浪花直播

More than one-fifth of the world鈥檚 population lives in  鈥� 鈥渁reas that are particularly rich in biodiversity and endemic species,鈥� said  of the University of California, Davis, at the 浪花直播 Center on February 29. And those populations are growing faster than the global average. Add to that the fact that 鈥渂iodiversity continues to decline globally, despite increasing investments in conservation,鈥� said  of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the need for new approaches to conservation becomes evident.

Williams and Lopez-Carr were joined by , director of the sexual and reproductive health program for , a London-based conservation nongovernment organization that works with communities on the remote western coast of Madagascar.

To respond to the demands of the communities and to better protect biodiversity hotspots, the speakers argued that  directed at the growing populations living nearby.

A Complex Relationship

鈥淭he relationship between population and biodiversity loss or conservation is a pretty complex relationship,鈥� said Williams.

He offered Latin America and the Caribbean as an example of the multiple factors that can affect how population and biodiversity interact. Population growth in the region has slowed, and agricultural expansion is driving habitat loss as the population ages and urbanizes and as increasing per capita GDP contributes to higher levels of consumption.

In the Indo-Pacific region, stretching from East Asia to Australia, high population growth coupled with economic growth has coincided with an increase in the exploitation of rare species for illegal trade, according to Williams. And in Africa, where the population is growing quickly but without comparable economic growth and amid high levels of instability, subsistence drives ecological exploitation.

Biodiversity and Family Planning in Madagascar

鈥淧eople who live in the biodiversity hotspots are typically poorer, typically have poorer access to healthcare than their counterparts in the cities or in the world at large, and typically have poorer health than those counterparts,鈥� said Mohan.

Blue Ventures has been . The island is one of the most biodiverse areas in the world; 80 percent of its plant and animal life is endemic, meaning it exists there and nowhere else, said Mohan. At the same time, Madagascar is one of sub-Saharan Africa鈥檚 fastest growing countries, with a  and an average .

Blue Ventures initially came to the country to improve conservation in the island鈥檚 coastal villages, where residents survive largely on subsistence fishing. But once there, the group quickly found that the population was 鈥済rowing so rapidly that in spite of our best conservation efforts, the demand for those finite coastal resources [was] outstripping supply,鈥� said Mohan. 

鈥淭he number of people who are going out to catch fish to feed their to feed their families is going up exponentially, and those fisherman are having to work harder and harder to catch smaller fish that are farther and farther down the food web.鈥�

Realizing that trend, Mohan said that 鈥渏ust by asking a few very basic questions, we unearthed a huge unmet need for healthcare and a huge unmet need for family planning in particular.鈥� 

In response, Mohan and his colleagues opened up a , one of the villages Blue Ventures serves. On the clinic鈥檚 first day, Mohan said, 鈥�20 percent of all women of reproductive age came asking for contraception.鈥� Following that opening, they 鈥渞apidly found [that] this unmet need was mirrored in every single village along the coast that we worked in,鈥� he said. Since then, modern contraceptive prevalence, initially about seven percent, has increased four-fold, while birth rates have fallen by about one-third. All in all, Mohan said, the population of the  region, where Blue Ventures operates, is five percent smaller now than it would have been without .

Rural Areas Driving Population Growth

Across the developing world, Lopez-Carr said that unmet need for family planning 鈥渞emains significantly higher鈥� in biodiversity hotspots. Given that high unmet need, especially in Africa, it is easy to infer that 鈥渃onservation may be less sustainable鈥f it does not consider health,鈥� he said.

In his , Lopez-Carr looks at how fertility rates compare in and out of hotspot areas and between regional and local levels. At the country and province level, 鈥渉igh-value conservation areas do not have unusually high total fertility rates (TFRs),鈥� he said. But at more localized levels, 鈥渋n the most remote rural areas, TFRs remain high, and in many cases, in the most remote rural areas, the demand for family planning is still very low,鈥� indicating that these areas are still in the early stages of their demographic transitions.

The fact that the sub-state picture can look so different from the state-level picture means that there is more work for researchers to do, said Lopez-Carr. 鈥淲here the fertility rates are highest is where we have the least data,鈥� he said, and that has significant implications for understanding future population growth. 

, the world鈥檚 net population gains will be in its poorest cities, he said, but 鈥渧irtually all this growth is going to be from migration, fueled by remaining high fertility in rural areas.鈥� And 鈥渧irtually all of that growth will be predicated upon the timing, magnitude, [and] pace of the fertility transition in rural areas.鈥�

Better understanding the demographic picture in rural areas is therefore critical 鈥� not just to improving health and preserving biodiversity in the world鈥檚 hotspots, but to honing down more accurate global population projections as well.

Drafted by Kate Diamond edited by Schuyler Null.