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Economist: Fewer feet, smaller footprint

September 21, 2009 / ELISE / In the Media

This article discussed the Bixby edited publication The Impact of Population Growth on Tomorrow’s World a special theme issue of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.

Excerpt:economiost-mothers-and-babies

“FAMILY planning is five times cheaper than conventional green technologies in combating climate change. That is the claim made by Thomas Wire, a postgraduate student at the London School of Economics, and highlighted by British medics writing in the Lancet on September 19th.

Ever since Thomas Malthus, an English economist, published his essay on the principle of population in 1798, people have been concerned about population growth. Sir Julian Huxley, the first director-general of the United Nations Education, Science and Cultural Organisation when it was established in 1945, remarked that death control made birth control a moral imperative. Sir Julian went on to play a role in establishing what was then the World Wildlife Fund, a nature conservation agency, linking population growth to environmental degradation.

According to Roger Short of the University of Melbourne, the world’s population is 6.8 billion and is expected to reach 9.1 billion by 2050. Some 95% of this growth is occurring in developing countries. In a paper published on September 21st in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, he points out that fewer people would produce less climate-changing greenhouse gas.

A companion study published in the same issue by Malcolm Potts of the University of California, Berkeley, reckons that there are 80m unintended pregnancies every year. The vast majority of these result in babies. If women who wanted contraception were provided with it, 72% of these unintended pregancies would have been prevented, according to a report by the United Nations Population Fund called “Adding it Up: the Benefits of Investing in Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare”.”

Read the full article here Fewer feet, smaller footprint

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AFP: Population growth driving climate change, poverty: experts

September 21, 2009 / ELISE / In the Media

This article discusses the Bixby publication The Impact of Population Growth on Tomorrow’s World a special theme issue of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.

Excerpt:

AFP “PARIS — Unchecked population growth is speeding climate change, damaging life-nurturing ecosystems and dooming many countries to poverty, experts concluded in a conference report released Monday.

Unless birth rates are lowered sharply through voluntary family-planning programmes and easy access to contraceptives, the tally of humans on Earth could swell to an unsustainable 11 billion by 2050, they warned.

The UN currently projects that global population will rise from 6.8 billion today to between 8.0 and 10.5 billion by mid-century.

The researchers said that with one and a half million more humans climbing aboard the planet every week, a recipe is looming for ecological overload, famine and broken states.

“Continued rapid population growth in many of the least developed countries could lead to hunger, a failure of education and conflict,” said Malcolm Potts at the University of California in Berkeley, which hosted the conference in February.

The papers, authored by 42 specialists in environmental science, economics and demography, are published by the Royal Society, Britain’s de-facto academy of sciences.

“There is no doubt that the current rate of human population growth is unsustainable,” summarised Roger Short, a professor at the University of Melbourne in Australia.

“The inexorable increase in human numbers is exhausting conventional energy supplies, accelerating environmental pollution and global warming and providing an increasing number of failed states where civil unrest prevails.”

Ninety-eight percent of the expected population growth will occur in developing countries, especially in Africa, where numbers are set to double to almost two billion by 2050.

“How Niger is going to feed a population growing from 11 million today to 50 million in 2050 in a semi-arid country that may be facing adverse climate (change) is unclear,” said Adair Turner, a member of Britain’s House of Lords.”

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Rising Above the Tide: $15 million Gift Establishes New Center for Population, Health, and Sustainability

August 1, 2009 / ELISE / In the Media

(Originally published in the Campaign for the School of Public Health Magazine Summer, 2009)

Bixby-in-almni-mag-edited

Click to enlarge photos.

Male circumcision can reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS in parts of Africa by as much as 50 percent. A low-cost drug originally created to treat stomach ulcers, misoprostol, could save tens of thousands of women’s lives who would otherwise die of postpartum bleeding. Empowering women in developing countries with options regarding childbearing can reduce the level of civil strife and terrorism worldwide.

Researchers in the Bixby Center at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health know that complex world problems can have surprising solutions. What these solutions often have in common is that they are innovative, cost effective, and have the potential to work on a large scale in fast growing, resource-poor communities.

Thanks to a $15 million gift from the Fred H. Bixby Foundation, the School has begun to expand and enrich the current Bixby program, which has become the Bixby Center for Population, Health, and Sustainability. The new center will retain the mission of creating a more prosperous, ecologically sustainable, and less divided and conflict-ridden world. It will also highlight the critical impact of population on the global environment, global public health, and civil and international conflict, and help to address the well-documented unmet need for family planning.

