report from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), "Footprints and Milestones: Population and Environmental Change -- The State of World Population 2001", the close linkages between opportunities for women, basic health and the fate of environment are noted. Women are specially impacted by environmental concerns and can play a key role in solving them. Some of the problems are: 3 billion people live on less than $2 per day; One in six people around the world lack the necessary food needed to maintain a safe and nutritious life; In developing countries (where 80% of the world's population lives), 60% of the people lack basic sanitation, 33% do not have access to clean water, 25% lack adequate housing and 20% of all children do not attend school through the fifth grade. To make matters worse, by 2050 the population of the 50 poorest countries will triple. By that time, an estimated 4 billion people will receive less water than they need to function. By 2025, 70% of all available freshwater on Earth will be consumed to meet basic human needs for drinking, sanitation and cooking and food production will have to double from current levels. .001424

  • November 29, 2001 The Alan Guttmacher Institute;   Teenage Sexual and Reproductive Behavior in Developed Countries: Can More Progress Be Made?.  is the title of a new multi-year, cross-national study from The Alan Guttmacher Institute. While the U.S. teenage birthrates have fallen 20% since 1990 to 49 per 1,000 women aged 15-19 in 2000,the U.S. rate remains about twice as high as rates in Great Britain and Canada, and five times as high as in Sweden and France. The study found that differences in sexual activity and in the age at which teenagers become sexually active do not account for the wide variation between study countries in pregnancy and STD rates. Compared with teenagers in the other study countries, U.S. teenagers are less likely to use contraceptives, especially more effective hormonal methods. The other countries have strong and clear social expectations that sexual relationships should be committed and monogamous, and that teenage partners should use contraceptives to avoid pregnancy and to prevent STDs. Easy access to contraceptive and reproductive health services contributes to better contraceptive use and lower teenage pregnancy rates. Youth in other countries receive more assistance and support, including vocational training, job placement assistance and on-the-job training, than do U.S. teenagers. .001425

  • November 30, 2001 US Forest Service/NPG   USA: Population Growth Threatens Southern Forests.  A U.S. Forest Service study found that over the next four decades the U.S. South will lose more than 30 million acres of prime forestland to urban development, much of it in the Appalachian Mountains and the Florida Panhandle, increasing the threat to wildlife and water quality. .001433

  • October 02, 2001 The Lancet   Better Family Planning Services in Bangladesh Reduce Abortion Rates.  In less developed countries where fertility transition is occuring, abortion rates tend to increase along with the desire to limit family size - unless there is widespread availability of high-quality family planning services. Abortion rates were significantly lower in an area that had better family planning services compared with a control area - this was shown in research in rural Bangladesh. A country of 133 million traditional and religiously conservative people, Bangladesh has cut fertility from about 6.5 to 3 births per woman, a historic record in rapid fertility transition. Contraceptive use among women of reproductive age has tripled, to 55%. One of the incentives is that parents increasingly want to invest more in the health and education of their children. The Maternal Child Health and Family Planning (MCH-FP) Project, a supervised community-based health service since 1977 in the rural Bangladeshi subdistrict of Matlab has provided more accessible and higher quality family planning services than the standard government services. Community health workers visit door-to-door bi-weekly, offering varying methods of contraception selected to suit each couple's needs. The results are that rate of unintended pregnancy has dropped, and consequently abortions have dropped to about a third of those in the comparison area. .001436

  • October 1, 2001 Christian Science Monitor   Conference Recommends Better Management of Fishing.  "There are too many vessels chasing too few fish," and "The great oceans are exhaustible," said Dr. Jacques Diouf, the director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), speaking at the Reykjavik Conference (in Iceland) on Responsible Fisheries in the Marine Ecosystem. There were over 400 attending the conference, including national delegates from 75 countries, representatives from dozens of NGOs, scientists, and industry leaders. Diouf added: "Man is really not giving the fish in the sea much chance of escaping the fishing gear and allowing time to grow and reproduce." In 1950, 19 million tons of fish were harvested globally. That number increased to about 130 million tons in 2000. 50% of marine fishery resources are now fully exploited, 25% are overexploited, and 25% could support higher exploitation rates. Warnings against overfishing have been repeated since the early 1970s, yet the trend has not yet been reversed. Countries could get more fish from oceans if they allow over-fished stocks to recuperate, reduce wastage, and manage fisheries resources better. Broad swaths of habitat should be protected, for good "ecosystem management". For example, the state of California is implementing a system of marine parks, many of which would ban all types of fishing. This angers many local fishermen, but scientists say this system is necessary for managing overstretched fisheries. The Marine Life Management in California calls for plans based on science and public input to protect targeted species. Like ecosystem management on land, the idea is to adopt broad guidelines that recognize the mutual dependence of species and their habitats. .001437

