Population, Family Planning,
& Ecology News Digest
Archives January - April 2000
April 24, 2000 FAO
Slow Progress Towards Sustainable Agriculture Since Rio, FAO
Warns.
In the eight years since the UN Conference on Environment and Development
(UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro, and most of the challenges identified then have
still to be met. Environmental problems such as land degradation, loss of
agro-biodiversity and the impact of climate change on agriculture, pose an
increasing threat to the ability of countries to grow enough food and to
reduce hunger and poverty. 790 million people in developing countries and 34
million people in industrialized countries and in countries in transition
are suffering from hunger and undernourishment. The number of hungry people
decreases by about 8 million every year, but the annual decrease needed to
reach the World Food Summit target is nearly 20 million. Despite some
progress in reducing trade barriers, "support and protection to agriculture
is still high in many developed countries and adversely affect agriculture
in other countries by depressing commodity prices, which undermines
investment in agriculture." Official development assistance (ODA) for agriculture has been steadily declining since the late 1980s, amounting to only $7.5 billion between 1995-97, compared to nearly $15 billion in 1986-1988, according to FAO.
The world's farmers need to produce 40% more grain in 2020 to feed the
growing global population. Increases will mainly come from intensified
agricultural production. Sustainable intensification without further
degradation of natural resources and environment still remains a challenge.
Land degradation and the decline in soil fertility continue to be major
threats to food security and sustainable development, especially in
developing countries. "The problem is most severe in sub-Saharan Africa,
where annual average nutrient loss is estimated to be around 24 kg per
hectare and is increasing. In South Asia alone, the cost of different forms
of land degradation is estimated to be $10 billion per year." Progress has
also been slow in reducing excessive use of mineral fertilizers and
livestock wastes in intensive agriculture in certain countries. Water
pollution by nitrates is increasing in many countries, causing
eutrophication in lakes, estuaries and coastal areas. In many developing
countries continuous soil nutrient depletion leads to the deterioriation of
soil productivity and threatens the sustainable production of agriculture
and food security. Pesticide use continues to increase in developing
countries.
April 18, 2000 Xinhua
Over 1 Million Babies Born Malnourished in Indonesia.
About 30% of the 3.5 million babies born in the last two years in
Indonesia had serious malnutrition, according to State Minister of Women's Empowerment and head of the the National Family Planning Board, Khofifah Indah Parawansa. Many weigh less than two kilograms because of their mothers' poor health and malnutrition. Their growth would be retarded, both physically and mentally. "Unless help came quickly, they would become "the lost generation." ... and "they will become a serious social problem for the nation," she said.
April 13, 2000 Scripps Howard News Service
Grand plans for 'Water Decade' Evaporate.
The great "World Water and Sanitation Decade," which began in 1980, was to bring clean water and adequate sanitation to every person in the world by 1990. While proportionately more people now have access to drinking water, the waste and foul water generated by half of the world population of 6 billion is today still not properly dealt with, and nearly twice as many people than at the start of the Water Decade lack adequate sanitation. The World Commission on Water recently called for increased private sector involvement in Third World water projects, but radical analysts attacked a comprehensive lack of political will. Patrick McCully of International Rivers Network believes the crisis is due to "mismanagement, skewed political priorities, over-consumption, waste, pollution, watershed degradation, rampant dam building, poorly conceived and operated infrastructure projects, corruption and inequality, rather than water shortage. Stephen Turner of a Water Aid says that if the present rate of investment in water supply, which now brings drinkable quality water to 4.6 billion people, continues, then it's possible that everyone could have adequate supplies by 2025. But a significant boost in investment is needed to cope with increasing problems of waste and foul water generated by an increasing number of people.ccmc
April 17, 2000 Chicago Tribune
Drug-Resistent TB Spreading Rapidly
The deadly spread of multidrug-resistant strains of tuberculosis from
developing countries to rich countries is growing at an alarming rate and
should be a wakeup call for the Western world to wage war on the disease,
says the World Health Organization and the International Union Against TB &
Lung Disease. Resistance to at least one TB drug has increased by 50% in
both Denmark and Germany since 1996, while it doubled in New Zealand.
Significant multidrug-resistant (MDR-TB) strain "hot spots" have emerged in
Estonia and Latvia, as well as in parts of Russia, China, Iran, Mozambique,
Thailand and India. Victims treated in poor countries frequently fail to
complete their treatments, which leads to the development of more
drug-resistant strains. Because it is often a companion to AIDS, the disease
has re-emerged in the past decade as one of the world's biggest killers.
About 8 million people every year are newly infected with TB. Of these, 2.5
million are expected to die. In developing countries, it costs $10 to $20
for the medicines to cure a case of TB. But if the disease becomes drug
resistant, drug costs increase 100-fold. In New York in the early 1990s, a
MDR-TB strain killed 500 people and cost $700 million to suppress. A
WHO-recommended strategy called Directly Observed Treatment, Shortcourse
(DOTS), can produce cure rates of up to 95% with standard TB, even in the
poorest countries.
April 14, 2000 New York Times
China's Widely Flouted One-Child Policy Undercuts Its
Census.
Unannounced spot checks by the State Statistics Bureau have discovered
undercounts of up to 40 percent below official census figures in some
Chinese villages. Gathering accurate data on births is becoming more
difficult each year because more families are violating the limits on family
size and women are more likely to move to find work, making it more
difficult to track pregnancies. The policy allows urban residents one child,
and rural residents a second if the first was a girl; members of China's
minority populations may also have more children. The coercive techniques of
the past are being replaced by more lenient fees, encouraging more families
to have extra children and pay or ignore the fines. The one-child policy is
still strictly enforced in the cities, but in the rural countryside there is
tremendous variation, in some places 3, 4 or 5 children per family being the
norm. Village leaders are less likely to enforce an unpopular policy, and
many third or fourth children are hidden during census counts or their
parents simply pay the fees and registration costs so their children can
attend school. According to official statistics, the one-child policy has
dropped birthrates from 5.8 children per woman in 1970 to 1.8 today, a
significant improvement. VK
April 12, 2000 Philadelphia Inquirer
Activists Rally for Birth-Control Coverage.
In Pennsylvania, activists from Zero Population Growth and women's rights
groups demonstrated to push bills that would require health insurers to
cover birth control for women. Four of the 14 largest health plans in the
state currently cover major birth control options, while 3 do not pay for
any birth control under standard coverage. The National Abortion and
Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL) contends that women nationally pay
68 percent more than men in out-of-pocket health costs, largely because many
birth-control costs are not covered by insurance. The state's insurance
industry opposes the potential bill because it would drive up the cost of
health insurance, possibly forcing some to drop coverage altogether. The
activists consider the issue an issue of equal rights for women, pointing
out that insurance coverage for Viagra is more widely available than for
reversible birth-control methods such as the Pill, diaphragm, Norplant,
IUDs, and Depo-Provera. Advocates say that the estimated $1.78 per employee
per month needed to add contraceptive coverage to Pennsylvania health plans
would be more than offset by the reduced number of abortions and unwanted
pregnancies. If the bill passes, birth control coverage would be added to
the recent women's health mandates for coverage of annual Pap smears and
gynecological exams, reconstructive breast surgery following a mastectomy,
and longer hospital stays for new mothers. Eleven states have passed bills
requiring birth control coverage, including Georgia, California and New
Hampshire. VK
April 29, 2000 San Diego Union
Tribune
Pat Buchanan Fears Mexico Will Seize Southwest.
As president he'd halt illegal migration. Illegal Mexican immigration
is turning the border region into a battle zone and sowing the seeds of
nothing less than a move by Mexico to reclaim the American Southwest. "Mass
immigration followed by insurrection, independence and annexation: This is
how all of Europe's American empires were eventually expropriated and lost
and is how America grew," Buchanan said. "We may forget this history; Mexico
remembers."
Buchanan mentioned Mexican soccer fans booing the national anthem in Los
Angeles and radical voices advocating creation of an "Aztlan" nation.
April 21, 2000 (NAS Pop
list)
Earth Day Plus 30, As Seen By The Earth. By Donella
Meadows, adjunct professor at Dartmouth College. If, in the thirty Earth
Day celebrations we have held since 1970, the human population and economy
have become any more respectful of the Earth, the Earth hasn't noticed. What
the Earth sees is that, from the first Earth Day in 1970 to now, Earth Day
2000, the numbers of those hyperactive critters called humans have increased
from 3.7 billion to over 6 billion; the barrels of oil extracted from the
Earth's crust has grown from 46 million barrels to 78 million; natural gas
extraction has nearly tripled; human carbon emissions have increased from
3.9 million metric tons to an estimated 6.4 million; the global vehicle
population has grown from 246 to 730 million while air traffic has
multiplied by a factor of six; we have doubled the rate at which we grind up
trees to make paper to 200 million metric tons per year. We grow 2.25 times
as much wheat, 2.5 times as much corn, 2.2 times as much rice, almost twice
as much sugar, almost four times as many soybeans as we did thirty years
ago. We pull from the oceans almost twice as much fish. Average human life
expectancy has risen since 1970 from 58 to 66 years; gross world product has
grown from 16 to 39 trillion dollars; the planet's species are vanishing at
a rate it hasn't seen in 65 million years; 40% of its agricultural soils
have been degraded, and half its forests have disappeared and half its
wetlands have been filled or drained. Recycling has increased, but so has
trash generation, so the Earth receives more garbage than ever before. Wind
and solar power generation have soared, but so have coal-fired, gas-fired
and nuclear generation. While one degree (Fahrenheit) warming it has
experienced since 1970 may not seem like much, temperature differences from
one place to another have been changing much more than the average
temperature has changed. These temperature differences make winds blow,
rains rain, ocean currents flow. Despite Earth Day, all these trends are
accelerating. Earth Day has become a commercial occasion - trivializing -
even dangerous.
April 4, 2000 NPR - All Things
Considered
Family Planning in Iran. by Anchors Tobert Siegal and Noah
Adams, and reporter Jennifer Ludden. Iran had one of the highest birthrates
in the world just 10 years ago. After the Islamic revolution in 1979, it was
state policy to produce as many children as possible to strengthen the
revolution and produce future soldiers for the war with Iraq. After the war
ended, officials discovered their biggest problem was the exploding
population. Today, more than half Iran's population is under age 20. Iran's
has an army of women volunteers who go into homes to preach the benefits of
family planning. A fatwa, or religious edict, from supreme religious leader
Ayatollah Khamenei condones contraceptives, IUDs, and even tubal ligation. A
government campaign changed attitudes. Billboards everywhere equate fewer
children with peace of mind and a healthy society. Maternity leave and
health benefits are cut off after three children. Engaged
couples must take a family planning seminar to get their marriage license.
Nowadays, young people think about having a job to support children, before
considering having kids. A sign in a crowded city says: "Population control
reins in unemployment and illiteracy." Iran has a condom factory.
Contraceptives are free and available through a remarkably extensive health
system, even in rural areas. Vasectomies are promoted. There's extensive
counseling, but no
coercion. Birthrates have dropped from 5.2 children per woman in 1989 to
about 2.5 today. But with the numbers of young people, the population could
reach a staggering 100 million in the next 25 years.
April 3, 2000 USA Today
Feminists Warn against Complacency - Conference Emphasizes Global
Issues. Gloria Steinem told the 6,000 women who attended
Feminist Expo 2000: "We are 30 years into a century of change." The main
themes of the conference were: The plight of women in Afghanistan, who
suffer severe repression under the rule of the Taliban militia; a call for
the Food and Drug Administration to clear the drug mifepristone, also known
as RU-486; and a push for the United States to ratify the international
Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, or CEDAW.
The United States is the only industrialized nation that has not ratified
it. Conference participants were asked to "annoy Jesse Helms" by signing a
petition demanding that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman
release the treaty for a vote by the full Senate.
April 12, 2000 The Christian Science
Monitor
A Survivor's Story: One Woman's Crusade Against Rape In South
Africa. "Every 26 seconds in South Africa, a woman gets raped.
