Last month, on February 24th, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) released a new report, the Water and Conflict Toolkit. The toolkit is part of a series that explores the ways in which development assistance can assess and manage key risk factors that are associated with conflict and instability in developing countries.
One major contributing factor to conflict is in fact, water.
Water is a human necessity, essential for both survival and development. Its management can be complex, as it often generates competition between divided parties.
USAID is using this toolkit to try to mitigate these effects and promote effective water management. This will not only increase access to water and increase agricultural productivity, but also unite communities and lead the way towards peacebuilding.
This is the first time that USAID has created such a water strategy. During the five-year effort USAID hopes to ensure that 10 million more people have access to drinking water, 6 million have improved access to sanitation, and 3 million have improved access to agricultural productivity.
The report noted the multiple challenges that will be faced, with population growth and movement to urban areas at the top of the list. Other factors that also need to be taken into account include agricultural and industrial demands, corrupt governance, water politics, pollution and climate change.
A number of leaders spoke at the launch of the Water and Conflict Toolkit, held at the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington, D.C. Among them was Gideon Bromberg, the Israeli director of EcoPeace/Friends of the Earth Middle East.
Bromberg highlighted the particular importance of this report, noting that the toolkit is about much more than just conflict.
“It’s put very much in the forefront the possibilities of peacebuilding. Water is an opportunity in areas where there aren’t many opportunities.”
He used the example of the Jordan River to show how effective water management can generate the will for change.
The Jordan River has its headwaters in Syria and borders Israel, the West Bank, and Jordan. Over the past 50 years, about 96% of its freshwater has been diverted for agricultural and domestic use and the river’s flow has dropped substantially.
In 2013, a committee of local leaders got together and successfully passed an initiative to pump water regularly from Lake Kinneret into the lower Jordan River, to revitalize the overused ecosystem.
Bromberg explained the change that this grassroots, bottom-up initiative generated,
“I had a water minister from both sides come and say ‘You guys, you environmentalists, you’re dreamers, you’re tree-huggers! Water is too scarce! We’re not going to waste water to allow it to flow down the River Jordan. Were not going to allow water to go beyond our borders and empower the other side, the enemy.’ Well, that was said to us a decade ago. Today, that same leadership is carrying the flag of rehabilitating the Jordan River. This is their project, this is their political leadership, this is their success.”
Public awareness and community mobilization were key to the success of the Jordan River initiative.
The Water and Conflict Toolkit will hopefully be another resource that can be used to effectively manage water, mitigate conflict, and promote peacebuilding among communities.
– Mollie O’Brien
Sources: New Security Beat, All Africa, USAID
Photo: Aqua Rocks
Drought Crisis in Pakistan
More than 130 children died during a recent drought in Pakistan. Activists link the growing death toll to “long-term failures” in its healthcare and infrastructure. Most of those suffering from the drought belong to the Dalit caste. Referred to as ‘the scheduled class’, Dalits suffer the most discrimination in the region. As residents of the Tharparkar district, members of this caste bear the burden of drought conditions.
Most deaths occurred in the Thar Desert. The Pakistan Dalit Solidarity Network (PDSN) and other agencies fault the government for it delayed response. PDSN reports “animals started dying in the desert in October last year but the government did not act until reports of children dying in the Mithi Taluka hospital.”
Hospital reports indicate 38 children dying of malnutrition in the hospital in December. Before the drought, Oxfam forecasted the consequences of a continued food insecurity. 57% of children under five face stunted growth.
Persisting food insecurity, coupled with this drought, led to the dramatic rise in deaths. Dependent on food subsidies and animal fodder, residents live in constant food insecurity. Syed Qaim Ali Shah currently serves as the minister of Sindh. The chief minister routinely provides food every August. Yet this year, relief did not arrive until November. Currently, he leads an investigation into this delayed delivery.
“Elected representatives must be held responsible for not reporting to the chief minister,” remarks Javed Jabbar, leader of a nongovernmental organization in Tharparkar.