  • December 4, 2001 USA Today   Importance of Foreign Aid Is Hitting Home; Lawmakers Look to Boost the Budget after Years of Cutbacks.  After the destruction of the World Trade Center, nearly 4,000 American deaths, and a war in Afghanistan, key members of Congress are finally wanting to share more of America's wealth with other nations. A bipartisan Senate resolution introduced last month would triple foreign aid funding over the next 5 years. More than 40 signatures, with more expected, have been added to a letter urging President Bush to increase foreign aid in next year's budget. They say it is the best way to win friends and influence people around the globe. Traditionally, polls have shown that Americans say the government spends too much money overseas. "People have a difficult time understanding how events in faraway places can affect us," says Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y. But the share of the federal budget devoted to foreign aid has dropped from 15% of every U.S. tax dollar in the late 1940s (to help war-torn Europe), to now only 1% of the government's $ 1.9 trillion budget, with over one-third earmarked for military and law enforcement operations. The amount spent on feeding, housing and educating the world's poorest citizens, which many experts see as the most effective way to win goodwill, is even less. "We're going to have to do a lot more in the areas of education, health care, democracy-building," says Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., chairman of the House panel with jurisdiction over foreign aid. "If we're going to be bold and face this thing as a national emergency, we have to recognize that our economic aid and assistance programs (are) part of our diplomacy." Those that oppose foreign aid say that money sent overseas has gone "to prop up bad governments that have mistreated their people." As a result, Congress slashed the staff of the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID) by almost 40%. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., a co-sponsor of the resolution, along with Leahy and Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., says the United States would help itself by helping nearly 800 million people who don't have enough to eat and more than 1 billion who don't have safe drinking water. And there are inequities. Israel, with a population of 5.9 million, an average per capita income of $18,900 and a democratic government, will receive $2.8 billion in U.S. aid this year. On the other hand, famine-stricken Afghanistan, with a population of 26.8 million, an average per capita income of $800 and a government that harbored some of America's most committed enemies, was budgeted to get $174 million before Sept. 11. Even President Bush has earmarked almost $1 billion for emergency assistance to Afghanistan and neighboring countries, whose support the United States needs in its battle against terrorism. .001444

  • November 30, 2001 Newsday/Daily Telegraph   Campaign Challenging Condom Ban Launched.  Catholics for a Free Choice (CFFC) recently launched a global campaign that challenges the Catholic Church’s ban on the use of condoms. CFFC launched the campaign to coincide with World AIDS Day. It began in Washington, D.C., with an advertising campaign effort that includes 50 bus shelters and 225 subway posters and an ad in The Washington Post. Subsequent ads will appear in Britain, Belgium, South Africa, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Bolivia, Chile, Mexico and the Philippines. .001470

  • December 29, 2001 The Independent (London)   Condom Shortage Fuels HIV Spread.  A global shortage of condoms and the continuing reluctance of many men to use them is fueling a worldwide explosion in HIV/AIDS, said Michael Fox, Senior Technical Director of UNAIDS. Nine billion condoms a year are supplied to countries around the world but more than twice as many are needed. There are still problems in distribution and in convincing people to use them, said Bernhard Schwartlander, an epidemiologist who worked on the report. .001471

  • November 28, 2001 Grist magazine   How's the Weather? Taking the Earth's Temperature .  The Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration agrees: August of 2001 was the second-warmest August ever in the modern historical record -- and now both September and October have ranked as the warmest ever - since modern temperature records began in 1880. October broke all records, with a world-wide average temperature of 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.6 degrees Celsius) above the long-term mean. In the Northern Hemisphere, October temperatures were 1.21 degrees Fahrenheit above average. If this were an El Nino year throughout much of the central and eastern equatorial Pacific, such a rise in temperature might be expected, but it is a La Nina year, the counterpart of El Nino. La Nina usually brings colder temperatures. .001477

