DevPolitics

We agree to agree...by 2050?

 

Last weekend the Climate Change Summit in Cancun,Mexico came to a close being heralded as “historic” by the head of the UN climate change secretariat. So, what did this monumental accord agree to? According to this Al Jazeera article on-line, the plan for climate change is to figure out a plan. Yes that's right, 200 countries sat down and agreed that they would try to agree to an actual goal of how to reduce the emissions of green house gases by 2050. They also agreed to create a $100 billion fund for developing countries to tap into so they can obtain technologies to lessen their emissions or to subsidize the negative effects they are feeling from climate change. However, they are not sure where the funding will come from but realize that it is very vital. If you are unfamiliar with the damaging effects that climate change is currently causing around the world, take a peak at this video. I think we owe it to the people suffering from food insecurity due to the devastating effects of climate change to do more than agree to help them. Maybe we should think about how we can actually help them and stop putting off tough decisions.

Blue Gold: World Water Wars

 

        I recently had the chance to attend a public screening of the film Blue Gold: World Water Wars by Sam Bozzo, which is based upon the book of the same title written by Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke. This film effectively opened my eyes to one of the future areas of global conflict, as countries battle over one of the most basic and shared natural resources in the global commons, water. As we are able to purchase bottled water on any block in Manhattan, drink tap water, and are fortunate to have indoor plumbing/proper sanitation we may forget how important the issue of water is in the world of development. If you disagree, just ask the 884 million people on earth who lack access to this precious resource or the family of the one child that dies every 20 seconds due to water related disease. Take a study break, watch this film, and learn for your self what the privatization of water, poor global water policy, and commodification of this vital resource is doing to our world. It could possibly save your life if the former vice president of the World Bank Ismail Serageldin's prediction that, “the next world war will be over water,” comes true or at least raise your awareness of a critical issue.

In Kansas, Climate Skeptics Embrace Cleaner Energy- NYT

Here is a great example from Kansas of re-framing environmental issues and adapting alongside cultural or religious beliefs to connect people to a need for change on their own terms.

"by focusing on thrift, patriotism, spiritual conviction and economic prosperity, it could rally residents of six Kansas towns to take meaningful steps to conserve energy and consider renewable fuels."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/19/science/earth/19fossil.html?_r=2&hp=&pagewanted=all

Building A School With Empty Bottles

As a participant on the recent Public Service trip to Guatemala, I found this story that my mom told me about on abc news to be an incredibly innovative way to building schools, while at the same time cleaning up their local environment!  

A peace corps volunteer recognized the need for a new school, with little to no money (traditional materials of concrete and steel to expensive) to build the school in the rural highland town of Granados, Guatemala. She also recognized the fact that there was a lot of trash lying around, specifically plastic bottles. 

The innovation? Collect the bottles, fill them with trash that had been left on the side of the roads (or else where), and then use the filled bottles to build a school.

Although I may not agree fully with the language used in the video (which is meant for the general public), ultimately I think "building a school out of bottles" represents exactly what effective development work should look like; you work with what you have.  Who would have ever thought that trash and plastic bottles could be a good thing?  For this community, it was a great thing!

Here is the link to the short video here:

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/building-school-empty-bottles-10453096
What do you all think?  People told her her idea was crazy...

Her reply, "you need to trust your crazy ideas, they can do great things"... I agree!

Video: human rights and the environment

In advance of Thursday's class, I came across this video on YouTube.  It is the head of Human Rights Watch speaking at a university in California on the link between the environment and human rights.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=JwNISdT86jA

The Death of Development?

Our discussion during the IPSA reading group on Friday seemed to parallel the debate we addressed in class the night before.  In the IPSA group, we discussed The Death of Environmentalism, an essay written in 2005 that sparked a lot of debate among environmentalists.  One of the main points throughout the essay is that the environmental community needs to forget the idea of ‘environmentalism’ – scrap the term altogether – and reframe environmental issues as part of a larger progressive movement that has an effect on much more than just the environment.   This echoed the argument that we heard from W. Sachs and others, stating that we should scrap the term ‘development’ in order to focus on the true issues and reframe the movement.  The essay actually links this death of environmentalism to development, stating that development is a large problem in the international environmental movement.  Oil and coal are still seen as successes and as positive economic advances for ‘developing’ countries – the very nature of how development is framed is harmful to the environment.  Sachs puts it perfectly when he writes: “the challenge is to embark upon growth patterns that are both pro-environment and pro-poor, without going through all the stages of industrial evolution as Northern countries did.”