Population – Page 2 – Population Matters-USA

Last month I wrote about the coalition of rich and poor countries, of foundations and nonprofits that delivered family planning to 46 million women—FP2020. Its successor, FP2030, has continued the same work, but with some changes.

One of the involved nonprofits, the Margaret Pyke Trust (MPT), has introduced a new direction for FP2030. It has connected the growth of the human population with the decrease in biodiversity, and is doing something about it.

Population, Health and Environment (PHE) programs are not new. The recent book “Walking with Gorillas” was written by the first wildlife veterinarian in Uganda, Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka. The growing human population threatens wildlife in at least two ways. People take over the habitat of the animals, and some human diseases, such as scabies, were passed to animals. Of course, wildlife also threaten people! As humans push into areas where the animals had lived, the animals sometimes attack humans or destroy their gardens. They also have introduced diseases to humans, such as Ebola. Kalema-Zikusoka was so concerned about conflict between wildlife and humans that she started a PHE program which provides basic healthcare, contraception and environmental education, to the farmers.

Several years ago, I wrote about a PHE program on the bank of the Amazon River. It had a small health clinic with educational programs. Their family planning program was unique. There are no roads in the area—all transportation is by boat. Because the clinic worked on a shoestring budget, a long-acting contraceptive method would be advantageous. Villagers couldn’t afford a trip to the clinic except for an emergency. The solution was to have a boat go up and down the river 4 times a year. A health worker gave DepoProvera shots (which last 3 months) to women who wanted birth control.

The Margaret Pyke Trust is a British organization that specializes in education about reproductive health and contraception. Their new campaign, “Thriving Together”, started recently and already has over 150 organizations supporting it. Its goal is to build a movement recognizing “…that family planning is critically important not only women and girls, but also for the environment.” Furthermore, the head of MPT wrote: “…the existence of barriers to family planning is the most important ignored environmental challenge of our day.”

I cannot agree more! I remember when two of the top environmental nonprofits in the USA (National Audubon Society and the Sierra Club) recognized the effect of overpopulation on the environment and had active population groups. Now, the Center for Biological Diversity is the only major organization with that recognition; there are 6 people on its Population and Sustainability Team.

Although MPT will not provide clinical services as a part of FP2030, they will probably have a greater impact than if they did. Instead, they will be working with national governments to develop policies. Specifically, they plan to work with all the countries that have signed the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, which requires each state to have a biodiversity plan. MPT will offer their expertise with a new document “Reproductive choice in national biodiversity policy”.

One of the goals of this MPT program is to increase reproductive choice knowledge for several thousand people working in the fields of biodiversity and climate. They have made this possible by joining a number of international organizations, including the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. They are the first and only group in these organizations with reproductive health expertise.

To me, one of the best parts of the MPT is that they talk about “removing barriers to family planning”; they are careful to not pressure people into using contraception. Moreover, they are working to slow the extinction crisis.

©Richard Grossman, MD

There isn’t a shortage of water so much as a longage of people

Paraphrasing Garrett Hardin

This morning I cut down a little piñon tree. It had died during the winter, and was unsightly this spring with dead needles clinging to its branches. It had looked stressed last summer so I had watered it 2 or 3 times, as in previous summers. I guess it was given too little water, too late. This little tree was victim of our megadrought.

There was media coverage when a scientific paper on North American drought was published. Regrettably, the media lost interest in the subject which will affect so many lives. The paper’s title wasn’t prepossessing: “Large contribution from anthropogenic warming to an emerging North American megadrought”. Its two main points were correct, unfortunately. The North American megadrought has emerged. A megadrought is defined by its duration—it must last 20 years or longer. When the paper was written, the drought wasn’t quite that old. An update was published two years later, confirming the concerns of the original paper.

The megadrought started at the turn of millennium, and is still with us as of June, 2024. All of La Plata County, Colorado, is experiencing moderate drought.

The second key point of the paper is that “anthropogenic warming” is a major cause of our drought. Yes, we humans are responsible for almost half of the dryness. These two papers calculate that more than 40% of our megadrought is human caused, due to global heating.

Both articles used tree-ring data to estimate prehistoric rainfall. Since trees grow faster when there is adequate precipitation, this is a valid method to use before records were kept. There are tree-ring data for SW North America that go back 1200 years. The second paper states that the current megadrought is the worst in that whole 1200-year stretch!

Drought isn’t confined to the USA. Mexican farmers faced crop failures caused by a heat dome affecting most of the country. Canada is also suffering. There are areas of extreme drought in the Canadian west where terrible wildfires are burning.

The drought can cause a positive feedback loop with harmful results. Drying of bodies of water, such as the Great Salt Lake, exposes dry earth. Spring winds blow the dark dust onto white snow, causing it to melt sooner. This can cause deluges of early snowmelt and produce flooding—too much water at the wrong time—that doesn’t contribute to groundwater.

How serious is this megadrought? We will see more communities like Rio Verde Foothills, Arizona, where residents have practically no water source. In 2022 Severance, Colorado, realized that its water was already serving the maximum number of people and had to stop issuing building permits. Using foresight, last year Arizona stopped issuing building permits in some areas around Phoenix due to lack of water.

What can we do about the megadrought? Of course, most important is being careful with the water we have. In addition, we need to limit our carbon emissions, because our use of fossil fuels is what is causing the increase in drought. To quote the first megadrought paper: “The magnitude of future droughts in North America and elsewhere will depend greatly on future rates of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions globally.”

One of the goals of the local organization, 4CORE (Four Corners Office for Resource Efficiency), is to reduce local carbon emissions. Their programs include making homes more energy efficient, encouraging use of rain barrels to harvest precipitation, and electrification of homes and transportation. Most of all, we must recognize that arid land cannot support many people.