Population
Patuca Reserve Resilience Network
Honduras' ecosystems are being destroyed at an incredible rate, taking with it the rich natural heritage of biodiversity that has required million of years to evolve. In 20 years, human populations in Honduras will be be threatend from ecosystem collapses that are likely to create abect misery and population collapses at an extraordinatry level. Already population crashes are happening in small scale collapses due to the degradation of social ecology.
There is a need to build a Patuca Reserve Resilience Network to help preserve the remaining 30% of the Patuca Reserve that has not been destroyed by deforestation and gold mining in the rivers. Association Patuca and Dr. Perinjaquet are working on introducing Resilience Capacity Zone Assessments and Mapping in order to identify solution sets local communities would embrace for preserving their environments and livelihoods, considering that they are squating within a national preserve that to date has had no environmental enforcement.
Video - TIME, GOOGLE AND NASA: Timelapse of the Earth Over the Last 30 Years
world.time.com - by Jeffrey Kluger
Spacecraft and telescopes are not built by people interested in what’s going on at home. Rockets fly in one direction: up. Telescopes point in one direction: out. Of all the cosmic bodies studied in the long history of astronomy and space travel, the one that got the least attention was the one that ought to matter most to us—Earth.
That changed when NASA created the Landsat program, a series of satellites that would perpetually orbit our planet, looking not out but down. Surveillance spacecraft had done that before, of course, but they paid attention only to military or tactical sites. Landsat was a notable exception, built not for spycraft but for public monitoring of how the human species was altering the surface of the planet. Two generations, eight satellites and millions of pictures later, the space agency, along with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), has accumulated a stunning catalog of images that, when riffled through and stitched together, create a high-definition slide show of our rapidly changing Earth. TIME is proud to host the public unveiling of these images from orbit, which for the first time date all the way back to 1984.
Chapter 2. The Ecology of Population Growth - Full Planet, Empty Plates: The New Geopolitics of Food Scarcity
earth-policy.org
Full Planet, Empty Plates: The New Geopolitics of Food Scarcity
Chapter 2. The Ecology of Population Growth
by Lester R. Brown
Principles and Practice for Resilience, Food Security and Nutrition
This article by Ambassador Erthin Cousin, Jose Graziano da Silva and Kanayo F. Nwanze addresses six principles to protect the most vulnerable from hunger and malnutrition in a world of global changes that are rapidly increasing risks, often with no social safety net for 80% of the world's population.
PRINCIPLE 1: People, communities and governments must lead resilience-building for improved food security and nutrition
PRINCIPLE 2: Building resilience is beyond the capacity of any single institution
PRINCIPLE 3: Planning frameworks should combine immediate relief requirements with long-term development objectives
PRINCIPLE 4: Ensuring protection of the most vulnerable is crucial for sustaining development efforts
PRINCIPLE 5: Effective risk management requires integration of enhanced monitoring and analysis into decision-making
PRINCIPLE 6: Interventions must be evidence-based and focus on long-term results
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ertharin-cousin/global-food-security_b_254...
Trade-offs between water for food and for curbing climate change
submitted by Samuel Bendett
homelandsecuritynewswire.com - September 4th, 2012
Earth’s growing human population needs fresh water for drinking and food production. Fresh water, however, is also needed for the growth of biomass, which acts as a sink of carbon dioxide and thus could help mitigate climate change. Does the Earth have enough freshwater resources to meet these competing demands?
An American Geophysical Union release reports that J. Rockström and colleagues, in their recent study, estimate the order of magnitude of freshwater consumption needed to feed a population of nine billion people by 2050 and the amount of water needed to realize the planet’s full biomass carbon sequestration potential.
(VIEW COMPLETE ARTICLE)
MSN's The Cities Issue
Image: The Cities Issue logo.
foreignpolicy.com
Our special issue dedicated to the cities of the future has its eye squarely toward China, because the cities of the future are increasingly going to be speaking Mandarin -- even more than you realize. It's no longer news that China has embarked on the largest mass urbanization in history, a monumental migration from country to city that will leave China with nearly a billion urbanites by 2025 and an astonishing 221 cities with populations over 1 million. But this isn't just about size: It's about global heft.
UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) - Launches Flagship Publication on State of the World's Refugees
unhcr.org - May 31, 2012
NEW YORK, United States, May 31 (UNHCR) – UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres warned on Thursday that factors causing mass population flight are growing and over the coming decade more people on the move will become refugees or displaced within their own country.
In comments marking the launch in New York of "The State of the World's Refugees: In Search of Solidarity," Guterres said displacement from conflict was becoming compounded by a combination of causes, including climate change, population growth, urbanization, food insecurity, water scarcity and resource competition.
All these factors are interacting with each other, increasing instability and conflict and forcing people to move. In a world that is becoming smaller and smaller, finding solutions, he said, would need determined international political will.
Climate Change, Disaster Risk, and the Urban Poor - Cities Building Resilience for a Changing World
scribd.com/WorldBankPublications - April 2012
Poor people living in slums are at particularly high risk from the impacts of climate change and natural hazards. They live on the most vulnerable lands within cities, typically areas that are deemed undesirable by others and are thus affordable. Residents are exposed to the impacts of landslides, sea-level rise, flooding, and other hazards.
Exposure to risk is exacerbated by overcrowded living conditions, lack of adequate infrastructure and services, unsafe housing, inadequate nutrition, and poor health. These conditions can turn a natural hazard or change in climate into a disaster, and result in the loss of basic services, damage or destruction to homes, loss of livelihoods, malnutrition, disease, disability, and loss of life.
This study analyzes the key challenges facing the urban poor given the risks associated with climate change and disasters, particularly with regard to the delivery of basic services, and identifies strategies and financing opportunities for addressing these risks.
Several key findings emerge from the study and provide guidance for addressing risk:
Africa is Experiencing Some of the Biggest Falls in Child Mortality Ever Seen, Anywhere
economist.com - May 19, 2012
IT IS, says Gabriel Demombynes, of the World Bank’s Nairobi office, “a tremendous success story that has only barely been recognised”. Michael Clemens of the Centre for Global Development calls it simply “the biggest, best story in development”. It is the huge decline in child mortality now gathering pace across Africa.
World Needs to Stabilise Population and Cut Consumption, Says Royal Society
World population will reach 9 billion by 2050. Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images
Economic and environmental catastrophes unavoidable unless rich countries cut consumption and global population stabilises
guardian.co.uk - by John Vidal - April 25, 2012
World population needs to be stabilised quickly and high consumption in rich countries rapidly reduced to avoid "a downward spiral of economic and environmental ills", warns a major report from the Royal Society.
Contraception must be offered to all women who want it and consumption cut to reduce inequality, says the study published on Thursday, which was chaired by Nobel prize-winning biologist Sir John Sulston.