Professor Malcolm Potts, who has led the Bixby program at the School since becoming its director in 1992, believes that population growth is a key factor in many of the world’s problems. “I think the huge challenge for the human race in the twenty-first century is whether we can move to a biologically sustainable way of life on this planet,” he says. “And population plays an essential role in that.”

Partnering to Solve Population Problems
Fred H. Bixby attended UC Berkeley in the 1930s, and provided in his will for the creation of the Fred H. Bixby Foundation in order to support efforts towards solving the problem of overpopulation. The three trustees of the foundation, John Warren, Howard Friedman, and Owen Patotzka, oversaw the foundation’s pledge of $500,000 to establish the Fred H. Bixby Jr. Chair in Population and Family Planning, with the goal of attracting an eminent faculty member to lead the School’s efforts towards creating a premiere program to address the population subject. The School began a search that culminated with Potts’s appointment. A Cambridge trained obstetrician and reproductive biologist, Potts was the first medical director of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, where he introduced contraceptive methods into scores of developing countries during his decade-long tenure.

“I have spent my professional career, since 1968, working internationally in family planning. I saw the endowed chair of the Bixby foundation as a wonderful opportunity to continue that work in the world’s greatest public university,” says Potts, who was named to the chair in 1992.

Over the next 16 years, he built a team of Berkeley students and postgraduates with the goal of broadening the understanding of the population factor and making an impact on policy all around the world.

“The foundation trustees I think have kept very consistently and sincerely to Fred H. Bixby’s goals, which were to help put population on the table and help people around the world make voluntary choices so they can enjoy the benefits of smaller families,” says Potts. “They had the vision that this problem is long-term, and that one of the roles that universities play is to undertake research and action over the long term.”

The Bixby Foundation’s latest gift of $15 million will allow Potts to elevate the program he has built to an elite level. “This generous gift will enable our School to significantly expand initiatives in population health,” says Dean Stephen Shortell. “The impact of the Fred H. Bixby Foundation commitment will be felt around the world for generations to come.”

Ten million dollars of the overall gift will be used to create the new center, which will be anchored in the School of Public Health, but will be recognized as a campuswide center, working in collaboration with the Blum Center for Developing Economies, the Berkeley Center for Global Public Health, the Berkeley Population Center, and other initiatives. The remaining $5 million of the gift will help support a new building for the School of Public Health, in which a wing will be named in honor of Fred H. Bixby.

Success through Student Internships
The Bixby Center has achieved remarkable results through its internships. In 1999 and 2003, the Bixby Foundation made gifts in support of students concentrating on population and family planning, allowing fellowship recipients to travel abroad over the summer and conduct research in the field.

Since 2003, a total of 33 Bixby interns have traveled to 20 developing countries, primarily in Africa and Latin America, to conduct research on family planning and reproductive health. In addition to the positive impact in these communities, the interns’ work has led to publications in refereed journals and has enriched courses offered through the Bixby Center with students’ firsthand experiences.

“We send very well-trained master’s and doctoral students who are taking skills and sharing them with colleagues in low-resource countries,” says Potts. “So the interns get an experience, and sometimes individually it changes their lives.” For some students, the experience can help shape their careers in work related to population and sustainability. This cycle has resulted in a cadre of trained professionals helping to address these problems, upon whom Potts can call to apply the University’s research findings in the real world.

Potts names Lori Babcock, M.P.P., M.P.H. ’08, as a recent shining star of the Bixby internship program, saying “she’s fearless and full of good ideas.” As a Bixby intern, Babcock went to Ethiopia in the summer of 2006 and Nigeria in 2007. In Ethiopia, she worked to improve family planning access in rural areas, especially with the delivery of Depo-Provera, which many women are eager to have. She researched ways to reduce maternal mortality in Northern Nigeria, working in conjunction with Ahmadu Bello University.

“It’s helped me enormously,” Babcock says of her experience with the program. “The two fellowships gave me concrete research experience. Prior to coming to the School of Public Health, I had experience implementing programs in the Peace Corps and with other organizations, but only limited monitoring and evaluation experience.”