  • September 2001 Populi - The UNFPA Magazine   Iran Produces Gender Statistics Datasheet.  A statistics data sheet divided by gender and covering areas such as population, life expectancy at birth, mortality rates, marriage, economic participation, unpaid work, headship of households, and school attendance and literacy rates, has been produced by the Statistical Center of Iran. Produced with the support of UNFPA, the sheet also breaks down the statistics by province. .001479

  • December 21, 2001 Sierra Club population news list   International Family Planning Funding and Policies Finalized!.  Congress approved $446.5 million for international family planning representing an increase of $21.5 million over last year. This includes $34 million for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), with an increase of $9 million. Significantly, the long-standing "China Penalty" language - which reduced the total U.S. contribution to UNFPA by one dollar for every dollar spent by UNFPA on family planning programs in China ? was eliminated. .001480

  • November 2001 Women's Health Journal   Gender Issues Factsheets .  The Pan American Health Organization's (PAHO) Women, Health and Development Program has recently produced a number of interesting factsheets on issues such as gender and food security and gender and child development. These and other useful sources of information are online at the PAHO website under the Resources section. .001488

  • December 2001 NPG   DC-Area Rush Hour Could Last 14 Hours by 2020 .  The stop-and-go traffic of rush hour around the Washington, D.C. area could stretch to 14 hours a day by 2020, according to a new analysis by the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission released this week. The findings are based on the latest population projections for the region. .001491

  • November 8, 2001 Rachel's Environment & Health News   Environmental Trends.  There are now at least a dozen writers or publicists who spend their days putting a smiley face on environmental trends, including Gregg Easterbrook, Michael Fumento, Rush Limbaugh, John Stossel, John Tierney, and Bjorn Lomborg. They make various claims such as: the environment is not seriously deteriorating; human population growth has slowed; forest tree cover in many countries is expanding; global warming will lead to more pleasant northern winters; toxic chemicals are becoming a thing of the past - and "all those gloomy environmentalists are scaring us to death so they can raise money". The public, hearing such news, doesn't know what to believe. We can point them to the new 327-page report titled OECD Environmental Outlook from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which describes environmental trends in the OECD's 29 member nations (Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, the Slovak Republic, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the U.K. and the U.S.). This is no Chicken Little manifesto from the fringe. Among the "red light" problems that the OECD has identified are: Human population will increase by 23% by 2020, imposing a 23% greater burden on the natural environment in the next 20 years. Plus, as household size diminishes (requiring more individual homes) and urban sprawl increases, the burden imposed on the environment by each individual is steadily rising; ... 20% of all protein in the human diet comes from ocean fish but 50% of the world's marine fisheries are already producing as much as they possibly can, 15% are being over-fished and another 7% are fully depleted - any increase in fish yields must come from fish farming which results in large concentrations of fish-waste nutrients, large-scale feeding of antibiotics, and escaping fish that can drive out native species and spread disease; ... Water pollution is reducing the useable supply in most countries at the same time that demand for fresh water increases to keep up with population growth, and 17 countries are pumping more water from underground than nature replaces each year; ... "Old growth" forests are being cut and replaced by secondary growth and by simple tree farms, which require artificial fertilizers and pesticides to survive, resulting in the steady decline of natural habitat and biodiversity, and a 6% loss of its total forested land in 20 years; ... Acid "rain" has led to current acid deposition levels in Northern Europe and parts of North America at least twice as high as critical levels, with the resulting acidification of surface waters and soils in these areas diminishing the quality of the most sensitive ecosystems; ... Degradation of wildlife habitat by human clearing and plowing up of land, irrigation (which brings lethal salts to the surface), and soil erosion, with 1/3 of the world's farmlands "strongly degraded," half of its wetlands destroyed, 20% of its fresh water fish extinct, threatened or endandered, and half of all primates, and 9% of all known species of trees are at some risk of extinction; ... Garbage: While the number of pounds of garbage in OECD countries is expected to increase by 28% from 1995 to 2020, adding the factor of growing population will cause OECD garbage to increase by 43% by 2020, reaching 847 million tons each year. Outside the OECD regions, annual garbage production is expected to more than double by 2020, reaching 1450 million tons per year. The garbage that goes to landfills is often contaminated underground water supplies, and incinerated garbage often produces a range of noxious air pollutants, including the notoriously toxic, mobile and long-lived dioxins and furans. 18% of OECD garbage was recycled in 1997; this number is expected to increase to 33% by 2020; ... Hazardous waste: per-capita OECD production will rise 47% to 320 pounds per person per year and, because of growing population, the total will increase 60% to 194 million tons each year. Significant portions of this will enter the general environment and eventually begin moving through food chains. .001497

