Population Connection, October 2015

Population Connection Volume 47, Issue 3 October 2015

Inside This Issue:

UN Population Projections: The 2015 Revision Human Population Boom Remains Largest Threat to Africa’s Lions The Blood Cries Out: Burundi’s Land Crisis

“THE NEXT CIVIL WAR IN BURUNDI WILL ABSOLUTELY BE OVER LAND.”

President’s Note

“N

ever make predictions, especially about the future.” So saith Hall of Famer Casey Stengel, whose 54-year career included stints managing both the best and worst teams in baseball.

The UN Population Division eschews predictions. Instead, its demographers deploy the best available data to tell us what may lie ahead.

The 2015 UN global population projections are radically and alarmingly higher than just over a decade ago in 2004. Since then, the UN’s medium-fertility projection for 2100 has shot up by an additional 2.15 billion. The biggest shock is Africa, where the latest projection for 2100 is 2.13 billion higher than it was in 2004. Improvements in other parts of the world have been nearly wiped out by soaring projected increases in Africa.

The poorest continent is likely to see vastly more population growth than had been anticipated. Africa’s population recently topped 1 billion for the first time. Now it’s projected to spiral to nearly 4.4 billion by the end of the century. By 2100, Africa may have as many people as the entire world had back when Reagan was elected president in 1980. Many thought that Africa’s population problems would evaporate. They were wrong.

It gets worse: Researchers led by respected former NASA climate scientist James Hansen just forecast a possible 10-foot rise in sea levels before the end of the century. One-third of Florida’s population lives below this level, as do more than 700,000 residents of New York City. So do millions of other Americans.

Globally, most major cities are in low-lying coastal areas.

Hurricane Katrina forced the evacuation of 1.2 million people in greater New Orleans. A 10-foot rise in sea levels could force permanent evacuations far larger than that. Imagine hundreds of millions of climate and population refugees desperate to find safe, dry homes.

Population Connection — October 2015

Global population stabilization represents the single best way to help avert this catastrophe. There are 225 million women in the developing world with an unmet need for contraception.

Helping them today is the right thing to do. If we don’t, we may see unimaginable levels of suffering and chaos.

And what about us—that is, the U.S.? Seemingly modest changes can yield enormous differences. The medium UN projection for the United States in 2100 is 450 million people. But, if every woman had half a child fewer (on average, of course) the U.S. could see population drop back below the current level before 2100, followed by a gradual decline. Of course, immigration matters as well. Reducing population pressures in “sending” nations is the best way to meet long-term migration challenges.

If such a drop in family size seems far-fetched, keep in mind that American family size already declined by nearly four times that much in the two decades between 1960 and 1980. Half of all U.S. pregnancies and a third of all births are unplanned.

Modest changes can yield vastly different outcomes. Plus, when women postpone childbirth, the population curve can bend sharply downward. The more education women have, the later they begin to have children.

As for migration, if sea levels rise significantly, all bets are off everywhere around the world. We’ve seen horror stories involving hundreds of desperate refugees. Now imagine hundreds of millions in full flight.

“The Old Perfessor,” as Stengel was called, opined that, “If we’re going to win the pennant, we’ve got to start thinking we’re not as smart as we think we are.” Even modest rainfall can disrupt a baseball game. Global havoc looms if we foolishly stand by while the tides rise and cities disappear.

John Seager john@popconnect.org

John’s Fall Speaking Tour

September 3, 2015

November 3, 2015

Brevard College, Brevard, North Carolina

University of Maryland, Baltimore County

September 15, 2015

November 4, 2015

Salem State University, Massachusetts

Tri-State Freethinkers, Newport, Kentucky

September 16, 2015

November 11, 2015

Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, East Falmouth, Massachusetts

University of North Carolina, Greensboro

September 21, 2015

Unitarian Church in Charleston, South Carolina

University of North Carolina, Wilmington

November 15, 2015 November 19, 2015

California State University, Northridge, Los Angeles October 2, 2015

University of Massachusetts, Amherst October 4, 2015

Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, Pottstown, Pennsylvania October 7, 2015

University of Washington, Seattle October 21, 2015

Modesto Junior College, Modesto, California October 28, 2015

Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia

November 20, 2015

California State University, Northridge, Los Angeles November 21, 2015

New Orleans Secular Humanist Association December 3, 2015

James Madison University, Harrisonburg, Virginia December 13, 2015

Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Columbia, South Carolina

Email Lee Polansky at lee@popconnect.org or call her at (202) 974-7702 if you would like John to visit your group or classroom.

www.popconnect.org

October 2015 — Population Connection

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Population Connection Volume 47, Issue 3 October 2015

President John Seager Editor Marian Starkey marian@popconnect.org Proofreader Skye Adams Contributors Jillian Keenan, Andy and Dorothy Leong, Stacie Murphy, Christina Ospina, John Seager, Marian Starkey, Heidi Vogt, Pamela Wasserman, Hania Zlotnik Population Connection (ISSN 2331-0529) Population Connection is the national grassroots population organization that educates young people and advocates progressive action to stabilize world population at a level that can be sustained by Earth’s resources.

Board of Directors Duff G. Gillespie Padgett Kelly Anna Logan Lawson Sacheen Nathan Dara Purvis Estelle Raboni Tom Sawyer, Treasurer J. Joseph Speidel, Chair Carol Vlassoff Jo Lynne Whiting, Vice Chair Hania Zlotnik, Secretary Population Connection 2120 L Street, NW, Suite 500 Washington, DC 20037 (202) 332-2200 • (800) 767-1956 info@popconnect.org www.PopulationConnection.org www.PopulationEducation.org http://twitter.com/popconnect www.facebook.com/PopConnectAction

Features 12 Future World Population:

The Latest United Nations Projections

By Hania Zlotnik

14

Human Population Boom Remains Largest Threat to Africa’s Lions

18

The Blood Cries Out: Burundi’s Land Crisis

By Heidi Vogt

By Jillian Keenan

Departments 3

Editor’s Note

4

Letters to the Editor

6

Pop Facts

8

In the News

10

From Our Members

38

Washington View

40

Field & Outreach

42 PopEd 44 Cartoon

Cover Photo Pierre Gahungu, a small land owner in Burundi, earns a living working in a tailoring shop in a city near his farm. He was forced to flee his land by violence threatened and carried out by members of his cousin’s family who did not have enough land of their own to farm for their subsistence.

This is a problem across Burundi, due to extremely high population density.

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Population Connection — October 2015

45

Editorial Excerpts

Editor’s Note

A

good friend of mine here in Maine is an enthusiastic and extremely dedicated ELL (English Language Learner) teacher at the high school that I briefly attended at the beginning of my freshman year. That high school, which was almost entirely white when I was a student there 20 years ago, is now accepting an average of six new foreign students each week. At last count, there were kids from 54 countries speaking 27 languages. Forty percent of the student body is now first-generation immigrants, many fleeing conflict in sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East. (The United States accepted 70,000 refugees in 2014—fewer than the number of American births each week.)

My friend has been helping a group of teenage boys who are here (some without their parents) from Burundi, a tiny nation in East Africa that suffered a brutal civil war from 1993-2005.

They are among the more than 175,000 Burundians who have left home in recent months to escape political unrest over an unconstitutional presidential election in July. Two of the boys who came here unaccompanied are living with my friend’s parents, who have become their legal guardians here in the United States. These quiet, gracious boys were at a summer cookout that my friend and her husband hosted, where they played with the little kids in attendance and chatted politely about their favorite American foods and their first Maine winter. They could have just as easily been eager exchange students as resilient refugees.

People flee their homes for all sorts of reasons: war and civil conflict, economic decline, lack of educational opportunities, and climate changes, to name a few. “If you’re frightened for your life or unable to feed your children your first response is to flee to where you think you might be able to meet those needs,” said Stephen O’Brien, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief. Many of the places people flee are high on the Fragile States Index. Burundi was number 21 in 2013—the most recent ranking. I suspect that its rank will rise for 2014 and 2015 because of the recent political strife. www.popconnect.org

The feature article in this issue is set in Burundi. “The Blood Cries Out” explores the complicated issue of land inheritance in a country with one of the highest population densities in the world: 1,127 people per square mile, versus 607 people per square mile in Maryland, whose land area is about the same size.

The father’s land (women typically do not own property in Burundi) must be passed on to his sons, according to custom.

But that is getting increasingly difficult as population growth outstrips available land and plots become smaller and smaller with each generation. The population has doubled since 1990 and continues to grow by 3.2 percent a year—only Niger is growing at a faster rate at 4 percent (Uganda is tied at 3.2 percent). Burundian women have an average of 5.7 children; even assuming future fertility decline, the population is projected to double again by 2040.

Pierre Gahungu, the man pictured on the cover of this issue, knows this story all too well. He suffered an attack by his cousin’s son over rights to his land and fled to the nearest town.

Extended family now squats on his land, treating it as their own and refusing to move away, even though the court ruled in Gahungu’s favor.

I enjoy the diversity that refugees bring to my historically homogenous state, where less than 4 percent of the population is foreign born (the largest share being from Canada). But I cringe to think about what brings them here. I wish they lived the lives of foreign exchange students visiting for a semester or a year, but the reality is that most of them do not. And without population stabilization, the refugee crisis—in Burundi and in so many other places— will only get worse.

Marian Starkey marian@popconnect.org

October 2015 — Population Connection

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Letters to the Editor

Very good to see an emphasis on water in the June issue of Population Connection. Although some media have emphasized almonds, which use 10 percent of all water in California, more relevant is that meat and dairy use up to 47 percent. We can lower our impact by moving toward a plant-based diet.

Linda A. DeStefano Syracuse, New York Thank you for offering a complimentary copy of Population Connection magazine to my friend Maurice English. He has been elected to the water board of our county and is very concerned about clean water for people to drink.

