Environment Week in Review

Hi everyone and welcome to another Week in Review. This month we are focusing Environment so today’s WIR includes a look back at World Environment Day, UNEP’s new report on food waste and a World Bank article on global sustainability. This article will also introduce Wikichild’s upcoming online consultation, partnered by the World Health Organization and Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children, on how child well-being should be measured in view of future development frameworks such as the Post-2015 agenda.

World Environment Day is an annual event that is aimed at being the biggest and most widely celebrated global day for positive environmental action. This year’s celebration, hosted by Mongolia, had the theme of ‘Think. Eat. Save. Reduce your Footprint’.  According to UNEP’s Reducing Food Loss and Waste report, which was launched on W.E.D, an estimated one third, or 1.3 billion tonnes, of all food produced ends up in the garbage of farmers, transporters, retailers and consumers alike. Make sure you look out for more environment awareness days this month including Global Wind Day and World Ocean’s Day.

This week the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction welcomed the emphasis that the Post-2015 committee is putting on combatting climate change. The Head of UNISDR, Margareta Wahlström referenced the recently published Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk, which highlights the economic and social costs of disasters and the impact they can have on the global population, particularly the poor.

This Saturday The governments of the UK and Brazil, and the Children's Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF) will co-host a high-level international meeting, Nutrition for Growth: Beating Hunger through Business and Science on 8 June in central London. The event will bring together business leaders, scientists, governments and civil society to make ambitious financial and political commitments in a bid to reach millions of pregnant women and infants with the right nutrition at the right time, and reduce cases of stunting and deaths from severe acute malnutrition. The whole day will be webcast live from 8.30am to 5.30pm on Saturday 8 June 2013 on this website.

This week the World Bank published the ANS indicator for more than 200 countries in the Little Green Data Book, the World Bank’s annual compilation of environment data. Click here to access highlights from the report.

The Living Planet Index is one of the longest-running measures of the trends in the state of global biodiversity and reflects changes in the health of the planet’s ecosystems by tracking trends in populations of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians. Last year’s report provides a comprehensive overview of the cumulative pressure we’re putting on the planet, and the consequent decline in the health of the forests, rivers and oceans that make our lives possible.

Finally, between the 19^th of June and the 2^nd of July, Wikichild, HBSC and the W.H.O are running an online consultation on how child well-being should be measured in view of future development frameworks. The discussion will be launched at HBSC’s 30^th anniversary conference so make sure you tune in and add your comment to what should be a fascinating conversation! Follow #childwellbeing on Twitter for updates.  

We hope you have enjoyed this Week in Review and look forward to bringing you more Environment updates in the coming weeks.

Robbie Lawrence,

Wikichild Coordinator 

A Promising Future for Child Nutrition?

This ProgBlog article by Robbie Lawrence, Wikichild Coordinator, is part of the Wikiprogress Health Series.

"In June, the Prime Minister will host the Nutrition and Growth event ahead of the G8; we hope Mr Cameron takes this timely opportunity to pledge significant investment in nutrition programmes and show real leadership in improving children’s futures, as well as those of their communities and their countries.” David Bull, UNICEF UK

Wikichild is currently focusing on nutrition as part of the wider Wikiprogress spotlight on health this month. On Monday, UNICEF released ‘Improving Child Nutrition: The achievable imperative for global progress’ which reports that significant advances have been made in the fight against stunting – the long term effect of hunger and malnutrition. Citing successes in eleven countries - Ethiopia, Haiti, India, Nepal, Peru, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sri Lanka, Kyrgyzstan, Tanzania and Vietnam, the report shows that stunting and other forms of undernutrition can be brought down by improved understanding of the problem and the implementation of practical measures that target pregnant mothers and children in the first two years of their life.

According to UNICEF, one in four of all children suffer from stunting because they haven’t had the right nutrients in the critical 1,000-day window following conception. Malnutrition, through lack of both macronutrients and certain micronutrients has long-term negative impacts on brain and nerve development and function, including mental activity, and the acquisition of skills needed to interact well socially. This impairment is often reflected in lower IQs and poorer performance at school (Save the Children). The damage done to a child’s body and brain by stunting is irreversible. It brings down performance at school and later at work, and heightens children’s risk of dying from infectious diseases.

‘Improving Child Nutrition’ builds on UNICEF’s earlier report ‘Tracking Progress on Child and Material’ by highlighting new developments and showing that attempts to improve nutrition programs are working. An estimated 80 per cent of the world’s stunted children live in just 14 countries spanning across Africa and Asia, and by working in communities within these nations, UNICEF and other organizations have reduced stunting by applying a series of steps including, improving women’s diet, early and exclusive breastfeeding and providing minerals and appropriate food to new mothers.

These programs all have common elements: political commitment, national policies and the presence of trained community workers to deliver information and aid. To use two examples of their success; we can look at Ethiopia, where stunting has been cut from 57 percent to 44 percent in the first decade of this century through the implementation of a national nutrition program, and at the Maharashtra state in India where the percentage of stunted children fell from 39 percent in 2005 to 23 percent in 2012 due to the support of frontline workers. 