  • September 2001 Center for Health and Population Research ICDDR,B   One and a Half Centuries of Demographic Transition in Nepal.  Mortality decline began in Nepal during 1930s, as suggested from data from the pre-1961 censuses. Fertility decline followed sometime between 1961 and early 1980s, with the total fertility rate declining from about 6 to 5 children per woman by early 1990s. At the current slow pace of fertility decline the total population will climb from 20 million to over 100 million by the year 2100. A median decline similar to the experience of Asian countries would reduce this growth to below 60 million and a rapid decline would result in a doubling to 40 million, the least possible growth that can be expected, which could plausably be achieved by a combination of smaller family sizes and rising age of childbearing. Note: Nepal is already suffering the effects of overpopulation with vast deforestation and landslides in the mountain areas where 50% of the population lives. Organizations like Planned Parenthood have pulled out of the family planning effort in Nepal in order to promote abortions there. Even though abortions in Nepal are punishable by long prison terms, half the maternal deaths to Nepali women are due to unsafe abortions. The question is: which is better: to provide more means of non-abortion family planning or to make abortions legal and safe? Which saves more lives? .001503

  • December 11, 2001 Reuters   Food Transport From Afar Wasteful, Risky - UK Group.  The fixings for a traditional British turkey dinner could travel more than 24,000 miles before they reach the table, says a report from the U.K. lobby group Sustain. Food travels 50% more than it did a decade ago, on average. The distribution of the country's food, completely dependent on oil, is a major contributor to pollution and climate change. In addition, nutrients are lost from fresh produce, there are animal welfare issues, and the spread of disease like hoof-and-mouth is more frequent. The transportation of food in some cases has become ridiculous - for example in 1997, the U.K. imported 33 million gallons of milk and exported 71 million gallons. "For every calorie of carrot, flown in from South Africa, we use 66 calories of fuel." ... "We need to invest now in regional and local food systems combined with fair trade initiatives that will bring about a more secure, sustainable and fair food system," said Andy Jones, who wrote the report. .001505

  • December 4, 2001 BBC News   Silt Behind Dams 'Worsens Water Shortage'.  Each year reservoirs of the world's dams are losing 1% of their capacity due to built up silt, the United Nations Environment Programme reported on the International Conference on Freshwater. The silting process is very much determined by the land use, where erosion due to farming practices play a large role. According to a book, "Evacuation of Sediments from Reservoirs", by Dr Rodney White, a British engineer, a capacity of 1500 km3 of a total of 7000 km3 could be lost by 2050. More severe weather due to global warming could also worsen erosion. According to White the erosion can be 150 times higher if from farmed crop land compared to forest covered land. "We must act to reduce the loss of forests and to re-afforest cleared areas. We must also act to reduce the threat of global warming," said Dr Klaus Toepfer, executive director of UNEP. "South Africa has found that if you simply plant pines and eucalyptus trees on bare slopes, they reduce the inflow to the reservoir by around 7%," said Jeremy Bird who is the interim coordinator of UNEP's Dams. Meanwhile the demand for water is increasing with the growing population. As for the developing countries UNEP is concerned that about 60% of the water used for irrigation is wasted. Also more than half of the water used in cities is wasted due to leaky pipes and poor management. "Six thousand children die every day because of inadequate water and poor sanitation," Dr Toepfer said, and further commented that "In Kenya, where UNEP has its headquarters, more than 5% of the water supply is used for brewing. That's not because we're all drinking from dawn to dusk. It's because brewing needs water, and can afford it." [Note: because of silting, dams with landslides and loose soil upstream lose all their capacity after only 70-100 years. In the U.S. most of the good dam sites are dammed, and the remaining environmentalists are fighting to have preserved as wild and/or scenic.] jlf .001507

