The Wilson Center’s New Security Beat was just selected as one of the winners of the Population Institute’s 2011 Global Media Awards in the category of Best Online Commentary or Blog. New Security Beat joins a diverse and distinguished group of awardees that include an Ethiopian serial drama, a Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist, the PBS NewsHour, and the executive director of the UN Population Fund.

Population remains an under-reported and oft-misunderstood issue, no less so during the “year of seven billion.” For 32 years, the Population Institute’s long-running Global Media Awards has called attention to gaps in reporting on population and recognized those covering this important issue.

Since January 2007, New Security Beat has shed light on today’s non-traditional security issues, including population growth, water scarcity, and environmental degradation. New Security Beat has contributed to the discussion of global population issues by offering nonpartisan analysis of reports and current events, as well as thoughtful commentary by experts in the fields of demography, international development, and family planning and reproductive health.

Our written coverage includes new analysis of the demographic roots of today’s headlines, as well as in-depth coverage of important conferences and spotlights on new data:

• The Day of Seven Billion: Elizabeth Leahy Madsen looks at how we got to this milestone and asks, “Where do we go from here?” while Geoff Dabelko outlines “Seven Ways Seven Billion Affects the Planet.”
• Extensive demographic analysis on the “Arab Spring” includes “Tunisia’s Shot at Democracy: What Demographics and Recent History Tell Us,” a video feature with the author, Richard Cincotta, and more than a dozen other articles on demography in the Middle East/North Africa region.
• The “From Ethiopia” series reports on the problems facing Ethiopians and how integrated population, health, and environment (PHE) programs can help solve them, drawing on coverage of the PHE Ethiopia conference and site visits in Addis Ababa and surrounding areas.

Audio and video interviews with population experts from around the world, includes:

• John Bongaarts on global demographic change in the developing world
• Judith Bruce on empowering girls in post-earthquake Haiti
• Joel E. Cohen on “Too Few or Too Many? How Education Can Address Both”
• Barbara Crossette on UNFPA’s State of the World Population
• Roger-Mark De Souza on why integrating population, health, and environment is “One Great Idea That Won’t Be on the Rio Agenda”
• Sir John Sulston on the Royal Society’s “People and the Planet” Study
• Eliya Zulu on population growth, family planning, and urbanization in Africa

Since 1994, the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program (ECSP) has explored the connections between the environment, health, population, development, conflict, and security. Follow us online at www.wilsoncenter.org/ecsp and www.newsecuritybeat.org.