Years ago I lived in rural Mexico, where I saw mule riders arrive in remote villages with polystyrene saddlebags filled with vaccines and birth control. The former, to protect living children, gave women the confidence to use the latter—which they were already eager to try, thanks to a powerful message coming to them via a powerful medium.
That was the television soap opera, among the most beloved forms of entertainment in Latin America. Once, at the bottom of Chihuahua’s Copper Canyon, I saw five horseback cowboys watching the evening’s telenovela through the window of a grocery store, where the townspeople gathered around a thirteen-inch black-and-white TV powered by a diesel generator. Among the most popular shows in the late 1970s was one titled Acompáñame—Accompany Me—produced, directed, and cowritten by Miguel Sabido. Imbedded in this family drama of three sisters and their respective struggles with their husbands—including over whether to plan their pregnancies—was the message that smaller families live better.
Acompáñame is widely credited for the 34 percent drop in Mexico’s fertility rate during the decade the series aired. Sabido’s method inspired the work of the Population Media Center in Burlington, Vermont, which today produces soap operas that promote family planning in twenty-two languages: electronic analogs of the family-planning street theater I witnessed in Pakistan. PMC has been a font of information and news about reproductive health, for which I warmly thank Bill Ryerson, Katie Elmore, and Joe Bish.
I’m grateful for the guidance of other population NGOs, each with its own approach to this complex subject. My thanks to Marian Starkey of the Population Connection (originally Zero Population Growth); Jason Bremner of the Population Reference Bureau and his colleague Karen Hardee, formerly of Population Action International; Musimbi Kanyoro, past director of the Packard Foundation’s Population and Reproductive Health Program; Geoff Dabelko and Meaghan Parker of the Woodrow Wilson International Center’s Population, Health, and Environment program; and John Guillebaud and, especially, Roger Martin of the UK’s Population Matters, née Optimum Population Trust.
I am also indebted to the readily available resources of the Guttmacher Institute, the United Nations Population Fund, and the Communication Consortium Media Center’s invaluable PUSH Journal (Periodic Updates of Sexual and Reproductive Health Issues Around the World), which enlightened me daily while working on this book. Finally, a deep bow to Hania Zlotnick, former director of the UN’s Population Division, whose office I walked into in 2009 with a raw idea in mind—and walked out of hours later with piles of essential reading and references, and wise, patient advice that sustained me continually over the next three years.
Heather D’Agnes, past director of USAID’s Population, Health, and Environment programs, generously offered me encouragement, vital information, and crucial contacts. I’m also beholden to her en famille mentors: her mother, Leona D’Agnes, advisor to reproductive health programs in southeast Asia, who helped me navigate trips to the Philippines and Thailand, and her father, Thomas D’Agnes, author of the fine biography of Mechai Viravaidya, From Cabbages to Condoms.
In 2003, I spoke at an international conference in Hannover, Germany, on water as a source of conflict in the twenty-first century. The most compelling moment was a joint presentation by an Israeli coordinator for Friends of the Earth–Middle East and the deputy head of the Palestinian Water Authority. No matter how incandescent the tension between their two peoples, every week they managed to speak, because the urgency to preserve a scarce natural resource transcended nationality. Listening to these brave men, many of us were near tears.
That memory inspired my first trip for this book, to the divided land considered hallowed ground by much of the world. In Israel, I thank Daniel Orenstein and his colleagues at Haifa’s Israel Institute of Technology; Gidon Bromberg of EcoPeace/Friends of the Earth–Middle East; Eilon Schwartz and Jeremy Benstein of the Heschel Center for Environmental Learning and Leadership, and past Heschel fellow and landscape architect Rachel Landani; Rabbi Dudi Zilbershlag of Haredim for the Environment; Tamar Dayan, Yoran Yom-Tov, Amotz Zahavi, and ornithologist Yossi Leshem of Tel Aviv University’s Department of Zoology; Jerusalem deputy mayor Naomi Tsur; director Binyamin Eiben Boim of Mea She’arim’s Yeshiva Sha’ri Ha Torah; University of Haifa geographer Arnon Soffer; Hebrew University demographer Sergio DellaPergola; Huleh Valley farmer Ellie Galili; journalists Zafrir Rinat of Haaretz and Sylvana Foa of the Village Voice; desalination planner Dan Perry; Arava Institute for Environmental Studies’ Alon Tal, Elli Groner, David Lehrer, Tamar Norkin, and Tareq Abuhamed; Phil Warburg and Tamar Gindis for many valuable contacts; and Sheik Saed Qrinawy and Ahmad Amrani of the Bedouin city of Rahat.