W. Joan Lane Glen Rose, Texas Animal agriculture and feed crop production comprise the vast majority of the water use in California. It takes 1,800 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of beef and 880 gallons of water to produce 1 gallon of milk. However, it only takes 132 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of wheat and 119 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of potatoes. Producing one hamburger uses the water equivalent of two months of showers! Almonds require, possibly, up to a gallon of water per nut, however, forage and alfalfa, grown exclusively to feed beef and dairy cattle, use about four times more water than almonds. And California exports about 100 billion gallons of water every year in the form of alfalfa to feed cows in Asia.

You have a responsibility to consider how we are going to feed the 9 billion humans expected by mid-century. It’s disingenuous to publish essay after essay about water use and conservation, repeatedly mentioning the length of showers, lawns, and almonds, and never mentioning animal agriculture.

As the United Nations, the World Health Organization, and our own USDA Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee has recommended, we all need to evolve to a more plant-based diet.

It is simply not going to be possible to keep up with the current global demand for meat and dairy; there isn’t enough land or water to grow the feed crops, house the animals, or dispose of their waste, not to mention absorb the greenhouse gasses, quell the deforestation, and avert the massive species extinction that are all linked to our current food system.

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Population Connection — October 2015

Please don’t be afraid to call out the agricultural sectors that use the most water. While many humans may like their animalbased foods, I don’t think we will be able to sustain this type of diet for much longer, and luckily we don’t have to. Plant-based diets have been scientifically proven to be healthier for humans, preventing and sometimes even reversing our most common diseases. If we could transition to a more plant-based diet, there might be food and water for all, a reversal of global warming, and a healthier population.

Debra Shapiro, M.D., F.A.C.O.G. Women Caring For Women Burlingame, California The cover of the June issue is stunning and effective. Made me want to look and read—like a good website. The water theme and environmental connections drew me in, and the population connection is made naturally. I am not just a proud Board member, I actually was engaged.

Robert K. Musil, Ph.D., M.P.H. Board Chair, Population Connection Action Fund Bethesda, Maryland With reference to the timely articles concerning worldwide water shortages, I wonder how many readers know that all H2O on this planet is part of a system. Water present at the time Neanderthals walked this earth is still here today. Water cycles from vapor to rain, down the rivers and through the aquifers, into the oceans, only to return again as part of the cycle.

Unfortunately, energy companies have now devised a way to take water out of the cycle. It is called fracking.

With this process, millions of gallons of fresh water are pumped thousands of feet into the crust of the earth below the water tables and out of the water cycle, never to be recovered unless by volcanic action.

Norman Tempel Estes Park, Colorado I loaned out this month’s magazine and cannot get it back, as everyone is so fascinated by it. Is there a means by which I can purchase two more?

Joseph Stokes Idaho Falls, Idaho

Send correspo

Amongst economists it’s currently fashionable to downgrade Thomas Malthus.

So it’s important to understand just where Malthus was right and where he went wrong.

Malthus pointed out that populations grow exponentially. He used the word “geometrically” as in geometric progression, but in modern usage we would say exponentially. And he was certainly right. The population of any species will grow exponentially if there are no checks. Normally there are no enduring population explosions in wild species because nature provides checks. But there is one species that has learned to defeat all the checks, and that, of course, is the human species. This has resulted in the human population explosion.

Everyone agrees that death control, such as improving public health, is good. It would be even better if it were balanced with birth control. But for every one hundred dollars spent on death control, only one dollar is spent on birth control.

Malthus also predicted that eventually England would not be able to feed herself. He was right about that, as well. England has not been able to feed herself for more than one hundred years. It endures on imported food. This works well for England, but it doesn’t take much imagination to see that if every country tried to be a food-importing country, there would be problems.

Today, the world is so over-populated that 45,000 people die every day from starvation and malnutrition. But even with those deaths, global population is still increasing by more than 220,000 people every day.

Some claim that technology is going to save us. As a technologist, I can assure you that not every problem is amendable by a technological solution.

Then there are those who claim that an increase in population will give us more geniuses who will save us through their bright ideas. The geniuses I know all say the same thing: Our planet is being destroyed.

The human species is the only species that pollutes. And now we have soil pollution, water pollution, and air pollution levels that threaten all forms of life on our planet. Thirty-thousand www.popconnect.org

ndence to marian@popc onnect.org.

Letters are also accepted via postal mail. Le tters may be edited for clar ity and length .

Attn: Marian St Population Co

arkey

nnection 2120 L St., NW , Ste. 500 Washington, D C 20037

species are being destroyed every year. It is the greatest mass extinction in the last 65 million years.

Few people realize the power of exponential growth. Gabor Zovanyi has pointed out that if our species had started with just two people 10,000 years ago, and then increased at a rate of 1 percent per year, humanity today would be a solid ball of flesh many thousands of light years in diameter. I thought this must be an error until I did the math. For the last 200 years, population has grown not by 1 percent, but by 1.9 percent. Stephen Hawking has calculated that if this continues, with population doubling every 40 years, by the year 2600 there will be standing room only on our planet.

Fred Brown Palomar Mountain, California I worked in a bacteriology lab in a hospital in the mid-1950s where we put swabs in a tube of sterile yellow sugar solution and then into an incubator. The following morning, the tube would have a faint white thread of bacteria in the center. A few hours later, the thread would ‘blossom’ out into a much bigger cloud. The following day, however, the solution in the tube would be almost colorless and there would only be a small amount of grey-white residue at the bottom of the tube. The bacteria colony would be gone.

The bacteria consumed all the available sugar in their environment and then died. It is taking humans more than 48 hours obviously, but the disaster for us will be the same as for the bacteria!

Phillip J. Crabill Little Elm, Texas

October 2015 — Population Connection

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6

Population Connection — October 2015

In

the

News

Nuns Not Exempt from Birth Control Requirement The United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit ruled in July against the Little Sisters of the Poor, an order of Roman Catholic nuns. The nuns challenged the mandate in the Affordable Care Act to provide contraceptive coverage to their employees at an assisted living facility for low-income seniors.

The Little Sisters are permitted to state their opposition to the mandate, like other religious organizations nationwide, at which point either the insurance company or the Department of Health and Human Services will provide contraceptive coverage to their employees. The Little Sisters argue that this arrangement makes them complicit in their employees’ use of birth control.

OTC Birth Control for California and Oregon A state law in California made overthe-counter hormonal birth control legal in 2013, but it will finally go into effect after October 1. Oregon’s governor, Kate Brown, signed a similar bill into law in early July, which will become effective after January 1, 2016.

Patients will undergo a screening with the pharmacist, including having their blood pressure measured.

California’s law has no age restrictions.

In Oregon, only women 18 years and older will be able to receive new birth control prescriptions over the counter.

8

Population Connection — October 2015

Women younger than 18 must have a previous prescription in order to get a new one over the counter.

Women Already Saving Money on Birth Control The Affordable Care Act saved women across the country an estimated $1.4 billion in out-of-pocket expenses in 2013, and that’s just on the birth control pill alone. Economists from the University of Pennsylvania analyzed health claims of one large nationwide insurer with patients in all 50 states. The results were published online in Health Affairs in July.

Successful Colorado Program Loses, Regains Funding A previously anonymous donor— recently revealed to have been the Buffett Foundation—contributed $5 million in 2009 for a five-year program that gave free IUDs and implants to Colorado teens. More than 36,000 young women received the birth control devices. During the five-year period, teen births and abortions both dropped by 48 percent.

State health officials asked Colorado’s legislature for another $5 million in funding to keep the program going, but were denied, despite estimates that the program saved state taxpayers nearly $80 million in Medicaid costs.

The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment extended a plea to the public, asking that citizens

step forward to continue funding the program. More than a dozen non-profit organizations pledged a total of $2 million in order to keep the program going.

Part of the program’s initial funding went toward training health professionals to insert the birth control devices—a skill that many health care professionals lack.

Another aspect that made it unique from the Affordable Care Act’s requirement to provide all methods of birth control with no copay is that it allowed teens to obtain long-acting reversible contraceptive (LARC) methods without their parents finding out because care was not tied to their health insurance benefits.

About 20 percent of Colorado women ages 18-44 now use a long-acting method of birth control, compared with 7 percent nationally.

Births Increased in 2014 for First Time Since 2007 According to preliminary figures from the CDC, the number of births in the United States in 2014 was 3,985,924, an increase of 1 percent (or 53,743 births) over 2013.

Following a years-long trend, however, the birth rate for teenagers ages 15–19 decreased by 9 percent in 2014 to 24.2 births per 1,000 women.

The total fertility rate (TFR) for the United States in 2014 was 1.861 births per woman, a slight increase from the rate in 2013 (1.858)

Texas Abortion Clinics to Remain Open

•

The Supreme Court ruled in June that 10 of the 19 remaining clinics that perform abortions in Texas may stay open while lawyers representing the clinics ask the court for a full review of the abortion law.

The strict abortion law requires doctors to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals and also requires that clinics meet ambulatory surgery center requirements. (Only 10 of the 19 clinics are in violation of the new law.)

The Supreme Court will hear arguments as early as October if it decides to take the case, Whole Woman’s Health v. Cole.

Clinics will be allowed to stay open until at least then.

Population Projections Revised Upward Again The 2015 World Population Prospects was released by the UN Population Division in June. In light of new census and Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) data, the projections were revised upward for the year 2100 by 359 million people.

Highlights include: • •

By 2022, the population of India is expected to surpass that of China.

With the highest rate of population growth, Africa is expected to account for more than half of the world’s population growth over the next 35 years.

www.popconnect.org

•

•

The populations of 28 African countries are projected to more than double, and by 2100, 10 African countries are projected to have increased by at least a factor of five: Angola, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi, Mali, Niger, Somalia, Uganda, Tanzania, and Zambia.

The world’s population is projected to reach 8.5 billion by 2030, 9.7 billion by 2050, and 11.2 billion in 2100.

The population is projected to grow by 83 million in 2016.

Wheaton College Ends Health Insurance for Students Approximately a quarter of the 3,000 undergraduate and graduate students at Wheaton College stopped receiving health insurance coverage from the school in July, as a result of the school’s objection to the contraceptive mandate of the Affordable Care Act. Disambiguation: This is the evangelical Wheaton College in Illinois, not the one in Massachusetts.

