It is assumed that the already existing gap between developed and developing nations is large and apparent enough that wealthier nations would try and fill this gap and bring these opposite ends closer together. According to an ABC Environmental article, however, wealthy nations are instead competing over ‘land’ and ‘water grabbing’ to appease their growing populations and the “stressed” supply of basic necessities such as food and water. Investors in a foreign land, or better yet, the land-grabbers, are countries and investment firms from biofuel producers to large-scale farming operations (agricultural investors).
Since 2000, the major countries that have contributed to this land purchasing are the U.S., Malaysia, the U.K., China, and the U.A.E. Experts aren’t sure of these investors’ motives but it is clear that they are only focusing on buying land where there is clear access to water.
‘Land grabbing’ is defined by Paolo D’Odorico, a professor at the University of Virginia, as “a deal for about two km2 or more that converts an environmentally important area currently used by local people to commercial production.” According to an environmental study, 454 billion cubic meters sums up the ‘water-grabbing’ per year by corporations on a global scale, which is about 5 percent of the world’s annual water consumption. According to the public database Land Matrix “1,217 deals have taken place, which transferred over 830,000 square kilometers of land” since 2000, with 62 percent of such deals happening in Africa alone.
From 2005 to 2009, during a major food price crisis, land purchases, which fall under a very low level of regulation, skyrocketed. In 2011, the Food and Agricultural Organization of the U.N. released guidelines that advise investors to consider the people and communities whose land is being used. However, such guidelines are viewed as humanitarian concerns and have little enforcement, meaning that they aren’t strict enough to have corporations and investors abide by them or even care for them.
Governments who are interested in and have been leasing and selling land to foreign countries and investors are mainly those in Eastern Africa and Southeast Asia. They are interested in these sales because they want to modernize their farming and believe this is the way to do it. However, the reality is that the resulting development from such ‘land and water grabbing’ depends on the investors’ terms and conditions, as well as their sense of morality.
The main problem is that the majority of these sales are happening in poor countries in which there are high rates of hunger and where resources valuable to the local populations are being purchased by wealthier developed nations or even by private corporations. The main question of the matter is this: Who is benefiting from land and water grabbing? Are these sales helping the local people since it is their land? Or are these purchases only concerned about foreign benefits and the population concerns of developed nations?
– Leen Abdallah
Source: ABC
Photo: Water Governance
5 Reasons Why Social Responsibility Matters in Business
Here are 5 reasons why social responsibility matters in business:
1. Consumers Look For Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)
2. Employees Look For and Perform Better for Socially Responsible Businesses
3. It is a competitive advantage (Harvard Business Review)
4. Capitalism focused strictly on profit is no longer viable
5. It is a moral obligation
– Mary Purcell
Source: Movingworlds.org
Photo: Chieforganizer.org
Embrace Infant Health in the Developing World
The Embrace infant health “sleeping bag” is an innovative, low-cost baby warmer, engineered for at-risk babies in developing countries. Around the world over 20 million low-birth-weight and premature babies are born every year, in the right environment, these babies can still thrive. However, in impoverished areas without resources or in turmoil, these babies are at risk of dying – and over four million will die within their first month of life. Amazingly, just keeping these newborns at the right temperature can be the difference between life and death.
The design of the Embrace incorporates materials that will stay a constant 98.6F, the critical temperature for a newborn’s survival. After being heated via any AC power source, the “WarmPak” inside the wrap traps the heat and then slowly releases it for up to 6 hours, keeping the “microclimate” inside the Embrace perfect for healthy development. Under normal conditions, a baby’s body temperature can be maintained through basic contact with the mother, but sometimes this is not always an option. Particularly for women who are working and/or caring for other children, who may be recovering from a traumatic birth, and those in disaster-relief and post-conflict settings.
The biggest problem these pre-mature babies face is hypothermia, when they cannot regulate their own body temperature and cannot stay warm. Average room temperature for these tiny bodies actually feels freezing to them. Those that can survive even without proper care will often develop life-long problems like diabetes, heart disease, and low IQ. Simply keeping a baby warm can save its life immediately and allow proper development in the long term.
– Mary Purcell
Source: Embraceglobal.org
Books For Africa Teams Up With The Peace Corps
In countries where few classrooms have suitable resources, Books for Africa ship libraries of new scholarly and leisurely texts as well as new law and human rights texts. Classrooms in countries such as Ghana, Ethiopia and South Africa are filled with avid learners whose parents have sacrificed greatly to provide them with an education but often lack adequate supplies.