In Palestine, my deep thanks to demographer Khalil Toufakji of the Arab Studies Society in Jerusalem; Jad Isaac and Abeer Safar of Bethlehem’s Applied Research Institute–Jerusalem; Palestinian director Nader Khateb of Friends of the Earth–Middle East; Palestinian Water Authority director Shaddad Attili; attorney and peace talks negotiator Diana Bhutto; Al-Amari refugee camp residents Ruwaidah Um-Said, Ayat Um-Said, and her children, Rheem and Zacariah; their neighbors Abed, Jabert, Hayat, and Ahmad Fatah; the family of Firyal, Nisreen, and Ala’a———; Mahmoud and Nidal———; geographer Khaldoun Rishmawi; and especially my guide and translator in both Arabic and Hebrew, Nidal Rafa.
That trip ended in Aqaba, Jordan. My next was to the United Kingdom, where, in addition to Optimum Population Trust/Population Matters, I thank painter Gregor Harvie; Shropshire ornithologist John Tucker; British National Party deputy chairman Simon Darby; Dr. Mohammad Naseem of the Birmingham Central Mosque; Fazlun Khalid of the Islamic Foundation for Ecology and Environmental Science; economists Sir Partha Dasgupta of St. John’s College, Cambridge, and Pavan Sukhdev of Deutsche Bank; director Abdulkarim Khalil, deputy director Yusef Noden, board vice chair Farrid Shamsuddin, and Imam Samer Darwish of London’s Al-Manaar Muslim Cultural Heritage Centre; London School of Economics master’s candidate Asma Abdur Rahman; and Sara Parkin of the Forum for the Future.
In San José, Costa Rica, director Hilda Picado of the Asociación Demográfica Costarricense and demographer Luis Rosero Bixby of the Universidad de Costa Rica’s Centro Centroamericano de Población kindly spared time for me. I then joined conservation biologist Gretchen Daily; Stanford graduate students Chase Mendenhall, Danny Karp, and Melinda Belisle; naturalist Jeisson Figueroa Sandi; and ornithologist Jim Zook at the Organization for Tropical Studies’ Las Cruces Biological Station. Like all great field scientists, they seem to work harder and have more fun than anyone, and I’m ever grateful they included me.
Next came Uganda, where I traveled with two dedicated reproductive health specialists, epidemiologist Lynne Gaffikin and Dr. Amy Voedisch, to the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest. Thanks to them, I met the inspiring veterinarian Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka; her husband, Lawrence; and their associates at Conservation Through Public Health, including David Matsiko, Joseph Byonanebye, Alex Ngabirano, Dr. Abdulhameed Kateregga, Melinda Hershey, Samuel Rugaba, and CTPH co-founder Stephen Rubanga: my gratitude and admiration to them all. In Bwindi Community Hospital, I thank Dr. Mutahunga Birungi, Isaac Kahinda, and family-planning director Florence Ninsiima. At the Batwa Development Programme, Richard Magezi, the late Blackie Gonsalves, and the Batwa Pygmy families of Mukongoro settlement. At the Uganda Wildlife Authority, I thank Chief Warden Charles Tumwesigye, who approved my permit to track mountain gorillas, and forest guides Gard Kanuangyeyo and Fred Tugarurirwe.
In Uganda’s capital, Kampala, I am grateful to Dr. Peter Ibembe of Reproductive Health Uganda; Susan Mukasa of Population Services International; radio journalist Pius Sawa; Patricia Wamala of Family Health International–Uganda; Dorothy Balaba and Denis Mubiru of the Programme for Accessible Health Communication and Education; Jan Broekhuis of Wildlife Conservation Society–Uganda; and especially to Anne Fiedler of Pathfinder International and Joy Naiga of the Uganda Population Secretariat.