Failure to act on early warning signs continues the pattern of neglecting the Thar Desert and Dalit people. The drought in this region highlights existing structural inequities. For instance, advocates cite poor health services and limited roads to the more developed regions in Pakistan.
The establishment of Nawabshah Medical College promised a rise in female doctors, yet very few decide to work in less developed regions. Jabbar asserts medical professionals should sign a bond, agreeing to serve difficult regions. Referring to maternal and infant health as “the root cause of this crisis,” Jabbar believes women need incentives to serve Tharparkar.
“Missing public policy action and persistent economic inequalities are the main causes of malnutrition, which – if not addressed – may aggravate the situation in future in the entire province,” remarks Dr. Akram, a pediatrician in the region.
As the region is isolated and neglected, activists cannot know the death count with certainty. Dr. Sono Khangarani of the PDSN estimates the a number as high as 190. “The poorest of the poor” die, reports the Dr. Khangarani. Many parents cannot afford the health services or travel the distance to hospitals and as a result, he predicts a much higher death rate.
The “environmental uncertainty” threatens the food security of residents, but limited healthcare services threaten their lives. Interventionists need to invest in long-term development, as opposed to simply crisis relief.
– Ellery Spahr
Sources: BBC, Guardian
Photo: Aamir Qureshi
U.S. Foreign Aid Facts
With all the attention in the United States focused on the economy and the government’s fiscal decisions, people are finally noticing the vast amount of pork barrel spending that occurs every year. Wasted government dollars are spent on projects of no significance while Congress still refuses to extend unemployment insurance benefits. This intense scrutiny of U.S. spending usually finds its way over to the International Affairs Budget.
According to a poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation, Americans think 28% of the budget goes to foreign aid. Many are shocked to find that the real number is close to 1%! The same poll also found out that when people learn the truth, it changes their opinions. When asked if the U.S. spends too much on foreign aid, 61% said “too much” while 13% said “too little.” When asked the same question after learning the true proportion, just 30% said “too much” while 28% said “too little.”
Education must continue to dispel any myths about U.S. foreign aid and fight ignorance with facts. Here are some facts about U.S. foreign aid that could help you in your crusade!
U.S. foreign aid is a wonderful tool of diplomacy that promotes democracy and security throughout the world. Investments are made in economic development, education and social services, health, humanitarian assistance, environment, governance, and security. For further ammunition and a complete breakdown of U.S. foreign aid investments and their results, visit USAID’s results page.
– Sunny Bhatt
Sources: Washington Post, USAID, USAID
Photo: Ozy
Quotes About Poverty
The World Bank reports that we are making significant strides towards reducing global poverty. In 1981, approximately 50% of the developing world was living on less than $1.25 per day. Today that number is reduced to just 21% despite rapid increases in population. To continue pushing forward on the battle against poverty, here are some quotes about poverty that will inspire while provoking honest reflection:
We hope these quotes about poverty allow you to reflect and perhaps gain a new perspective. It is never a wrong time to get involved in your local community or to help advocate for a world without poverty!
– Sunny Bhatt
Sources: World Bank, Confront Global Poverty, TED, Proverbia
Photo: Personal Excellence
Communities Reverse Deforestation in Ethiopia
Less than 5% of Ethiopia’s original forest remains today. Ethiopia experiences 0.8% deforestation per year, and is down to 4.6% forest cover. The rapidly growing population of 85 million and the 70 million livestock put pressure on land forests.
With 80% of the population living in rural areas, deforestation in Ethiopia affects their livelihood. Before 2007, the forest in Ethiopia was government-owned. Michelle Winthrop, Country Director of Farm Africa Ethiopia, helped pioneer an initiative in 2007 to place responsibility for the forest on the local communities.
“You can stick up a big fence around the forest,” Winthrop says, “but people climb fences. If you embed the ownership for the protection of the forest in the hands of communities, it is much more powerful.”