It was my turn last Thursday night." began a true two-page newspaper account
of freelance journalist Charlene Smith's own brutal experience in the
reputed rape capital of the world. Today, she can be credited for heightened
political awareness, some tentative improvements in the justice system - 22
new, first-of-a-kind rape courts, and new medical research initiatives. Some
52,000 women report a rape each year in South Africa. Police officials
estimate that only 1 in every 36 victims here actually reports the crime,
suggesting the real number of victims could be in excess of 1 million. Rural
men still believe the myth that sex with a virgin can cure AIDS. Gang rape
is shockingly common. Only 7% of reported rape cases ever make it to a
court.
April 17, 2000 The Post of Zambia
Africa Expected To Exceed India's 1.5 Billion Population.
Africa's population will soon exceed India's population of one billion, and
by 2050 is expected to grow to 2.5 billion while India's will stabilize at
1.5 billion. Accordingly, the absolute poor in India will decline
proportionately in India but increase significantly in Africa. Africa's
income inequality is the highest globally, with the richest 20 percent
receiving nearly 10 times the income of the bottom 10 percent. Forty-four
percent of Africans live below locally defined poverty lines. In order to
halve poverty by 2015, Africa would need investment rates of about 45 per
cent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The average savings rate is about
15 percent of the GDP, and foreign assistance adds another 12 percent,
leaving a financing gap of 18 percent of GDP that needs to be covered on an
annual basis. Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) executive secretary
Kingsley Amoako explains that capital flight is the main cause of the lack
of financing; Africans have lost faith in their governments and therefore
prefer savings export or immediate consumption. VK
April 12, 2000 USAID
Population and Health Materials Working Group Unveils One-Stop Search
Site
A ready-to-use search function searches through more than 20,000 pages on
over two dozen websites selected for information on reproductive health.
April 7, 2000 Oil and Gas
Journal
The Oil World 1973 Compared to 2000.
"The wolf is literally barking at our door." ... by Matthew R. Simmons
President Simmons & Company International. The world now faces a fragile
balance between raging demand and a relentless struggle to increase daily
supplies as decline curves accelerate and the record low levels of the
global petroleum stocks. In 2000, little excess capacity exists and all is
likely to be gone in a year or less. Few people seem to realize that, when
peak production is reached, and big fields roll over, they tend to fall
faster than anyone expects. In 1973, key US states produced 10.7 million
barrels of liquid petroleum per day. By 1979, despite the greatest drilling
boom in U.S. history, production from these same key states had already
fallen to 7.4 million barrels per day. By 1999, this production was less
than 4 million barrels per day. True, the U.S. uses less oil as a percentage
of our GDP, but these numbers need to be adjusted for inflation. The average
person consumed 26.3 barrels of oil per year in 1970, 31 barrels in 1978,
23.7 barrels per person in 1983, and now uses 26.5 barrels. [And there are
now more people in the U.S.] Today there are almost twice the vehicles on
our roads than in 1973, and they now consume almost 50% more oil than they
did. In 1973, the world needed only 55 million barrels of oil each day, but
in 2000, our oil needs have risen to 77 million barrels a day.
April 5, 2000 Washington Post
Making a Better World With U.S. Money.
A recent Rand report found that 59% of Americans support international
assistance, the highest percentage since attitudes were first tracked in
1974. Of those favoring assistance, 60% believe it will ultimately benefit
the United States economically. When asked how the assistance dollars should
be spent, two of the top goals were improving children's health and
increasing child survival rates. The fifth most popular program was helping
women in poor countries avoid unintended pregnancies, followed by helping
countries slow their rate of population growth. Funding for voluntary family
planning programs (which do not include abortion services) was favored by 8
in 10 Americans. Ignorance of population issues was evident, however; only
14% knew that the world's population is about 6 billion people. Sixty%
believe the Earth is overpopulated, and the percent of Americans that
believe that "too much population growth in developing countries is holding
back their economic development" rose to 71%, up from 55% in 1994. Hispanics
are more likely to support funding for family planning programs than any
other group, and 33% of Hispanics rank population growth as a very serious
problem, as opposed to 20% of the general population. The public highly
supports giving girls in developing countries the same educational
opportunities as boys, a factor that tends to postpone childbearing and
allows females to contribute to their family's well-being. A report released
by the World Health Organization and the International Union Against TB &
Lung Disease provides troubling news about tuberculosis; outbreaks this
decade have cost $2 billion. In Denmark, Germany, and New Zealand,
resistance to at least one TB drug has increased significantly. Foreign-born
patients are almost twice as likely to have the drug-resistant strain. The
only course for wealthy countries to protect themselves from the
drug-resistant strains may be to help developing countries strengthen their
TB control programs. VK
April 13, 2000 Los Angeles Times
Gore Sounds Environmental Alarm Anew.
A reissue of Vice President Al Gore's 1992 bestselling book,
Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit,
will contain a new call to environmental activism. He warns that the global
warming trend must be halted, or sea levels could rise to catastrophic
levels. He also stands by his 1992 position of completely eliminating the
internal combustion engine in his lifetime. Gore calls environmental
protection the world's second-most-urgent challenge after the threat of
nuclear war, remarking that global pollution endangers quality of life and
life itself. Gore is pushing for the ratification of the Kyoto agreement,
which would commit the United States to cut carbon emissions by 30% from the
levels they otherwise would reach by 2012. He vows, if elected, to increase
environmental technology to help other nations invest in renewable energies
and conservation, to protect endangered species, and to protect public lands
from being exploited for their resources. He faces opposition from both
conservatives and from environmentalists who feel that Gore and the Clinton
Administration have not done enough for the environment. VK
April 8, 2000 Philadelphia Inquirer
Clinton Urges Global Family-Planning Aid.
President Clinton has begun a campaign to lift the gag rule that prevents
federal money from going to international organizations that advocate
abortion rights and to increase spending on worldwide family planning and
AIDS prevention. He asked Congress to increase family planning assistance by
45 percent, or $169 million, for the 2001 fiscal budget, restoring aid to
1995 levels. Clinton said that the congressionally supported restrictions
bar family-planning organizations from discussing reproductive health
choices, rules that would never be accepted in America. As Rep. Carolyn B.
Maloney (D., N.Y.) states, "In America, it's unconstitutional. Around the
world, it's unconscionable." Clinton points out that U.S. money is not used
to perform abortions. Rather, he said, it goes only to prevent unwanted
pregnancies, which reduces the need for abortions and the number of botched
abortions. Rep. James C. Greenwood (R., Pa.), who is cosponsoring a bill to
increase spending on family planning, said botched abortions kill 75,000
women each year. V
April 25, 2000 ENS
U.S. Fish Harvesters Up on Financial Rocks.
Overfishing has become a crisis in this country. The harvesting of wild
fish is the last wild animal industry in the US. Overfishing, habitat
destruction, and stock depletion here are mimicking the pattern of collapse
that occurred in the Canadian fish industry in the 1990s.
"Lost at Sea", the wake-up call report issued by the Marine Fish
Conservation Network, a coalition of 90 environmental groups, fishing
associations, and marine scientists, alleges that the NMFS has been
approving fishery management plans which do not abide by the conservation
measures mandated under the Sustainable Fisheries Act (SFA) of 1996.
The report found that since 1994, U.S. taxpayers have paid more than $160
million to mitigate economic and ecological impacts of fishery management
failures in New England, Alaska, and the West Coast.
"The industry is suffering from serial depletion with harvesters going from
species to species in each fishery without concern for renewable stocks,"
says Mark Powell, Pacific fisheries manager for the Center for Marine
Conservation. "The businesses harvesting fish are the same group regulating the industry, and they don't want the public to know they are operating without a viable
business plan," he says. MT
April 13, 2000 ENS
Seattle Pledges Zero Greenhouse Gas Emissions.
Seattle has a great environmental record. Despite a population increase of
25 percent, water conservation programs have kept regional consumption below
1980 levels. Pink and chum salmon runs are now among the healthiest in the
region due to improved dam operations on the Skagit River. Seattle has
recycling rates that surpass any other municipality in the world and that
have saved the City and residents more than $12 million since 1987, as well
as energy conservation measures that have saved enough energy to power one
out of every eight Seattle homes.
Due to global warming, scientists predict that the Pacific Northwest will
experience more summer droughts, winter floods, damage to forests, rising of
ocean levels and deteriorating conditions for endangered salmon unless
greenhouse gas emissions are reduced.
In honor of Earth Day 2000, the City of Seattle plans to embrace renewable
energy and energy efficiency to drop its emissions of greenhouse gases to
zero. The City Council has unanimously adopted a proposal to meet Seattle's
future electricity needs with no net emissions that are linked with global
warming and climate change. MT
April 4 2000 Population
Press
Ten Billion Mouths to Feed by David and Marcia Pimentel
It is doubtful that we can feed a world population of 10 billion. Already
more than 3 billion people now are malnourished worldwide according to a
recent World Health Organization report. This is the largest number and
proportion of malnourished people ever in history. Malnourishment leads to
susceptibility to other diseases, such as malaria, diarrhea, and AIDS.
Cereals grains, which comprise 80% to 90% of the world food supply have
increased per hectare harvest only slightly since 1984, while the number of
people has risen considerably, causing a per capita decline in cereals. The
current number of children per couple averages 2.9. Even at 2.1, the world
would increase to 12 billion. Much of this increase is due to the large
numbers of people entering their child-bearing years. More than 10 million
hectares of cropland are degraded and lost every year due to wind and water
erosion. In developing countries erosion is intensified where the rural poor
remove crop residues for cooking fuel. Valuable forests are being removed
for new cropland, while often poor farmers are cultivating marginal,
unproductive lands. Per capita irrigated cropland per has declined about 10%
in 10 years because of population growth and the salinization and
waterlogging that destroy cropland.
March 31, 2000 Associated Press
Former Senator Discusses Birth Control.
Gaylord Nelson, a former Wisconsin governor and U.S. Senator who helped
establish Earth Day in 1970, urged the U.S. to steps to reduce population in
order to protect the U.S.'s wilderness and environment. He recommended
restricting immigration and providing financial incentives to limit family
size to one child per couple, but stated, " I don' t want us to go the route
of India or China." America could reach a population of 500 million by 2050,
twice today's population. Nelson doubted that there would be any room left
for wild creatures and quiet places at that point. Population growth has
already destroyed half the nation's environmentally valuable wetlands, he
pointed out. VK
March 29, 2000 Washington Post
Number and Rate Of U.S. Births Rise.
In 1998, both the total number of births and the birthrate were up for the
first time since 1990. While this was true for all women between ages 15 and
44, the overall trend seemed to be driven by women in their twenties. The
daughters of baby boomers are have children earlier than their parents did,
returning to patterns closer to earlier generations. The trend is expected
to continue as the members of the growing teenage population move into their
twenties. The total number of births increased 2 percent over 1997, and the
overall fertility rate for 1998 was 66 births per 1,000 women, up 1 percent
from 1997. The birthrates for second, third and fourth children also
increased, even for women in their late thirties. From 1995 to 1998, The
number of third children increased from 8 per 1,000 women ages 35-39 to 9
per 1,000 children. A strong economy likely played a part in the increased
birth rate. Nationally, the 1998 total fertility rate is 2.06 children per
women, below the replacement level of 2.1. Mexican, black, and Puerto Rican
women are having children above the replacement level, while whites, Asians,
American Indians and Cubans are reproducing below replacement levels. The
fertility rate, or number of births to women age 15 to 44, rose 5 percent
for Puerto Rican women and 1 percent for whites and blacks, while declining
about 4 percent for Mexican and Asian women. Mexican women in their
twenties, however, were the most reproductive of any group, with 198 babies
per 1,000 women age 20 to 24. Teenage births are continuing to decline, a
trend reflecting fewer pregnancies, not more abortions, but the portion of
all births occurring to unmarried women rose slightly, to 33 percent. 13
percent of women smoked during pregnancy, down 2 percent from 1997, but the
rate rose among teenage mothers. 30 percent of white teenage mothers smoked
during pregnancy, a rate about five times that of black teenage mothers. The
portion of women who began prenatal care in the first trimester continued to
rise, to 83 percent in 1998. VK
March 10, 2000 Reuters/CNN Interactive
Paraguay Faces Outbreak of Dengue Fever.