Gretchen Daily kindly invited me to join her again as, with colleagues Chris Colvin, Driss Ennaanay, and Luis Solórzano from the Natural Capital Project, she toured western China with their counterparts from the Chinese Academy of Sciences—who, to my great gratitude, hosted me as well: ecologists Ouyang Zhiyun, Wang Yukuan, and Zheng Hua; and economists Li Jie and Zeng Weihong. Thanks to them, my research for this book also benefited from conversations with residents in the towns of Feng Qian and Ling’guan, in the Tibetan village of Qiaoqi, and on Hainan Island. Throughout our travels in Sichuan, I enjoyed the expert help of translator Yan Jing.
In Xi’an, my great thanks to demographer Li Shuzhou, founder of Care for Girls—and, in Beijing, to his mentor, former missile scientist and demographic planner Jiang Zhenghua. In China’s always boggling capital city, I also thank obstetrics nurse Wang Ming Li of the Beijing Aobei Hospital; Guardian correspondent Jonathan Watts, author of a gem of environmental journalism, When a Billion Chinese Jump; and Beijing journalists Chen Ou, Yan Kai, Fu Hui, and especially Cui Zheng, who was also my able translator. Last, my warm thanks to “Lin Xia” and her parents, who kindly shared their story, and to my perspicacious Chinese literary agent, Jackie Huang.
My trip to the Philippines owed hugely to the help of Dr. Joan Castro of the PATH Foundation and her colleague Dr. Ron Quintana. I was further enlightened by Ramon San Pascual of the Philippines Legislators’ Center for Population and Development, Ben De Leon of the Forum for Family Planning and Development, and Dr. Junice Melgar of the community reproductive health NGO known as Likhaan: I am grateful to many women in Likhaan clinics throughout Greater Manila for their time and willingness to talk to me. Thanks also to nurse “Roland” and the unnamed health facility where he works, for his frankness about the struggle between his faith and his profession.
The PATH Foundation also coordinated my travels to Isla Verde, where I was hosted by Jemalyn Rayos, and to Bohol, where another excellent guide, Geri Miasco, introduced me to Dr. Frank Lobo in Talibon, midwife Mercy Butawan in Humay-Humay, and, in Ubay, Mayor Eutiquio Bernales and coastal resource manager Alpios Delima. Geri also accompanied me to the island of Guindacpan, where nutritionist Perla Pañares, nurse Estrella Torrevillas, and numerous fisherfolk took time to show me how the sea is reclaiming their village.
Iris Dimaano-Bugayong arranged my visit to the International Rice Research Institute on Luzon, where director Robert Ziegler kindly granted me his time and access to IRRI’s staff. My great thanks to him and to crop scientist Roland Buresh, evolutionary ecologist Ruaraidh Sackville Hamilton, and Paul Quick, coordinator of the C4 Rice Project.
At the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (Centro Internacional de Mejoramiento de Maíz y Trigo) in Texcoco, Mexico, I was graciously received by CIMMYT Director Thomas Lumpkin; maize breeder Félix San Vicente; Global Wheat Program director Hans-Joachim Braun; wheat physiologist Matthew Reynolds; deputy director general for research Marianne Bänziger; Genetic Resources Center head Tom Payne; socioeconomists Pedro Aquino-Mercado and Dagoberto Flores; and Peter Wenzl, head of the Crop Research Informatics Laboratory. My thanks to them and to Caritina Venado, who organized my visit. In Mexico City, I thank demographers Silvia Elena Giorguli Saucedo, Manuel Ordorica Mellado, and José Luis Lezama at Colegio de México; poet Homero Aridjis and Betty Ferber of Grupo de los Cien; María Luisa Sánchez Fuentes of GIRE—El Grupo de Información en Reproducción Elegida; Nick Wright of Casa de los Amigos; Areli Carreón of Sin Maíz No Hay País; architect Eduardo Farah; Juan Carlos Arjona of the Mexican Environmental Law Center (Centro Mexicano de Derecho Ambiental); community activist Eduardo Farah; and Carlos Anzado of the Consejo Nacional de Población.
In the state of Morelos, I thank reproductive rights advocate Dr. Estela Kempis and her husband, filmmaker Gregory Berger. And at the Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos orphanage, mil gracias to Dr. Luis Moreno, Father Phil Cleary, Paco Manzanares, Elvi Clara Jaramillo, Marisol Aguilar Castillo, Erika Klotz—and with fond remembrance, the late Father William Wasson, whose humanity and legacy lives on in thousands of children he saved.