The majority of the rural population are members of the cooperatives that protect the forest; therefore, forest dwellers no longer cut down trees for fuel or livestock grazing. The forest condition has improved a great amount, allowing an opportunity for impoverished forest dwellers to find more sustainable ways of earning income.
In the Bale region, Farm Africa is implementing a participatory forest management scheme. Of the 23,000 households covered by the project in the Bale region, about 3,500 have taken up growing coffee and bamboo, as well as learning how to become bee-keepers.
Farm Africa provided agricultural expertise and equipment to start harvesting coffee and honey, rich natural resources of the Bale region of southern Ethiopia. Along with the transfer of power to local communities, those people are now also able to produce high-value crops and have connections to lucrative market opportunities.
“We built people’s relationship with that coffee and helped them understand that a small amount of it, carefully harvested, is important both for their own pockets and also the condition of the forest,” says Winthrop.
An unexpected outcome of the participatory forest management project has been a sense of civic responsibility, leading to more stable communities and building democracy at the grassroots level.
– Haley Sklut
Sources: Dowser, Herald Tribune, The Guardian
Photo: First Climate
How Israel Stopped Human Trafficking
In the span of about five years Israel has seen monumental changes in its country’s reputation as being sympathetic to human trafficking.
As of 2005 Israel was listed on Tier 3 by the U.S. State Department in its efforts to fight and prevent human trafficking. As the bottom in the scale Tier 3 is reserved for those shame-faced countries whose governments “do not fully comply with the minimum standards and are not making significant efforts to do so.” Israel at this time was still considered one of the main destinations for the trafficking in woman – primarily those from the former Soviet Union.
The U.S. State Department’s harsh labeling of Israel as being on the same Tier as non-democratic countries such as Sudan and Somalia shamed Israel into action. Knesset member David Tsur of the HaTenua Party and chairman of the Subcommittee on Trafficking in Women and Prostitution stated, “If I were a seasoned and professional politician, I would say that the decision to act was not related to the Americans, but the reality was that without the whip of the State Department, we would not have taken serious steps. We understood that if we didn’t address the problem, aid funds would be stalled, and very quickly we would have a new center of criminal activity on our hands.”
As the law stood, victims of human trafficking were treated as criminals, making it very difficult and unlikely for them to come forward and report their abuse. This was one of the first things to be changed as Israel began to make anti-human-trafficking a priority. Government-funded shelters were set up for trafficked women who’d filed complaints where they received medical treatment and underwent rehabilitation.
Congruent to decriminalizing the victims, starting in 2006 perpetrators were given 20 year sentences for human trafficking violations. As of the U.S. State Department’s 2013 report on Trafficking in Persons, they declared that this still wasn’t a sentence that “Commensurate[d] with the gravity of the offence.”
The addition to Israel’s pre-existing barrier in 2005 was monumental in preventing the trafficking of people from Egypt, which at one time was the post popular through-country and entrance into Israel for traffickers.
Since prostitution is legal in Israel there are still issues of sexual exploitation and cases of trafficking within the country, but Israel has been hugely successful in abolishing human trafficking across its borders. In a statement to Israel’s Daniel Shapiro a U.S. Ambassador said, “I applaud the Government of Israel for continuing to focus on eliminating the scourge of modern day slavery. Israel has taken an all-of-government approach to tackling this global phenomenon, including legislative action in the Knesset, police training, and providing shelters and services for trafficking victims.”
Other countries stand to learn a lot from Israel’s example. Human trafficking has been reported in nearly every Western country, including each state within the U.S. As Israel has demonstrated, governments must recognize trafficking as a threat and allocate a full-on attack to stand a chance in eliminating it.
– Lydia Caswell
Sources: The Times of Israel, Al-Monitor, Atzum, U.S. Department of State
Photo: Jerusalem Post
New Approach to Boko Haram
Guns are more of a threat mechanism for Boko Haram. It is knives they use to kill.
