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Page added on August 2, 2013
Faster-Than-Expected Population Growth in Many Feed the Future Countries
Cambodia to grow by nearly one-third by 2050; Kenya to more than double; Mali to swell to three times its current size. These were the population projections available when Feed the Future, President Obama’s global hunger and food security initiative, was beginning implementation in 19 focus countries around the globe in 2010.
The over-arching goals of Feed the Future are to reduce both the prevalence of poverty and the prevalence of stunted children by 20 percent. The cross-government initiative incorporates a broad range of interventions, from developing new seed varieties to training smallholder farmers in new management techniques and strengthening delivery systems for maternal and child health and nutrition services.
But revised population projections, released last month by the UN Population Division, show that the populations in these countries could grow even faster than previously anticipated. In seven Feed the Future focus countries – Cambodia, Ethiopia, Mali, Mozambique, Senegal, Tajikistan, and Uganda – population is projected to grow at least 20 percent more between 2010 and 2050 than UN demographers projected just two years ago (see Table 1). In sum, there are now projected to be 274 million more people added to these countries by the middle of the century.
How might a strategy for food security change when all of a sudden the demographic future looks different? In countries that already are grappling with food security challenges, a greater-than-anticipated boost in population is likely to amplify the struggle.
Women’s Empowerment, Access to Reproductive Health Key
On a global level, the new projections forecast a world population of 9.6 billion in 2050, 250 million greater than demographers projected in the last revision two years ago. This update takes into account new information about demographic trends that overturns prior assumptions made about birth rates and death rates. While there are a handful of countries whose populations are now projected to be not quite as large in 2050, the overall upward revision is due in large part to the fact that the fertility is not falling as quickly as previously expected, particularly in many sub-Saharan African countries.
The factors that underlie slower-than-anticipated fertility declines are numerous and varied. In immediate and practical terms, access to quality reproductive health and family planning information and services is required for families to avoid unintended pregnancy and actualize their fertility preferences. Globally, it is estimated that more than 220 million women would like to avoid pregnancy but lack family planning.
In the seven Feed the Future countries listed in Table 1, national Demographic and Health Surveys indicate high proportions of women have this unmet need for family planning: 34 percent of women in Uganda, 30 percent of women in Senegal, 28 percent of women in Mali, and 26 percent of women in Ethiopia. Many see meeting this need for family planning as a basic human right, and its importance for women and child health, community health, and overall development is reflected in the Millennium Development Goals and ongoing discussions about the what will replace them.
The ability to determine the number, timing, and spacing of children is also closely linked to women’s empowerment, a factor recognized by Feed the Future as a critical component of strengthening prospects for food security. Feed the Future is piloting the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index for performance monitoring and impact evaluation. In addition to assessing gender parity within households, the index measures the extent to which women are empowered across five key domains: production, resources, income, leadership, and time. Understanding women’s empowerment in these areas can help to inform interventions that can strengthen women’s empowerment in ways that support food security outcomes. Clearly, a woman’s ability to plan her pregnancies is a relevant factor in each of these domains.
More Evidence of the Integration Imperative
The new population projections serve as a call to redouble efforts in promoting women’s empowerment and expanding access to reproductive health and family planning services. The stories we can tell are not all gloomy ones: In Malawi, for example, where population, land, and climate dynamics threaten food security, the new population projections show a lower expected figure for 2050, reflecting faster-than-anticipated drops in fertility. As Elizabeth Leahy Madsen points out, the emphasis placed on girls’ education, access to family planning, and women’s economic empowerment by President Joyce Banda has likely contributed to these changes.
The significant population increases projected in countries that are priorities for food security investment point toward opportunities for comprehensive approaches that can promote multiple, reinforcing development outcomes. As we have seen with other development initiatives that bring together interventions in population, reproductive health, and natural resource management, such integration can result in synergies that deliver results that are stronger than single sector interventions. As efforts to promote women’s empowerment expand within Feed the Future programs, the inclusion of reproductive health and family planning services is a logical – and needed – step forward.
11 Comments on "Faster-Than-Expected Population Growth in Many Feed the Future Countries"
Arthur on Fri, 2nd Aug 2013 11:48 am
Double the height of the fences (EU), or start to build them (USA).
rollin on Fri, 2nd Aug 2013 2:28 pm
More projections into a very uncertain future. I would not put too much credence on population projections at this point. Education, women’s rights and increased standard of living really kills the population surge, so that is possibly the way to go.
First, has anyone really asked what the people in those countries want? What do they aim for and have they been even informed of possible choices. Maybe instead of telling them what to do and aiding them in externally determined ways, the people should be able to determine their own future. They need to look at where they are, where they are headed and come up with what they want. Empower the people and the results may last, enforce or just aid in specific ways and the aid must go on forever.