Early in my career, I wrote about Father Wasson’s work, and over the years he became a friend and mentor. Our discussions of Catholicism proved invaluable preparation for my research in the world’s smallest country—albeit among the most influential. I thank Monsignor Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences and Cardinal Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace for their willingness to discuss sensitive issues I raised with them. For helpful advice on Vatican coverage, thanks also to National Catholic Reporter’s John Allen and NPR correspondent Sylvia Poggioli.
Outside the Vatican’s walls, I am grateful to demographers Antonio Golini and Massimo Livi-Bacci; political scientist Giovanni Sartori; Italian Senate vice president and now foreign affairs minister Emma Bonino; parliamentarian Claudio D’amico of the Lega Nord; economists Leonardo Becchetti and Tito Boeri; Legambiente president Vittorio Cogliati Dezza; OB-GYN Dr. Carlo Flamigni; male fertility specialist Dr. Giuseppe La Pera; Prof.ssa Lucia Ercoli of Medicina Solidale e delle Migrazioni; the students and faculties of Rome’s Scuola Media Pubblica Salvo D’acquisto, Scuola Media Daniele Manin, and St. George’s British International School; Gianfranco Bologna of WWF-Italy; immigrant-rap musician Amir Issa; Jacopo Romoli and Claudia Ribet of the Rome Science Festival; corporate manager Ornella Vitale; park guide Licia Capparella; Dr. Vincenzo Pipitone and biologist-nutritionist Claudia Giafaglione; software designer Emilio Vaca and, for all her help and guidance, journalist Sabrina Provenzani. Thanks also to translator Livia Borghese, and to University of Massachusetts–Amherst anthropologist Betsy Krause, who generously shared her insights into Italy’s declining fertility. That same topic in another traditionally Catholic European country, Spain, was kindly explained to me by demographer Margarita Delgado in a visit to Madrid’s Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas.
En route to Niger, I was hosted in Tripoli, Libya, by journalist Yusra Tekbali, and further enlightened about her country in conversations with her brother, Salam Tekbali, and friends Zubaida Bentaher, Moha Bensofia, Adam Hassan, and Sideq Qabaj. At the time, events that ultimately led to the overthrow of dictator Muammar Gaddafi were in their embryonic stage, and the hopes of these bright young people for a Libyan awakening were inspiring. Within weeks, all were either fleeing, fighting, protecting their families, or reporting on what became the tragic birth of a Libyan future still to be determined. I regret that just after I left, Jamal Said Fteis of Arkno Tours, who facilitated my visa, was gunned down by Gaddafi’s soldiers as he left a mosque. I hope that his last act in this world—praying—comforted his final moments.
My guide in the West African Sahel nation of Niger was Nigerien journalist Baraou Idy, a friend I intend to keep: warm gratitude to him and his wife Mariana Hassane Idy. Thanks also to demographer Mounkaila Haruna of the Université Abdou Moumouni Dioffo de Niamey; Bako Bagassa, director of Foula, the condom-distribution program of the Association Nigerienne de Marketing Social (Animas-Sutura); Dr. Galy Kadir Abdelkader of the Educational Research Network for West and Central Africa; Drs. Koli Lamine, Maidaji Oumarou, and Sayadi Sani of Bien Eire el la Femme et de l’Enfant au Niger; Thierry Allafort-Duverger, director of the Alliance for International Medical Action (ALIMA); Col. Abdoulkarim Goukoye, head of Niger’s Haute Autorité à la Sécurité Alimentaire; UNFPA’s Mme. Martine Camacho at the Multi-sector Demographic Program (PRODEM); and Sahidou Abdoussalam, Navid Djewakh, and Agathe Diama at ICRISAT-Niger, the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics.