Known for attacking Christians, government officials and schools in an effort to halt anything it considers to be Westernization, Boko Haram is an Islamic jihad terrorist organization that aims to form an Islamic state in northeast Nigeria. Their violent campaign, which began in 2002 under Mohammed Yusuf, is increasing in intensity and inciting fear throughout the region. This past year alone saw hundreds of deaths at the hands of Boko Haram and the group’s official recognition as a terrorist organization by the United States.
Many innocent Nigerians have been severely affected by the horrors around them. One young woman was held captive for three months and ordered to slit the throats of newcomers brought to her camp. Orders such as this, in addition to the slaughter of numerous people in front of captives, are not uncommon circumstances in the presence of Boko Haram.
Attacks on schools have resulted in an unfortunate educational hiatus. Borno state, for example, closed down all of its schools prior to the normal end of term in order to keep children and educators safe. And the conflict is spreading.
Thousands of refugees have run away from the region, taking refuge over international borders. Navanethem “Navi” Pillay, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, has recommended a regional effort in order to take on the tumultuous issue of Boko Haram’s terrorist activity.
Nigeria’s national security advisor, Sambo Dasuki, also offers a new path to solve the problem. Claiming that corruption, injustice and a lack of opportunity have led many young Nigerians to support or even join Boko Haram, Dasuki proposes a plan quite different from the military campaign currently attacking Boko Haram camps that is failing to make much progress toward peace.
Dasuki calls it a “soft approach” and purports to enroll past Boko Haram members in vocational schools while local imams deliver different, more pacifist, interpretations of the Quran. The primary issue, however, is that a great many Nigerians, alienated in the northeastern section of the country where Boko Haram runs rampant, harbor a deep distrust for President Goodluck Jonathan’s counterinsurgency program in the area. This military action is expected to continue even through Dasuki’s new approach.
The hope is that a mobilization of “family, cultural, religious and national values” can turn the tide of the situation in northeast Nigeria. With enough energy behind these new initiatives, perhaps the number of people terrorizing civilians will subside and a feeling of safety and security will form as a replacement for fear.
– Jaclyn Stutz
Sources: The Economist, BBC, Al Jazeera, All Africa
Photo: Daily Post
Preserving Traditional Knowledge
Many educated people casually assume that the human species has grown more advanced over time. After all, the developed world is full of modern conveniences that were not even conceivable two generations ago.
Meanwhile, a wealth of traditional knowledge, skills and information forged over thousands of years of human experience are being lost in our exhausting race forward. As intuitive as modern progress and development seems, many defenders and practitioners of traditional knowledge see it differently.
There’s an argument to be made that that the developed world’s blind reliance on modern technology is largely inferior to the practicality of low-tech traditional knowledge. In many cases traditional methods of agriculture and resource usage is simply more responsible and better for the environment than modern practices.
The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD,) for one, supports traditional agriculture, claiming that, “Many [indigenous communities] have cultivated and used biological diversity in a sustainable way for thousands of years. Some of their practices have been proven to enhance and promote biodiversity at the local level and aid in maintaining healthy ecosystems.”
The CBD argues that these eco-managerial roles are important for the developed world to look to as a model in how we perceive our environment. The West, in particular, often looks down on these otherwise poor, and undeveloped communities because of their lack of modern convenience.
Certainly indigenous communities have many challenges with health and sanitation that advanced societies do not, but these differences are not so imbalanced in favor of modernity as we might think.
In fact many organizations like the CBD have begun to advocate for preservation of traditional practices. The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has also drafted international legislation aimed at protecting and promoting the right of indigenous communities and there traditional practices.
At its roots, traditional knowledge is science in its purest form. It is simple, with empirical observations about the land and its inhabitants. It extends in all areas of scientific pursuit: geology, ecology, astronomy, and physics. You name it, there is an indigenous understanding for it across cultures.
Unfortunately, many of these practices are already lost forever. The loss of traditional knowledge is not just the lost of antiquated techniques, it’s also a loss of culture. As traditional knowledge is crowded out by more efficient and modern practices, it is not just the environment that suffers, but it is also the people who identified themselves by an ancient way of life.