While many classrooms have adequate textbooks to constitute as reading material, noted on project organizer, the establishment of reading centers such as libraries indulge the hope that “Ethiopian children and their families will be able to experience the joys of reading and literacy activities directly.”
– Pete Grapentien
Source Huffington Post
Poverty Reduction Can Take Many Paths
With a need as immense as reducing global poverty, there are many different ways one can choose to affect change and inspire others to get involved. Poverty reduction can take many paths and many methods can be employed in the fight. One compelling and effective approach is the use of documentary film as a means of educating and emotionally inspiring others.
In an effort to raise awareness and ignite involvement, the non-profit organization Global Citizen has partnered with Development and Aid World News Service (DAWNS) to provide two $1,000 grants for humanitarian documentaries.
By going to the Global Citizen website, interested parties can vote for the 12 finalists who have started projects to impact and create a better understanding of the complex effects of extreme poverty.
One film follows 15 grassroots organizers in Cameroon who are mobilizing communities through peacebuilding, social justice, human rights and more. Another tries to tell the day-to-day story of war victims in Somalia. Many others address women’s issues, such as a film based in Libya which consist of interviews with Nobel Peace Prize winners, or an entry from Gambia focusing on the largely female impoverished agricultural population, or in the Hindu culture of India where boys represent status and girls are regarded as a financial drain on the family, or in Sub-Saharan Africa where maternal death is still systemic.
Finalist Nosarieme Garrick, an African woman living in America, focuses on innovations on the African continent evolving from younger generations. Her series will follow unexpected and “hopeful” developments in the humanitarian, music, fashion, film, arts and business sectors. Garrick wants to change the perception of “her” continent. “Africa is a growing force to be reckoned with. As young people return back from the diaspora, and democracies become more stable, the former image of the “Hopeless Continent” is in desperate need of shedding.”
Anyone can affect change in a way that speaks to them; it’s just a matter of taking that first, crucial step.
– Mary Purcell
Source: Global Poverty Project
Who is Benefiting From Land and Water Grabbing?
Since 2000, the major countries that have contributed to this land purchasing are the U.S., Malaysia, the U.K., China, and the U.A.E. Experts aren’t sure of these investors’ motives but it is clear that they are only focusing on buying land where there is clear access to water.
‘Land grabbing’ is defined by Paolo D’Odorico, a professor at the University of Virginia, as “a deal for about two km2 or more that converts an environmentally important area currently used by local people to commercial production.” According to an environmental study, 454 billion cubic meters sums up the ‘water-grabbing’ per year by corporations on a global scale, which is about 5 percent of the world’s annual water consumption. According to the public database Land Matrix “1,217 deals have taken place, which transferred over 830,000 square kilometers of land” since 2000, with 62 percent of such deals happening in Africa alone.
From 2005 to 2009, during a major food price crisis, land purchases, which fall under a very low level of regulation, skyrocketed. In 2011, the Food and Agricultural Organization of the U.N. released guidelines that advise investors to consider the people and communities whose land is being used. However, such guidelines are viewed as humanitarian concerns and have little enforcement, meaning that they aren’t strict enough to have corporations and investors abide by them or even care for them.
Governments who are interested in and have been leasing and selling land to foreign countries and investors are mainly those in Eastern Africa and Southeast Asia. They are interested in these sales because they want to modernize their farming and believe this is the way to do it. However, the reality is that the resulting development from such ‘land and water grabbing’ depends on the investors’ terms and conditions, as well as their sense of morality.
The main problem is that the majority of these sales are happening in poor countries in which there are high rates of hunger and where resources valuable to the local populations are being purchased by wealthier developed nations or even by private corporations. The main question of the matter is this: Who is benefiting from land and water grabbing? Are these sales helping the local people since it is their land? Or are these purchases only concerned about foreign benefits and the population concerns of developed nations?
– Leen Abdallah
Source: ABC
Photo: Water Governance
Heroes of Advocacy
There are many more social activists or heroes of advocacy who dedicated their lives to social reform and political change by fighting for people’s rights and freedoms. The activists listed above were a few of the most prominent and most influential throughout history.
Today, we’re fighting for a different kind of freedom, although it is not any less important: we’re fighting to end global poverty and free people from the shackles of poverty. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” during his fight for equal rights for colored people in the United States.
With advocacy, we deliver information and vital knowledge to the masses, thereby engaging them and mobilizing them to stand up for an issue and demand justice as the heroes of advocacy did.