Following a trip west of the capital, Niamey, where I was kindly received by the Fulani tribal village of Bongoum, David Boureima drove us east to the Maradi region. My thanks to Maradi Sultan Al-Haji Ali Zaki for his frankness and hospitality; the villagers of Bargaja, especially chief Al-Haji Rabo Mamane; his wives Hassana and Jaimila, and his son Inoussa; chief Noura Bako and the villagers of Souraman; chief Haji Iro Dan Dadi and the villagers of Madarounfa; Maradi mayoral candidate Moktar Kassoum; and Imam Raidoune Issaka and his brother Imam Chafiou Issaka. In the district of Dakoro, thanks to Secretary General Insa Adamon, who approved my entry and offered us an armed escort; nurse Halima Dahaya of the Korahan Health Center; Mahmoud Dou Maliki and Omar Mamane Sani of Contribution a l’Education de Base; the people of the village of Mailafia—and special thanks to the schoolchildren of Dan Dawaye village. Finally, I wish to thank Tahoua region Sultan Al-Haji Manirou Magaji Rogo, and Mayor Abdoulaye Altine of Madaoua for welcoming me to his inaugural town council.
I am grateful to Nadeem Ahmad Niazi at Pakistan’s Mission to the United Nations, who helped me secure a journalist visa to his country, and I am indebted to veteran Karachi journalist Shahid Husain for his companionship there. I also thank the University of Karachi’s Pakistani studies director Syd Jaffar Ahmed and sociologist Fateh Muhammad Burfat; Tanveer Arif and Naeem Munwar Shah of the Society for Conservation and Protection of Environment; demographer Methab Karim of the Pew Research Center; Dr. Nikhat Saeed Khan of Pakistan’s National Committee for Maternal Health; the———family in Lyari Town; Jalil Abdul Ibrahim and Nazreen Chandio of the Lyari Resource Center; Lyari Lady Health Workers Asma Tabassum and Nazaqat Chandio; Shaikh Tanveer Ahmed of the Health and Nutrition Development Society; Dr. Sonia Poshni, Dr. Hamid Ali, and Dr. Capt. Liaquat Ali Shaikh of the Civil Hospital–Karachi; and Moach Goth Cemetery caretakers Khair and Nadeem Mohammad.
Heartfelt thanks and condolences to the families of slain leaders Abdul Ghani and Haji Abu Bakar of Karachi’s Fisherfolk Development Organisation, who asked me into their homes amidst their mourning. Thanks also to NPR correspondent Julie McCarthy; to the villagers of Haji Qasim, Mahar, Ahmed Jat, and Ahmed Khan Zour in the Indus Valley; to Shaikh Tanveer Ahmed of the Health and Nutrition Development Society; and to Imam Qari Abdul Basid of Thatta’s Shah Gehan Mosque. Finally, my deepest respect and gratitude to Principal Afshan Tabassum, her staff, and students at The Citizens Foundation’s Vohra School, and to vice-president Ahson Rabbini for TCF’s extraordinarily hopeful work. In one of the most difficult places, they are an example to everyone of how much of the world’s ills education can solve.
Judy Oglethorpe and Lee Poston of World Wildlife Fund kindly arranged for me to meet, in Kathmandu, Shubash Lohani and Bunu Vaidya of WWF’s Eastern Himalaya Ecoregion Program, who took me to Nepal’s Terai region. Many thanks to them and to their colleague Tilak Dhakal; to Moti Adhikiri of the wonderfully named Old Age Home for Livestock and Vulture Conservation Centre; to Bardia National Park ranger Barbadia Echar and ornithologist Gautam Paudyl; and to the many people I spoke to in the Terai villages of Lalmatiya, Madhuwan, Dhallapur, and the Khata Corridor. Thanks also to Dr. Navin Thapa, director of the Family Planning Association of Nepal.
In India, I am grateful to hydrologist Kanwar Jit Singh of the Punjab Agriculture Department; botanist R. K. Kohli of Punjabi University; Dr. G. S. Kalkat of the Punjab State Farm Commission; farm leaders Balbir Singh Rajewal, Biku Singh, and Labh Singh; and widows Gurdial and Sheela Kaur. Thanks to many anonymous women in Kaithal and Ambala districts in Haryana state who spoke to me about illegal ultrasounds and sex-selective abortions. My guide in both Punjab and Haryana was award-winning Tribune correspondent Geetanjali Gayatri of Chandigarh, whom I cannot thank enough.