Of course the starving will accept food, but unless they learn how to produce that food or reduce the number of mouths needing that food, nothing will change.
Kenz300 on Fri, 2nd Aug 2013 2:36 pm
Access to family planning services needs to be available to all that want it.
Endless population growth is not sustainable.
Birth Control Pictures: Types, Side Effects, Costs, & Effectiveness
http://www.webmd.com/sex/birth-control/ss/slideshow-birth-control-options?ecd=wnl_day_071113&ctr=wnl-day-071113_hdln_1&mb=dtfWIHfXZxtqE9pudELmLeHnVev1imbCq%2f0xB3s74mA%3d
GregT on Fri, 2nd Aug 2013 3:23 pm
We used to make contributions to one of the groups that fund these initiatives, until we found out that 70 percent of our contributions were being spent on the administration of yet another bloated multi-million dollar western bureaucracy.
As sad as it may sound, a big part of the problem stems from feeding people that can’t feed themselves. Leave them alone, stop exploiting their resources for white corporate gain, get out of their countries, and the problems will solve themselves.
BillT on Fri, 2nd Aug 2013 3:45 pm
Bingo! GregT, I wonder what the world would have been like if the US had shut down it’s Military Industrial Complex after WW2 and the CIA had never been formed? Imagine the wars that would not have happened. The countries that would be prospering without having served as colonies of the US. The prosperity in the Us if the oil had not been all sold or wasted.
Arthur on Fri, 2nd Aug 2013 9:57 pm
“I wonder what the world would have been like if the US had shut down it’s Military Industrial Complex after WW2 and the CIA had never been formed? Imagine the wars that would not have happened.”
That would have meant handing over the world to the communists on a silver platter, because the latter would not have dreamed giving up on their MIC. The communist monster that the Roosevelt gang had allied themselves to and brought to victory at the expense of America’s mother civilization.
BillT on Sat, 3rd Aug 2013 1:42 am
Ah, Arthur, you want it both ways. And what is wrong with Communism? It probably would not have been any worse than Capitalism, and maybe better. Ask any 3rd world country that Capitalism has destroyed or even the West which is now on it’s way to the 3rd world because of Capitalism.
Alas, we shall never know what it may have been like then, but we are going to find out what it will be like now. Communism might look good compared to what is coming.
Arthur on Sat, 3rd Aug 2013 10:42 am
“And what is wrong with Communism?”
Aha, there you go! What a revelation, dJeezus! The US, “O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?”, or so the propaganda goes. Marlboro man in reality is a lung cancer patient on Obama care.lol I wonder how many Americans deep in their heart, like Bill seems to do, curse the Constitution and would love to have a strong authoritarian state, with free goodies and handouts for all. After all, you people sided with the communists in Spain in the thirties, as well as against Germany in the fourties. Americans always side with the communists, unless of course these communists turn anti-semitic, that’s when your Wallstreet zionist communist overlords decide the fun is over. Like with Russia after WW2 and crypto antisemite Stalin. Problem with communism is: who is going to do the work to make all these free handouts possible in the first place? Answer: nobody.
“Ask any 3rd world country that Capitalism has destroyed”
Give me a break. I am not going to justify every aspect of capitalism, certainly not the embodied myth of endless growth, but the global capitalist machine has enabled a level of production that has lifted even third world countries above stone age status. Every African has a mobile phone. Saw pictures of Zimbabwe a few days ago at the occasion of the elections there: people are reasonable clothed, there is electricity, cars, busses, election infrastructure, telecom infrastructure, hospitals. Obviously imported from the West and probably largely financed with development aid, but nevertheless it is there. Without this ‘capitalism scurge’ these people would be leaning on their javelins with naked buts, just like 500 years ago, when the first sails of European ships appeared at the horizon.
“the West which is now on it’s way to the 3rd world because of Capitalism.”
OMG, you are a real lefty, aren’t you. America is on it’s way to become another third world country, not because of capitalism, but because of race. I repeat: RACE (give me the Nazi accusations.lol). If you open your borders for massive third world immigration, like your zionist masters finally achieved to do in 1965, with the intent to destroy Euro-America, after they successfully wasted JFK and after 80 years of tireless lobbywork, then you should not be surprised that you become a third world country yourself. That’s extremely simple logic. But you Bill, after your own admission above, politically positioned on the hard communist left, do not believe in race. Fine with me. Communism is an excellent tool to completely wreck a country, so please, be my guest and pull the plug out of America and turn communist. And we vile Natzi Europeans will come to Ellis Island and pick up a few million of Euro-America’s finest and save them from the Chertoff’s Fema-Gulag (Bill: “nothing wrong with communism.lol”), precisely as millions of Russians fled the zio… uhh communist revolution in Russia. And from then on, America can vegetate along as an oversized Cuba, of no particular harm to anybody. The word ‘racism’ btw appeared first in the works of Leon Trotsky, the zionist butcher of the upper strata of Russian society. The communist strategy after all is to murder anyone who doesn’t fit the racial egalitarian mold. The result is a completely decapitated society, like Russia is today and that is merely kept afloat by it’s fossil wealth and a potent European customer. And now the US is next in line for a decapitation. Manning and Snowdon are the first victims and refugees of a long line of American refugees that will follow (Bill probably has no problem with typical communist institutions like the NSA, or he will denounce it as ‘capitalist’).