Without some thread of connection to the past, people can become really lost. And though not all ancient practices are worth adopting, not all of them are worth rejecting either.
In this global age where there is such a tremendous convergence of culture, it is important to look to (and retain) the understanding of indigenous peoples. The ecological and cultural gain we have in preserving traditional knowledge is tremendously greater than any gain we might acquire from ease of modern technology.
– Chase Colton
Sources: ICSU, CBD, WIPO
Photo: WFP
Water As A Tool For Peace
Last month, on February 24th, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) released a new report, the Water and Conflict Toolkit. The toolkit is part of a series that explores the ways in which development assistance can assess and manage key risk factors that are associated with conflict and instability in developing countries.
One major contributing factor to conflict is in fact, water.
Water is a human necessity, essential for both survival and development. Its management can be complex, as it often generates competition between divided parties.
USAID is using this toolkit to try to mitigate these effects and promote effective water management. This will not only increase access to water and increase agricultural productivity, but also unite communities and lead the way towards peacebuilding.
This is the first time that USAID has created such a water strategy. During the five-year effort USAID hopes to ensure that 10 million more people have access to drinking water, 6 million have improved access to sanitation, and 3 million have improved access to agricultural productivity.
The report noted the multiple challenges that will be faced, with population growth and movement to urban areas at the top of the list. Other factors that also need to be taken into account include agricultural and industrial demands, corrupt governance, water politics, pollution and climate change.
A number of leaders spoke at the launch of the Water and Conflict Toolkit, held at the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington, D.C. Among them was Gideon Bromberg, the Israeli director of EcoPeace/Friends of the Earth Middle East.
Bromberg highlighted the particular importance of this report, noting that the toolkit is about much more than just conflict.
“It’s put very much in the forefront the possibilities of peacebuilding. Water is an opportunity in areas where there aren’t many opportunities.”
He used the example of the Jordan River to show how effective water management can generate the will for change.
The Jordan River has its headwaters in Syria and borders Israel, the West Bank, and Jordan. Over the past 50 years, about 96% of its freshwater has been diverted for agricultural and domestic use and the river’s flow has dropped substantially.
In 2013, a committee of local leaders got together and successfully passed an initiative to pump water regularly from Lake Kinneret into the lower Jordan River, to revitalize the overused ecosystem.
Bromberg explained the change that this grassroots, bottom-up initiative generated,
“I had a water minister from both sides come and say ‘You guys, you environmentalists, you’re dreamers, you’re tree-huggers! Water is too scarce! We’re not going to waste water to allow it to flow down the River Jordan. Were not going to allow water to go beyond our borders and empower the other side, the enemy.’ Well, that was said to us a decade ago. Today, that same leadership is carrying the flag of rehabilitating the Jordan River. This is their project, this is their political leadership, this is their success.”
Public awareness and community mobilization were key to the success of the Jordan River initiative.
The Water and Conflict Toolkit will hopefully be another resource that can be used to effectively manage water, mitigate conflict, and promote peacebuilding among communities.
– Mollie O’Brien
Sources: New Security Beat, All Africa, USAID
Photo: Aqua Rocks
Gates Foundation to Improve Sanitation in India
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced on March 20, 2014 that they were awarding $2 million worth of grants to multiple teams of researchers in India to work towards solving global sanitation issues.
These grants are part of the foundation’s “Grand Challenges,” a series of grant programs that was started ten years ago. The Gates Foundation describes Grand Challenges as a way to work with partners to “support innovative research to radically improve key problems in health and development around the world.”
In India, the foundation has partnered with the Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC) IRK Knowledge Park, and the Department of Biotechnology in hopes of designing a toilet that will provide sanitation services to the billions of people who currently lack those services.
Currently, 2.5 billion people worldwide do not have access to safe means of sanitation, which leads to the deaths of 1.5 million children under the age of five every year. Additionally, UNICEF reported that 2,000 children die every day because of poor sanitation and contaminated water. Many of these children die due to diarrhea, which can originate from the use of unsanitized toilets.