In Kerala, I am equally grateful for the skilled assistance of Ernakulam-based freelancer Anna Mathews. My thanks, too, to former Kerala finance minister Thomas Isaac; economist TK Sundari Ravindran of the Achutha Menon Centre for Health Science Studies; forester James Zacariah; demographer Irudaya Radan; Dr. Theresa Susan of the University of Kerala’s Department of Education; Dr. C. Nirmala, OB-GYN at SAT Hospital and Medical College; Swami Amitavhananda of the Ramakrishna Order; and, especially, the great Malayalam poet Sugathakumari, founder of Abhaya, an institution for distressed women.
I was shown Mumbai and Pune by Prachi Bari, veteran fixer for the BBC and PBS. Deep thanks to her and to journalists Nandini Rajwade and Kalpana Sharma; to Pune environmental activist Ashish Kothari and to Dr. S. B. Mujumdar, president of Symbiosis University; to Mumbai artists Jayanta and Varsha Pandit; to Krishna Pujari of Reality Tours & Travel and the people of Dharavi; to Dr. Faujdar Ram, Dr. Laishram Ladusingh, and Dr. P. Arokiasamy of the International Institute for Population Sciences; to Swami Atmanandaji of the Prema Devi Ashram; to Mumbai’s Nagpada police precinct and to Madam “Rukmini” of Siddharthnagar; and to head priest Gajanan Modak and trustee Nitin Kadam of Mumbai’s Siddhivinayak Temple.
My final trip for this book began in Japan with Akihiko Matsutani, an economist who, refreshingly in his profession, finds big opportunities in readjusting to a smaller reality. Thanks to him and to finance economist Masaru Kaneko; Tokyo architect Kengo Kuma; Senator Kuniko Inoguchi; samurai descendant Shuhei Nishimura of the anti-immigration Group to Recover Sovereignty; former nuclear engineer Tetsunari Iida, director of Japan’s Institute for Sustainable Energy Policies; anti-nuclear advocate Hiroaki Koide of the Research Reactor Institute at Kyoto University; rector Atsushi Seike of Keio University; Kazuhiko Takemoto of the Ministry of the Environment’s Satoyama Initiative; Toyooka agronomists Narita Toshimichi and Kawagoe Ynusube and rice farmer Itsuyoshi Nawate; wasabi farmers Yoshimi Kashitani and Yoshio Takeya and trout hatchery manager Osamu Nakatani in Nosegawa, Nara; and robotics engineers Shijie Guo, Susumu Sato, and Takahisa Shiraoke of the Tokai Rubber-RIKEN Riba II project.
Very special thanks to University of Yokohama anthropologist and Sloth Club founder Keibo Oiwa, and to Mari Tokuhisa and Michiko Takizawa of the village of Shiga in Nagano Prefecture. Finally, un abrazo caluroso to my deft trilingual translator and fixer, Junko Takahashi, and her friends Yoko Nishi and Keiko———.
In Thailand, I had audiences with three Buddhist monks: Abbot Athikarn Somnukatti Panyo of the drowning Wat Khun Samut Trawat temple; Ajaan Boonku of the Theravāda forest monastery, Wat Asokaram; and renowned Thai social humanitarian Sulak Sivaraksa. Thanks to them and to American Theravāda monk Ajaan Geoff for help contacting them and to my excellent translator and fixer, Khemmapat Rojwanichkun.
At Condoms & Cabbages in Bangkok I enjoyed the delightful company of Thailand’s own Captain Condom, Mechai Viravaidya, and his staff at the Population & Community Development Association and at the Mechai Pattana School in Buriram. Because they’ve shown that family planning can be not just a responsibility but a source of great fun, Thailand is a far safer, healthier, and happier place. Special thanks to Mechai, his assistant Paul Salvette, school principal Amornrassamee Loipami and deputy principal Kaensri Chaikot, teachers Manapt Meechumnan and Paveena Mettaisong, and project coordinator Isadore Reaud.
