Population Action International

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Condoms and CFLs: Environmental Behavior Change Lessons from Public Health

December 22, 2008
In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report recognized climate change as a global issue with the potential for catastrophic environmental effects. Likewise, by the late 1980s HIV/AIDS was identified as an undeniable pandemic that would affect all countries. The similarities between climate change and HIV/AIDS extend beyond the global nature of these issues, though. Both have complex etiologies, the scientific bases of which are difficult to translate to the general public, and neither is fully understood, even by experts in their respective fields.

Hunger is Africa's Natural Disaster

January 2, 2006
The West African nation of Niger was propelled to the headlines several months ago over reports of starving and dying children amid denials by its government that the country was enduring a sustained food emergency (seasonal fluctuations in the availability of food are not unusual in the arid Sahel region, they argued). Niger is perhaps better known as the country falsely accused by the Bush Administration of selling uranium to Iraq  an issue that later became the object of the Valerie Plame scandal. But Niger is confronting a genuine scandal: one-quarter of its people are facing yearly food shortages. Meanwhile, its population is set to double in less than 20 years and contraceptive use among Niger's men and women remains at one of the lowest levels of any country in the world.