The health care plans of Wheaton faculty and staff have not been affected.

Planned Parenthood Under Attack for Fetal Tissue Donation Undercover videos shot by actors working for the misleadingly named anti-abortion group Center for Medical Progress were released in July. The videos show

Planned Parenthood staff talking with the actors about the transfer of legally aborted fetal tissue for medical research purposes. The tissue was not being “sold” to the actors as the sting videos suggest; rather, the costs to cover the transfer of the tissue were being discussed, in medically explicit terms.

Venezuela Birth Control Stockout The going rate for a package of 36 condoms in Venezuela is currently about $755, thanks to a nationwide birth control stockout. The pill can barely be found at any price.

The stockout is due to an economic crisis in the country, driven by a drop in oil prices. The pharmaceutical industry in Venezuela does not have access to the raw materials needed to produce their own birth control pills, so the sector has no choice but to import the medication.

Venezuela already has the second highest rate of teen pregnancy in South America, after Guyana. Many expect the current shortage of contraceptive methods to increase that rate even further, and some pharmacists have said that they have already seen a rise.

Abortion is illegal in Venezuela, but there is a black market for the service, which is largely unsafe.

To read the original news articles, go to www.populationconnection.org/resources/ population-news/.

October 2015 — Population Connection

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From our Members: Dorothy and Andy Leong on Joining the ZPG Society founding, and our society and our planet still face the same problems that we thought for sure we had solved during our idealistic college days.

I

f you met us on the street, the first thing you would notice is that we are not of the same race. But although our ancestral roots are on different continents, we built our lives on common ground—a love for each other and for our home, Planet Earth.

We became friends at a small college in Iowa during the turbulent years notable for the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement, the first Earth Day and Women’s Liberation, The Population Bomb and The Graduate. When we reunited and married seven years after college, we fancied ourselves as Ben and Elaine, heading off to our future in the back of a bus.1 Two daughters soon entered our lives (we made a mindful decision to limit the size of our family). Andy segued into a successful career in civil engineering, his résumé arrayed with rail transit projects across the country, while Dorothy wholeheartedly earned an advanced degree in motherhood and enjoyed nurturing her unique, Earth-friendly garden.

Now at retirement age, we find ourselves assessing our situation—contemplating our past and planning for our future.

After all these years, we’re still the same kids we were around the time of ZPG’s 1

A reference to The Graduate

10 Population Connection — October 2015

When we considered our legacy, we realized we wanted to do something that would continue to make a positive impact long after we’re gone. Something that would bring us peace and satisfaction about our contribution to the future of this spectacular planet.

Luckily, we had just the thing. Nestled in our assets were some shares of stock that Andy inherited from a beloved aunt who never had her own children.

We held onto Aunt Rebecca’s memory and that stock for 35 years, reinvesting the dividends, amazed at how the stock appreciated in value.

By donating Aunt Rebecca’s stock to Population Connection to set up a Charitable Gift Annuity (CGA), we

invested in our own future as retirees, and also in the future of our society and our precious planet. Shauna Scherer and her professional associates took care of all the paperwork, no problem. It feels very good to see this happen while we are alive.

Now happily relaxed in the back of the bus, we are confident that our driver, John Seager, knows where to go and the best way to get there. The ever-growing assemblage of people on our bus shares our vision and our hope that education and progressive action will enable humankind to realize a future where our finite planet is not overburdened and permanently desecrated by too many people.

Nothing would please us more than to have the wherewithal to reinvest our anticipated dividends from this CGA by purchasing more stock in this superior organization.

Projections for increased global water shortages strike a chord

Results from our Population Connection Water Poll

Population growth and global warming are chief among threats to freshwater resources in the years ahead. In just 15 years, experts project that the world will face a 40 percent water deficit under the business-as-usual climate scenario. Already 1.2 billion people live in water-scarce areas, and more than a tenth of the world’s population lives without clean sources of drinking water.

We asked Population Connection readers and supporters about their concerns for our world’s water woes. The top response?

I’m concerned that more wars and civil strife will occur because of water and food shortages. Considering that global population grows by more than 80 million people a year, and demand will increase 55 percent by mid-century, the threat of water shortages all over the world looms large.

1. I’m concerned that more wars and civil strife will occur because of water and food shortages.

2. I’m concerned about people worldwide who lack clean water and/or improved sanitation.

3. I live in a state affected by drought, water rationing, or water rights battles.

4. I work in (or retired from) an industry negatively affected by water shortages.

5. Other concerns cited.

3% 3%

36%

23%

35% www.popconnect.org

Future World Population: The Latest United Nations Projections

By Hania Zlotnik, former Director of the UN Population Division

E

analysts make explicit decisions about the future paths of fertility, mortality, and migration—and a set of probabilistic projections where models simulate thousands of different paths and thus permit an assessment of future uncertainty underlying the projected results.

very two years, the United Nations Population Division issues a new revision of World Population Prospects, the official set of United Nations population projections.

Frequent revisions are necessary because, as new data on population dynamics at the country level reach the United Nations, past estimates of population trends are often found to need revision.

Since the methods currently used to produce the UN projections rely on past trends to derive future population paths, changes to past estimates induce changes in the projected future. In particular, modifications to the most recent estimates of fertility, mortality, and population size considerably impact the projection results obtained.

According to the 2015 Revision, the world today has 7.3 billion inhabitants and a 95-percent chance of having between 9.5 billion and 13.3 billion in 2100. Furthermore, there is just a 23-percent chance that the world population may peak and start declining before 2100. The median projected population for 2100 is 11.2 billion, meaning that there is a 50/50 chance that the population at century’s end may actually be higher or lower than that number.

In July, the United Nations Population Division released the 2015 Revision, which updates the 2012 Revision issued in 2013. Both Revisions use essentially the same methodology and both include a set of deterministic projections—where

Comparing the 2015 Revision with the 2012 Revision

The 2012 Revision projected a median population in 2100 of 10.9 billion—359 million lower than that projected by the

2015 Revision. This difference is made up of discrepancies between the two Revisions in the starting population and the numbers of births and deaths projected. The 2010 population, which was the starting point for the 2012 Revision, is higher in the 2015 Revision by nearly 14 million. Between 2010 and 2100, the number of births projected in the 2015 Revision surpasses that projected in the 2012 Revision by 194 million and the number of deaths is lower by 152 million.

That is, the median path (also called the “medium variant”) of the 2015 Revision projects higher fertility and lower mortality than the 2012 Revision did.

The differences in total fertility between the 2015 and the 2012 Revisions are highest during 2010-2030 and are strongly influenced by the upward revision of total fertility in 2005-2010, when the total fertility of the least developed countries in particular underwent a substantial revision, increasing by a tenth of a child. At the same time, the 2015

Population of the world and its regions according to the 2015 Revision (medium variant) Population (in millions) 2015

2030

Percentage of the world population

2050

2100

2015

2030

2050

2100

World

7,349

8,501

9,725

11,213

100

100

100

100

Developed countries

1,251

1,284

1,286

1,277

17

15

13

11

Developing countries

5,144

5,891

6,542

6,769

70

69

67

60

954

1,326

1,897

3,167

13

16

20

28

Africa

1,186

1,679

2,478

4,387

16

20

25

39

Asia

4,393

4,923

5,267

4,889

60

58

54

44

Latin America and the Caribbean

634

721

784

721

9

8

8

6

Northern America

358

396

433

500

5

5

4

4

Europe

738

734

707

646

10

9

7

6

Oceania

39

47

57

71

1

1

1

1

Least developed countries

12 Population Connection — October 2015

Popula'on (in thousands)

12,000,000

2015 Revision

2100 projec+on: 11,213,317,000

10,000,000

2012 Revision

2100 projec+on: 10,853,849,000

8,000,000

6,000,000 2010

2020

2030

Revision revised mortality downward for both 2005-2010 and 2010-2015, leading to a noticeable shift to lower mortality in comparison to that of the 2012 Revision over the whole projection period. Consequently, between 2010 and 2050, the reduced mortality of the 2015 Revision with respect to that of the 2012 Revision contributes more to accelerate population growth than the upward revision of fertility. Because most of the additional reductions of mortality projected by the 2015 Revision occur in the adult ages, they contribute indirectly to increase the number of births by increasing the population of reproductive age.

After 2050, the contribution of excess births in the 2015 Revision in relation to the 2012 Revision vastly surpasses the contribution made by fewer deaths to increase population growth above that projected by the 2012 Revision.

These results indicate that, if mortality decline accelerates as projected in the 2015 Revision, it is all the more urgent to accelerate also the reduction of fertility in those countries that still have high levels in order to reduce the potential of higher population growth and increase the chances of reaching a peak population before 2100.

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2040

2050

2060

2070

2080

Key Results of the 2015 Revision

The medium variant of the 2015 Revision projects a world population of 8.5 billion in 2030 and 9.7 billion in 2050.

The 95-percent confidence interval for 2030 ranges from 8.4 billion to 8.6 billion, whereas that for 2050 is wider: from 9.3 billion to 10.2 billion. To achieve the medium variant, fertility in the least developed countries has to decrease from its current 4.20 children per woman to 3.46 children per woman in 2025-2030 and to 2.87 in 2045-2050. Similarly, the remaining developing countries must reduce their fertility from 2.36 today to 2.09 in 2045-2050. Slower reductions will produce larger future populations if mortality declines as projected.

Assuming that the medium variant is realized, the world population will increase by 2.4 billion between 2015 and 2050, 1.3 billion of which will be added to Africa and 0.9 billion to Asia.

The population of developed countries as a group will barely increase, mostly because of migration, and that of Europe will decrease. Africa’s share of the world population will rise from 16 percent in 2015 to 25 percent in 2050, while that of Asia will fall and so will that of developed countries (see table).