  • December 13, 2001 NPG   USA: Birth Rate Rose 2% in 2000.  The U.S. birth rate rose 2% in 2000, the third consecutive annual increase after several years in which the number of births in the U.S. had declined, according to the latest statistics from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), published in the December issue of Pediatrics. Fertility rates rose 3%. .001513

  • December 12, 2001 National Academy of Sciences/NPG   Devastating Global Climate Change Could Occur Abruptly.  In a new report by the esteemed National Academy of Sciences, scientists warn that global climate changes could occur in an abrupt manner far faster than human systems and ecological systems could adapt. "Climate change is not always smooth. Sometimes it is abrupt," said Richard Alley, the lead author from Pennsylvania State University: "The bigger and faster it is, the harder it will be to deal with." The report cites geological evidence that such climate shifts have occurred frequently in the past changing temperatures over just a few decades. "This can happen in less than a human generation, and then it will persist for thousands of years," said David Battisti from University of Washington. The areas potentially most affected by such climate changes are water supply and agriculture, which could be destroyed by induced floods and droughts.     jlf.001514

  • December 12, 2001 Scripps Howard News Service/NPG   Chicago Area Will Run Short of Water by 2020.  "Alarmed by increasing reports of suburban wells running dry, the Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission looked into the problem, releasing a report earlier this year forecasting water shortfalls by 2020," reported Joan Lowy of Scripps Howard News Service this week. The six-county Chicago metro area is projected to add 1.3 million people by that year. "The lesson from Chicago, say water experts, is that the days of cheap, easy water are over in the United States," wrote Lowy. "If Chicago has to scramble for water, then fierce competition over water can break out anywhere. Indeed, it's already occurring. Water supplies are showing strain in places that once thought them limitless. The problem is exacerbated by population growth, a general warming trend, and urban sprawl." .001515

  • December 12, 2001 CBS News   USA: 59% Want Lower Legal Immigration Levels.  Fifty-nine percent of Americans say legal immigration levels should be decreased, a new CBS News poll shows. The poll, conducted December 7 - 10, also found 29% thought legal immigration should stay at current levels; 9% think it should be increased.   npg .001516

  • December 16, 2001 Los Angeles Times   Air Pollution Harmful to Babies, Fetuses.  More than a dozen studies in the United States, Brazil, Europe, Mexico, South Korea and Taiwan have linked smog to low birth weight, premature births, stillbirths and infant deaths, even in cities with modern pollution controls, including Los Angeles. Beate Ritz, an epidemiologist at UCLA's Center for Occupational and Environmental Health said, "This should make us pause. Air pollution doesn't just impact asthmatics and old people at the end of life, but it can affect people at the beginning of their life, and that can disadvantage people throughout their life." .001523

  • December 28, 2001 Earth Policy Institute   Iran's Birth Rate Plummeting at Record Pace: Success Provides a Model for Other Developing Countries.  In only 15 years, Iran's population growth rate plummeted from 3.2% in 1986 to a low of 1.2% in 2001, one of the fastest decreases ever recorded. Some are now looking towards Iran as a model to achieve smaller family sizes. This was not always the case though, given Iran's ever-changing stance on family planning throughout its recent history. Iran's first family planning policy was instituted in 1967 under Shah Reza Pahlavi, ensuring family planning as a human right. However, the policy was reversed in 1979 at the beginning of the Islamic Revolution in Iran led by Shiite Muslim leader Ayatollah Khomeini. Seeing family planning as an undue Western influence, Khomeini ordered the dismantling of family planning programs. During the Iran-Iraq war between 1980-1988, a large population was seen as a strategy to win the war, thereby encouraging a pronatalist stance and consequently raising the population growth rate to over 3%. UN data shows a doubling of Iran's population between 1968 and 1988 from 27 million to 55 million people. During the post-war development period in the late 1980s, Iran felt the negative effects of its rapid population growth rate in its overcrowded and polluted cities, finally seeing it as an obstacle to development. Khomeini responded by reviving the national family planning program in December 1989, encouraging families to space their births by 3-4 years and limiting family size to 3 children, and discouraging childbirth among women less than 18 or greater than 35 years old. In May 1993, the government passed a law that restricted maternity leave benefits after 3 children, further discouraging larger family sizes. Different ministries were told to incorporate information on population and family planning in their curriculum materials and the media were to raise awareness of the issues. In 2001 women in Iran were having on average less than 3 children during their childbearing years, compared to 7 in 1986. Several factors facilitated Iran's demographic transition, the most important probably being its strong government support. Contraceptives are provided for free, family planning and health services are provided to four-fifths of the rural population, and because family planning is integrated with primary health care, it helped to decrease the stigma associated with modern contraceptives. Religious leaders were also actively involved in promoting family planning, giving weekly sermons on the topic and issuing "fatwas" or religious edicts that permitted the use of contraceptives. Another important factor that helped Iran decrease its population growth was the involvement of men. For example, both men and women are required to take a class on modern contraceptives before a marriage license is issued to them. Iran's pro-active stance on curbing its population growth has helped alleviate its current water shortages and dwindling per capital arable land. Other developing countries with high population growth rates can draw from Iran's experience to help stabilize their populations.   rs .001607

