Pop-Env at Colegio de Mexico

Certainly scholarly interest in the connection between demographic dynamics and environmental context is on the rise -- I can only hope it’s in response to the real need of solid research to inform policy response to critical issues such as climate change!

There are exciting new developments at Colegio de Mexico in Mexico City. In Dec 2009, the Population Center at the “COLMEX”, in collaboration with UNFPA and CONAPO, organized an international workshop on “The Demographic Factor in the Contemporary Environmental Crisis.” Check out the program here!

The meeting was fascinating – covering a wide range of topics including theory linking demography-environment, health, inequality, livelihoods, and gender.

I contributed two presentations – the first representing more of a “think piece” based on a chapter drafted for UNESCO, in collaboration with Emmanuel David. The topic was “Climate Change, Migration, and Gender” and the work brings together several disparate, but complementary, bodies of literature to consider future research and policy needs.

The second presentation offered a summary of results from my collaborative several projects undertaken with Wayne Twine of the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa. These projects, focused on the natural resource implications of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, have been situated at the Agincourt Health and Demographic Surveillance Site. In general, they reveal the importance of natural resources as a “safety net” among AIDS-impacted households