An explosion of Type I dengue fever, a mosquito-borne disease, has affected
tens of thousands of people in Paraguay. Type I is the less severe form,
causing fever, rash, headaches and muscle pain. It affects some 100 million
people worldwide, principally in tropical regions. There is no vaccine for
the disease, which in its more deadly form (Type 2) can cause internal
bleeding. Nearby Bolivia advised residents to reject water stored in cans
and pitchers to avoid the spread of the disease, and launched a fumigation
campaign.
March 28, 2000 Sacramento Bee
Medicines, Chemicals Taint Water: Contaminants Pass Through Sewage Plants.
Raising new environmental and health concerns: scientists attending the American Chemical Society's annual meeting in San Francisco reported findings that urban America's rivers and ground water are spiked with a dilute cocktail of pain relievers, caffeine, antibiotics, birth control pills and perfumes, apparently passing from humans through sewage treatment plants. The sex organs in fish downstream appear to be changed by synthetic and natural human sex hormones. The addition of medicine-chest chemicals into US water is not monitored or regulated, and sewage treatments plants are not designed to filter out all of these contaminants. Some of the contaminants included: codeine, antacids, cholesterol-lowering agents, anti-depressants and Premarin, an estrogen replacement. A German scientist reported that chemical fragrances from perfumes, shampoos, detergents and sunscreen lotions were accumulating in the flesh of fish down river from sewage treatment plants in Berlin. Some drugs, such as chemotherapy drugs, retain nearly all their potency as they leave the body. Antibiotics and hormones from animal feed lots also end up in waterways.
A complete list of contaminants is at
http://toxics.usgs.gov/regional/contaminants.html
March 22, 2000 Scripps Howard News
Service
Advocates of More Public Transit Criticize Highway
Spending.
A study by the Surface Transportation Policy Project, which favors mass
transit and other transportation alternatives, found that federal spending
on new roads grew 21 percent while spending on other transportation fell by
19 percent in the last two years. This reversed the trend in the 1990s of a
variety of federally funded transportation projects beyond road-building.
Building and widening highways drew the largest share of new federal
funding, growing from $5.8 billion in 1998 to almost $9 billion in 1999, or
26.7 percent of federal transportation aid. In contrast, mass transit aid
fell from its peak of 27 percent in 1995 to 16.6 percent, or $5.5 billion,
last year. The group contends that road building does not work to solve
congestion, and that building new highways only encourages the sprawl that
causes traffic congestion in the first place. However, some critics of the
study such as the Road Information Program believe that both new roads and
mass transit are important. They point out that between 1970 and 1997, the
U.S. population grew by 30 percent while traffic increased by 130 percent.
New roads and lanes increased by only 5 percent. VK
March 10, 2000 UNEP
Legislative Update - International Family Planning
Click here for the status of H.R. 3634 - Saving Women's Lives Through International Family Planning Act of 2000 - which provides international family planning funding for the fiscal year 2001; and S. 2380 - the Senate version of the same bill; and the Global Democracy Promotion Act of 2000 (H.R. 4211) - which would repeal "global gag rule" restrictions on international family planning assistance from USAID that were passed as part of the FY2000 Foreign Operations Appropriations bill; and the Technical Assistance, Trade Promotion and Anti-Corruption Act of 2000 (S. 2382) - which seeks to place unnecessary contingencies and additional bureaucratic layers on family planning programs; and the Foreign Operations, Export Financing, and Related Programs Appropriations Act of 2001 (S.2522) - where monies for all foreign assistance programs for FY2001 is voted on, and which contains a number of positive measures for voluntary international family planning and population assistance programs.
March 10, 2000 UNEP
The Fraying Web of Life
Staggering statistics from a report entitled World Resources 2000-20001: People and Ecosystems, The Fraying Web of Life, by the United Nations Development Program:
.Half of the world's wetlands were lost last century. ... Logging and conversion have shrunk the world's forests by as much as half. ... Some 9% of the world's tree species are at risk of extinction; tropical deforestation may exceed 130,000 square kilometers per year. ...Fishing fleets are 40% larger than the ocean can sustain. ... Nearly 70% of the world's major marine fish stocks are overfished or are being fished at their biological limit. ...Soil degradation has affected two-thirds of the world's agricultural lands in the last 50 years. ...Some 30% of the world's original forests have been converted to agriculture. ...Since 1980, the global economy has tripled in size and population has grown by 30% to 6 billion people. ... Dams, diversions or canals fragment almost 60% of the world's largest rivers. ... Twenty percent of the world's freshwater fish are extinct, threatened or endangered. JH
March 22, 2000 Mobile (AL) Register
Sprawl Endangers Mobile-Area Wetlands.
Alabama is about ten to twenty years out of date in terms of knowing the
state of the Mobile-area wetlands. The last time a comprehensive inventory
of the region's wetlands was done was in 1979, and efforts to update the
information have not been well coordinated. Government agencies such as the
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Baldwin County Planning Department, the
Mobile Bay National Estuary Program, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
have not coordinated their efforts to identify and regulate the wetlands.
The wetlands and underwater seagrasses provide essential food and spawning
habitat for fish and other marine life. Poor planning and poor funding also
contributed to the lack of information. A growing population and sprawl in
Baldwin and Mobile counties have pushed development, endangering wetlands.
Until the agencies' efforts are coordinated and the state of the wetlands is
assessed, conflicts over land use and wetlands destruction will continue.
VK
March 27, 2000 Los Angeles Times
Balancing Act in Orange County: Accommodating Both Nature and Nature
Lovers.
In Orange County, the two goals of protecting delicate habitats and allowing
the public to enjoy them are especially difficult to reconcile. Rapid growth
has created a great demand for recreation while decreasing the amount of
open space and undisturbed habitat in the area. Throughout the state,
heavily populated urban areas are often found near parks or natural
reserves. Orange County's population is expected to increase from 2.8
million to 3.3 million by 2020.
Visitors to the beaches often take with them shells (leaving hermit crabs
without homes), sea stars, mussels, and marine snails. Other endangered or
threatened species such as the Southwestern arroyo toad, California
gnatcatcher, oaks and sagescrub, and habitats such as tide-pools and the
area's only natural lake, are being threatened by visitors. Awareness
campaigns now include tactics such as mailing 20,000 brochures to tide-pool
visitors, informing teachers and visitors of proper behavior, and issuing
warnings and citations to people who remove marine wildlife. Some areas have
been closed during important breeding seasons or even longer while the area
recuperates. Many areas now only allow docent- or biologist-led hikes.
While visitors may not be happy about the limited access to the county's
reserves, these actions may be the only way to keep natural areas from
disappearing. VK
March 23, 2000 Rand News Release
Americans Lack Knowledge - But Not Concern - About World Population
Issues. Rand's latest telephone survey examined how Americans
felt about world population issues. Interviewing 1500 people, the survey
found that although most Americans lack knowledge of even basic world
population statistics, 6 in 10 believe that the
earth is overpopulated. While many do not view population control as a
pressing concern, a majority believes that overpopulation results in
environmental problems, civil strife, and other problems. Older Americans
(27%) and Hispanics (33%) were more likely to rate rapid population growth
as a serious problem, as compared to the general population (20%). The Rand
survey also found that 8 in 10 interviewees favored US aid for developing
countries to fund voluntary family planning programs. At the same time,
however, 50% approved of the 1996 US congressional vote to reduce US
contributions to international family planning. Despite the general
sentiment that family planning should be encouraged in both America and
abroad, opinions over abortion remained split reflecting a 25 year trend.
Rand concludes that while Americans are concerned about increases in
population, they seem to contradict those concerns frequently, citing that
many who oppose abortion are proponents US funding for family planning, both
at home and abroad. jb
March 21, 2000 The Associated Press
U.N. Offers Migration As Solution to Population Decreases.
Despite anti-foreigner sentiment present in Europe, a new U.N. study
recommends significant increases in migration to offset the low fertility
rates and declining population in some European and Asian countries. Japan,
South Korea, and Europe may not be able to support their increasing number
of retirees without taking action. To maintain the favorable ratio of four
workers to every retiree, Italy would have to accept 2.2 million immigrants
a year or raise the retirement age to 77. In order to maintain its present
worker-to-retiree ratio, Japan would also have to raise the retirement age
to 77 if they do not import 10 million workers a year for the next 50 years.
Increased immigration would also help these countries compete with the
United States, whose aging baby-boomer population is being supported by a
constant flow of working-age immigrants, on average 1.1 million a year from
1990 to 1996. Other possibilities of offsetting the declining work force
include a surge in the birthrate, as happened in the United States following
WWII, or increasing the number of women in the workforce, an especially
viable solution in South Korea. VK
March 13, 2000 PlanetArk
Poachers
Decimate Gorilla Population in East Congo. Poaching has
decimated the population
of endangered gorillas in the war-ravaged east of the Democratic Republic of
the Congo,
according to officials. Only 70 eastern lowland gorillas remain in the
highlands of Kahuzi-Biega
National Park, compared with a population of 258 several years ago. Gorillas
are being killed by
poachers, militiamen and villagers in search of food. Kahuzi-Biega has been
closed to tourists
since August 1998. In 1994 Hutu militiamen and soldiers from the former
Rwandan army -
responsible for a genocide that claimed the lives of an estimated 800,000
people in Rwanda,
mostly Tutsis- fled into the Congo and took refuge in the park. Officials
say around 8,000
gorillas were thought to inhabit the lower regions of the park several years
ago, but that
number has certainly decreased. No trace of bush elephants remains in the
highlands - where
there used to be 400 - but 3,600 were still thought to be in the lowlands.
Villagers living
around the park have chopped down trees for charcoal and firewood and hunt
animals, including
antelope and chimpanzees, for "bushmeat".
March 24, 2000 ENS
Kenya's Indigenous Honey Hunters Lose Their Forest Home.
The Kenyan courts ruled to claim part of the Central Rift Valley, the
ancestral home to the Ogiek people, in the name of the common good. The
decision was said to benefit the environment by removing the people from the
natural forest.
"The eviction is for the purpose of saving the whole Kenya from a possible
environmental disaster and it is being carried out for the common good
within the statutory powers," judges Samuel Oguk and Richard Kuloba said in
their summary of judgment.
The Ogiek people were given "not inhospitable" alternative land during the
colonial days, but returned to their native forest despite the forced
re-location. The judges aimed their verdict at people who live in the
forest without following statutory requirements.
Despite the fact that the land was seized for environmental reasons, sadly,
large portions of it have fallen into private hands; hands which are
altering it from its natural state and isolating it from the rest of the
park.
MT
March 27, 2000 World Watch
Globalization Straining Planet's Health.
According to the report Vanishing Borders: Protecting the Planet in the
Age of
Globalization, by Hilary French, globalization presents growing threats
to the planet and its inhabitants. Forests are shrinking as the value of
global trade in forest products climbs, from $29 billion in 1961 to $139
billion in 1998. Fisheries are collapsing as fish exports grow nearly
fivefold in value since 1970 to $52 billion in 1997. Pesticide exports have
increased almost nine times since 1961, to $11.4 billion in 1998,
endangering human health. World goods exports have increased 17-fold between
1950 and 1998. Globalization should be channeled to protect, rather than
undermine, the earth's natural systems. The new communications technologies
help create powerful international coalitions, like last December's
outpouring of citizen concern at the World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting
in Seattle. And trade can help spread environmentally beneficial products
and technologies, from shade-grown coffee to wind power. The rising
investment in natural resources sectors such as forestry, mining, and
petroleum development is threatening the health of the world's forests,
mountains, waters, and other sensitive ecosystems. The increasing movement
of human beings and their goods and services has provided convenient
transportation for thousands of exotic species of plants and animals.