2090

2100

Population aging will continue and the proportion of persons aged 60 or over will rise from 12 percent today to 22 percent in 2050. Africa will remain the region with the youngest population, with the share of those aged 60 or over rising from 5 percent today to 9 percent in 2050. However, to achieve such slow population aging, Africa will have to maintain a rapid rate of population growth, averaging well above 2 percent per year until 2040.

Globally, the number of children under 15 and young people aged 15 to 24 will increase from 1.9 billion and 1.2 billion, respectively, to 2.1 billion and 1.3 billion in 2050. Africa, which accounts for 25 percent of the world’s children and 19 percent of the world’s young people today, will account for 39 percent and 34 percent, respectively, in 2050 and will be the only region with an increasing population of children and youth at midcentury. More than any other region, therefore, Africa will face the challenges of educating ever-increasing numbers of children and of generating jobs for everincreasing numbers of young people.

The full results of the 2015 Revision can be accessed at www.unpopulation.org.

October 2015 — Population Connection 13

Human Population Boom Remains Largest Threat to Africa’s Lions in Wake of Cecil’s Killing

Male Lion, Zimbabwe, Hwange National Park Photo: © Macabby1296 | Dreamstime.com

14 Population Connection — October 2015

Africa’s human population…is the fastest-growing in the world. In roughly the same period as the lion decline, the number of Africans has nearly doubled to 1.2 billion people.

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AIROBI, Kenya—The killing of a lion named Cecil in Zimbabwe has sparked worldwide outrage, but the largest threat to Africa’s big cats is a human population boom that is shrinking the animal’s habitat and posing worrying questions about its future in the wild.

continents. But the population surge is also stressing rural populations, who are subdividing land to fit more families and pushing into new areas previously occupied by lions and other wildlife.

More people has meant more forests being turned into pastures, more locals hunting the lion’s prey for their own

confined to less than 1 percent of the 4.5 million square miles of sparsely forested land where they used to roam, according to Panthera.

The lion population in East Africa has fallen nearly 60 percent in the same period.

Encroachment on natural habitats poses troubling questions about big cats’ future in wild

By Heidi Vogt; Originally published by The Wall Street Journal on August 7, 2015 The wild African lion population has declined 42 percent over 21 years, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, to fewer than 20,000 lions. The African lion isn’t at immediate risk of disappearing, but conservationists say that if the trend continues, there may soon be few truly wild lions left on the continent.

meals, and more herders killing lions rather than risk losing cattle.

Africa’s human population, meanwhile, is the fastest growing in the world. In roughly the same period as the lion decline, the number of Africans has nearly doubled to 1.2 billion people. The population will double again to 2.5 billion by 2050, according to the United Nations. At that point, one out of every four humans will live in Africa.

The quest to save Africa’s lions has therefore become a push to find ways for the animals to coexist increasingly closely with humans. Those efforts include payments to communities to protect big animals in their backyard, improving corrals and techniques to keep lions away from cattle, and sometimes even closely managed hunting.

Much discussion about Africa’s population boom has centered on increasingly crowded cities and migrants risking their lives for better opportunities on other

The efforts face daunting hurdles. West Africa and Central Africa have suffered the loss of 66 percent of their lion population. In West Africa, lions are now

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“There’s some cases where the pressure on African wild cats—because of that population issue—is just going to mean that we’re going to lose them,” said Luke Hunter, president of New York-based wild cat conservation group Panthera.

Efforts are under way in East Africa as well. In Kenya, a national park on the edge of the capital has become so surrounded by people that animals can no longer migrate in or out.

“It has become a fenced-in park,” said James Isiche, the East Africa director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW). In 2012, local herders hunted down a group of six lions that strayed into a nearby residential area after the lions killed a number of sheep and cows, said Paul Muya, deputy spokesman for the Kenya Wildlife Service.

In Mozambique, the number of people living inside the country’s gigantic Niassa Reserve grew to around 35,000 in 2012 from about 21,000 in 2001, and those people are increasingly clashing with the park’s lions—catching them in snares or hunting them when they attack livestock, said Alastair Nelson, October 2015 — Population Connection 15

Shrinking Kingdom

Africa’s wild lion population has declined 42 percent over the past 21 years, while the continent’s human population has nearly doubled in that span, putting a bigger strain on big-cat populations.

Sources: Panthera; International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources Graphic: The Wall Street Journal

the country director for New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society. In a strange sense of how out of whack the area has become, the park’s lion population has risen because of a jump in elephant poaching for ivory that has created a multitude of carcasses for the lions to feed on, Mr. Nelson said.

Southern Africa overall has actually seen an 8-percent increase in lions—a fact conservationists attribute to more resources devoted to protecting lions and less human population pressure.

Southern Africa’s human population is growing substantially more slowly than that of the rest of the continent.

But some of the increase in the lion population in southern Africa can also be attributed to conservation successes that help the local population live with lions, maybe not comfortably, but at least with less fear.

16 Population Connection — October 2015

Zimbabwe—where Cecil was slain—is seen as having a successful lion management program, including regulation of hunting based on permits that are lion-specific. In one community near the Hwange National Park where Cecil lived, the Panthera group trains and pays locals to scare off lions by beating drums and blowing vuvuzelas—the plastic horns more commonly seen and heard at soccer matches—to track the cats and report problem lions via mobile phone, and to strengthen corrals to keep lions from making off with cattle.

Across swaths of the continent, there is a push to give locals more control over the land, either through long-lease concessions or by helping them set up conservancies that could bring in tourists.

In Kenya, the government wildlife service has helped herders install large blinking lights in the areas where their livestock sleep in order to scare off lions.

The country also passed a law last year that promises government compensation at market price for any livestock a lion kills.

“These two—livestock and wildlife—are not necessarily incompatible. You can have a land use that embraces both,” said Mr. Isiche of IFAW, noting the rise of private conservancies that do just that.

“But if they don’t get the balance right, at the end of the day the wildlife pays the price.”

Mozambique’s government is embracing this to curb the influx of settlers into protected areas and safeguard wildlife populations, including elephants and lions, Mr. Nelson said. It is a move on a governmental level that conservationists say has the potential for long-term impact.

Press Statement: World Population Day July 11, 2015

By John Kerry, Secretary of State World Population Day isn’t just another day we mark on the calendar. It is a reminder of our common responsibility to build a more sustainable and just future.

I remember leading the U.S. Senate delegation to the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo.

Back then, a lot of people were still afraid to talk about the connections between family planning, women’s rights, and development, let alone think we could actually turn the tide.

Since Cairo, the tide’s been turning. According to the final report on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the maternal mortality ratio has been cut nearly in half. Steps taken to educate girls and empower women have helped to lift 675 million people out of poverty in the past generation alone. These initiatives save lives. A child born to a mother who can read and write is 50 percent more likely to survive past the age of five than one born to a mother who is illiterate. By ensuring gender equality, advancing reproductive health, and protecting reproductive rights, we can break the cycle of poverty.

That is why, as the MDGs expire this year, we and other nations hope to put forward a new set of goals that highlight gender equality and reproductive health and rights.

This year’s theme for World Population Day is “vulnerable populations in emergencies.” It is a reminder that in a fragile world, where war and persecution are displacing record numbers of people, those with the least power need the most protection. And so we must strengthen our partnerships to prevent conflict, shield the innocent, care for refugees, and confront such common threats as climate change, violent extremism, bigotry, and discrimination.

Our responsibilities are clear, and so are the solutions. We know the difference it makes when women and girls are empowered, educated, and equipped to participate as equals in the political and economic life of their countries.

The post-2015 Development Agenda embraces all of these priorities. If countries take these goals seriously, we can improve the lives of hundreds of millions of people. And so on this World Population Day, we mark the miles we have traveled, but more importantly, we commit to the next miles of the journey. www.popconnect.org

October 2015 — Population Connection 17

The Blood Cries Out

In one of Africa’s most densely populated countries, brothers are killing brothers over the right to farm mere acres of earth. There’s just not enough land to go around in Burundi—and it could push the country into civil war.

By Jillian Keenan Photographs by Martina Bacigalupo/Agence VU’ Originally published by Foreign Policy on March 27, 2015

Photo: A woman cultivating her small plot of land in Kayanza, Burundi

October 2015 — Population Connection 19

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hen Pierre Gahungu thinks about the small farm in the Burundian hills where he grew up and started a family, he remembers the soil—rich and red, perfect for growing beans, sweet potatoes, and bananas. He used to bend over and scoop up a handful of the earth just to savor its moist feel. To Gahungu, now in his 70s, the farm was everything: his home, his livelihood, and his hope. After he was gone, he had always believed, the land would sustain his eventual heirs.

But then, in an instant, his dreams were thrown into jeopardy. On a dusky evening in 1984, Gahungu was walking home when he heard a noise behind him.

He turned and found himself face to face with Alphonse, the son of a cousin. For months, Alphonse had been begging

20 Population Connection — October 2015

Gahungu, whom he called “uncle,” for a portion of the farm. Alphonse’s polygamous father had many sons—more than 20, Gahungu says—which meant each one would get just a tiny plot of his land. (In Burundi, generally only men may inherit property.) Alphonse wanted more space, a rapidly shrinking commodity, on which to build a house and a life. Gahungu had a much smaller family—ultimately, he and his wife would have three children, but only one boy, named Lionel—so he had plenty of land to share, Alphonse reasoned. Why shouldn’t he get a piece of it? Gahungu, however, had refused repeatedly. When he saw Alphonse that night on the road, he assumed they were in for another round of the same exhausting refrain.

Alphonse, however, had not come to talk. Without saying a word, he raised a machete and brought it down onto his uncle’s skull. Gahungu remembers feeling a flash of pain and hearing a bone crunch before everything went black.

Opposite, above: The neighborhood of Kibenga, where people buy plots of land and build walls immediately thereafter, in order to protect them from others who might be tempted to claim them as their own. People sometimes leave their land untouched for years while saving the money to build a house.

Opposite, below: Map of Burundi’s provinces Above: A house in Kayanza Province, the most densely populated province in Africa (893.3 inhabitants per square kilometer, according to the 2013 enquiry for the State Service of Kayanza). Two families (one with three children and one with seven) live in this house, which is 4x5 square meters.