After graduating, Babcock began working at Population Services International (PSI) in Washington, D.C., a social marketing organization that addresses the health problems of low-income and vulnerable populations in more than 60 developing countries. “I love my new job—it’s perfect for me,” she says. “I get to work on improving global health all day every day. And I’ve been to Africa twice in the past six months. It’s perfect.”

Mission Critical
The Bixby Center makes a compelling case for the urgency of addressing population growth, pointing to its underlying contribution to problems such as environmental decline, war, and violence. “All the terrorists come from places where it’s difficult to get birth control,” Potts puts it simply.

Martha Campbell, a Bixby Center lecturer, notes, “We haven’t found a country that has gotten out of poverty while maintaining high birth rates, with the exception of the Persian Gulf nations. Governments of rapidly growing countries simply cannot keep up with the requirements for education and health services when the number of children increases greatly each year. At the same time, there is a huge unmet need for family planning in all the fast-growing countries.”

Potts believes that Berkeley is the only university that has been consistently saying two things: first, that rapid population growth has a lot of deleterious effects, and second, that population growth can be slowed in a human rights framework. “Other universities have gone into much less focus and more diffuse descriptions of this,” he says. “I see the Bixby Center as an opportunity for Berkeley to enhance its leadership in the United States and globally in putting the population growth factor back on the world agenda.”

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LA Times Op-Ed: The war for Afghanistan’s women

July 25, 2009 / ELISE / In the Media

Bixby Center Chair Malcolm Potts published an op-ed in the LA Times Aug, 23 2009.

Read the article online here: http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-potts23-2009aug23,0,4867091.story

In his op ed Dr. Potts aruges, "it is not worth risking the death of one more American or British soldier fighting there unless there is a bold, achievable plan to educate women, enhance their autonomy and meet their need for family planning"

In his op ed Dr. Potts aruges, “it is not worth risking the death of one more American or British soldier fighting there unless there is a bold, achievable plan to educate women, enhance their autonomy and meet their need for family planning”

The war for Afghanistan’s women:

It’s not worth risking U.S. lives unless we raise the status of Afghan women

“There are two wars going on in Afghanistan. One is to defeat the Taliban, and that war is not going well. The other is to liberate women, and that war has hardly begun. If the first war is won but the second is lost, Afghanistan will turn into a failed state — a caldron of violence and misery, home to extremism and totally outside the Western orbit of influence.

Last week’s election, however imperfect, is welcome, but it means little as long as women remain enslaved in this patriarchal, tradition-bound culture. In most of the country, a woman needs her husband’s permission to leave her home. Domestic violence is tragically common. Indeed, the government elected in 2004 passed, and President Hamid Karzai signed into law, legislation legalizing marital rape. Older men use their wealth and power to marry young women. In April, according to news reports, when a teenage Afghan girl called Gulsima eloped with a boy her own age instead of marrying an older man, she and the boyfriend were shot to death in front of the mosque in the southwest province of Nimrod.

Currently, Afghanistan is one of the worst places in the world to be a woman, and — as is the case everywhere women’s rights are nonexistent or in decline — the birthrate is high. Afghan women have an average of about seven children, and the population has been doubling about every 20 years. Today it is 34 million. According to U.N. estimates, by 2050 it could reach a staggering 90 million. That rapid population growth and the demographics that go with it drive most of Afghanistan’s worst problems.

All too often, demography is overlooked in developing countries, as I experienced in 2002 when I wrote the budgets for a U.N. agency working to rebuild Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban. Part of our job was to write a 10-year financial plan. As my colleague from the World Bank was closing his computer, I said, “You do realize in 10 years’ time there will be almost 50% more people needing healthcare?” He hadn’t. After an expletive and some more hitting of computer keys, the budget totals rose considerably.

I made my first visit to Afghanistan in 1969. Even then it was clear that slowing population growth was a prerequisite for feeding Afghanistan, for its socioeconomic progress and for any shred of hope for a stable democracy.

One result of rapid population growth is that two-thirds of the Afghan population is below the age of 25. The primary role models for the volatile, testosterone-filled young men in this group are local warlords. The reason Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden (who, incidentally, is the 17th child of a man who had 54 children) have found a haven in Afghanistan is largely because of the mixture of loyalty and anger generated among males in such a society, in which there are no genuine economic opportunities for advancement. The word “taliban” means “student.” The men who condemned Gulsima and her young boyfriend were probably 18 or 19 years old.