Semiconductor manufacturing employs hundreds of chemicals, including
arsenic, benzene, and chromium, all of which are known carcinogens. Over
half of all computer manufacturing and assembly operations-processes
intensive in their use of acids, solvents, and toxic gases-are now located
in developing countries. On the other hand, globalization has been
beneficial in bringing cleaner technologies to developing countries. China
has taken the lead in producing energy-efficient compact fluorescent light
bulbs. India has become a major manufacturer of advanced wind turbines. Some
countries work to harness the global economy to protect rather than decimate
natural wealth: Costa Rica by way of eco-tourism, and Mexico via organic
farms. The report recommends the following: that the World Trade
Organization respect the precautionary principle, which holds that lack of
scientific certainty should not be used as a reason for postponing action
where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage; that goods should
show an eco-label so that customers know about the impacts of products they
purchase; the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) should be upgraded into a
stronger World Environmental Organization
March 20, 2000 The Toronto
Star
Water Fight Looms for Megacities. At the second World Water
Forum in the Hague, Netherlands, a growing potential for disaster in the
world's mushrooming major centres was pronounced. Megacities, defined as
those that have at least 10 million people - are projected to double in
number by 2025. 18 of the planet's 21 megacities are developing countries
where annual grow rates of up to 10% add to overstressed water systems which
already leak as nearly half of their freshwater reserves. The Forum was
attended by delegations from 112 countries. Klaus Toepfer of the United
Nations Environment Program (UNEP) called for full-cost pricing for water
which would throw open the door to massive private-sector investment in
water and waste-treatment facilities. Africa's annual population growth is
2%, and urban population is rising by 5% each year. Nairobi will double in
size in the next 15 years. Aquafers are poisoned by latrines set up at the
city perimeters to accomodate newcomers. The world now has 228 cities with
more than 1 million people. By 2025 there will be 650 such cities.
March 23, 2000 Associated
Press
Clinton Pushes India on Environment.
Pollution has blemished the gleaming white marble walls of the Taj Mahal,
India's treasured monument. Clinton urged India, one of the world's poorest
nations, not to sacrifice the environment for the sake of economic growth.
Clinton visited some villages where he learned about the role of women and
heard stories of stuggle for child care, higher wages, better education in a
rural society where they traditionally are considered subservient to men.
March 20, 2000 ENS
Valdez a Drop in the Bucket? What Else Aren't We Hearing
About?
The Exxon Valdez spilled 11 million gallons of oil into the ocean. A city
of 5 million people generates that much run-off each year.
Large oil spills only account for 10% of the oil ending up in the ocean each
year. About 706 million gallons of oil gets in the ocean each year via used
engine oil being poured down the drain, runoff from city streets, air
pollution particles and off-shore oil drilling. So who's dumping oil down
the drain? A lot of people are, because 363 million gallons of it ends up
in our waterways due to this reason alone. Ship operations account for over
137 million gallons entering oceans and waterways. Oil tankers spill 37
million gallons each year, and another 15 million spill from off shore oil
rig operations. Millions of gallons of jet and aircraft fuel spills each
year, on land and in water. In 1985 at Des Moines Creek, 34,000 gallons of
toxic jet fuel spilled which killed 50,000 salmon. In October 1999 at Honda
Harbor in Puerto Rico, 112,000 gallons of jet fuel spilled. And in that
same month, 10 railroad cars were derailed in Talkeetna, Alaska, spilling
12,000 gallons of jet fuel.MT
March 21, 2000 ENS
National Park Jet Ski Ban, or Almost Ban.
The National Park Service (NPS) announced new rules that will reduce the use
and impact of jet skis in National Park waters. However, some
environmentalists are saying that the rules do not go far enough, and that
these personal watercraft should be banned altogether from National Parks,
since their very use violates the principles of our National Parks.
We all know how loud and disturbing they are for us, while we are trying to
recreate in a natural setting. But these crafts go way beyond just noise
pollution. The exhaust emissions from running a jet ski for a 2 hour period
is equivalent to that produced by driving a 1998 passenger car for over
100,000 miles!
The NPS is seeking to "limit" use in about two dozen National Parks. Also,
most of these areas have a 2-year grace period before they must employ any
restrictions. The reason being that the NPS has deemed these parks as
having water-related recreation as their primary purpose.
Jet ski use is already banned in Yellowstone and Everglades national parks,
Buffalo National River in Arkansas and Ozark National Scenic Riverways in
Missouri, due to special regulations imposed prior to this new NPS
rulemaking process.
"The Park Service knows quite well that jet skis threaten public safety,
shatter natural quiet, and destroy visitor enjoyment," said Dr. Russell
Long, Director of Bluewater Network. "What's surprising is that the agency
charged with protecting our national heritage is ignoring this damage and
will condemn nearly two dozen parks to an onslaught of jet ski
destruction."MT
March 14, 2000 The Telegraph (London)
China to Relax "Disastrous" One-Child Policy.
Now that China's birthrate has dropped to safer levels, the twenty-year-old
policy of one child per family will be softened. China still recognizes the
necessity of family planning, but its enforcement will become more flexible,
allowing for more categories of Chinese to be allowed more than one child.
The dramatic one-child policy is connected with the suicides and breakdowns
by many lone children faced with the expectations of their entire families,
and with the steep decline in the female population. 120 boys are now born
for every 100 girls. Illegal selective abortions and female infanticide may
contribute to a catastrophic shortage of women soon facing China. Only one
percent of 30-year-old women are unmarried. Under the current policy,
families having more than one child face steep fines; unregistered children
have no right to an education or citizenship or hope of finding a good job.
Family planning abuses are one of the biggest causes of resentment in the
countryside, where officials may terrorize peasants who break the rules or
demand bribes. China defends its one-child policy, saying it has prevented
an extra 300 million people from being born that the stressed country could
not have fed. VK
March 16, 2000 Nature Conservancy
US Has More Species Than Previously Thought.
In a report, "Precious Heritage: The Status of Biodiversity in the United
States", The United States is home to more than 200,000 plant and
animal species, twice as many as previously thought. But a third of the
species living in the United States are imperiled to some degree. The U.S.
is home to about 10% of the known species on Earth; ranks at or near the top
among nations in its variety of mammals, freshwater fish, salamanders,
snails and crayfish; and contains 21 of the world's 28 different types of
ecological regions -- a greater variety than any other country. The Nature
Conservancy is also expected to announce a five-year, $1 billion program to
protect US wilderness.
March 15, 2000 Agence France-Presse
UNICEF Warns Of High Child, Maternal Mortality in Congo.
for every 1,000 live births, 205 children under age 5 die. Among mothers,
the death rate is 1,800 per 100,000 births - the highest rate in the world -
the same as Sierra Leone, another country at war. Primary school enrollemnt
has dropped from 65% three decades ago to 35% in many areas of the country.
In central Congo, children younger than 14 are being used as laborers in
mines.
March 16, 2000 DOE Energy Information
Administration
World Energy Demand Continues Rapid Growth.
>From the annual DOE EIA report International Energy Outlook, the
world's use of energy will continue to grow rapidly at least until 2020,
particularly in developing countries. Global energy consumption will rise by
60%, in developing countries by 121%. Carbon emissions -- linked to concerns
about global climate change -- will grow even faster than estimated, by 40%
from 1990 to 2010 and 72% from 1990 to 2020. Revisions in historical data
and a higher forecast for oil consumption in the former Soviet Union account
for the increase. China is expected to become the largest source of carbon
emissions by 2020, with output rising by 836 million metric tons between
1990 and 2010, and an additional 634 million metric tons between 2010 and
2020. However, energy intensity (energy consumption per dollar of gross
domestic product) is expected to decline by 1.1% a year in the
industrialized world and by 1% a year in developing countries -between 1997
and 2020. Natural gas will be the fastest-growing component of primary
energy consumption worldwide, more than doubling between 1997 and 2020.
February 17, 2000 ENN
Borehole Temperatures Confirm Global Warming.
Temperature readings taken from more than 600 holes drilled into Earth's surface confirm that a 500-year warming trend accelerated in the latter half of the 20th century, coinciding with emissions of 'greenhouse gases' such as carbon dioxide. Henry Pollack, a geology professor at the University of Michigan and co-author of the study in a recent issue of Nature said "some 80 percent of that warming corresponds with the growth of industrialization." This is another piece of growing evidence that the warming trend in the latter half of the 20th century is without precedent in the past 400 to 1,000 years. For the study, thermometers into holes drilled into Earth's surface, primarily at mining sites. Century-long temperatures propagate slowly down, reaching a depth of about 492 feet (150 meters) in 100 years and 1,640 feet (500 meters) in 1,000 years. Other systems of temperature analysis use tree-ring data analysis and ice core measurements. BP
February 16, 2000 South China Morning
Post
Hong Kong Population Set to Top 7 Million.
Hong Kong's population will increase beyond predictions this year due to an
expected baby boom and a continuing influx of mainland migrants, further
stretching resources and social services. 150,600 immigrants entered the
country in 1999 while the emigration rate dropped 33% over 1998. 2000
is the Year of the Dragon; a lower-than-normal birth rate this year is a
likely indicator of a baby boom that usually accompanies Dragon Years.
Although density is a problem, officials are mainly worrying about
maintaining the standard of living. Unemployment stood at 6% at the
end of last year, and officials worry that the job market will not be able
to keep up with the rising population.VK
March 2, 2000 Agence France Presse
China's Population Hit 1.259 Billion At End Of 1999.
The world's most populous country grew 0.87% last year, 0.07 percentage
point lower than 1998. The birth rate of 1.52% and the 0.64% mortality rate
produced a net increase of 11 million people in 1999, pushing the total
population to 1.259 billion. 69% of China's population is
rural, and 6.9 % of the population is over 65. VK
February 29, 2000 The Associated Press
Kenya's Population Up 34 Percent.
Although Kenya's population grew 34% in the last decade to reach 28.7
million, it did not reach the projected 30 million. Family planning efforts
made by the government and other concerned parties, encouraging families to
have the number of children they can economically support, have met with
some success. Fertility rates dropped from the average seven children per
woman in 1989 to five in 1999. VK
February 25, 2000 The Washington Post
Campaign Launched To Help Prevention Of Teen Pregnancy: Premature
Parenthood a Major Concern For D.C. Youths and Parents.
A two-year study conducted for the D.C. Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy
found that in Washington D.C., more than 40 percent of young people ages 11
to 18 said they have had sex. The campaign's goal is to cut the District's
rate of teenage pregnancies in half by 2005. Although teen pregnancy rates
in the District have declined, one in six teenage girls in the District gets
pregnant each year, compared with one in 10 nationally. D.C. residents rank
teen pregnancy nearly as high as violence as a major challenge facing
teenagers. A major contributor to the high teen pregnancy rate is the low
rate of birth control use. Youths polled in the study felt that parents
talked with them about sexual issues less than parents thought they did.
VK
March 2, 2000 The Seattle
Post-Intelligencer
Pollution Worsens on Sound: Some Wildlife, Fish Seem to be in
Trouble.
A report released by the Puget Sound Water Quality Action Team found that
pollution and its effects seem to be worsening, but efforts to
protect the Sound have met with some success. More than half the Sound's
river stations monitored have fecal coliform levels that make the water
unsafe for swimming or wading. The incidence of liver tumors (likely caused
by fossil fuel-produced contaminants) on English sole in Elliott Bay,
perhaps the most developed area around the Sound, have more than doubled
over the past decade. Other species affected by increasing pollution include
salmon, include orca whales, Pacific herring, rockfish, great blue herons,
scoters, and the Western Grebe. However, improved water quality has led to
the opening of more areas to shellfish harvest and lower concentrations of
PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) in mussels and harbor seals, and control
measures are also reducing the infestations of Spartina, an invasive salt
marsh plant. V K
March 14, 2000 The Hindu
India: Fall in Fertility Rate among Andhra Pradesh Women Puzzling.
