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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 19, 2001
Earth Day 2001 Offers Chance to Reflect on the Global Challenge of
Balancing Rapid Population Growth with Environmental Leadership
New CD-ROM Provides Wealth of Information on the Global Challenge
BALTIMORE — Improving living standards in the developing world without destroying the environment is a challenge explored in a new interactive CD-ROM offered by the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs (JHU/CCP). As Earth Day approaches, consider that the world's natural resources are being threatened by a number of factors, including deforestation, air and water pollution, water shortages, coastal degradation and population growth.
“Population and the Environment: The Global Challenge” is the first multimedia version of Population Reports, a respected journal which has been published quarterly for the past 25 years. Interactive enhancements on the CD such as animated charts, streaming video and audio interviews with renowned environmentalists help bring environmental challenges to life.
“This CD paints a vivid picture of the relationship between population growth, industrialization and environmental degradation,” said Phyllis Tilson Piotrow, director of JHU/CCP. “The big challenge we face is how to help developed and developing countries manage their natural resources without destroying them for future generations.”
Policy makers, journalists, researchers, educators and planners around the world can use this valuable new resource to help understand how population and industrial growth impacts the environment. For example, animated charts graphically illustrate how carbon dioxide emissions remained relatively stable for hundreds of years and then sharply increased with the dawn of the Industrial Age.
Also, experts such as Tony McMichael, professor of epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and Steve Olsen, director of the Coastal Resources Center at the Graduate School of Oceanography at the University of Rhode Island, speak about their views on a variety of environmental threats.
“We have a chance to save big chunks of the planet's ecosystem and save species…provided we recognize it is not just a big problem but a stupendous opportunity,” says Norman Myers in an audio interview on the CD. Myers, a Fellow of Green College at Oxford University in the United Kingdom, coined the term “biodiversity hotspots.”
Sample a taste of what the new “e-Population Reports” offers or to order the complete CD, contact Kim Martin at (410) 659-6140. Also, JHU/CCP offers environmental resources.
The Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs (JHU/CCP) is a pioneer in the field of strategic, research-based communication for behavior change and health promotion that has helped transform the theory and practice of public health. JHU/CCP has been a leader in the development of projects based on systematic needs assessments and clear strategies for positioning and presenting the benefits of health interventions to appropriate audiences. With representatives in more than 30 countries, JHU/CCP has developed and managed over 300 country-based projects and contracts in 50 countries involving more than 200 local organizations and subcontractors. This CD-ROM project is funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
For more information contact: Kim Martin at Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs, 111 Market Place, Suite 310, Baltimore, Maryland 21202, USA. Tel: 410 659-6140; Fax: 410 659-6266.
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