So in a country where women have had their fingers cut off because they painted their nails, where the Taliban threw acid on girls trying to go to school, is there any possibility of improving the status of women? Yes.

When Karzai signed the law demeaning and controlling women, he did so as an ugly deal to buy the support of the very traditional Shiite minority in the west of the country. But linguistically, culturally and religiously, this population is simply an extension of eastern Iran. And Iran happens to be a powerful example of how family planning can liberate women and change a society for the better.

In the 1980s, the typical Iranian woman had almost as many children as her counterpart in Afghanistan today. Even an oil-rich country could not support that rate of population growth. The Koran mentions contraception in a positive light, and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the religious leader and founder of Iran’s Islamic Republic, endorsed family planning. Iran began to offer a full range of contraceptive choices and even voluntary sterilization. Before young couples could marry, they were required to receive family-planning instruction.

The typical Iranian woman now has 2.1 children. The transition in Iran from high to low birthrates was as rapid as that in China, but without a one-child policy, and it has had similar social benefits. Maternal and infant mortality have fallen, and, despite repressive politics, the U.N. Human Development Index, using such measures as education and individual wealth, shows that the country is better off.

How would this translate to Afghanistan, which is far behind Iran in so many ways? From my experience, I know that teenage girls in Afghanistan want to be in school, despite the cultural obstacles. And having seen firsthand Afghan women suffering from botched abortions, I am sure some, at least, want fewer children. In addition, Westerners are training female health workers. Private pharmacies often dispense drugs smuggled from neighboring countries. It would be possible to introduce contraceptives, even in remote areas.

A stable, modern and functioning Afghanistan is the West’s goal. But it is not worth risking the death of one more American or British soldier fighting there unless there is a bold, achievable plan to educate women, enhance their autonomy and meet their need for family planning.

This feudal, fundamentalist, warrior society will never join the 21st century — or even the 16th century — unless we win the war to liberate women. Unless women are given the freedom to choose whether or when to have a child, by 2050 there will be millions more angry men age 15 to 25 in Afghanistan. If only a tiny percentage are potential insurgents or suicide bombers, no Western army, however large and however strongly backed at home, has the slightest chance of prevailing.”

Malcolm Potts is a UC Berkeley professor and the chairman of the university’s Bixby Center for Population, Health and Sustainability. His latest book is “Sex and War: How Biology Explains Warfare and Terrorism and Offers a Path to a Safe World.”

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The Monthly: Burden of Billions

July 11, 2009 / ELISE / In the Media

The Bixby Center was featured in the East Bay Monthly July 2009

Burden of Billions: Cal global health experts break the silence on population growth.

by Noelle Robbins

From the East Bay Monthly 2009: "Two’s company, but 6.8 billion’s a crowd. Enough already, say two renowned U.C. Berkeley researchers who are reviving a controversial crusade to stem population growth."

From the East Bay Monthly 2009: “Two’s company, but 6.8 billion’s a crowd. Enough already, say two renowned U.C. Berkeley researchers who are reviving a controversial crusade to stem population growth.”

“Two’s company, but 6.8 billion’s a crowd. Enough already, say two renowned U.C. Berkeley researchers who are reviving a controversial crusade to stem population growth. The movement is more important now than ever, say Drs. Malcolm Potts and Martha Campbell, for the future health of our planet. But it’s key, they believe, that women are given the option (not the mandate) to choose smaller families.” By Noelle Robbins.

Read the article at http://www.themonthly.com/health0907.html



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The Daily Californian: ‘Sex and Sustainability’ Event Mixes Art and Development

April 29, 2009 / ELISE / In the Media
"This (event) is about a very basic human freedom-the freedom of women to control their own fertility," said public health professor Malcolm Potts, chair of the Bixby Center.

“This (event) is about a very basic human freedom-the freedom of women to control their own fertility,” said public health professor Malcolm Potts, chair of the Bixby Center.

The Bixby Center was featured in the Daily Californian April 29, 2009

‘Sex and Sustainability’ Event Mixes Art and Development

by Leah Greenbaum

“Hundreds of onlookers packed into the Alphonse Berber Gallery on Bancroft Way Tuesday night to learn about how unmitigated population growth hampers development in Third World countries.

The graduate student group Bixby Youth in Action, along with the Sierra Club, sponsored “Sex and Sustainability,” an event that examined the connection between population, poverty and women’s empowerment through a series of art pieces by UC Berkeley students.