The total fertility rate among women in Andhra Pradesh has suddenly declined
from 2.6 in 1992 to 2.25 children per woman, puzzling demographers and
bureaucrats. Andhra Pradesh has a low female literacy rate, the lowest
average age of marriage in India and a high infant mortality rate. TFR in
India is 3.4, around 1.9 in Kerala and about 4.2 in Uttar Pradesh. The State
Government would like to attribute this positive achievement to the
consistent emphasis on family planning in the people-centred Janmabhoomi
programme. Another theory is that
mothers-in-law have changed their attitudes, having married early and used
various contraceptives, they are no longer resistant to adoption of family
planning methods by their daughters-in-law. The most obvious reason is the
success of the family welfare programme - Andhra Pradesh was the first to
formulate a population policy in 1998 underscoring its commitment for
finding solutions to population problems and giving necessary resources. The
director of the Mumbai-based International Institute for Population Sciences
says that 57% of married women in Andhra Pradesh are sterilised and another
11% say they do not want any more children. The average age of sterilization
is 24-25 years.
March 15, 2000 ENS
Holes In Sun's Corona Linked To Climate Change.
A team of climatologists and astronomers found that holes in the Sun's
corona affect the global temperature of the Earth. They are not disputing
that human causes (eg. pumping carbon into the air) of global warming are a
factor. But their research points to many factors influencing our
temperature and weather patterns. Gaps in the Sun's outer atmosphere, called
corona holes, are the outlet for solar wind. This solar wind has long been
thought to affect climate change here on Earth. Now there is data to
support it. The team of researchers studied the Earth's troposphere, the
region of atmosphere where we live. They compared the troposphere
temperature with corona holes during a 20-year period (ending 1998). The
findings suggest a correlation between the intensity of the Sun's magnetic
field activity and the Earth's temperature. Also, charged particles from
the Sun hit the Earth's atmosphere and affect cloud cover; more cloud cover
means lower temperatures. It is likely as well that these charged particles
alter the ozone chemistry, which changes the Earth's climate dynamics. The
researchers concluded that the percentage of the Sun's surface covered by
corona holes seems to be "a fairly accurate indicator of temperature in the
Earth's troposphere over months or years." M
T
March 14, 2000 Reuters/Kuala Lumpur
Star
Smoke Blankets Borneo as Sumatra Air Clears.
Regional air pollution from the fires has gone over 300 (hazardous), even
past 500. Anything over 100 is "unhealthy". Four large plantation companies
started the fires in Sumatra. The licenses of several forest plantations
have already been suspended in connection with the fires.
March 14, 2000 NWF
Move Against Honor Killing. The government's decision to
treat honor killings -- when a woman is murdered because she is perceived to
have shamed her family -- as a crime is long overdue. "This kind of killing
is a national shame -- one that repudiates our claim to being wedded to
civilized norms and values."
March 14, 2000 NWF
URGENT - OPPOSITION to HR 2372.
Please urge your U.S. Representative to vote March 16 against H.R. 2372,
"The Private Property Rights Implementation Act." This federal bill is
aimed at undermining zoning and smart-growth programs. Call Capitol
Switchboard
202-224-3121, leave your name, address and a brief message.
Click here for general background info.
March 13, 2000 Agence France
Presse Major Water Crisis Looms.
The World Commission on Water for the 21st century said that 1 billion
people lack access to safe water, and 2 billion lack proper sanitation. By
2020, water use by humans will increase by about 40%, and 17% more water
than is available will be needed to grow the necessary food. "The arithmetic
of water simply does not add up." Only 2.5% of the planet's water is not
saline; of that, 2/3 are locked up in icecaps and glaciers. 20% of what is
left is in remote areas and virtually all of the rest -- monsoons, storms
and floods --
comes at the wrong time and place. Recommendations include: -Doubling annual
investment in sustainable use of water rather than lowering water tables; -
Letting the private sector provide water supplies, rather than governments,
who should only act as regulators and protectors of the environment;
-Scrapping water subsidies that encourage waste, and ruthlessly enforcing
the "polluter pays, user pays" principle. Help for the poor should be made
through targeted subsidies rather than handouts for the whole population. -
Overhauling institutional mechanisms about disputes about water rights and
water use so that environmental problems are not ignored; -Setting up a
"Water Innovation Fund" to foster smart ideas for water technology.
March 13, 2000 The Independent
(London) A Few Minutes of Mea Culpa Rips Up 20 Centuries of
Papal Authority.
Pope John Paul II apologized on March 12, for the Church's guilt during the
Crusades, the Inquisition, and its silence during the Holocaust, and for
"the enormous suffering inflicted on people during the age of conquest and
colonisation," asking pardon from "our African brothers and sisters," and on
the violations of the dignity of women "often ... relegated to the margins
of society and even reduced to servitude." If the Church misunderstood
Galileo and Darwin then maybe it is outdated in its understanding of the
science of contraception. In the 1960s, a pontifical commission recommended
that the ban on artificial birth control be lifted. But the Pope rejected it
because to admit the Church had been wrong, about anything, would undermine
its authority on everything. This opens the way for the Church to admit that
it might be wrong about other things too.
March 12, 2000 The Seattle Times
Ecological Economists Say Supply of Natural Resources is
Limited. by Kirvil Skinnarland and Amy Solomon of Sustainable
Seattle. Jan Tinbergen, a Nobel Laureate in Economics has said: "Two things
are unlimited: the number of generations we should feel responsible for, and
our inventiveness. The first provides us with a challenge: to feed and
provide for not only the present, but all future generations, from the
Earth's finite flow of natural resources. The second, our inventiveness, may
create ideas and policies that will contribute to meeting that challenge."
In 1972, Donella Meadows published the "The Limits to Growth," the results
of computer modelling by the Club of Rome, a group of international leaders
from the scientific, business and governmental communities. The book warns
that the world would experience catastrophic declines in population and
industrial output by the year 2100, if growth is not limited. Unfortunately,
we have been drawing down our stocks of natural resources such
as our water, trees, soil and clean air to keep the Gross Domestic Product
(GDP) growing. Ecological economists believe that economic growth is no
longer limited as much by human labor and technology as by the supply of
natural resources. But our economy still values natural resources based on
their extraction cost, not their true replacement value. The capacity to
assimilate human waste, pollution and toxins on this Earth will soon be
exceeded. 50% of all land surface has been altered from its original state
by human activities. Per capita demand for lumber has doubled and paper use
is 6 times what is was in 1950. Herman Daly, Amory Lovins, L. Hunter Lovins
and Paul Hawken are proposing a "natural capitalism," a market economy in
which all forms of capital, including human and natural, are fully valued.
March 14, 2000 The Dallas Morning
News
'Bad vibrations' Signal Doom for Population and Economy.
Geophysicists Didier Sornette and Anders Johansen of the University of
California, Los Angeles, say that the equations describing world population
and economic growth foretell a cataclysmic future in 2058, give or take 5
years. The two scientists applied the same "log-periodic oscillations,"
mathematical techniques - that they previously used to measure the amount of
stress needed to make a tank of gas burst - to stock market fluctuations and
population.
Think of them as "bad vibrations." Population growth relies on the
ever-increasing capacity of the global economy to support more people, so
they also analyzed the economy, as represented by the Dow Jones Industrial
Average. They reconstructed the Dow back to 1790, and identified bad vibes
before the crashes of 1929 and 1987, and before the deep drop in stock
prices during 1962. The mother of all market crashes is due to arrive in
2053 - suspiciously close to the 2058 indicated by the population analysis.
March 14, 2000 The Christian Science
Monitor
Barriers to Progress for Africa's Girls.
A 1999 United Nations Children's Fund report says that 130 million children
in the world do not go to school, two-thirds of which are girls. Such a
gender gap is a problem throughout the undeveloped world. In Africa,
poverty, and
cultural traditions, and parental deaths due to AIDS are keeping girls and,
to a lesser extent, boys away from school. Phil Twyford of Oxfam's
Washington-based Education Now says girls who learn to read and write tend
to live longer and have healthier children, more likely to postpone
parenthood and have fewer children, helping to break the cycle of poverty.
Twyford would like to see the international community pour $2 billion into
education for African children.
March 8, 2000 Senate Foreign Relations
Committee
US Senate Committee Defends Holy See's UN Status.
The US Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday adopted a resolution
objecting to efforts to expel the Holy See from the United Nations by
removing its status as a permanent observer. Catholics for a Free Choice,
the group spearheading the effort to downgrade the Vatican's status at the
world body, blaste
d the Republican members of the US Congress
March 8, 2000 UNCCD
Desertificatoin: Developing Countries Plan Joint Projects. In
Eastern region of Mali, nearly half of the male population has
migrated at least once to neighbouring African countries (96% of the total
1995) or to Europe (2.7%) over the last 15 years. In Burkina Faso, 60% of
the flight to main urban centres can be attributed to desertification. 20%
of Peruvians migrates from rural areas into the main towns every year.
Desertification in Mexico is closely associated to poverty and
marginalization, with 47% of the land affected. From 1970 to 1995 over
100,000 new small centres have started, and 8 -10 million Mexican have
migrated to the United States in the past years out of a total population of
91 millions. The Africa / Latin America and Caribbean Forum is meeting on
the implementation of the United Nations Convention to Combat
desertification (UNCCD). It is organized by the Government of Mali and the
UNCCD Secretariat. The plan is to cooperate in eradicating poverty and land
degradation processes which are at the origin of the migration movements.
March 3, 2000 ENS
IMF: Lending Policies Ecologically Unsound.
Friends of the Earth (FoE) released a report Tuesday calling for the
greening of the IMF and other international financial institutions. a
separate study by the US Congress-mandated
Meltzer Commission, which also called for a major overhaul of
multilateral lenders such as the IMF and World Bank. "The current model of
economic development that is being pursued by the IMF (and other
international financial institutions) is fundamentally unsustainable, as it
seeks growth at all costs without regard to ecological limits," says the
report. "Exports of natural resources have increased at astonishing rates in
many countries under IMF adjustment programs." More here.
March 3, 2000 ENS
Whales Win Out Against Mitsubishi's Salt Plans.
Laguna San Ignacio is one of only four calving grounds for the California
gray
whale. A five-year struggle has finally ended, with the whales victorious,
keeping this as their calving ground instead of a salt mine.
Mitsubishi corporation, along with the Mexican government has announced the
abandonment of the plan to construct the mine. Mitsubishi received more
than a
million letters of protest. A full-page ad in the newspaper showed
signatures
of leading scientists, calling the saltworks an "unacceptable risk" to the
environment. Some of the world's top mutual fund companies pledged not to
invest in Mitsubishi, to dissuade them from proceeding. Over 40 cities in
California passed resolutions against the project.
With this outpouring of activism from individuals, as well as a coalition of
environmental organizations, the whales emerge victorious.
This area is critical habitat for the gray whale, as well as other sensitive
life, including antelope, sea lions and black sea turtles. The saltworks
would
have adversely impacted these, and all other species of plants and animals
who
depend on the region.
The president of Mexico stated the main deciding factor in rejecting the
saltworks plan: "national and world importance and the uniqueness of the
Vizcaino Biosphere Reserve. This is a place that has had minimum
interference
by humans - one of the few places like that left on the planet." M.T.
March 8, 2000 Guatemala City Prensa
Libre
Guatemala: UN Combats 75% Poverty Level With Aid To Women.
The UN World Food Program said that 75% of Guatemalans live in poverty and
do not have access to adequate nutrition. 80% of this year's food aid will
be distributed directly to women to combat malnutrition among those most
affected: women and indigenous and rural populations. 58% of children from 3
months to 36 months of age are undernourished. 41% of children older than 6
years suffer malnutrition. 15% percent of 5-year-old children are vitamin A
deficient and anemic. Although production increased 17% between 1990 and
1997, Guatemala's population increased by 20%.
March 8, 2000 Knight
Ridder/Tribune
N.Korean Women Urged to Bear More Children.
To offset the decrease in population of the country in the wake of
years-long acute food shortages, women were urged to bear more children by
leader General Kim Jong-il. Women have been reluctant to bear children in
the face of high infant morality due to food shortages of the last 5 years.