Such progress is undoubtedly promising, and presents a unique opportunity for future global frameworks to further alleviate the problem of undernutrition. UNICEF itself acknowledges that there is still a great amount of work to be done if the World Health Assembly’s new global target of reducing the number of stunted children under the age of five by forty percent by 2025 is to be achieved. 

More recently, inequality has been a hot topic on the Wikichild, Wikiprogress and Wikigender platforms so we are well versed in the hidden realties that large, all encompassing goals such as this can mask, but it is encouraging that new approaches are targeting individual countries and communities, allowing accurate data systems to be developed that can describe and monitor changes in the circumstances of different population groups.

Furthermore, tools like the Hunger and Nutrition Commitment Index (released last week) provide greater transparency and public accountability by measuring what governments achieve, and where they fail, in addressing hunger and undernutrition. Even Duncan Green has commended the HANCI, stating that ‘it could become one of the more useful annual league tables’, as it forces governments to be ‘slapped’ if they underperform. 

Nutrition should remain at the center of the global development agenda leading up to Post 2015. The evidence laid out in UNICEF’s report and the momentum generated by their successes shows that improving child and maternal nutrition is an achievable necessity for global progress.

Robbie Lawrence

Wikichild Coordinator

Impact of daycare interventions in Latin America

Urbanisation and increased female labour market participation have led to increased demand for daycare services, which in developing countries is partly met by government daycare programmes. Some of these programmes offer subsidised community daycare services, in which women from the community provide full time childcare in their home, food and some recreational or educational activities for the children. Other programmes offer public preschool education to children between 3 and 5 years of age. But do these daycare interventions benefit the child’s development?

Impact evaluations of these programmes were undertaken to assess their effectiveness by comparing the wellbeing of children cared for at daycare (or preschool) to those cared for at home. To synthesise the evidence, researchers of the National Institute of Public Health in Mexico (myself and Jef Leroy, currently at the International Food Policy Research Institute) and the Center for Research and Teaching in Economics (Maite Guijaro), undertook a systematic review. The study, The impact of daycare programmes on child health, nutrition and development in developing countries: a systematic review examined the effects of daycare interventions (formal out-of-home care) on the health, nutrition and development of children under five years of age, in low- and middle-income countries.

Photo sourced by 3ie

The systematic review identified 13,190 studies, but only six, based in Latin America, met the inclusion criteria in terms of scope, type and quality. Four studies evaluated community-based interventions and two looked at preschool interventions.

The findings showed that attending daycare had positive effects on language skills, social and emotional development of children in the short run. In the medium term, school attendance, student behaviour and test scores witnessed a positive trend. In fact, the effects on the children were more pronounced depending on the exposure to the programme. For example, the Bolivia daycare programme had a positive effect (2-11% increase) on bulk (gross) and fine motor, language and psycho-social skills for children with more than seven months of exposure to the programme. On medium-term outcomes, the Argentina study found that one year of preschool increased mathematics and Spanish test scores at third grade of primary education by eight percent. In Uruguay, it was found that children who attended at least one year of preschool, increased their schooling by nearly one additional year by the age of 15.

On child health outcomes, only one study from Colombia evaluated the impact on prevalence of diarrhoea and acute respiratory infections. Although this study found reductions in the prevalence of both diseases with longer exposure to the programme, it is not clear if the results are a true health effect of the programme or if the comparison group of children with less than one month of exposure to the programme, might have suffered from a steep increase in infections right after joining a daycare centre.

However, no conclusions could be drawn with respect to the nutrition outcomes. One study from Guatemala analysed child dietary intake and found positive impacts, a study from Bolivia found no impact on child growth, and two additional studies from Colombia found inconsistent results on child anthropometrics, such as height and weight.

Finally, the reviewed studies did not provide a good description of the type and quality of care children receive in the absence of the programme. This represents an important limitation of the reviewed studies since the potential impact a daycare programme might have is determined by the “net” treatment, which is the difference in the type and quality of care between daycare interventions and the alternative forms of child care in the absence of the programme. For instance, a positive “net” treatment effect can be expected if daycare interventions provide a high quality childcare alternative to mothers who take care of their children while working. However, a negative “net” treatment effect could be anticipated if children who receive adequate family care are enrolled into a low-quality daycare programme.

Policy implications

The evidence shows that daycare interventions in Latin America, community-based or school-based, have had a positive impact on child development. However, there is not enough evidence to conclude that these programmes have improved child health and nutrition. Based on this information, should policymakers decide not to implement daycare interventions until there is conclusive evidence about its impacts?

Considering the proven impact daycare interventions can have on improving child development in the short and medium term and the increasing demand for out-of-home care, these programmes should be implemented if they provide a high quality alternative to the care children normally receive.

However, it is crucial that new programmes are evaluated and closely monitored, not only to add to the very limited knowledge base of programme effectiveness and pathways of impact, but also to guarantee that unintended negative effects are identified and corrected.