Below: The neighborhood of Kigobe

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October 2015 — Population Connection 21

Above: A group of people from Kamenge, a poor neighborhood in the capital city of Bujumbura, assemble in front of the office of the ombudsman. They have come almost every day for a year in order to have a private meeting with the ombudsman, who could help them solve the conflict they have with the government over their land. So far, though, they have not been received.

Opposite page: The group discusses the possible meeting they’ll have with him the following day.

“I was terrified,” Gahungu says through an interpreter. He woke up wounded and later saw a doctor. He began recovering from his injury, but he feared that his farm would never be safe in his hands.

Gahungu decided that if Alphonse couldn’t kill him, the land’s legal owner, his son’s inheritance would be safe. So he left his family behind and moved alone to the nearby city of Muramvya, where he worked at a tailoring shop downtown.

Before long, more problems arose, but not with Alphonse (who, Gahungu says, died in a car accident). One of Alphonse’s brothers built two houses on Gahungu’s land without his uncle’s permission. In 1991, on the eve of a brutal, 12-year 22 Population Connection — October 2015

civil war that pitted Burundi’s two main ethnic groups, Hutu and Tutsi, against one another, Gahungu took the man to a local court, which ruled in the owner’s favor. But winning the legal battle did nothing to change Gahungu’s situation: To this day, he says, Alphonse’s brother, the brother’s family, and the two houses illegally occupy his farm.

Gahungu has tried to go back to Burundi’s backlogged courts for help, but he doesn’t have the money to pay for a case. Tragedy, too, has continued to follow him: Lionel died at just 19. As his own life draws toward an inevitable end, Gahungu lives alone in Muramvya. He now fears he will die before ever getting

his beloved land back. “It was the perfect farm because it was my farm,” Gahungu recalls. “It was my whole life.”

Gahungu’s experience mirrors other stories familiar to Burundi for decades— stories that are multiplying and worsening as the country copes with a veritable explosion of people. At 10,745 square miles, Burundi is slightly smaller than the U.S. state of Maryland, but it holds nearly twice as many people: about 10 million, according to the UN Development Program, or roughly 40 percent more than a decade ago. The population growth rate is 2.5 percent per year, more than twice the average global pace, and the average Burundian woman

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October 2015 — Population Connection 23

The vast majority of Burundians rely on subsistence farming, but under the weight of a booming population and in the longstanding absence of coherent policies governing land ownership, many people barely have enough earth to sustain themselves. has 6.3 children, nearly triple the international fertility rate.1 Moreover, roughly half a million refugees who fled the country’s 1993-2005 civil war or previous ethnic violence had come back as of late 2014. Another 7,000 are expected to arrive this year.

The vast majority of Burundians rely on subsistence farming, but under the weight of a booming population and in the long-standing absence of coherent policies governing land ownership, many people barely have enough earth to sustain themselves. Steve McDonald, who has worked on a reconciliation project in Burundi with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, estimates that in 1970 the average farm was probably between nine and twelve acres. Today, that number has shrunk to just over one acre. The consequence is remarkable scarcity: In the 2013 Global Hunger Index, Burundi had the severest hunger and malnourishment rates of all 120 countries ranked. “As the land gets chopped into smaller and smaller pieces,” McDonald says, “the pressure intensifies.”

1 Since this story was published, new demographic data has been released by the UN Population Division. The Burundi population is now estimated at over 11 million; the total fertility rate is estimated at 5.66 children per woman; and the growth rate is estimated at 3.21 percent.

24 Population Connection — October 2015

This pressure has led many people who want land, like Alphonse years ago, to take matters into their own hands—at times violently. The United Nations estimates that roughly 85 percent of disputes pending in Burundian courts pertain to land. Between 2013 and 2014, incidents of arson and attempted murder related to land conflict rose 19 percent and 36 percent, respectively. Violence sometimes occurs within families, but it also can play out between ethnic groups: Most returning refugees are Hutu, but the land they left behind has often been purchased by Tutsis. “The land issue comes into politics when parties say, ‘I promise to return to you what is rightfully yours,’ ” says Thierry Uwamahoro, a Burundian political analyst based in the Washington, D.C. area.

Against this fragile backdrop, the Institute for Security Studies, a South African-based think tank, has warned that “attempts to politicize land management … risks reigniting ethnic tensions” before national elections scheduled for May and June.2 Many locals, however, fear that an even bigger disaster is looming. “The next civil war in Burundi will The election was held on July 21, 2015. Despite vehement opposition, which killed dozens and forced 175,000 refugees into neighboring countries, President Pierre Nkurunziza ran for a third term (two terms is the constitutional limit) and won by nearly 70 percent.

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absolutely be over land,” says a communications consultant in Bujumbura, the capital, who works for UN agencies and asked not to be named for security reasons. “If there is no new land policy, we won’t last a decade.”

There are no easy solutions to Burundi’s mounting land crisis, but stories like Gahungu’s offer a glimpse of what might happen if this ticking time bomb is not diffused. “In the past, this situation didn’t exist,” Gahungu says, standing outside the tailoring shop where he still works, cleaning and ironing clothes. “There was land for all, but not anymore. I fled because I feared that what happened to me before could happen again. It happens to someone every day now.”

Before European colonizers arrived in Burundi, farmers cultivated the country’s arable hilltops, while less desirable, low-lying swamplands went largely unclaimed. An aristocratic class, known as the Ganwa, technically owned the land, but farmers’ access was administered at the local level by a network of “land chiefs,” many of whom were Hutu. The chiefs also resolved land conflicts, according to Timothy Longman, director of Boston University’s African Studies Center.

Under Belgian rule, which lasted from 1916 to 1962, this all began to change.

The king, the head of the Ganwa, kept control of the highlands. (According to scholar Dominik Kohlhagen, the king was seen as the land’s spiritual guardian.)

But the state assumed ownership of the lowlands and began to encourage their cultivation. The colonial government also concentrated political power among the Tutsi minority, which comprised about 14 percent of the population, giving the group a near monopoly on Burundi’s government, military, and economy.

The group from Kamenge leaves the office of the ombudsman after another unsuccessful attempt to receive a meeting.

Among other actions, this consolidation involved gradually stripping the Hutu land chiefs of their authority. More broadly, too, it sowed the seeds of dangerous ethnic polarization.

Under colonialism, official land deeds and titles were few and far between, which meant that Burundians often could not prove that they owned acreage. In the early 1960s, as independence loomed, the government began offering land registration to parties that requested it, which, for the most part, were foreign businesses such as hotels. Families also had the option to register their land, but because the centralized system was inaccessible for most farmers and required a www.popconnect.org

huge tax payment, few did. So land plots quickly fell into two categories: those with boundaries recognized by the state, and those with borders determined by custom—that is to say, residents understood trees, rocks, paths, creeks, and huts to mark de facto property lines.

The Catholic Church was among the institutions that benefited from the colonial approach to land. Missionaries, known as “White Fathers,” began arriving in the late 19th century, and over several decades, the king gave them large tracts of land, which they used to establish churches, schools, hospitals, and farms. After colonialism ended, the self-sufficiency that land provided

the church helped it retain influence, even as its relationship with the newly independent government grew fraught.

Most notably, Jean-Baptiste Bagaza, a military leader who in the mid-1970s seized Burundi’s presidency in a bloodless coup, saw the church as an extension of colonial power and a rival to his own, so he limited the hours in which congregations could gather, shut down a Catholic radio station, and used visa non-renewals and expulsions to decrease the number of missionaries in the country. Nevertheless, the church retained millions of Burundian followers, along with plenty of land, though no one, it seems, knew exactly how much.

October 2015 — Population Connection 25

An overcrowded classroom in Gatara, the capital of Kayanza Province. There are 93 children in this sixth-grade class. The tables are meant for two students, but there are three and sometimes four per table, so writing becomes very difficult.

The Catholic Church was also complicit in nurturing Burundi’s ethnic divisions; Catholic schools, for instance, were largely reserved for “elite” children, meaning Tutsis. Intensifying schisms led to various outbreaks of ethnic violence, and in 1972, the Tutsi-dominated military launched a series of pogroms targeting Hutus. More than 300,000 Hutus fled the country in under a year, leaving behind their land. Bujumbura took advantage of some of this newly vacated property and extended agricultural schemes called paysannats (derived from the French word for “peasantry”): The state leased the land to farmers, who 26 Population Connection — October 2015

would grow cotton, tobacco, and coffee and then sell these crops back to the government, the only legal buyer. Officials in Bujumbura hoped to boost Burundi’s weak economy by reselling the crops on the international market.

But the paysannat system failed miserably due to corruption, inefficient government bureaucracy, and variations in global commodity prices. Seeking bigger profits than they were able to get in Burundi, farmers began to smuggle their harvests over the country’s borders, and state-run agricultural buying programs floundered in the mid-1980s. Paysannats

also ignored and often destroyed the physical markers that had defined traditional land boundaries. Along with the pervasive lack of legal documents showing land ownership, this made it impossible for most returning refugees to reclaim their lost acreage. (Today, the Hutus who left in 1972, some of whom have never come home or are only just doing so, are called “old-caseload” refugees.)

The government set up two commissions, in 1977 and 1991, to resolve land disputes, but they proved largely ineffective.

Ethnic tensions continued to mount,

coming to a head in 1993. That October, Tutsi extremists assassinated Burundi’s first democratically elected Hutu president, Melchior Ndadaye, and civil war erupted as Hutu peasants responded by murdering Tutsis. In just the first year of conflict, tens of thousands of people were killed; by the time the war ended more than a decade later, some 300,000 Burundians, most of them civilians, had died. The war also produced a new wave of roughly 687,000 refugees.

When the dust settled, the effects of mass death and displacement were exacerbated by widespread poverty, food insecurity, and a host of other postconflict challenges, all of which persist today. In 2014, the World Bank estimated Burundi’s GDP growth rate at 4.0 percent, below the average of 4.5 percent for countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The bank forecasts that this gap will only widen in 2015, with Burundi’s rate declining to 3.7 percent and the region’s climbing slightly. The issue of land, meanwhile, has become a casualty in its own right, thrown into greater flux than ever before.