North Korea's population has dropped to 3 million, a loss of 2.5 million
between 1995 and 1998, mainly due to starvation and related illness. Even
though N. Korea has experienced better harvests lately, a massive shortfall
in grain and other food is expected this year.
March 8, 2000 Financial Times
Deforestation Leads
To Urban Squalor. Little hope in Amazon shanties. People
used to live in the rainforest. Now, as farmers clear forests for more
agricultural land, over 60% of the region's people live in cities. Crime,
child prostitution, disease improper sewage facilities, unsafe water, and
illegal drugs are the problems of city life. The government is talking about
raising the price of rubber, a mainstay of the rainforest economy, to stem
the flow of migrants into cities.
March 8, 2000 Knight
Ridder/Tribune
Perils and Promise on International Women's Day.
Today is International Women's Day. Millions of women will be too busy
struggling for survival to notice. 500,000 women die and 8 million are
disabled each year during pregnancy or childbirth, according to the World
Health Organization. In Pathfinder International says that 1,500 of every
100,000 women in Mozambique die during pregnancy or childbirth. In China,
women undergo forced abortions. Over 100,000 women were sterilized with
quinacrine pellets, which the World Health Organization says may cause
cancer. 43% of women in northeast Brazil undergo female sterilization
because reversible methods aren't available. 80,000 women die each year from
unsafe abortions, particularly in countries where abortions are illegal. 70%
of the 1 billion people living in poverty are women. Prostitution is
escalating. Over 100,000 women and girl sex workers are in Japan, and 1
million in Thailand. An estimated 50,000 Colombian women are dispersed
throughout European and Asian sex markets. 20% of women worldwide are
physically or sexually abused in their lifetime. The World Bank says that
violence causes more ill health than traffic accidents and malaria together.
Women are regarded as second-class citizens in some Islamic countries such
as Kuwait, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. 35% of Japanese women said they
faced sexual harassment at work, while another 47% were subject to
discriminatory treatment at work. The AFL-CIO says that women in the U.S.
earn 75% of men's pay. In other news, UNICEF Executive Director
Carol Bellamy said it is an outrage that crimes such as "honor"
killings, bride burnings, acid attacks and female infanticide are subjected
to only token prosecution. And the Dhaka
Independent reported that hundreds of women from women's rights agencies
and NGOs marched, chanting slogans demanding equal rights and protesting
violence and repression. And in Christian
Science Monitor, in Gaza, Palestinian women's groups demand passage of a
"personal status law" to raise the minimum age for marriage to 18 and give
women equal rights in divorce and inheritance. Also, in a Karachi Dawn, 350 women
demonstrated for an end to violence against women. Panafrican
News Agency reported that, in Rwanda, there has been a continuous rise
in the number of sexual abuse cases in the country in the last five years.
March 6, 2000 UNWire
Latin America Has 30M Working Children.
Nearly 30 million children are working in Latin America and the Caribbean,
with 15 million of them under age 15, according to a report by the
International Labor Organization < http://www.ilo.org/> (ILO). Many
children labor in risky places like sugar cane and tobacco plantations,
porcelain and missile factories, and coal mines. In urban areas, only 25% of
adolescents who work between the ages of 13 and 17 attend school. In rural
areas, only 15% of working adolescents have the opportunity to study More
than 1.5 million children in Colombia, nearly 19% of the child population,
work at tasks that range from the production of drugs to prostitution, 23%
of the working population between the ages of 5 and 18 is dedicated to
harvesting coca for production of cocaine. Many working children have
elevated levels of lead and mercury in their blood; wounds or injuries
caused by various forms of violence; infections like tetanus; and
deformations of the skeleton caused by carrying heavy loads. Many children
have respiratory problems and are exposed to sexual abuse. Nicaragua's
Ministry of Labor released a report on child labor indicating
that: Almost 600,000 children -- 33% of the total urban population between
the ages of 5 and 17 -- work; More than 80% of these children do not attend
school; Only 57% of children finish primary school; 59% of working
children spend more than 56 hours a week at their job; 40% of working
children work in the streets or outside their homes; and 35% of working
children work for relatives and do not get paid; only 53% receive a wage
(Romero, La Prensa).
March 4, 2000 ENN
Batten Down the Hatches, Sea Level Is Rising. Expect a
rise in sea level of 20 inches and the inundation of 13,000 square miles of
land by the year 2100, says the co-author of a report for the Pew Center on
Global Climate Change. "The oceans have a considerable amount of momentum in
their expansion, so sea level rise would continue into the next century
(past 2100) even if temperatures were stabilized next month. Associated
costs range from $20 billion to $150 billion, depending on how humans adapt
to the change. The effects of sea level rise include erosion of beaches,
inundation of deltas, loss of wetlands, increased storm activity and
environmental degradation owing to recreation and development. The areas
most vulnerable to sea level rise include mid- and south-Atlantic states,
the Gulf Coast and parts of New England. On the West Coast, the San
Francisco Bay and Puget Sound are most vulnerable. These communities can
begin to address the impact of a rising sea level by setting development
restrictions, planning how and when to rebuild infrastructure such as storm
drains, and constructing sea walls to protect valuable property, said Yohe.
March 6, 2000 San Diego
Union-Tribune
African Traditions Can Make Childbirth Frequent, Dangerous.
In Tanzania, the maternal death rate for Sukuma women is the among
the highest in the world: more than 800 per 100,000 births. Often married
by age 15, Sukuma women are expected to start producing babies immediately.
The pregnancy and childbirth is often hidden for fear of jinxing the baby.
USAID is helping the Tanzanian Health Ministry teach Sukuma women about
prenatal care. Beliefs that prolonged delivery is due to promiscuity has
resulted in mothers dying from an obstructed delivery while their in-laws
interrogated them. Sukuma women can't inherit property, and men control
household resources. Sources of protein such as eggs and chicken are often
reserved for men. Men pay dowries for their brides, and often abandon them
for younger wives if they are infertile or have many miscarriages. Sukuma
women often have 12 to 16 pregnancies, with about maybe half of them live
births.
March 4, 2000 Worldwatch
Chronic Hunger and Obesity Epidemic Eroding Global
Progress.
While the world's underfed population has declined slightly since 1980 to
1.1 billion, the number of overweight people has surged to 1.1 billion, says
a new report by Gary Gardner, and Brian Halweil of Worldwatch, called Underfed and
Overfed: The Global Epidemic of Malnutrition. Both the overweight
and the underweight suffer from malnutrition, a deficiency or an excess in a
person's intake of nutrients and other dietary elements needed for healthy
living. More than half of the world's disease burden-measured in "years of
healthy life lost"-is attributable to hunger, overeating, and widespread
vitamin and mineral deficiencies. There are 150 million underweight children
in the developing world, nearly one in three. In the U.S., 55% of adults are
overweight by international standards and 23% are obese. 80% of the world's
hungry children live in countries with food surpluses. Eliminating
micronutrient deficiencies can produce rapid results for just pennies per
person per year. The World Health Organization program to iodize salt in 47
countries between 1994 and 1997 cut the prevalence of iodine deficiency
disorder from 29% to 13%.
March 3, 2000 Reuters/PlanetArk
Administration Seeks Protection for Coral Reefs.
The Clinton administration is asking that at least 20% of U.S. coral reefs
be set aside for protection as "ecological reserves" where environmentally
harmful activities such as fishing, and certain boating would be banned.
Already 10% of U.S. coral reefs have disappeared, and another two-thirds are
at risk from overfishing, pollution and commercial activities.
March 3, 2000 Reuters/PlanetArk
Mexico: Salt Plant Near Whale Habitat Nixed.
Japanese industrial giant Mitsubishi and the Mexican government are
scrapping plans to build a $120 million salt works (largest in the world)
near a gray whale breeding area in Laguna San Ignacio, Baja California
because it would "modify the landscape by the lagoon." A two-year
environmental impact study said the proposed plant, abutting a UN World
Biosphere Reserve, posed no danger to the whales. Environmental groups,
including the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the project would have
harmed one of the last pristine gray whale breeding areas in the world. The
reefs are along the coasts of Florida, Hawaii, the Virgin Islands, Puerto
Rico and the Pacific trust territories. Some environmentalists want the 20%
goal expaned. The Center for Marine Conservation liked the plan, but
additional action is needed to reduce water pollution from nutrient and
sediment runoff.
March 3, 2000 Reuters/Johannesburg Mail
& Guardian
HIV/AIDS: More Than Half Of South Africans At Risk.
A national survey showed that many of South African's 40 million practice
unsafe sex, believed that one's appearance indicates whether the person is
infected, or that those who are monogamous are safe, or that AIDS is not
necessarily fatal, or that a cure exists. The survey concluded that between
55% and 65% of South Africans are at high risk of HIV infection and that an
extremely focused and persuasive HIV/AIDS information campaign is needed,
and should be directed at the entire population. Approximately 1,700 South
Africans are infected with HIV daily, with 12% HIV-positive.
March 1, 2000 ENN
Little Ice Age Holds Big Climate Clues.
Chemical signals from two of the largest volcanic eruptions in human history
have allowed scientists to refine the chronology of an ice core taken from a
Wyoming glacier. The refined chronology indicates an abrupt end to the
little ice age.
"Now that we have documented a quick climate change in the past, there is no
reason not to believe it can occur in the future," said Paul Schuster, a
hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Boulder, Colorado.
Previous climate data revealed that a centuries-long cold snap - the little
ice age - ended in the mid-1800s. But scientists had not documented how
quickly the cold spell ended. Ice-core data gathered by Schuster and colleagues and reported in the Feb. 27 Journal of Geophysical Research shows that the little ice age ended over a span of 10 years, most likely in three to four years. "That is a major climatic shift in what we consider a quick period of time," said Schuster. Volcanic eruptions emit gases and minerals into the air that make
precipitation more acidic. As a result, the signatures of volcanic eruptions
are recorded in ice cores.
The two largest volcanic eruptions in human history occurred in the
Indonesian islands - in 1815 at Tambora and 1883 at Krakatau. The
researchers detected the signatures of these eruptions in the Wyoming ice
core, giving them new data to refine their error bar to plus or minus ten
years. "Because we are in a global warming, these glaciers are going away," he
said. Recent studies suggest that glaciers in Glacier National Park in
Montana and Canada will disappear within 50 years.
March 1, 2000 London Free Press
(Canada)
Indigenous People: Activists Push Permanent UN Forum.
An ad hoc group - consisting of dozens of governments and groups speaking
for the world's estimated 300 million indigenous people - is optimistic that
approval for a permanent indigenous peoples forum will be won during the
March 22 through April 27 session of the UN Human Rights Commission in
Geneva. The forum could become a reality within two years. There are
disagreements on the number of forum members, how often members should meet,
and what to name the forum. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary
Robinson says the forum "should not be delayed because of these practical
difficulties." In a November 19, 1999 Washington Post/UP article, the World
Health Organization says that the lives of 300 million indigenous people are
cut short by disease and poverty and their existence is increasingly
threatened by environmental degradation. They die 10-20 years earlier and
infant mortality rates are almost three times higher than national averages.
March 5, 2000 Xinhua
More Filipino Women Practice Family Planning.
49.3 percent of Filipino women used methods of family planning in 1999, up
from 46.5 percent in 1998, according to the The National Statistics Office.
The growth rate is 2.3 percent, one of the highest rates in Asia, which if
unchecked will raise the country's population, now 75 million, to over 100
million by 2009.
February 28, 2000 Environment News
Service
UNDP Mongolia Expands MicroCredit Program with Finland's
Support.
Finland will contribute $600,000 for a UN Development Program microcredit
program in Mongolia to expand the efforts a private microfinance company
called XAC. So far XAC has disbursed nearly $1 million in loans to more than
5,000 local entrepreneurs and working-age people. About 77% of the clients
are women. The program boasts a 98.5% repayment rate. MicroStart operates
programs in 17 countries and plans to start operations in Ethiopia,
Mozambique and Caribbean countries soon.
February 29, 2000 Environment News
Service
Water Everywhere in Ghana, But Not a Drop to Drink.
