Pakistan is currently enduring the worst flooding in the country’s history, and is expected to take months or even years to fully recover. Meanwhile, there’s a terrible drought in Niger, forest fires across Russia, food riots in Mozambique and the rains across Africa have become unpredictable, sometimes not appearing at all. Sahena, in this Oxfam video, talks about the unpredictability of the seasons in Bangladesh, and how this is upsetting their crop planting.
This unpredictability has enormous consequences for millions of people, and climate change has been blamed for causing such extreme weather.
As we see from the video in Bangladesh, people in poor communities can and are learning to cope with the changes in climate, and doing so with admirable determination and effort. A wonderful aspect of this project, is that it and other projects like it are not only helping communities cope with flooding, but by working with and educating women, they are improving their status in societies where they are not nearly so valued as men. The video shows how women involved in these projects are being empowered to stand up for their rights in their society by gaining confidence in their knowledge and usefulness.
Despite such wonderful projects we must not neglect our responsibilities. If those of us in the developed world do nothing to change, the situation is only going to worsen and force communities like Sahena’s to work even harder to protect their homes, or face losing them. Because of its abundant affecting factors and it’s equally numerous consequences, climate change is the biggest environmental challenge that we face. The UN MDG monitor reports that “action on climate change is within our grasp”, and there are major campaigns from NGOs that we can support to show our concern for people like Sahena.
These campaigns tend to approach the issue of climate change from a number of different directions. Charities are targeting politicians in an effort to persuade them to adopt binding emission targets and fair aid deals targeted specifically at helping developing countries adapt to the changing climate. At the same time they are investing in these small scale local projects that are nevertheless making huge differences to both individuals and communities. Our support is crucial to their success, and due to the many ways that we can quickly and easily take part in campaign actions online, there is ample opportunity for us to show how we feel.
Environmental issues for people living in extreme poverty in urban areas are just as important in their constraining effects as for those in rural areas. There are nearly one billion people living in slums across the world. They live in appalling conditions often with waste and excrement in open sewers that boost the spread of deadly diseases.
This video shows us a project supported by UK charity Christian Aid that cleaned up a slum area, and provided much needed sanitation, improving the health of the whole community. Because the control of the project was in the hands of the community, it meant that they could direct the funds towards what would most enhance their lives, and then, once the project had been set up the income was spent according to the wishes of the whole community to further enhance their environment and find them a new home away from the control of landlords.
It’s thanks to projects like this that UN-Habitat recently reported that 227 million people have moved out of slum conditions since 2000.
But, despite this progress, the influx of people to the cities has meant that, on a practical level we have not made a difference to the numbers of people living in these conditions – the total number of slum-dwellers increasing from 776.7 million in 2000 to some 827.6 million in 2010.
People migrate into cities and end up in slums for many reasons – foremost amongst them looking for work and escaping discrimination or conflict. We’re unlikely to see a change to this trend, so to improve conditions and prevent even more people from being forced into life in the slums, we need to work on both political and economic stability as well as carrying on the excellent work that is improving access to water, sanitation and better housing. We can do our bit to help change things by campaigning for change in the politics of our own countries as well as donating to charities that work in slums.
In the developing world millions of people are dependent on their immediate environment for their food, livelihoods, sanitation and shelter. This makes them very vulnerable when changes in their environment occur. An unpredictable environment can be catastrophic, for example millions of people rely on seasonal rains to water crops, refresh wells, lakes and rivers. When they are late or fail the consequences are widespread and disastrous.
The seventh Millennium Development Goal – ensuring environmental sustainability – is about trying to reduce the control that a person’s environment has over their life, by improving the environment and ensuring that it is preserved for future generations.
An important part of this is about having clean water to drink and sanitation facilities.
The video shows how improving Stidia’s environment, through the provision of clean water to her village, truly changed her life. This Tearfund project meant that, as well as improving her family and community’s access to water, she was no longer open to attack when walking for miles to collect water. The time saved meant she was able to go to school, improving her future prospects immeasurably.
Beyond the time saved by the water-tank, Stidia and her family are also now less at risk of drinking dirty water. Diahorrea caused by dirty water kills almost 2 million children every year.
Clean water and improved sanitation can also mean fewer intestinal parasites – what we often think of as worms. There’s some fascinating research that suggests that worms are one of the biggest factors preventing children from attending school. Therefore, by improving sanitation we would not need to spend so much on antibiotics and medical treatments for such conditions, and we could improve the numbers of children in education significantly.
These examples are an important reminder that one intervention to fight poverty can have important follow-on effects.
The good news is that we are on course to meet the 2015 target of halving the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water. But – the same can’t be said for sanitation, where half the population of developing regions still lack basic sanitation facilities like toilets. Our governments need to know we care about these problems, and that when we target water and sanitation, we make it easier to meet the other MDG goals.