Today, there are dozens of scenarios under which people claim land, and the same plot, no matter how tiny, is often the subject of competing claims.

Some families still say they own acreage because of paysannat leases; seeking to make a profit, tenants have even sold their land over the years, despite the fact that it is technically state-owned.

According to the International Crisis Group, some 95 percent of Burundian land still falls under customary law: A family says it purchased its farm from neighbors before the war, but holds no formal deed, while another claims village elders approved the purchase of a few acres after the war, and so on. A centralized registration system does exist, and www.popconnect.org

Burundi is slightly smaller than the U.S. state of Maryland, but it holds nearly twice as many people: about 10 million, according to the UN Development Program, or roughly 40 percent more than a decade ago.

The population growth rate is 2.5 percent per year, more than twice the average global pace, and the average Burundian woman has 6.3 children, nearly triple the international fertility rate. according to the country’s land code (which was revised in 2011 for the first time since 1986), any person who owns property must hold a land certificate. The bureaucratic system, however, is complicated, and the government has done little in terms of enforcement. According to Kohlhagen, offices that issue certificates exist in only three cities, and as of 2008, only about 1 percent of the country’s surface area was registered.

Complicating matters further is the continuous flow of refugees who return home to find their land occupied by new owners. In some cases, a Hutu farmer who fled the 1972 pogroms may come back to find two other people claiming his property: whoever lived on it up until 1993, and whoever claimed it after the civil war. The last resident may have purchased the land legally, even from the government itself, and may have been paying off mortgages for decades.

The question then becomes, who should get to live on the land now—and how should the claimants who can’t have it be compensated?

The government has no clear answer. “It’s tricky to say what land policy is today,

because there is not a uniform disputeresolution strategy,” says Mike Jobbins, a senior program manager at Search for Common Ground, a conflict-prevention NGO that works in Burundi. “Every case is decided on its own merits.”

The Burundian courts and bashingantahe, or traditional panels comprising senior men in villages, are empowered to settle land disputes. But while courts issue legally binding rulings, cases are time-consuming and often prohibitively expensive. The bashingantahe, meanwhile, are free, yet operate according to customary law. A third body would seem to offer a more promising option: The National Commission for Land and Property, known by its French acronym, CNTB, was established in 2006 to resolve arguments over who owns land vacated by refugees. Its 50 members are required to be 60-percent Hutu and 40-percent Tutsi, and since its creation, the CNTB has processed nearly 40,000 cases.

But the CNTB has struggled to adopt a consistent approach to its judgments.

At first, its preference was to divide land between valid claimants, both past and October 2015 — Population Connection 27

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current owners. Since 2011, however, it has begun returning land to its original owners, usually Hutu refugees displaced in 1972. In some cases, it has even revised decisions on previously closed disputes. This has led to angry claims that the government of President Pierre Nkurunziza, a Hutu, is trying to curry support from Burundi’s predominantly Hutu electorate.

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The government did nothing to quiet these concerns when, in December 2013, it expanded the CNTB’s mandate to review cases that predate even 1972, made it a criminal offense to obstruct the commission’s actions, and allowed rulings to be appealed to a new “land court” that can issue binding decisions. This move to boost the CNTB’s power created suspicion among critics of the government that the commission’s biases would only

become more firmly entrenched. “Far from uniting Burundians or reconciling them, this new law on the CNTB will divide them,” Charles Nditije, then leader of an opposition political party, told the media at the time.

Other criticisms surround the government’s failure to establish a compensation fund for people who do not win land disputes. The 2000 Arusha

many people eligible for compensation would be Tutsi.

Murky, controversial land policies have at times led to interethnic violence. In 2013, riots broke out in Bujumbura when the police tried to evict a Tutsi family from the house it had owned for 40 years in order to give the house back to its previous Hutu residents. “We are here to oppose injustice, to oppose the CNTB, which is undermining reconciliation in Burundi society,” a protester was quoted by Agence France-Presse as shouting. Over a six-hour standoff, more than a dozen people were reportedly hurt, and 20 were arrested.

Peace and Reconciliation Agreement for Burundi, which outlined a plan for the country’s postwar peace process, guaranteed compensation, but according to Thierry Vircoulon, the International Crisis Group’s project director for central Africa, the state seems to have “completely ignored” this detail. Some government detractors say this is a deliberate, ethnically driven decision by Nkurunziza’s administration, because www.popconnect.org

Ethnic tensions, however, are only part of the puzzle in Burundi’s land crisis.

Poor farming families are straining the country’s limited ground space. About two-thirds of Burundians live in poverty, and families often have several male heirs who are forced to share plots of earth that barely fit a home and a few rows of crops.

As a result, according to research conducted by land-rights consultant Kelsey Jones-Casey, “[T]he most destructive conflicts experienced by rural people in Burundi are intra-family disputes, most of which manifest over the issue of inheritance.” Violence sometimes occurs within polygamous families, with sons born by different mothers fighting for finite land. In Muramvya, people speak in low voices about a woman who slit her husband’s throat to accelerate a land inheritance for her son.

Violence over land is roiling a country that already clings to an uneasy peace.

Nkurunziza’s government has been accused of ordering convictions, murders, and disappearances of political adversaries, among other abuses. In January, the state claimed to have killed nearly 100 rebels who had crossed the border

between Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo with the intention of destabilizing the country and the upcoming national elections, in which Nkurunziza is expected to seek a third term despite a constitutional limit of two3. Vital Nshimirimana of the Forum for the Strengthening of Civil Society in Burundi told Voice of America that officials had suggested the country’s political opposition supported the rebels: “This is what leads us to think that it might be a fake explanation to actually take advantage of the same to arrest opposition leaders or some civil society [members],” he said. A few days later, youth leader Patrick Nkurunziza (no relation to the president) was arrested for his alleged connections to the rebels; at the same time, the government sentenced opposition leader and former Vice President Frédéric Bamvuginyumvira to five years in prison for bribery.

Many Burundians fear that land could be the detail that pushes swelling political tension into something far worse.

“Land is the blood and the flesh of any human being,” says Placide Hakizimana, a judge in Muramvya, who notes that 80 percent of the cases he adjudicates pertain to property disputes. “Without land, we are condemned to death. No one will accept that. [Families] will fight. We prefer to die rather than live without land.”

Policy reform may be a dead end or, at least, one that is too rife with corruption and partisan battles to ever solve the land crisis. This thinking is driving some people to focus on restricting population growth. “Family planning is the only exit point to the land problem,” says Norbert Ndihokubwayo, a member of Burundi’s parliament and president of a legislative

Nkurunziza did run for a third term and won by a nearly-50-percent margin.

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October 2015 — Population Connection 31

Christine Nimbona is a nurse at a secondary health clinic in Kayanza province, which, with nearly 1,500 inhabitants per square mile, is one of Burundi’s most overpopulated regions. One day in August, several women waiting outside the clinic where Nimbona works nursed babies; dozens of children played nearby. Nimbona says that of the roughly 30 patients she sees each week, “almost all” cite fears about land resources and potential inheritance conflicts as their reasons for seeking family planning.

“I know that by what I am doing, I am fighting the escalation of violence in my country,” Nimbona says.

commission on social and health issues.

“No other solution is possible.”

In 2011, the government approved a national development strategy called “Vision Burundi 2025” with ambitious demographic goals: to reduce national growth from its current rate, which would cause the population to double every 28 years, to 2 percent over the next decade, and to slash the birthrate in half.

To hit these numbers, the government said it would partner with civil society to “stress … information and education on family planning and reproductive health.” Ndihokubwayo says the government is also “absolutely” considering a law that would limit the number of children each family can have.

32 Population Connection — October 2015

Many international donors are helping to expand access to family-planning services. The Netherlands chose Burundi in 2011 as one of 15 “partner countries” in which to emphasize programs that promote peace and stability, and according to Jolke Oppewal, the Dutch ambassador to Burundi, his country now donates 8 million euros annually to programs promoting sexual and reproductive health, among other human rights. In a 2005-2013 contract, the German government-owned development bank KfW dedicated more than 1.4 million euros to “strengthening and reorganizing [Burundi’s] reproductive health and family planning services.”

Some medical professionals are keenly aware of the role they are meant to play in keeping population growth in check.

It’s an uphill battle, littered with enormous, deep-seated obstacles. According to the United Nations, modern contraceptive use among females between the ages of 15 and 49 was just 18.9 percent in 2010.4 In Burundi’s male-dominated society, women are often powerless to convince their husbands to use birth control. Then there is the Catholic Church: In addition to claiming an estimated 60 percent of Burundians as followers, the church has affiliations with roughly 30 percent of national health clinics, which are forbidden from distributing or discussing condoms, the pill, and other medical contraceptives. “Catholic teachings against birth control are very resonant with Burundian culture, which says that children are wealth,” explains Longman, of Boston University.

“Because the Catholic Church is so powerful and controls so much of the health sector, it creates a huge stumbling block for family-planning practice.”

Bujumbura insists that the Catholic Church is a collaborative partner on land issues. The president even appointed a New data from UNICEF estimate that the contraceptive prevalence rate in 2013 was 22 percent.

4

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October 2015 — Population Connection 33

Article Title Article Author

Catholic bishop, Sérapion Bambonanire, as head of the CNTB in 2011. But cracks do exist between church and state.

In 2012, the Ministry of Public Health launched a series of “secondary health posts,” which offer medical contraceptives; sometimes these clinics, including Nimbona’s, are built right next door to existing Catholic ones.

34 Population Connection — October 2015

There is also tension over a variable with unknown dimensions: how much of the land the Catholic Church held onto after colonialism it still owns today.

“The Catholic Church can’t keep owning all the land while Christians are starving,” says a regional government employee in Kayanza, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of concern for his safety. According to him, in 2013

the government quietly launched a mapping program to determine, among other things, how much land the church controls. “National politics don’t allow us to focus on the Catholic Church,” he says, referring to the fact that the church’s followers are also voters. “So the government thinks this indirect method is best.”