Benin, Burkina-Faso, the Gambia, Ghana, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Senegal
were the most severely affected countries with widespread population
displacement, loss of crops and livelihoods and destruction of property. In
Ghana the floods last year killed 70 Ghanaians, displaced more than 280,000,
and, thirty months later, people are still thirsty. Tons of untreated human
and industrial waste washed into sources of drinking water. 200 dams, wells
and bore-holes in the upper West Region are polluted with an amalgam of
sewage, high colonies of fecal coliform and used engine oil. Bloating
carcasses of cows, sheep, goats, dogs and cats float in the contaminated
water. Environmentalists attribute the floods to global warming.
February 29, 2000 UNWire
High-Tech Project Eyes Threatened Forested Areas.
Satellite images posted on an innovative
new Web site, Global Forest
Watch show "widespread" logging in the Congo Basin and "extensive"
development in the forests of Canada. It aims to expand to cover 21
countries and 80% of the world's remaining pristine forests over the next
five years. The project was created by the World Resources Institute (WRI),
and is backed by 75 partners in 7 countries, including both environmental
groups and private companies. Project director Dirk Bryant said only a fifth
of the world's historic forest cover remained intact and another 40% could
be lost within 20 years. In the Congo Basin, the second-largest contiguous
tropical forest after the Amazon, forested areas under logging concessions
more than doubled in the last five years. In Cameroon, logging concessions
stretch across 76% of the total forested area. In Canada the logging
companies are moving into slow-growing, "ecologically sensitive" northern
boreal forests, with 90% of logging being done in old-growth and other
primary forests -- mostly through clear-cutting. Less than 8% of Canada's
forests are protected from future logging.
February 29, 2000 LA Times
Sea-Level Rise & Global Climate Change.
Sea levels could rise by 20 inches by 2100 through the melting of ice and
warming of oceans, according to a new report by the Pew Center on Global
Climate Change. Levels have already risen between 4 and 10 inches during the
last 100 years. Higher sea levels can cause erosion, affect wetlands, and
boost salinity in coastal aquifers and estuarine systems. Physical
characteristics of the land, population, development and land-use planning
all will affect the vulnerability of coastal areas.
March 1, 2000 The New York Times
Egypt's Women Win Equal Rights to Divorce.
With the new law, a woman will be able to divorce her husband, with or
without his assent. Tunisia is the only neighboring Muslim country that also
makes divorce an equal opportunity. A divorced woman also be able to call on
the Egyptian government to garnish her husband's wages if he refuses to
provide for
her. If he cannot pay, she will be able to draw from a special state bank to
keep her family afloat. The reforms were endorsed by an alliance of moderate
Muslim clerics, women's advocates, civil court judges and divorce lawyers.
They made a special effort to convince people that the law is a modern
rendering of the equal rights that Islam bestows on women. In the Shariah -
Islamic legal code a Muslim man can get a divorce automatically. But a woman
must prove that her husband beats her, is a drug addict, is sterile or does
not support the family. If she wins, her husband can appeal the decree
indefinitely. Even with the new law, a wife who gets a divorce will have to
return to her husband any money or property that he paid her upon the
marriage.
February 29, 2000 The Associated
Press
Kenya's Population up 34 percent, Increase Less than
Expected.
Kenya's population has reached 28.7 million after growing 34% in a decade,
but a decline in the fertility rate the average of seven children in 1989 to
the five in 1999, has kept the number to below the projected 30 million. The
government and other concerned parties encouraged the Kenyan people to have
the number of children they can economically support. "The population of
this country should be seen in terms of Kenyans as a whole rather than along
tribal lines," said Planning Minister Gideon Ndambuki.
March 1, 2000 Agence France
Presse
Green Revolution" Can't Cope with Population Crisis.
The "Green Revolution" of the past half century will founder in the face of
the surge in world population over the next two decades, according to World
Bank Vice President Ismail Serageldin, a specialist in food security. Food
demands are so great that genetic manipulation of plants must be embraced to
boost production. New productive strains of rice infused with fertilisers
and insecticide had helped stave off "potential famine" in South Asia and
saved 350 million hectares (875 million acres) of marginal land and forests.
But the developing world faced the risk of "scientific apartheid." 800
million people today are already malnourished, and the world's population
is due to rise to 8 billion in another 20 years. 85% of the additional food
will have to be provided by developing countries. Pesticides used in
conventional farming were beginning
to concentrate in the soil or were encountering resistance. Only 12
different crops provide 90% of human food. He encouraged the Swiss
invention, golden rice, which, with genes from a daffodil and some bacteria
spliced into it, promises to boost vitamin A - 125 million people in the
world suffer from vitamin deficiencies and consequently poor eyesight. But
the half a dozen mega-corporations that dominate genetic research and
patents must be regulated by anti-trust laws. Or competition for new crops
must be encouraged from the
developing world.
February 29, 2000 LA Times
A Delicate Balancing Act in Mexico.
Monarch butterfly spectacle faces threat of extinction.
Every fall, millions of monarch butterflies return to a mountain forest in
Mexico, in a ritual dating to prehistoric times, surviving a 3,000-mile
journey through storms, starvation, and other dangers. Scientists discovered
the remote destination of the butterflies only in 1975, near the border of
Michoacan and Mexico states. At a dozen different mountain ridgetops,
monarchs cluster tightly on fir trees, up to 10 million per hectare. Now the
monarchs face loss of habitat from logging and the invasion of tourists.
Illegal logging by peasants leaves holes in the tree canopy which serves as
a blanket, keeping rain out warmth in. The government allowed tourism to
protect both the forests and the peasants' livelihoods, but now crowds tear
through the fragile forests in pickups, on horseback and on foot, due to
lack of control and infrastructure.
February 28, 2000 Environmental News
Network
Urban Sprawl Curbs Food Production.
Urban sprawl limits the ability of the land to take carbon dioxide out of
the atmosphere and convert it to biomass, as demonstrated by an analysis of
satellite images of city lights and corresponding images of photosynthetic
potential of the landscape. Marc Imhoff, a researcher at the Goddard Space
Flight Center says: "Is it wise to take the best soils and turn them into
parking lots?" Sprawl can reduce the photosynthetic ability of land by as
much as 20 days in denser construction areas - like turning out the lights
in a greenhouse for 20 days. In the U.S. only 3% of the land is covered by
urban development, leaving sufficient arable land yet available, but in
places like Egypt, the local food supply is threatened because all the
urbanization is taking place along the Nile River, on what little arable
land there is. The study showed that human activity such as lawn irrigation
and planting can beneficially alter the environment, particularly in arid
and semi-arid areas. Imhoff suggests that cities should be built on poorer
soils. "As population increases we are going to have to rely on our soil
resources more and more," said Imhoff. "Because of their style of
consumption, in Europe the amount of land needed to support urban areas is
100 times larger than the urban area itself." NASA pictures
here
February 25, 2000 University Science
News
Model Shows That Market For Conservation Is Plausible.
According to Columbia Earth Institute and Business School economist Arthur
Small, in the Journal of Political Economy, the potential economic
value of Earth's genetic resources could fuel market-driven incentives to
conserve biodiversity. A mathematical model demonstrated that a market for
conservation will become economically plausible as the biomedical industry
recognizesthat returns from new drugs found in nature exceed the cost of
preserving the ecosystems that supply them. Bioprospecting is one useful
tool in the effort to preserve world biodiversity. Nearly all modern
medicines are derived from or modeled on naturally found chemical compounds.
Penicillin comes from a type of mold; the cancer drug taxol comes from the
bark of the Pacific and Himalayan yew tree, and other medicined come from
the venom of snakes, spiders and frogs. Poorer nations that now sacrifice
their ecological resources for short-term economic gain could lease
bioprospecting rights to research and development companies, thus preserving
their assets while creating income. The model shows a flaw in the earlier
model presented in a 1996 paper in the Journal of Political Economy,
and suggests that companies would be willing to pay a premium for exclusive
access to promising research prospects, thus creating an incentive to
preserve ecological resources in order to charge access fees. This situation
is analogous to the oil industry which pays for the right to drill in known
reserves, or where there is a high probability of striking oil. However, a
legal system involving the protection of property rights and patent law must
be created to support this system. More atEarth
Institute.
February 17, 2000 Managua La
Prensa
Nicaragua: UNFPA Threatens To Halt Family Planning Aid.
The Nicaraguan representive to the UN Population Fund said that aid to
Nicaragua will be stopped if there is no clarification of why the resources
supplied by the UNFPA have been misused and "wasted" since last September.
Nicaragua's family minister, Max Padilla, and education minister, Fernando
Robleto, will reject all reproductive health programs because they believe
the policies advocate abortion. The UNFPA has studied Nicaragua's high
maternal mortality rates and encouraged sexual education in schools to avoid
unwanted pregnancies.
February 16, 2000 Panafrican News
Niger: Inventor Launches Annual Contraceptive Pill
A new locally invented contraceptive product, Alpha, has been experimented
among 100 women in Niger with satisfactory results, without secondary
effects like some
other contraceptives. The inventor is Aboubacar Garba, whose research took
three years. One pill taken annually will prevent pregnancy. Garba is
worried about abuse by single women and said, "We have consequently imposed
our pre-conditions: married and breast-feeding women first and we have no
intention to give the pill to a woman for more than two years,"
February 16, 2000 Times of India
Contraceptive Pill: Two-Thirds Of Men Say They Would Use
It.
According to a study of 2,000 men worldwide, published in the European
journal Human Reproduction, men are eager to take greater
responsibility in contraception. Also, 80% of 2,000 women also favored the
idea. New developments mean a male pill will likely be available in five to
10 years.
February 16, 2000 Times of India
India's Population Policy Stalls Delimitation.
The new population policy announced by the Union cabinet has a special focus
on health and education to achieve a stable population by 2045, and includes
freezing of the number of seats in the Lok Sabha at the current level of 543
- which is based on the 1971 census - till 2026, rather than 2001, as
originally planned. Not known is whether the number of seats allocated for
each state can be reallocated per changes in population size. The action
plan will have the following main features: self-help groups (mostly
housewives) at village and panchayat levels who will interact with health
care workers and gram panchayats; elementary education to be made free and
compulsory; registration of marriage and pregnancy, births and deaths to be
made compulsory. For routine delivery cases, maternity huts will be provided
in villages. For complicated cases the policy proposes soft loans to start
ambulatory services. Couples below the poverty line who undergo
sterilisation after two children will be eligible for health insurance plan.
Also for couples below the poverty line who marry at the legal age of 21.
Cash incentive at the birth of a girl child as also to mothers who have
their first child after the age of 19.
February 17, 2000 Times of India
The Family Way.
Have successive governments really made the paradigm shift from a
number-oriented to a people-friendly approach to population as articulated
at the landmark Cairo conference in 1994? Even though the Vajpayee
government has laid to rest many apprehensions with its new national
population policy, vestiges of the earlier mindset remain. The government is
seeking to postpone the population-based delimitation of Lok Sabha seats for
another 25 years, to avoid sending the wrong signals to states which have
lagged in taking measures to reduce fertility levels, hoping that the
glaring disparities in fertility management between the large, populous
northern states and their more successful southern counterparts will be
narrowed, after which delimitation can be debated. The positive side of the
new policy states that health insurance will be provided to those below the
poverty line who undergo sterilisation after having two children. But
studies show that even the most backward and illiterate people are acutely
aware of the need to limit their families so that their children can get the
best possible quality of life. What these people really need is access to
quality health care, education and a choice of contraceptive methods. There
is a reward for women who marry after 21 and opt for a terminal method of
contraception after the second child. But most women have little say in the
matter. There needs to be greater male involvement in planned parenthood,
and more male workers need to be brought into the health service delivery
systems. In addition, one third of India's population will soon enter
child-bearing age, and even if they limit to two children per family, to
expect the new policy to bring about any dramatic decline in population
growth anytime soon would be unrealistic. The challenge will be to persevere
with non-coercive policies in the face of increasing numbers until
replacement fertility levels are reached.