Because my own country, the USA, won’t issue visas to Iranian journalists, conversely I couldn’t get a journalist visa for my last country, Iran, although I thank Dr. Vahid Karimi of the Permanent Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations for his efforts. However, I found a travel agency that specializes in the Middle East, whose agents had recently scouted Iran. My great thanks to Matthew LaPolice of Absolute Travel, who expertly arranged my trip. Because I wasn’t sure how much I’d be able to interview in Iran, I invited along my wife, Beckie Kravetz, to have another pair of eyes. As it happened, we were able to talk to anyone we wanted, and the guide Absolute Travel found for us, the encyclopedic Alireza Firouzi, became my fixer, translator, and a bottomless well of knowledge of his country’s past and present. I can never adequately thank him and our driver, poet Ahmad Mojalal.
I am deeply indebted to demographer Mohammad Jalal Abbasi-Shavazi of the University of Tehran, Dr. Hourieh Shamshiri Milani of Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Science, and Dr. Esmail Kahrom of Islamic Azad University for their tremendous cooperation. I am also most grateful to Iranian American author Hooman Majd, who prepped me for my travels and met us in Tehran; to Australian Demographic and Social Research Institute director Peter McDonald, who put me in touch with Iranian demographers; and to Karan Vafadari and Afarin Neyssari of Tehran’s Aun Iranian Art Foundation. More thanks to Jafar Imani at the Parvar Protected Area; ranger Jabad Selvari and superintendent Mohammad Reza Mullah Abbasi of Golestan National Park; director Ali Abutalibi at the Miankaleh Wildlife Refuge; Bamou National Park’s Hussein Nikham and Rohalah Mohamadi; Mehdi Basiri, Ahmad Khatoonabadi, and Aghafakhr Mirlohi of Esfahan University of Technology and Green Message; and especially the valiant members of the Esfahan chapter of Women’s Society Against Environmental Pollution.
Many thanks, too, to Taghi Farvar of Tehran’s Centre for Sustainable Development and his CENESTA companions, who requested their full names be withheld, for their wisdom, work, and hospitality. Throughout Iran, from Ramsar and Rasht to Shiraz and Qom, strangers embraced us, invited us to tea and meals, and thanked us for visiting their country. We, in turn, thank them all for the warmth, music, poetry, artwork, history, and stories they willingly shared. We hope that the mistrust between our governments will soon finally be behind us.
In my own country, president Robert Engelman of the Worldwatch Institute was continually helpful and encouraging. An early conversation with Eric Sanderson of the Wildlife Conservation Society helped shape my ideas. I thank them and Lesley Blackner, Alan Farago, and Maggy Hurchalla for explaining their efforts to save southern Florida from human excess, and Duke University ecologist Stuart Pimm for showing me the Everglades. Many thanks also to Rev. Richard Cizik of the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good; to University of Colorado emeritus physicist Albert Bartlett; to population specialists Malcolm Potts and Martha Madison Campbell of the University of California–Berkeley; Aijaz Hussain of University Islamic Financial; University of Georgia ecologist Ron Pulliam; and Arizona State University wildlife biologist David Brown.
At the University of Arizona, early in my research I benefited greatly from discussions with geographer Diana Liverman, ethnobotanist Gary Paul Nabhan, and physicist Bill Wing, and from the constant support of School of Journalism director Jacqueline Sharkey and correspondent extraordinaire Mort Rosenblum. Thanks also to UA classics scholar Marissa Gurtler for kindly correcting my Latin.
At Arizona’s Prescott College, my thanks to ecologists Mark Riegner, Tom Fleischner, Doug Hulmes, Carl Tomoff, and sustainability director James Pittman. At Tucson’s Center for Biological Diversity, I thank Sarah Bergman, Randy Serraglio, and founder Kierán Suckling.
At Cornell University, I’m grateful to agricultural scientists Rebecca Nelson, Peter Hobbs, Norman Uphoff, and David Pimentel—and at the University of Vermont’s Gund Institute for Ecological Economics, to Jon Erickson and Joshua Farley.
At the University of Minnesota, thanks to evolutionary biologist David Tilman, grad students Jane Cowles and Peter Wragg, economist Stephen Polasky, and especially to Institute on the Environment director Jonathan Foley.