Burundi, pointed out that the program would also give President Nkurunziza’s ruling party information about how much land its political opponents own.)

Some religious leaders are on board with the push for family planning. Pastor André Florian, a priest in Burundi’s Anglican Church, which has an estimated 900,000 followers, says he used to be part of the problem. From the pulpit of his small stone church in Kayanza, he once railed against the evils of contraception. Family planning, he told his congregation, was best left to God. Yet Florian watched with grave concern as members of his flock struggled to feed their babies. One day, he looked at a child with dull orange hair, a clear sign of advanced malnutrition, and asked himself: Was this really God’s plan? Shaken, Florian isolated himself for three months, studying scripture and praying.

“When I returned from my research, I realized that I had done wrong,” Florian says. “If nothing happens, if we just keep doing what we’re doing, tomorrow is not certain. We will see families killing each other. We will see chaos in the country.

The day after tomorrow will disappear.”

Ndihokubwayo says a land-mapping program does exist, but won’t confirm or deny whether it was created specifically to find out how much property the Catholic Church possesses. “This is a very delicate issue,” he explains. “I’m not sure whether we’ll ever find out how much land the church owns, but we’ll keep trying.” (Cara Jones, an assistant professor at Mary Baldwin College who studies www.popconnect.org

Other Burundians, however, fear that support for family planning is too little too late. Joaquim Sinzobatohana, a father of four in Ngozi province, says he first learned about vasectomies on a radio program. (Eighty percent of Burundians have a radio, and UN-funded songs and soap operas now dramatize stories of families that have suffered the burden of many pregnancies but are saved by family planning.) He decided to get the operation, a simple outpatient procedure, because he and his wife, Clautilde, are “very scared” that their small plot will provoke conflict among their children, and more offspring would only increase the chances of violence. But

Sinzobatohana admits that even a demographic freeze might not save his family, or his neighbors. The numbers just don’t add up: Already, too many people are squeezed onto too little land.

“It’s unfortunate that these contraceptive programs came after we already had too many kids,” Sinzobatohana says. “The damage has been done. Now we wait.”

International experts say a comprehensive approach to Burundi’s land crisis is necessary—one that combines policy reform, better dispute-resolution options, family planning, and new economic opportunities that will ensure fewer Burundians rely solely on the earth for survival. “People need to have economic opportunities besides agriculture, to incorporate people into other kinds of jobs and trades, so that not everyone is dependent on farming for their livelihoods,” says Jobbins of Search for Common Ground. “Without some prospect for economic growth within the context of the region and the East African community, land scarcity will continue to be a stressor.”

But the land problem is infinitely complex, with roots that run deep into Burundi’s history. The resources and political will to deal with it are scarce.

And whether in a new law or a family’s decades-long story, there will always be critical details that go overlooked— details that could become matters of life and death.

In 1999, Emmanuel Hatungimana, an elderly farmer in northern Ngozi, could feel his body slipping away. Death was very close. So he gathered his family— two wives and 14 children—around his bedside. It was time to divide his farm.

October 2015 — Population Connection 35

At 37.5 acres, Hatungimana’s lush plot of land was a decent size. An equitable division would have left his eight sons with roughly 4.7 acres each. The eldest sons of Hatungimana’s two wives stepped up to represent his part of the family: Pascal Hatungimana for the four sons of the first wife, and Prudence Ndikuryayo for the four sons of the second wife. Hatungimana gave exactly half of his land to Pascal and his brothers, and the other half to Prudence and his brothers. The patriarch was satisfied, according to Pascal; his family’s future was secure. A few days later, he died at peace.

But no one had considered the road.

One side of Hatungimana’s land runs alongside a paved road, a very desirable quality because access to that lane makes it significantly easier to bring supplies in and out of the property. In dividing his land right down the middle, however, Hatungimana had ensured that only four of his sons could claim the road as a border.

Today, more than 15 years after Hatungimana’s death, his family teeters on the brink of violence.

Prudence says it’s unfair that Pascal and his brothers have the better land, and that he is willing to fight to get what he deserves. But Pascal doesn’t want to give up anything. So they’ve brought their case to a local bashingantahe. If the panel can’t resolve the dispute, both brothers say they don’t know what will happen.

Standing on the land outside his brother’s house, Prudence looks left, over his shoulder, at Pascal, who listens nearby with his arms crossed. A dark expression falls over Prudence’s face. “Around Burundi, brothers are killing brothers. Sons are killing fathers. And it’s all for land,” he says.

“Hopefully our family won’t reach that stage. But if something doesn’t happen, everything will fall apart.”

Jillian Keenan (@JillianKeenan) is a writer based in New York. She is working on a book about Shakespeare and global sexuality. A grant from the United Nations Population Fund supported research for this article.

36 Population Connection — October 2015

Pierre Gahungu, born in 1940 in Muramvya Province. In 1984, he was attacked by the son of a cousin who wanted his land. He suffered a severe injury on his head, which caused semi-paralysis of his right arm. After he recovered from the attack, his cousin’s family illegally built two houses on his land. Gahungu went to court in 1989. The judgement was in his favor and the people had 180 days to leave his land. He is still waiting for this to happen, 30 years later. Meanwhile, his son died (he thinks he was murdered for his land) and he had to flee his own house for fear of being assassinated himself. His wife still lives there and cultivates what’s left of their land. Gahungu says justice does not exist for poor people like him. “I am as poor as you can see.” He has been living in the center of Muramvya, earning a living as a cleaner in a tailor shop.

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October 2015 — Population Connection 37

Washington View

Congress Attacks Family Planning Funding, Providers, Then Goes on Vacation

By Stacie Murphy

J

une and July were hot months on the Hill, and not just because of the weather. Before breaking for their annual August recess, both chambers of Congress took shots at family planning.

With the end of the fiscal year rapidly approaching, there’s not much chance that things will cool down anytime soon.

House and Senate Committees Vote on FY 16 Funding

On June 11, the House Appropriations Committee finished its work on the Fiscal Year 2016 State Department and Foreign Operations Appropriations bill.

The bill slashed funding for family planning programs in the developing world by almost $150 million—limiting funding for international family planning programs to “not more than $461 million.” Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) offered an amendment to lift that funding cap. Her amendment failed by a vote of 21-30.

On top of slashing overall funding, the bill also banned any U.S. contribution to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), despite its work to expand access to birth control, to prevent and treat obstetric fistula, to eliminate female genital mutilation, to ensure access to basic reproductive health care to women in emergency situations, to 38 Population Connection — October 2015

end the practice of child marriage, and to eliminate coercive practices in China.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) offered an amendment to remove that funding ban so that UNFPA can do its vital work.

The amendment failed on a voice vote.

The bill also called for a reinstatement of the Global Gag Rule, one of the most misguided and mean-spirited policies ever created. It bans family planning aid to foreign health care agencies that use other, private funding to provide legal abortion, to offer counselling or referrals on legal abortion, or that publicly support a policy of legal abortion within their own countries. Ranking Member Nita Lowey (D-NY) offered an amendment to remove the Gag Rule language from the bill and replace it with a provision to permanently repeal the Gag Rule.

Again, the amendment failed, by a vote of 22-29.

The version of the bill initially proposed in the Senate was no better. It also contained the cap on funding, the ban on U.S. contributions to UNFPA, and the reinstatement of the Global Gag Rule.

Thankfully, however, the outcome of the vote was dramatically different.

The committee met on July 9, and, fortunately, our champions were ready to

respond to the attacks. Senators Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT) offered an amendment to the bill to prevent these devastating changes to our international family planning programs. Nine other committee members, including Illinois Republican Mark Kirk, cosponsored the amendment. It ultimately passed, 17-13. Along with Senator Kirk, Republican Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska voted in favor of the measure in a rare but welcome bipartisan effort.

In a statement following the vote, Senator Shaheen said: “An estimated 225 million women in developing countries are unable to access family planning services.

Providing greater access to family planning and reproductive health services improves the health of mothers and children, empowers women to make their own choices about how to grow their families, and is a smart investment that helps reduce poverty.”

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves, Senator.

Ultimately, we do not expect that either version of the bill will receive a floor vote. The next step will probably

be a conference meeting between representatives from each chamber, who will attempt to resolve the differences between the two bills. Having such a positive and bipartisan outcome in the Senate puts our supporters in a much stronger position going into these negotiations.

Planned Parenthood Under Attack … Again

Over the last two months, our friends at Planned Parenthood have been under assault.

It began with the release of several heavily edited, deeply dishonest videos shot by an “undercover” anti-choice group and posted online. These gave anti-choice members of Congress a new excuse to attempt again what they’ve been trying to do for years: end federal support for Planned Parenthood.

Multiple Republican senators quickly moved to introduce bills to strip the organization of its funding. Senator Joni Ernst (IA) sponsored the bill that ultimately came to the floor on August 3, just before the start of the August recess.

It was a stunningly cynical move.

Anti-choice Republicans in Congress have been trying to defund Planned www.popconnect.org

Parenthood for years. Senator Al Franken (D-MN) noted as much in his floor statement: “Make no mistake—this proposal has nothing to do with protecting women’s health. Instead, it advances a political agenda that threatens women’s ability to receive often lifesaving care … Rather than recognize Planned Parenthood’s role in protecting women’s health, this legislation continues a series of unrelenting attacks on Planned Parenthood and on women’s access to basic health care. We’ve seen this strategy before.”

The vote was pure right-wing politics at its most sleazy and dishonest. Extremist senators (many of whom are currently desperate for attention for their languishing presidential runs) seized on these fraudulent videos to score points with their fanatical base by voting to strip funding from an organization that helps millions of women each year gain access to breast exams, birth control, and other vital reproductive health services.

Fortunately, the actual vote was less dramatic than the rhetoric around it, and Sen. Ernst’s bill failed to reach the 60 votes it needed for passage.