The group is sponsored by the Bixby Center for Population, Health and Sustainability, the Sierra Club and Americans for Informed Democracy.”

Read the article at http://www.dailycal.org/article/105485/_sex_and_sustainability_event_mixes_art_and_develo

 

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The Rebel Yell: Asking why humans kill

February 26, 2009 / ELISE / In the Media

Malcolm-Teaching-from-Rebel-Yell

Barrick Lecture Series hosts UC, Berkeley professor to discuss “Sex and War”
February 26, 2009
by Lisa Rush

Dr. Malcolm Potts of the University of California, Berkeley discussed his book “Sex and War” as a part of the Barrick Lecture Series Monday.
The book, co-authored with science writer Thomas Hayden, discusses findings that suggest men are more aggressive than women and consequently are responsible for the existence of human warfare.

Potts, professor of population and family planning and the director of the Bixby Center for Population, Health and Sustainability at UC Berkeley, explained how humans and their closest relative the chimpanzee are both uniquely violent creatures. Historically, both species show increased violent and risky behavior in males compared to their female counterparts.

Both species engage in team aggression (deliberate and systematic forms of group violence) and same-species killings, which are both notably strange behaviors. In team aggression, animals that are related to each other take risks for each other. With humans, these behaviors are rewarded with the Medal of Honor for soldiers who are brave in battle.
Researchers have found that chimps tend to use these forms of violence to gain territory. Potts said these behaviors are a low-risk strategy to be able to increase resources in order to better reproduce, suggesting that these are evolved behaviors.

“Evolution is not about what is good, just or moral. It is about what works,” he said.

Potts pointed out how the first “Ice Man” was found with an arrow in his back and three different blood groups on his body. He argued against the popular view that this must have been “some poor Shepard that lost his way,” saying the man was more likely someone who “was involved in killing other people and was killed himself.”

Potts suggested that, contrary to popular belief adopted by the American Anthropological Association and the American Sociological Association, humans are not generally nice, peaceful creatures.

Potts discussed a survey that asked a sample of men whether they would rape a woman if they had the opportunity to do so without consequence. According to Potts, 35 percent said they would.

Potts said that since humans and chimps are highly sexual and very intelligent, it is intrinsically difficult for them to kill members of their own species.

“Therefore, my speculation is that we have a mental mechanism… that enables us to dehumanize… the person we’re attacking and I think we see that throughout history,” he stated. “Any of us could make a good soldier.”

Potts claimed that environment also influences behavior.

“Those who had encountered abuse as a child… tend to be more violent,” he explained.

Men ages 18 to 30 are the most volatile in the age spectrum, and most prone to risky behavior. Therefore, Potts claimed, “testosterone is the ultimate weapon of mass destruction.”

Potts explained how the 9/11 commission draws attention to the fact “that a large, steadily increasing population of young men without any reasonable expectation of suitable or steady employment” are a “sure prescription for social turbulence.”

Potts suggested that the Palestinian territories, particularly the Gaza Strip, are the most dangerous areas in the world. He claimed that the population of males aged 15 to 30 will increase drastically in the region, adding to the tensions.

“They’re full of testosterone, they’re uneducated, they can’t get a job…I would be a terrorist if I lived in the Gaza strip,” Potts exclaimed.

Potts believes that the availability of contraception, along with the option of safe abortions, is the only solution to population problems in the Middle East.

“Those unwanted pregnancies are going to be the world’s next terrorists,” he said.

Cara Connolly, an anthropology graduate student, found Potts’ views on abortion to be of interest.
“[Potts suggested] it’s a doctor’s job to do what the woman wants, [not what the culture thinks should be allowed.]”

Potts even admitted he taught people in the Philippines how to perform abortions and that he was not ashamed to do so even if it was illegal in the country.

Despite his arguably grim arguments, Potts said, “We’re much less violent than we used to be and I think we should rejoice in that.”

To read the article online go here

To download a printable version click here Asking why human’s kill- The rebel Yell

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Pittsburg Tribune-Review: Men, Women and War

January 25, 2009 / ELISE / In the Media

sexandwar-200x300Review of  “Sex and War: How Biology Explains Warfare and Terrorism and Offers a Path to a Safer World,” by Malcolm Potts and Thomas Hayden

“As Malcolm Potts and Thomas Hayden remind us in “Sex and War,” for much of human history the most successful and dominant males went to war, took the spoils and — exhibiting classic Darwinian behavior — raped and impregnated women, thereby benefitting future generations with their genes. You know, Genghis Khan, etc.”

