In recent months, a growing chorus of prominent individuals has been sounding the alarm about an issue that has suffered from bewildering inattention in recent years: the negative impact of rapid global population growth on the health and well-being of our planet.  Although rarely stated directly, implicit in these statements (highlighted below) is that more should be done to support voluntary family planning and basic reproductive health care for millions of poor women who lack it.  Why?  Because lack of family planning is a primary cause of the more than 60 million unintended pregnancies worldwide every year and the resulting yearly net increase in global population of 78 million people.

This morning I attended an extraordinary presentation at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars by Thomas Friedman about his new book, Hot, Flat and Crowded.  As you might suspect from the catchy title, the book focuses on how "global warming, the stunning rise of middle classes all over the world, and rapid population growth have converged in a way that could make our planet dangerously unstable." [See p. 5 @
http://www.thomaslfriedman.com/bookshelf/hot-flat-and-crowded]

In recent months, Friedman's been joined in bringing attention to the role of population growth in such critical issues as poverty, climate change, hunger, and security by the Secretary General of the U.N., the director of the CIA, former President Bill Clinton, the leaders of the G-8, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and the United States Senate.

Under the Constitution and our system of government as it has evolved over the more than 200 years of the country's history, the President has been vested with a number of powers and authorities by which he can imprint his stamp on the interactions of the United States with the rest of the world, including through development and humanitarian assistance. As a result, who occupies the White House can greatly affect what policies govern international family planning and reproductive health (FP/RH) programs and how much money is spent on these critical health activities. The President matters. 

The fact that the President matters is nowhere more obvious in the policymaking arena, in two ways -- either through promulgation of policy directives himself or in interpreting and enforcing the laws passed by Congress.

September 26 is World Contraception Day, a global campaign to raise awareness of contraception and the need to reduce the high levels of unplanned pregnancy, and to improve knowledge about reproductive and sexual health.  I celebrated World Contraception Day in Berlin, Germany, at an event on September 24 sponsored by the German Federation for World Population (DSW) and Bayer Schering Pharma.  The event in Berlin focused on teenage pregnancies worldwide and the need for better access to and information among teens to avoid pregnancy.
 
Moderated by Rolf Seelmann-Eggebert, Special Correspondent for North German Broadcasting Corporation, the event opened with remarks by Renate Bähr, executive director of DSW, and Klaus Brill, Vice President of Corporate Commercial Relations for Bayer Schering Pharma.  Marion Caspers-Merk, a Member of Parliament, asked provocatively in her keynote address what Germany would have provided to Sarah Palin's daughter.  She highlighted Germany's programs to reach teens and the country's support for international development programs.

Last week, over 1,000 heads of donor agencies, aid recipient countries, and bilateral and multilateral aid agencies gathered in Accra, Ghana for The Third High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness (HLF3).They were joined by 80 accredited civil society delegates participating in the official meetings, and 700 representatives of over 250 civil society organizations (CSOs) from 50 countries taking part in external meetings. Planned CSO events included the Accra Women's Forum and the CSO Parallel Forum on Aid Effectiveness, which both planned to produce their own sets of recommendations to ensure that CSO priorities and concerns would be addressed in the Accra Agenda for Action (AAA), the anticipated HLF3 outcome document.

The HLF3 reviewed progress implementing the 2005 Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness and addressed emerging issues. The Paris Declaration is supposed to increase the impact of aid on reducing poverty and inequality, increasing economic growth, building capacity of aid recipient countries, and accelerating achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The Declaration outlined a framework for improving aid effectiveness through a set of principles: (1) Promoting country ownership of development; (2) Donor alignment with aid recipient priorities; (3) Donor harmonization with one another; (4) Managing for results; and (5) Mutual accountability for development outcomes.