In India, more than half of the population does not have access to basic sanitation, which necessitates the building of proper toilets.
In the announcement of the grant, professor and biotechnologist K.Vijay Raghavan said, “Effective and comprehensive sanitation seems an impossible dream for India.” Raghavan went on to say, “Yet today we see a congruence of new and applicable science and technology, its affordability and sustainable implementation.”
The day after the announcement, the Reinvent the Toilet Fair took place in New Delhi and featured a variety of new devices, such as solar-powered electronic toilets. Other prototypes included a portable toilet that is capable of collapsing as well as another that emptied into a pit with waste-consuming insects.
The Gates Foundation’s goals for the scientists participating in the fair were to sanitize any waste, use a minimal amount of water or electricity, and produce a “usable product at low cost.” Another requirement was for the toilet to be something that people would want to use.
The World Bank currently estimates $260 billion to be the total global cost of poor sanitation every year, with India accounting for $54 billion of that total. These poor sanitation in India warrants change before things get worse and more lives are lost.
India is considered to have the worst conditions worldwide in regard to sanitation, an issue that is considered to be more of an annoyance in the Western world. Additional regions that lack basic sanitation include sub-Saharan Africa, southern Asia, Oceania and various islands in the Pacific Ocean. In countries where sanitation is a major issue, people commonly lose their lives due to preventable issues.
The Gates Foundation previously partnered with the BIRAC and Department of Biotechnology for the “Achieving Healthy Growth through Agriculture and Nutrition” program in August 2013.
In continuing its work with innovators in India, the foundation hopes to prevent these unnecessary deaths and improve sanitation worldwide.
– Julie Guacci
Sources: CNBC, Gates Foundation, The Japan Times, CNBC
Photo: InstaBlogs
How a GMO-Free Diet Could Benefit Global Health
The debate over genetically modified organisms has been on the rise for quite some time, but lately the American Academy of Environmental Medicine has issued a warning encouraging physicians to tell their patients to remove GMO foods from their diets.
GMOs are created in a laboratory and then injected into a food source. The injection contains a gene that carries a desirable trait, and is used to give that trait to another food source. This way, farmers are able to give their plants and animals characteristics that are more appealing to consumers.
At first biotechnology companies, such as Monsanto, promoted their biotech foods as a means to feeding those that are living in poverty and not receiving proper nutrients. The GMO food known as “golden rice” was thought to be the answer to malnutrition because it contained the vitamin beta-carotene needed for vitamin A production. Time Magazine stated that golden rice could help end blindness and death in countries that suffer heavily from vitamin A deficiencies.
On the contrary though, golden rice is not the golden ticket to ending world hunger. In fact, GMO foods have been found to do more harm than good.
Firstly, producing golden rice requires expensive amounts of pesticides and fertilizers, an expense that would not be affordable in developing countries.
Secondly, water is a major contributor to golden rice thriving, and in countries where vitamin A deficiency is prominent clean water is also usually scarce.
Thirdly, the amount of golden rice needed to properly nourish a healthy young boy is 27 bowls a day, but for a malnourished person the nutrients in golden rice may not even be properly digested in the body. One of Monsanto’s developments was a system known as the Terminator Technology, which genetically forms plant seeds that are sterile. Farmers in developing countries usually save seeds from fertile crops in order to produce their next batch of crops, with this Monsanto system farmers would suffer and potentially starve.
The Institute for Responsible Technology has found that GMOs are huge contributors to health problems, such as immune and gastrointestinal system problems, infertility, trouble with insulin balance and failing organs. The best possible method is to stay away from genetically modified foods. CNN offered a list of ways to keep your diet free of GMOs, some examples included:
As for GMO foods’ relation to poverty, fresh is always healthier, cheaper, and more beneficial in terms of nutrients. GMO has been proven to not yield any higher amount of crops than organic and chemical free crops.
– Becka Felcon
Sources: The Food Revolution, CNN, International Business Times, GMO Awareness
Photo: LA Times