Behind the Numbers: The PRB blog on population, health, and the environment

by Charles Teller, Bixby visiting scholar 

As the tragedy of the Haitian earthquake unfolded, I coincidentally was in Ethiopia attending two meetings on disaster risk science: an African regional workshop on building educator-practitioner networks in Africa focused on Disaster Risk Science Scholarship and Sustainable Development, and a national conference on Enhancing Disaster Risk Management for Reducing the Impact of Climate Change in Ethiopia. My challenge was to find appropriate entry points for incorporating population dimensions into disaster risk science using reliable data. As a professor of Population and Development in Ethiopia who had been seconded to government’s Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Commission’s (DPPC) Research Division for four years, this struggle was not unfamiliar to me.

The key framework in disaster risk science has been well documented in the UN’s Hyogo Framework for Action on Disaster Reduction. The assembled African experts in Bahr Dar last month identified capacity building as one of the most crucial needs for research, training, and public outreach, and for strengthening educator-practitioner networks in Disaster Risk Science/Management in Africa. The subsequent national conference aimed at strengthening community resilience and local adaptive capacity to climate change in Ethiopia – well-timed, in light of the government’s new and comprehensive Disaster Risk Management Policy.

Population pressure on a mountain in the densely populated and disaster-prone Southern Region of Ethiopia. Photo: Charles Teller.

So, where were the demographic dimensions in the trend analysis of increased risk and vulnerability to drought and climate change? After I presented a holistic model of the interactions of demographic, socioeconomic, environmental, technological, and policy/governance variables with hazards, responses, and adaptation, I was asked: Why has the number of disaster-risk prone Ethiopians actually increased since the terrible famines of the mid 1980s? Is the increase in the number of highly vulnerable Ethiopians (13-15 million chronic and acute food insecure in 2009) due mainly to high fertility, rapid population growth and resulting population pressure on the land?

I felt that was too simplistic and passive an assessment.  While population growth has occurred, changes in coping, resilience, adaptation, and productive capabilities have also been happening. Moreover, even in the face of annual population growth rates of nearly 3 percent, infant and child mortality rates have plummeted since 1990, and education and health coverage has greatly increased and are on track for meeting many of the MDG targets.  However, the lack of sufficient progress in urban development, land reform, agricultural intensification, economic diversification, and technology has induced an increasing movement of temporary off-farm laborers and permanent migrants to search for greener pastures (if any pasture at all). The pressure of continuing to maintain the overwhelming majority (84 percent) of the population on the land is tremendous, depresses the younger generations’ aspirations, and should be alleviated through off-farm employment, planned small market towns, and urban development

As a result of rural population pressure, a system of demographic change and response to natural and human hazards and climate variability appears to be functioning, and researchers have tried to monitor these through demographic and health surveillance, famine early warning, livelihood information, and vulnerability profiling. We know from years of research at DPPC and Addis Ababa University on drought risk, hazards and vulnerability that certain demographic characteristics are associated with high vulnerability: female or elderly-headed households; larger number of young dependents; and land scarcity (less than half-hectare of arable land per household). The most adaptive rural households are those with available adult labor for off-farm and diversified employment, or marketable urban skills

However, these risk and vulnerability factors vary widely across this very diverse country, from the cold, eroded highlands to the hot and dry lowlands. There really are two Ethiopian worlds: traditional rural Ethiopia and cosmopolitan Addis Ababa. The major research problem we face is the lack of reliable, seasonal, local area data and information systems for monitoring and evaluating these trends, demographic responses, and human development capabilities. Even when the data are available, constraints to access, analyze, and communicate these to policymakers who make decisions about disaster risk mitigation are formidable.

In the context of social change and sustainable development, demographics matter. The new field of Disaster Risk Science needs to include in its modeling the measurement of risk of mortality, the vulnerability of population pressure and household characteristics, and the adaptive capacities embedded in multiple migratory processes. To do so, we need to update our micro-level models, insert the missing demographic dimensions, and ensure that reliable data especially on both temporary and permanent migration, are generated and analyzed.

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