Stanford University was a remarkable font of generous and helpful sources. Dr. Paul Blumenthal, head of the Stanford Program for International Reproductive Education and Services, gave me invaluable advice before I joined his wife, Lynne Gaffikin, and SPIRES fellow Dr. Amy Voedisch in Uganda. Economists Larry Goulder and Ken Arrow shared helpful insights on how we might achieve sustainable prosperity that would leave room for other living things. My thanks also to neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky; anthropologist Jamie Jones; population biologists Shripad Tuljapurkar and Marcus Feldman; David Lobell of Stanford’s Center on Food Security and the Environment; bio-geochemist Peter Vitousek; Chris Field of the Stanford-based Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology; research coordinator Nona Chiariello of the Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve; and lead scientist Heather Tallis of the Natural Capital Project.
Special appreciation, once more, to that project’s founder, ecologist and Center for Conservation Biology director Gretchen Daily, whom I had the pleasure of accompanying for many discussion-, inspiration-, and chocolate-filled miles. And finally, for their cooperation, humor, indefatigable scholarship, and great prescience, my warm gratitude to the Center’s associate director, ecologist Anne Ehrlich, and to its president, population biologist Paul Ehrlich.
I could not have written this book without the research assistance and logistic support of journalist Claudine LoMonaco—who, to my good fortune, took maternity leave from her radio work just as my travels began, making her services available to me. I am ever grateful to her and to her husband, astrophysicist Sydney Barnes, who was always there to do the math.
My thanks to Eileen Clinton of Crowley Travel, who never failed to match air connections to my byzantine itineraries; to Susan Ware and Meeghan Ziolkowski for transcribing hundreds of hours of recorded interviews; to LK James, who compiled this volume’s lengthy bibliography; and to copyeditor Joan Matthews.
Much gratitude—for help with this book, and for what they do—also goes to executive director Joel Simon of the Committee to Protect Journalists, and to Mohamed Abdel Dayem, Carlos Lauria, and Bob Dietz, coordinators respectively of CPJ’s Middle East and North Africa, Latin America, and Asia programs.
Many colleagues, friends, and relations gave me wise advice, moral support, reassurance, sustenance, and shelter during the research and writing of this book. Thanks for all that, and for constant inspiration, to my partners at Homelands Productions: Jon Miller, Sandy Tolan, and Cecilia Vaisman, and to guest producer Sam Eaton. Deep appreciation also to Alison Hawthorne Deming, Bill McKibben, Katherine Ellison, Stephen Philbrick, Connie Talbot, Alice Cozzolino, Amy Pulley, Roz Driscoll, Alton Wasson, Karen and Benigno Sánchez-Eppler, Jim and Deb Hills, Mary and Alain Provost, Rochelle Hoffman, Peter and Zeynep Hoffman, Brian and Pahoua Hoffman, Joan Kravetz, Cindy Kalland, Jonathan and Cynthia Lunine, Clark Strand, Perdita Finn, Barry Lopez, Debra Gwartney, Tom Miller, Diana Papoulias, Francie Rich, Bill Posnick, Lynn Davis, Rudy Wurlitzer, Constanza Vieira, Mary McNamara, Richard Stayton, Nubar Alexanian, Rebecca Koch, Jeff Jacobson, Marnie Andrews, Jon Hipps, Liz Story, Ronn Spencer, Blake Hines, Dick Kamp, Barbara Ferry, Diana Hadley, and the late beloved and visionary biological anthropologist Peter Warshall.
My thanks to Richard Norris, Jennie Howland, Maria Gallo, Beth Coates, Laleh Sotoodeh, Dan Stiefl, Fernando Pérez, Shahin Tabatabaei, and Joa Agnello-Traista, for, at various times, patching me up and keeping me going.
My agent Nick Ellison, his foreign rights director Chelsea Lindman, and editorial assistant Chloe Walker of the Nicholas Ellison Agency have always believed in this book and in me, despite my own frequent doubts. I am forever grateful to them, and also for the unwavering support I’ve received at Little, Brown and Company from David Young, Michael Pietsch, Malin von Euler-Hogan, Carolyn O’Keefe, Amanda Brown, Heather Fain, Peggy Freudenthal, and my superb editor—now for two books and counting—John Parsley. Thank you, all.
And finally, to my wife, sculptor, mask-maker, and theatrical artist Beckie Kravetz, thank you for seeing me through this: yet again, a vast understatement. Thank you for contributing to humanity’s collective body of fine art, which is among the greatest justifications for the continuance of our species.
Another is our capacity for love. Thank you for yours.