To read the whole article go to the Pittsburg Tribune-Review

Download a PDF Pittsburgh Tribune Review Sex and War Review 01.09

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San Francisco Chronicle: Population growth grant for Cal school

January 15, 2009 / ELISE / In the Media

SF-Chronicle-square1-300x298The launch of the Bixby Center was covered in the San Francisco Chronicle

Population growth grant for Cal school

By David Perlman

“A $15 million grant has been awarded to UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health to study the impact of the world’s population growth on the global environment, international conflict and public health.”

Read more

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The New Security Beat: Biological Roots of Conflict

December 22, 2008 / ELISE / In the Media

sexandwar-200x300In December 2008 Bixby Chair Malcolm Potts was a guest contributor to the New Security Beat The blog of the Environmental Change and Security Program at the Woodrow Wilson Center.

Guest Contributor Malcolm Potts on the Biological Roots of Conflict

Armed conflict and its consequences concern us all. But where does war actually come from? In our new book, Sex and War: How Biology Explains War and Terrorism and Offers a Path to a Safer World, Thomas Hayden and I argue that warfare and terrorism are written in our DNA. But that doesn’t mean humanity is doomed to a future as violent as our past has been. Understanding the biological basis of our warring instincts, we argue, gives us our best hope of decreasing the frequency and brutality of warfare.

Biologically speaking, war is an unusual behavior—very few other animals intentionally set out to kill members of their own species. Along with chimpanzees, with which we share a common evolutionary ancestor, we humans have a rare and terrible behavioral predisposition: Our young males, in the prime of life, are prone to band together and attack members of neighboring groups. The conflicts currently underway in the the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Darfur, Iraq, and elsewhere all have many proximate causes—political, religious, environmental, and otherwise. But contrary to long-held beliefs about the cultural roots of war, we argue that the behavior that makes the systematic slaughter of other human beings possible in the first place is based on a suite of evolved behavioral predispositions, which we call “team aggression.”

Anyone who has been in combat will tell you he fought not for a flag, or democracy, or some other abstraction, but for his buddy in the trench, his mate in the torpedo boat, or the soldier next to him in the up-armored Humvee. Intense loyalty for one’s immediate comrades, along with loss of empathy for the members of the enemy, are at the heart of team aggression, and of warfare and terrorism. These predispositions stretch back more than seven million years to our ape ancestors’ early battles for survival. We are all descended, by definition, from the victors of innumerable conflicts over resources, territory, and the right to mate. And we bear the marks of this legacy in the behaviors and impulses that spur us on to lethal conflict to this day, even when other solutions might be available.

The big question then becomes not, “Why do wars break out?”—that is the easy part—but, “Why does peace break out?,” as we know it often does. Far from condemning us to a future of warfare, understanding war’s biological roots can point us toward policies that increase the likelihood of peace, which also has deep roots in our biology. The first step toward peace is to do everything possible to grant women greater decision-making power in society. Team aggression is primarily a male drive, and while women are certainly competitive and capable of fighting bravely and ferociously, in the vast expanse of human history there is not a single record of women banding together spontaneously to attack their neighbors.

Our book argues that when women have more agency, their societies become less warlike. Population size and growth rates are two more key factors in the quest for peace. Rapid population growth increases competition over resources, increases unemployment, and boosts the ratio of young to older men, and all of these factors help facilitate extremism and violence. Experience shows, however, that when women have the opportunity to control their own fertility, family size and population growth decline—demonstrating that accessible, voluntary family planning programs are powerful tools for peace. There is an aphorism: “If you want peace, understand war.”

In Sex and War, we argue that understanding war also means understanding our own biology and evolutionary history. If we can do that, we can find more ways to help the biology of peace win out over the biology of war.

Malcolm Potts is Bixby Professor of Population and Family Planning at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health. For more media coverage of Sex and War, see Newsweek, Wired Science, and The Scientist.

Read the full article online here

Download the article New Security Beat. Potts 12.08

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    • Bixby Center’s Affiliate UC Global Health’s Creative Expression Contest!

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      February 9, 2021

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    The Bixby Center for Population, Health, and Sustainability is dedicated to helping achieve slower population growth within a human right framework by addressing the unmet need for family planning. Learn more

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