But Bill’s naive candid revelations confirm my concern that in the end the US could indeed very well become communist and that the zionists will remain in power. And the first thing they will do is fly to Beijing and attempt to start an anti-Eurasian (EU + Russia) alliance with China. The US has done it before, in 1933, when Roosevelt made his ouvertures to the largest communist slaughter house in human history, the USSR (Bill: “what is wrong with communism”). If the US turns communist, as Bill seems to hope, than it is easy to predict that Greater Europe (EU + Russia) and ZOG-USA are going to compete for an alliance with China. The US will have Siberia on offer and Greater Europe Australia as a business present. And when the American-Chinese alliance will come about, probably applauded by Bill, then Greater Europe is really f**. But we are not there yet. We Europeans must support the America Firsters, the libertarians, the Alex Jones crowd, the 911-truthers, the Paul Craig Roberts and Buchanans, the antiwar.com crowd, etc. etc. and their secessionist drive against the US communists (zionist leadership, media, Wallstreet, Hollywood, minorities, Dems, Reps leadership). And the internet is the tool of choice… until it is switched off.
P.S. Bill, you sound very convincingly like a Euro-American, but for 75/25 I leave open the possibility that you are Asian after all. Because of your total lack of solidarity with your own people, your ravings about Asians, your predictions that the West is going to fall because of resource depletion (could indeed happen), but that somehow Asia is going to be spared that fate (which does not make sense at all).
“Communism might look good compared to what is coming.”
Communism and it’s horrors ARE coming to America, if your ruling zionists will win the coming battle against the Euro-American core (with 190 million guns). And the spark that will ignite hostilities will be the fall of the petro-dollar, possibly after a Muslim-Brotherhood takeover of Saudi-Arabia.
BillT on Sat, 3rd Aug 2013 3:17 pm
Arthur, where did I say I wanted free goodies? That is the idea of Europe where everything is covered from cradle to grave. I would be happy to live in a world that can work without a debt based monetary system, but that does not exist today. At least not in the West.
You are good at putting words into my mouth but refuse to look in the mirror or around you at the real world. Put down your I-toys and visit some parts of the world that is NOT the West.
BTW: you also ignore the FACT that Europe is a Siamese twin with the Empire and the fate of both will be the same. Europe is dying. You are ahead of the US at the current time, but we are catching up. Be patient.
Arthur on Sat, 3rd Aug 2013 7:49 pm
“Arthur, where did I say I wanted free goodies?”
That’s the idea of communism… 100% garanteed security and income certainty and health care and education in return for 100% subservience to the government. 5 year plans, no individual freedom. “Mr. BillT, you are expected at the steelmill of Chicago next monday morning”.
“That is the idea of Europe where everything is covered from cradle to grave.”
Yes, taxes are high (too high to my taste), but for the rest you are still free to do whatever you like.
“I would be happy to live in a world that can work without a debt based monetary system, but that does not exist today. At least not in the West.”
Become a muslim.lol But seriously, I agree that the banking systeem needs a total overhaul.
“BTW: you also ignore the FACT that Europe is a Siamese twin with the Empire and the fate of both will be the same. Europe is dying. You are ahead of the US at the current time, but we are catching up. Be patient.”
Absolutely not. It is the declared goal of the EU that the world should be a multipolar one and the EU acted accordingly. Britain btw is not equal with the EU, quit the opposite. Only the UK is acting as a total lapdog and France depending on who is running the show there.
Define “dying”. Nobody is dying, neither Europe nor North-America. What is in terminal decline is the US global empire, modernity, industrialism, endless growth.
Arthur on Sat, 3rd Aug 2013 7:57 pm
“Europe is a Siamese twin with the Empire and the fate of both will be the same.”
The ‘unipolar moment’ died in Iraq. Even US mainstream sources admit that the multipolar world order is next:
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/10/19/new_order
The neocons have not yet been informed. They had to attend a meeting in the local synagoge to plot the next move in setting up a world empire, a move no doubt even more desastrous than the previous one.