– Leen Abdallah
Sources: Gandhi, Nelson Mandela: Biography, Mandela: Nobel Peace Prize, The King Center, I Have a Dream, Nobel Peace Laureates
Photo: Daily Good
Investing in the Future with Universal Pre-K
The White House has released an infographic sharing that at-risk children who do not receive a high-quality early education are 25 percent more likely to drop out of school, 40 percent more likely to become a teen parent, 50 percent more likely to be placed in special education, 60 percent more likely to never attend college and 70 percent more likely to be arrested for a violent crime.
The investment in preschools, therefore, means investing in the future of American life, according to an administration that has championed demands that every child one day receive an affordable college education, and who has also called for sharp restrictions to be placed on assault weapons as a result of increasingly sensationalized acts of gun violence.
The investment in early education may raise a generation out of poverty, as current reports claim that the United States provides, at the moment, some of the least access to the social mobility of the world’s utmost developed nation. This has proven disheartening to a society that functions on the ideals of the American Dream, which is that anyone can achieve anything if they work hard enough.
Investing in the future is a principle that is both bipartisan and essential to the capitalist identity of America. We can only hope that legislators can overcome their differences to invest in this preventative social program, as has been done in the states of Georgia and Oklahoma.
– Nina Narang
Sources: The Huffington Post, The Washington Post
Photo: Post University
Raise the Minimum Wage, Inflation is Real!
This demand comes at a time when the National Center for Law and Economic Justice supports that one in seven Americans lives in poverty, with one in sixteen Americans living in deep poverty. Poverty, of course, exacerbates tension and has been linked to decreased social mobility, increased rates of violence, and increased likelihood of being a young parent.
Addressing poverty, both at home and abroad, is a key, central way to better the standard of living for millions as the better able families are to support themselves, the more efficient the employee, the better the consumer, and the more stable the economy.
CNNMoney, however, has debunked the myth that raising the minimum wage in America is the only element necessary to raise a family out of poverty. For a family of four making at least $9/hr, and while taking advantage of several key tax breaks, Tami Luhby of CNNMoney writes that the new rate would be barely enough to lift the family above the poverty line, and hardly enough to raise their standard of living by much in light of the U.S.’s dependence on a tax code that has been decried as “broken” by many.
While raising the minimum wage would be a step in the right direction towards addressing poverty in the United States, advocates for economic justice argue that helping people find higher-paying jobs is another, more effective, means of fighting poverty.
– Nina Narang
Sources: NCLEJ, CNNMoney
Photo: Occupy
The Top 3 Suprising Health Benefits of Globalization
Contrary to popular opinion, globalization has several little known and widely unpublicized effects on overall health and longevity. Previously, this phenomenon was primarily centered around the interconnectedness of people, ideas and economic capital; however, recent findings show that it might not be operating within the preconceived limitations and that there may actually be some health benefits of globalization.
Researchers at the University of Netherlands and Luephana University collaborated to analyze the mortality rates of globalized versus non-globalized countries. Utilizing the Maastricht Globalization Index (MGI) as a barometer to measure the various associations between globalization and health in a nation, scientists were able to determine-via statistical analysis-certain positive outcomes. Their results were unexpected, and what emerged from the study were three surprising health benefits of globalization.
It appears that based upon these findings, there is a certain amount of scientific evidence highlighting the health benefits of globalization. Thus, advocating for the increased economic stability and food security factors of global poverty reduction is exactly what is needed to combat infant, under five, and adult mortality rates.
– Brian Turner
Source: Globalization and Health
Photo: Imperial International Public Health
10 Countries with the Shortest Life Expectancy
The 10 countries with the shortest life expectancy can be found in one continent, Africa, with the exception of Afghanistan. Short life expectancy in sub-Saharan Africa can be caused by famine, poor governments, low levels of education (research has suggested that education correlates with healthcare awareness), availability of clean water and the existence of widespread AIDS. In Afghanistan, the main reason for short life expectancy has been due to infant mortality and women not surviving through childbirth. According to The Guardian, better access to healthcare in the last decade has helped cut infant mortality rates in Afghanistan.
What can we do? Well, donating and persuading our government to give more foreign aid helps solve the poverty issue. Once these countries move up, they can begin to fund higher levels of education, afford advanced agricultural tools which can help sustain growth, and improve healthcare.
(Listed top-to-bottom from the country with the shortest life expectancy)
– Leen Abdallah
Source: CIA World Factbook, The Guardian, Econs Guide
Photo: Google: Short Life Expectancy