A similar article from Economic Times
(India) says that the government decision once again takes
the focus away from overall health and social facilities to women,
including sustained nutritional norms for both mother and child, and
lowering the infant mortality rate.
And another article from Economic Times
(India) says that in freezing the Lok Sabha seats for the
next twenty five years is aking to freezing democracy. This move
would have been a solution to the problem if the backward states had
deliberately gone slow on population control in order to gain more seats in
Parliament. But the performance of these states in other fields has been
very much better. The imbalances that now exist will multiply. Since the
current delimitation of constituencies was based on the the 1971 census, by
the time the delimination is reestablished, the constituencies will be based
on population statistics that are over half a century old.
And from the India Times, a similar
theme:
No Representation Without Sterilisation. Does democracy mean
representation of the people, or representation of condoms? Democracy is
about giving a voice to every citizen, not about population control. A state
can be rewarded for killing off most of its babies through neglect. The
highest ever birth rate for the country was 48.1 per thousand in the decade
1911-21l, yet population actually declined by 0.4% because of mass deaths
caused by Asian Flu. The freezing of Lok Sabha seats penalises the poor, in
the most backward states with the worst facilities. They have the largest
families, not because they are stupid, but with high infant mortality, it
makes sense to have many children. Dozens of developing countries have
reduced their fertility rates without force or penalties, and this is true
even of dirt-poor country like Bangladesh.
February 21, 2000 MSNBC
Death By Global Warming Predicted At AAAS Session.
Cornell University ecologist David Pimentel said global warming will create
a favorable climate for disease-causing organisms and food-plant pests --
but a much more challenging planet for humans struggling to survive. There
are already noticeable increases in human diseases worldwide. Environmental
diseases, such as infectious microbes, pollution by chemicals and biological
wastes, and shortages of food and nutrients are already contributing to
disease - global warming will only make matters worse. 3 billion people
currently are malnourished -- the largest number and proportion of humans in
desperate need of food and nutrients in human history. Malnutrition
increases susceptibility diarrhea and pollution-related illnesses.
Population increases, such as an anticipated 12 billion by 2050 will
exacerbate the spread of disease globally. Densely crowded urban areas
without adequate sanitation and nutrition are sources of disease epidemics.
The mosquito that carries Dengue fever will move north with global warming.
Waterborne diseases, which are spread by using untreated water for drinking,
bathing and cooking, cause 90% of deaths from infectious disease in
developing countries. Air pollutants affect more than 4 billion people
worldwide, with air quality getting worse in many places. Automobiles are
growing 3 times faster than the population. Lung cancer is a threat to
people who use cook with wood and coal over open fires. Wood fires kill 4
million children each year. Cropland fell by 20% in 10 years, per capita
fertilizer by 23%, and per capita irrigation water by 12%. 5 billion pounds
of pesticides are used each year, yet insect pests, plant pathogens and
weeds cause the loss of more than 40% of the world's food - this will
increase with a warmer climate.
February 24, 2000 NY Times
Cramped Gaza Multiplies at Unrivaled Rate.
Hanan Suelem wanted an abortion after the 7th pregnancy, but Islamic clerics
told her that she would be "killing a soul." She told them that her soul was
dying.
"After this, no more, never," she said, speaking almost in a whisper. "I
have learned now about the IUD." The area's schools operate on two and three
shifts to accommodate the growing Palestinian population. Gaza's population
of 1.1 million is expected to double by 2014. Half are under age 15. It is
already a highly congested area with few jobs, severely inadequate housing
and almost no natural resources. The West Bank and Gaza combined have a
population of over 3 million, which is expected to rise to 5.5 million in 14
years. The fertility rate is seven children per woman. Almost all the babies
survive and adults live to an average of 73. Many young Palestinians do not
want their children to suffer as they did in oversized poor families, but
large families are not only
traditional, but a point of nationalist pride, and as a way to
outnumber the Israelis on the land the two groups share. Fortunately,
health and education officials quietly support family planning through
clinics and community outreach services. Women are taught about the
different methods of contraception that are acceptable under Islam --
anything except permanent means, like sterilization or tubal ligation. The
IUD and birth control pills are growing in favor. Health officials refer
delicately to the "spacing" of children, since the suggestion to place
limits on family size would violate Islamic teaching. Women are told that it
is written in the Koran that God orders women to breast-feed for two years.
Women in the West Bank average 5.6 children per woman, compared to Israel,
with about 2.7 children, the worldwide average. Gaza grows at over 4% a year
while Israel is grows only 2% a year, which includes high levels of
immigration. Palestinian advocates are pushing for a law that would raise
the legal age of marriage, since half of Palestinian women marry before they
reach age 18, and it is legal for them to marry at 15 in Gaza and 17 in the
West Bank.
February 21, 2000 MSNBC
Tests Find Nitrogen is Choking Earth Plant species
replaced, 'dead zones' in water more prevalent.
If farmers continue to depend heavily on nitrogen fertilizer, the
agricultural landscape could turn ugly within 50 years, says a University of
Minnesota ecologist. David Tilman found, in a two decade study, that, as the
amount of nitrogen doubles, species diversity declines by 25%. And as
nitrogen levels continue to increase, species are lost at a greater, though
less dramatic, rate, leveling off at declines of 40% to 70%. The species
that do survive are usually less-desirable, non-native ones such as quack
grass, which needs high doses of nitrogen to thrive. Oxygen-starved "dead
zones," such as the one now in the Gulf of Mexico, will become increasingly
prevalent and many plants will die off, while fewer - and less desirable
ones - will take over, he said. To get world food production to double over
the past 35 years, farmers have had to use seven times as much nitrogen as
they used to, effectively doubling the amount that already comes in from the
atmosphere. By 2050, the use of nitrogen may quadruple with the projected
increase in the world population by almost 50%, and if it becomes
increasingly affluent with a buying power 2.4 times that of today's
population and producing a demand for twice as much food. Tilman recommends
timing applications of fertilizer better and doing a better job of removing
it from sewage.
February 21, 2000 MSNBC
NASA's Eyes Show Earth's Sprawl/
Atlanta, Georgia, in the U.S., is "so thick with asphalt and air
conditioners that it's become a 'heat island,' soaking up radiant energy
during the day and holding onto it at night," NASA said in a statement
summarizing several years of research. The loss of vegetation and the
addition of dark surfaces that absorb heat add to the island effect.
Because the most urban parts of the city remain warmer than surrounding
areas, they essentially trap heat that may create a low-pressure system,
with hot air rising and cooler surrounding air rushing in to replace it and
then condensing to form thunderclouds. Indeed, weather images show that
storms begin to form directly over the hottest parts of Atlanta. "As the
city grows," NASA said, "so grow the thunderheads." A side effect is the
creation of ozone, a major contributor to smog.
February 19, 2000 Financial Times
(London)
Mexican Numbers Spell Trouble Ahead.
The potential windfall from the explosion of young people entering the
workforce
could turn into a scourge for Mexico and its northern neighbour if economic
growth does not take off in the next 10 years. "We have to create more
jobs," says Manuel Ordorica, head of the department of demographic studies
at El Colegio de Mexico. "If we don't the only way out will be via migration
to the US." Since
1970 the population has doubled to 100m, but in the next three decades
experts say it will add only 30m more and growth will almost halt by 2050.
Some 70% of women now use once-taboo birth control methods. Mexfam, the
leading family planning charity, says Mexico has become so liberal that it
is lobbying the government to dole out the "morning after" pill to halt the
spread of teenage pregnancies. In the next two decades about 1m Mexicans
will enter the workforce each year, pushing the working population to 64m
from 42m this year. If the economic growth is strong in the next decade,
payoff would be a "demographic dividend" of higher salaries, more personal
savings, increased investment and better health and education.
Alternatively, it could be squandered. Without more and better paying jobs,
the number of Mexican-born migrants to the US will double in 20 years from
its current level of 8m. In addition, Mexico's older population is
increasing. The number of people over 65 is expected to grow to about 33m in
50 years. Mexico could be condemned to become a country of poor and old
people. Population growth in the next decade will be 1.2m, and 300,000 a
year
already flee Mexico for the US.
February 22, 2000 Africa News
Online
Africa Should Increase Public Investment in Agriculture.
African governments should allocate at least 25% of their budgets to
agricultural and rural development, says the UN Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO). For the short term, agriculture will remain "the primary
engine of economic growth", accounting for 70% of total employment.
Governments often failed to maintain and manage such capital investments as
roads and irrigation systems, and public resources were often allocated to a
single cereal crop, such as rice, maize or wheat, and not enough to
traditional crops like roots and tubers, and pulses and oil seeds. Africa
has had to rely increasingly on food imports. Suggested plans include a
lower tax rate for farmers, loans to small-scale farmers (80% of whom are
women), and a liberalized exchange rate.
February 23, 2000 LA Times
Climate Change: Global Temperature Rising At Record Rate.
The Earth's surface is warming at an "unprecedented rate" that was not
expected to be seen until well into the 21st century. Throughout much of the
20th century, warming occurred at a rate of just over 1 degree per century.
But since 1976, warming has occurred at a rate the equivalent of "nearly 4
degrees per century." according to Tom Karl of the US National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). This may indicate the "change point" at
which the Earth's surface begins warming at a faster rate. The sharp
increase is difficult to explain through natural causes. In another article,
Lester Brown of World Watch says that "The arctic ice cap has shrunk by 40%
over the last three decades," and "the rate of melting appears to be
accelerating." Antarctic's glaciers are already melting and if the ice
shield melts completely, sea levels could rise by as much as 200 feet,
drastically reducing inhabitable land area worldwide. Alternately, higher
temperatures around Antarctica could also lead to "more evaporation, more
snowfall and even conceivably a buildup in the thickness of the Antarctic
ice shield,"
February 22, 2000 Salt Lake
Tribune
Bill Would Create Sexless Sex Ed.
House Bill 411, which was approved Monday by the state of Utah House
Education Committee, would direct all school districts in the state that the
only sex education allowed in classrooms is the teaching of sexual
abstinence before marriage. "Teens need to be told that the only safe sex
is no sex," said said Rep. Bill Wright. President of American
Life League Griffin held up a gas mask and said that teaching youngsters
that sex using condoms is safe is like sending them to a party in a house
filled with poison gas and giving them a gas mask as protection. But Les
Chatelain, from the University of Utah College of Health asked: "How do we
protect" against unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases?"
But Les Chatelain, from the University of Utah College of Health asked:
"How do we protect" against unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted
diseases?"
[Please go to these web sites for more information on this subject -
CNN (more on abstinence only) ... Alan Guttmacher Institute and Planned Parenthood]
February 22, 2000 Agence France Presse
Drink, Disease and Depression Eat Away at Russian
Population.
Russia's population has fallen by 2.8 million people since 1992, down to
145.5 million, losing .5% last year. A low birth rate exacerbated by
widespread abortion, a far higher death rate due to alcohol abuse, a failing
public health system, a growing AIDS problem, economic crisis, and a
shockingly high suicide rate are blamed for the decrease.
Births fell to 1.215 million while deaths increased to 2.14 million.
Russia's population could drop to just 80-100 million (as low as one-half)
by 2050. For every birth in Russia, there are two abortions. Russian men die
at an average of 58, mostly due to alcohol, tuberculosis, AIDS, and
suicide.
February 20, 2000 Washington Post
Columbia: U'wa Tribe Fails To Halt Drilling Plan.
The U'wa tribe has protested an oil drilling project by Occidental
Petroleum, for 5 years, but now a road to the site is being constructed. Oil
production near tribal lands "will destroy their way of life, and the
environment could suffer if waste from the plant trickles into nearby
rivers."
February 22, 2000 Reuters
Mexican Youth Work Family Planning Front Lines.
Mexfam is a non-profit, government-sponsored program for family planning in
Mexico. The youth program, which targets marginalized communities, was
established to lower birth rates and protect adolescents from unwanted
pregnancy, sexually-transmitted diseases and illegal abortions that kill
some 1,500 women a year. It aims to go beyond birth control instru