-
The “Push” Factor: Central American Farmers, Free Trade, and Migration
›April 17, 2019 // By Kyla PetersonThe number of migrants traveling from Central American countries (particularly El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras) destined for the United States has rapidly increased in recent years. In 2018, 87 percent of Central American immigrants came from those three countries, which account for most of the migrants at the U.S. southern border. Their numbers will likely only increase considering the Trump administration’s plan to cut around $700 million in aid to these three countries. The absence of aid will reduce countries’ ability to confront the violence, crime, and government instability within their borders—which act as some of the more notorious drivers of the movement north.
-
The Care Knot: Untangling Women’s Rights and Responsibilities
›“We were all working mothers,” writes American journalist Megan Stack in her recent New Yorker piece about raising two children in India. The women who helped shape her thinking and cleared the way for her writing were migrants who left their own children behind to lovingly care for hers. “We spun webs of compromise and sacrifice and cash, and it all revolved around me—my work, my money, my imagined utopias of one-on-one fair trade that were never quite achieved,” she writes.
-
Savings Mothers, Giving Life Tackled Three Delays to Improve Maternal and Newborn Health
›“Saving Mothers, Giving Life has undeniably raised the bar in how we address maternal perinatal mortality,” said Dr. Florina Serbanescu, Team Lead of Global Reproductive Health Evidence for Action at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for the launch of the Global Health: Science and Practice Supplement on Saving Mothers, Giving Life at a recent Wilson Center event. Saving Mothers, Giving Life (SMGL), is a public-private partnership created to reduce maternal and newborn mortality in sub-Saharan African countries. “The achievements show that what is often seen as an intractable problem,” said Serbanescu, “can be addressed with the right leadership, resources, and political will.”
-
Better Water Security Translates into Better Food Security
›“Food production is the largest consumer of water and also represents the largest unknown factor of future water use as the world’s population continues to balloon, and we face increasing weather-related shocks and stresses,” said Laura Schulz, Acting Deputy Assistant Administrator in USAID’s Bureau for Economic Growth, Education and Environment. She spoke at “Feeding a Thirsty World: Harnessing the Connections Between Food and Water Security,” an event sponsored by the Wilson Center, Winrock International, the Sustainable Water Partnership, and USAID. Currently about 70 percent of global water goes to agriculture, a number that is projected to rise “as high as 92 percent,” said Rodney Ferguson, the President and CEO of Winrock International.
-
Ambassador Marcia Bernicat on the U.S. Global Water Strategy
›The overarching goal of the U.S. Global Water Strategy is to create a more water secure world, said Ambassador Marcia Bernicat, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Oceans, and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs at the U.S. Department of State at a recent Wilson Center event. “Simply put,” she said, “a world where people have the water they need, where they need it, when they need it, without living in fear of floods or droughts.”
-
China’s Hollow Villages Undergo a Transformation
›As an agricultural engineering professor, I was excited to visit and tour the farm village Houbali, in southwestern Shandong Province. I found myself standing among newly constructed high-rise buildings, a vastly different community than I had expected to encounter. A bicycle repair shop was setting up alongside other bustling businesses in the first-floor storefronts. Farm families occupied apartments in the upper floors and a beautifully landscaped park and playground were a short walk away. This neighborhood looked like a transplant from Beijing, but these modern buildings were a newly developed farm village surrounded by agricultural fields. The new buildings brought together the residents of four old, nearly empty or “hollow” villages.
-
The Global Care Tilt: Migrant Caregivers Flock to Wealthy Countries to Meet Rising Demand
›With rapidly aging populations and rising levels of female employment, the United States and other wealthy nations are facing unprecedented demands for non-familial care. These nations vary in their ability to address such demands. Those with more robust welfare states, including publicly supported, high-quality child care and elder care services and facilities, are generally able to meet growing needs for care, while those with weaker welfare states experience severe “care deficits,” leaving families with few alternatives. Increasingly, in the United States and elsewhere in the developed world, families are turning to migrants—usually women—to solve their care dilemmas.
-
From Joseph Kony to Nile Perch: Complex Links Hook Armed Conflict to Fisheries
›In “Africa’s smallest war,” both Kenya and Uganda lay claim to Migingo Island, a tiny island in the waters of Lake Victoria. While the claims are over the island, the conflict is about something else entirely: Lates niloticus, also known as Nile perch, a tasty white fish that swims in the waters surrounding the island. The fish forms the backbone of the Lake Victoria economy but is increasingly hard to come by along the lakeshore. Catches are in decline, incomes are dropping, and the Ugandan government is taking increasingly harsh, militarized steps to help revive the fishery.
Showing posts from category development.