(Paola Gadsden is the Coordinator of Analysis and Evaluation of Public Policies for the State of Morelos, Mexico)

3ie funds impact evaluations and systematic reviews that generate high quality evience on what works in development and why. Evidence on development effectiveness can inform policy and improve the lives of poor people.

Summary of the Brazilian National Household Sample Survey (PNAD) 2011: income growth was higher in the lower income classes

Source:  www.ibge.gov.br

The Brazilian National Household Sample Survey (PNAD) studies on an annual and permanent basis the general characteristics of the population, education, employment, income, housing and other, with variable periodicity, according to the information needs of Brazil, such as migration, fecundity, marriage status, health, food security, among other themes. The PNAD 2011 shows that from 2009 to 2011, the real average monthly income grew 8.3%. By income brackets, the largest increase in income (29.2%) was seen in the 10% with lower incomes. Overall, there was a reduction in income growth as its value increased.

PNAD 2011 shows the Gini coefficient in Brazil decreased from 0.518 in 2009 to 0.501 in 2011. Regionally, only the North saw an increase, from 0.488 in 2009 to 0.496 in 2011. In other regions the increase in income was higher for the poorest, and lower for the 10% with the highest incomes. A more significant reduction was seen in the South (from 0.482 to 0.461).

The real average monthly income of permanent households was estimated at R$ 2,419.00 in 2011, representing a real gain of 3.3% compared to 2009 (R$ 2,341.00). There was an increase of household income in all major regions. The Northeast had the lowest variation (2.0%) compared to 2009, as well as the lowest value (R$ 1,607.00).

Women's income amounted to 70.4% of men's income. In 2011, the real average monthly income of men was R$ 1,417.00 and of women was R$ 997.00. Proportionally, women received 70.4%. In 2009, the proportion was 67.1%. In addition, there were proportionally more women employed without income or only receiving benefits (10.0%) than men (5.8%).

Formal jobs increased 11.8% from 2009 to 2011. From 2009 to 2011, there was an increase of 3.6 million employees with a formal contract in the private sector. 74.6% employees in the private sector had a formal contract. The income of employed people grew from R$ 1,242.00 to R$ 1,345.00, from 2009 to 2011. From 2009 to 2011, income of domestic workers without a formal contract increased 15.2%.

There are an increased number of workers with high school and university diplomas. From 2009 to 2011, the employed population increased the percentage of workers with at least secondary education (43.7% to 46.8%) and workers with at least a university degree (from 11.3% to 12.5%), while the percentage of workers with incomplete primary education fell from 31.8% to 25.5%.

There is an increased number of employed people in the sectors of services, trade and construction. The number rose 5.2% in the service sector (41.5 million people), 1.9% in trade and repair (16.5 million) and 13.6% in construction (7.8 million), 2009 to 2011, while falls were recorded from -7.3% in the agricultural sector (14.1 million) and -8.0% in manufacturing (12.4 million).

The increase of employed people in 2011, associated with the reduction of unemployed, brought as a result a significant drop in the unemployment rate, which fell from 8.2% in 2009 to 6.7% in 2011. In the South, PNAD saw the lowest unemployment rate (4.3%) and the highest in the Northeast (7.9%). In 2011, approximately 6.6 million people were unemployed. Despite the significant drop in the unemployment rate in Brazil, a greater difficulty in entering the labor market still persists, for some groups. Of the unemployed, 59.0% were women, 35.1% had never worked; 33.9% were between 18 and 24 years old, 57.6% were black or brown and 53.6% of them had not completed school. PNAD also confirmed the downward trend in child labor (5-17 years) in 2011. In two years, there was a reduction of 14%. However, child labor reaches 3.7 million.

It was observed that the illiteracy rate among people aged 15 or older in Brazil in 2011 was 8.6% (12.9 million illiterates), 1.1 percentage points less than in 2009 (9,7%, 14.1 million illiterates). 96.1% of the illiterate had 25 years or older. Of this group, over 60% were 50 years or older (8.2 million).

Women are more educated than men, especially between 20 and 24 years of age.  In 2011, the population aged 10 years or older had an average of 7.3 years of study. Women, in general, were more educated than men, with an average of 7.5 years of schooling, while men had 7.1 years of schooling.

From 2009 to 2011, the school enrollment rate of children between 6 and 14 years old increased by 0.6 percentage points, reaching 98.2%. As for young people between 15 and 17 years, the percentage dropped from 85.2% to 83.7%, in the same period.

In 2011, the resident population in Brazil was estimated to be at 195.2 million, an increase of 1.8% (3.5 million) compared to 2009. Women represented 51.5% (100.5 million) of the population and men 48.5% (94.7 million). People 29 years old or younger accounted for 48.6% of the population and those that are 60 years old or older, 12.1% in 2009, these values were, respectively, 50.2% and 11.3%, indicating that the population is having an aging trend.

This and other information can be viewed in full in the National Household Sample Survey (PNAD) 2011(in Portuguese)