  • December 23, 2001 CNN.com/Reuters   Kyoto: Great Leap Forward.  At a meeting between European and Asian environmental ministers who have decided to move ahead despite U.S. withdrawal China appealed for an early passage of the Kyoto protocol. The treaty required industrialized countries to reduce emissions to 5% below 1990 levels without setting any goals for developing countries. Xie Zhenhua, director of the State Environmental Protection Agency in China, said his country would consider deals with industrialized countries to reduce emissions within China which contributes 11% of global emissions, following an earlier announcement that China plans to double funding for emission reduction over the next five years. jlf .001704

  • December 10, 2001 Sustain   Eating Oil: Food Supply in a Changing Climate.  A new report [click on the link to download pdf files] released by Sustain and Elm Farm Research Centre (EFRC) considers the oil dependence of modern agriculture and food processing and distribution systems. In UK the distance of food transported by road which now accounts for up to 40% of all UK road freight increased by 50% between 1978 and 1999. In many regions (including the North Sea) of the world the oil extraction rate has peaked and in each year less oil on average is extracted from the ground than the year before which makes these regions more dependent on imports which increasingly come from the Middle East, but even then the oil would be exhausted by 2040 [*]. The enormous fuel use in the food system emit carbon dioxide which has been shown to cause climate change. Organic food also contributes to this. In one case a shopping basket of 26 imported organic products could have traveled 241,000 kilometres and released as much CO2 into the atmosphere as an average four bedroom household does through cooking meals over eight months the report says. The ingredients of a traditional Christmas meal could have traveled over 24,000 miles in total - if chosing only local suppliers this could be reduced to only 376 miles. For every 100 fruits consumed in the UK only 5 are actually grown there - the rest are imported. The report also considers loss of nutrients in transport, the easy spread of diseases, and animal welfare problems. The food system has become almost completely dependent on crude oil. This means that food supplies are vulnerable to increases in petroleum prices or any shortfall in oil supplies, as demonstrated during the fuel protests in the UK in 2000. Food distribution is also a major contributor to climate change and other forms of pollution. The environment and society cannot continue to bear the costs. We need to invest, now, in regional and local food systems combined with fair trade initiatives that will bring about a more secure, sustainable and fair food system," says the author of the report, Andy Jones. Caveat: This number assumes that nothing is added to the reserves. jlf .001719

  • January 2001 UNFPA   Family Planning Music Receives Royal Blessing in Benin.  In the West African country of Benin, the NGO named Organization for Service and Life has launched a collection of family planning songs, which it will distribute to various communities in the country. Entitled, 'The Benefits of Family Planning', the songs on a cassette were blessed by King Touko Chabi of Kpebie. Recorded in two languages, Bariba and Dendi, the songs help users of reproductive health services remember information they had received on reproductive health and family planning. According to the songs, family planning and associated services have substantial benefits, including the prevention of too close or unwanted pregnancies, which help reduce maternal mortality and complications of clandestine abortions. Also listed as benefits are the prevention of sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including HIV/AIDS, and the provision of economic opportunities for women through income-generating activities. The Organization for Service and Life, promotes reproductive health services in Parakou in close collaboration with communities and their leaders. At the request of the Beninese Government, the UNFPA supports the NGO and others, such as Child and Mother Survival. Its support includes the strengthening of clinic services, such as pre- and post-natal consultations, childbirths and the prevention of STIs. .001771

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