“An estimated 225 million women in developing countries are unable to access family planning services. Providing greater access to family planning and reproductive health services improves the health of mothers and children, empowers women to make their own choices about how to grow their families, and is a smart investment that helps reduce poverty.”

—Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH)

Now that they have returned to work after the August recess, there are indications that the House may hold a similar vote. And several members are actually talking about an attempt to shut down the government at the end of September in an effort to strip the funding.

Looking Ahead

The fiscal year ends on September 30, and with several Republican legislators (including multiple presidential candidates) looking to attract attention for their ostensibly conservative (read: reckless, irresponsible, punitive) stances on reproductive rights, there’s a high probability of further theatrics. We will keep you updated on what’s happening on the Hill—it promises to be a busy fall.

October 2015 — Population Connection 39

Field & Outreach

Meet Our Activists: Shaila Huq

By Christina Ospina

S

haila Huq is an enthusiastic young woman who recently graduated from Rutgers University. She dove into Population Connection’s work when she attended Capitol Hill Days (CHD) in 2014. From returning for a second time in 2015 to leading a film screening to engage others in the population conversation, Shaila has become a shining advocate for women’s empowerment and family planning access.

Shaila’s commitment to advocacy began many years ago, in middle school, when she stumbled across a video exposing cases of animal cruelty. This invoked unfamiliar emotions of frustration and helplessness and made her want to take action. With encouragement from her social studies teacher, she explored why this video had stirred such a visceral reaction in her and investigated opportunities to reconcile her frustrations. From this experience, Shaila learned about online petitions and the value of talking to friends about issues that are important to her. This led her to volunteering opportunities and the greater world of activism.

This lesson in taking action stayed with Shaila throughout her college career, both in her academics and her extracurriculars. From her first class, Shaila

40 Population Connection — October 2015

found public health to be the perfect major for her because it was a nexus of so many of the issues that she cared deeply about—equality, gender, poverty, and the environment. Seeking new ways to pursue her own interests and also to help others cultivate theirs brought her to her campus work with the ONE Campaign, an international advocacy organization committed to ending extreme poverty and preventable disease. Shaila found out that Rutgers once had a student chapter of ONE, but that it was no longer active.

With a few close friends, she was able to revitalize the ONE chapter at Rutgers and recruit others in fighting poverty and disease.

Shaila and Population Connection

Shaila first heard about Population Connection through an email invitation to attend Capitol Hill Days in 2014. After reading through our website and learning more about our mission in advocating for universal voluntary family planning, she decided to come to D.C. for the advocacy weekend. Throughout the conference, Shaila proved herself to be a well-spoken and passionate advocate for international family planning.

“Family planning is vastly important,” Shaila said, because “it represents a clear fork in the path for women.” Shaila

understands that reproductive rights and access to family planning are vital components of gender equality because they help raise the standard of living for women and girls by improving health and increasing access to educational and employment opportunities.

Shaila credits Population Connection with drawing out her interest in public policy advocacy. Through Capitol Hill Days, she was able to take part in lobby meetings with the offices of her representatives, an experience that she found incredibly eye opening. In speaking to congressional staffers, she found that “a seemingly untouchable group of people actually does want to hear what I have to say, even if they don’t necessarily agree.” She was surprised and heartened that the staffers took notes and asked (at times, hard-hitting) questions about her group’s requests to increase funding for family planning and to eliminate the Global Gag Rule. Her Capitol Hill Days experience helped show her that policy formation is an intricate process that citizen lobbyists can legitimately impact.

During the year following CHD 2014, Shaila was able to share her interests in reproductive health and international family planning with her peers. Seeking to encourage her classmates to join in

more conversations about reproductive rights, Shaila helped coordinate a film screening and discussion with Population Connection and her ONE Campaign chapter members. With this screening, her classmates explored the values of reproductive rights and how closely they tie in with opportunities to educate women around the world.

This spurred her classmates to get more involved, and several of her peers joined Shaila when she came back to Capitol Hill Days in 2015.

Looking Forward

Throughout her college career, Shaila committed herself to advocating for women’s equality, ending poverty and preventable diseases, and working toward environmental sustainability. In addition to leading her campus chapter of ONE, Shaila led organizing efforts with Food and Water Watch and its Take Back the Tap campaign, which aimed to expand the university’s water filtration system and eliminate plastic bottled water.

they give people who may have a passive interest in something a chance to become more informed and confident enough to move toward action.

“Above all, reaching out to people and empowering them to take action is my favorite part of all that I’ve done,” Shaila says. Shaila explains that organizations she’s been involved with, like Population Connection, are so important not only in the work they do, but also because

We are proud to see Shaila continuing to encourage others to embrace and advocate on behalf their passions. After graduating, Shaila spent time as a camp counselor for her local park system. She had a wonderful experience working with middle school students and finding ways

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to teach lessons about being a global citizen. She’s now gearing up to be a campus organizer for the ONE Campaign over the next few months. She hopes to eventually pursue her interests in epidemiology through a master’s degree.

From what we’ve seen, we are certain that Shaila will continue to grow as an activist and as someone who can help inspire action in everyone she meets!

October 2015 — Population Connection 41

Connecting the Dots on World Population History PopEd

By Pamela Wasserman

D

ots on a map, animated to show the progression of world population over time— it was an elegantly simple concept when it was conceived over 40 years ago and continues to amaze viewers today. Now in its fourth edition, the short video animation, World Population, has a new look and a new home— WorldPopulationHistory.org.

With a click of the mouse, viewers can stream the five-minute animation, recreated in HD, in six languages (English, Spanish, French, Arabic, Hindi, and Mandarin). From 1 CE to 2050, the animation features historical icons from the Han Dynasty to the Information Age and beyond.

Earlier versions of World Population have been displayed in top science museums and zoos from New York to Melbourne, tens of thousands of classrooms, and even corporate boardrooms. The video has been lauded by leading environmentalists, including Lester Brown and Paul Hawken, and is a favorite of Gilbert Grosvenor, former President of the National Geographic Society.

WorldPopulationHistory.org

Now, we’ve taken this impactful animation a step further with a new, interactive website that lets visitors explore the peopling of our planet from multiple perspectives—historical, environmental, 42 Population Connection — October 2015

social, and political. It is about the 2,000-year journey of human civilization and the possible paths ahead to the middle of this century. The central feature of the site is the world population map linked to a historical timeline representing five areas of human existence (People and Society, Science and Technology, Food and Agriculture, Health, and the Environment). There are multiple ways visitors can interact with the rich content on the site: • Click more than 1,400 of the map’s population dots to discover the history and demography of places as varied as Chichen Itza during the Mayan Empire, Glasgow at the height of the Industrial Revolution, or Kinshasa today.

• Add overlays to the population map to witness the changing human landscape and carbon emissions since the 18th century, as well as changing fertility and life expectancy.

• Explore over 370 historical milestones that shaped population trends, including inventions, explorations, key events, and social movements.

• Test your Population IQ with an online quiz.

• Join the conversation with an online discussion of the site’s themes.

Anyone with an interest in geography, world history, demography, or ecology will find much to explore at

WorldPopulationHistory.org. There is also content specifically for high school teachers and their students.

Putting World Population on the Map

The site went live the week of World Population Day ( July 11) with social media events (Twitter Chat and Reddit “Ask Me Anything”), radio interviews across the country, and a feature in Scientific American’s online edition. The hook? Five inventions that changed population history. Highlighting a handful of items from the interactive timeline—from the first oil rigs in 4th-century China to the invention of nitrogen fertilizer in 20th-century Europe—provided a way to link science and technology with global demographic trends.

With the start of the new school year, more media exposure is planned, including a Google Hangout for teachers and promotions through leading teacher associations. The site has relevance to so many high school disciplines, including several popular Advanced Placement (AP) courses—Human Geography, World History, and Environmental Science.

Please help us spread the word on Facebook and Twitter about WorldPopulationHistory.org by using the links at the top of the homepage!

Screen shots of the World Population video and WorldPopulationHistory.org

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October 2015 — Population Connection 43

Cartoon

44 Population Connection — October 2015

Editorial Excerpts

St. Louis, Missouri

Portland, Maine

Serious opponents of abortion should be lined up to support birth control clinics. They should sponsor sex education programs. They should help mothers find work so they can feed and educate their children.

The need to ensure widespread access to reproductive health services was once an issue that united Republicans and Democrats in Washington. Now it’s an issue that divides them.

They shouldn’t be using hidden cameras to obtain secret video of doctors who work for Planned Parenthood discussing the distribution of fetal tissue and body parts with people who have misrepresented themselves.

Those tactics are more about gotcha politics and about defunding a nonprofit organization that provides services to women and poor people than they are about helping women prevent unwanted pregnancies.

Donating fetal tissue is a life-saving effort, and the women who choose to do so should be commended, not treated like they are participating in a criminal undertaking. Fetal tissue is used for medical research to help find treatments and cures for diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.

Taking politics out of abortion would go a long way toward prevention. That’s where the nation should be headed.

— July 28, 2015

In the cross hairs is Title X, the only federal program devoted to providing low-income Americans with birth control and related reproductive health services, such as prenatal, postpartum and well-child checkups, and breast and cervical cancer and sexually transmitted disease screenings.

The program was created in 1970, enacted with the support of lawmakers from both major parties, and signed into law by a Republican president, Richard Nixon. It didn’t become a focus of partisan rancor until 2011, when House Republicans tried to cut off funding for the program.

Title X survived that time but is now again at risk of being eliminated, as part of a fiscal year 2016 budget proposal put forth last week by the Republican-dominated House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services.

At issue? Abortion. Though, as spelled out in federal law, Title X funds may not be used to pay for abortions, the program does subsidize some Planned Parenthood clinics that also offer abortion services.

Most patients at Title X clinics are uninsured women who have incomes at or below poverty level and don’t qualify for Medicaid. Nearly two-thirds have no other source of primary care—and that situation isn’t likely to improve in Maine and the 18 other states that have resisted expanding Medicaid eligibility.

— June 24, 2015

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October 2015 — Population Connection 45

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