Take a good look at this picture. From miles up the African nation of Ethiopia looks much like any other developing country. But there is one difference: Ethiopia is dying of thirst.
According to the New Internationalist, “Rainfall has been declining year on year in the Saharan region. The only zone of safety has been the humid tropical belt of Central and West Africa. But even here population pressures and climate stress are predicted to transform abundance into vulnerability.”
With increased global warming, both floods and droughts are expected to become more frequent. In Ethiopia, where poverty is often coupled with government corruption and ineptitude, not to mention ongoing wars with neighboring nations, the situation is becoming more dire with each passing day. And as with all shortages, we can expect the poor to stand in line the longest and to pay the most for whatever commodity is in short supply. It’s the rule of supply and demand, the free-market system we Americans are so proud of. There’s just one problem: when applied to life’s necessities, it leads to a tacit caste system in which the rich and powerful survive and the poor and disenfranchised die off.
There is a Turkish saying that goes something like this: Iraq has oil, we have water. Let them drink their oil. And here’s another salient quote from the May 2000 issue of Fortune Magazine, “Water promises to be to the 21st century what oil was to the 20th century.”
While our government continues to fret over oil in the Middle East, focusing on possible terrorist attacks and beefing up Homeland Security, our citizens watched in horror as people in New Orleans died from lack of water. There’s a bit of irony in that. The most powerful nation in the world watched their own people die of thirst, while surrounded by water–water full of pollutants (including oil) that made it unfit to drink.
The global warming that many believe contributed to the strength of Hurricane Katrina is affecting the entire planet. In Ethiopia, they won’t need breaking levees, or a tsunami, or a failure of local and/or federal government to push them to the brink of death: just a few more years of a bit less water, and their crops will die, their people will perish. So what can we do?
Moving water isn’t the answer. Experience shows us that efforts to move water on a large scale can cause serious environmental damage. What’s more the expense of such efforts means the price of the water must be very high: and that means, once again, the rich and powerful will benefit, not the poor and disenfranchised.
While Western environmentalists are often quick to blame population growth in places like Africa for their current water shortage, studies show that the key to water management is proper management of the local environment. While growing populations certainly require more water, a more serious problem is wasteful agricultural practices that require massive irrigation efforts and produce increasingly smaller returns while depleting natural resources. It is, therefore, Western style agro-business that is the largest man-made contributor to the current water shortage–not the poor of Africa who take only what they need to survive and often can’t even get that.
When farmers in the developed world have a bum crop, they rely on food that’s been stored to survive. Large warehouses, refrigerated containers and so on allow food to be both transported long distances and maintained in close proximity to areas that can’t produce what is needed to support the local population.
In Ethopia, there is no infrastructure for storing food. Nor do the poor of that country have the resources to buy it, even if it was available for purchase. As a result, an estimated 40 million people will require food aid should their crops fail. Yet when there is a surplus of food, the lack of storage facilities forces the market to be flooded with newly harvested crops that push the price down, causing even “successful” farmers to reap less than they need from their bumper crops.
The answer, clearly, is to provide the infrastructure needed to ship and store food throughout this impoverished nation. But why, if the answer is so simple, have we failed to act on it? The unfortunate truth is this: wealthy nations who’ve loaned money to African countries in the past are now essentially holding them hostage. A few years ago, in the Central African nation of Malawi, there was a surplus of food. But in order to pay off its debt to the World Bank, Malawi was forced to sell its grain. And now the people of that country are, once again, at the mercy of the weather. If they get enough rain and a good crop, they’ve survive another year. If not, they will simply die.
The larger question, then, is how is it that the World Bank can expect people to sell the only thing they have to fend off drought and allow their population to survive? How is it that industrialized nations with the capacity to store and transport large quantities of food could be so indifferent to the needs of the developing countries, like Ethiopia and Malawi, that they would force them to sell their grain surplus, knowing the dire consequences it may have for them?
The answer to that question is found in the words of Catherine Bertini, Former executive of the World Food Programme: “Food is power. We use it to change behaviour. Some may call that bribery. We do not apologize.”
Hmm. Perhaps “we” should.
I alow me to say? God only could gage us what are we doing to the poor people.That is my comement.thank you
hopefully when people notice they’ve made a critial mistke they can have the courage to admit it right away and make amends.
It’s that attitude “there isn’t enough to go around” that causes all this suffering. The world can produce so much JUNK in a year due to the “competition” of the market and no planning. It’s endemic to The System. I look forward to the collapse of the banking system and the rise in creativity and love. Treat thy neighbors as thyself, I think someone said.
Liberals are fascinating. I think if Hitler were alive today he would ba a “liberal”. When I was in grade school in the 50′s I was taught that the natural history of North America was one of very long periods of draught and that the continent was in a prolonged wet spell that had to end. Now, that it is, everyone ones around screaming SUVs are killing the planet and people. The truth is Asian farming practices have created flu strains that have killed more people than all the wars combined and may kill many many more via the aviarian flu. YET, THERE ARE NO CRIES OF CONDEMNATION OVER THE CALLOUSNESS OF THESE PEOPLE IN REFUSING TO CHANGE ANIMAL HUSBANDRY AND FARMING PRACTICES THAT ARE KNOWN TO BREED KILLER VIRUSES. DUH!
Conservatives are fascinating. I like to watch them get angry and type in all caps.
Arnold — it’s frustrating to realize that the media, which is part of the System, does not publicize this erosion of the ecosystem. It’s not really left/right/liberal/
conservative “thing” , it’s a whole outmoded way of looking at the world. The world changed drastically when the first photo of earth taken in space was published. We were provided a new way of looking at ourselves — beyond borders, a spaceship hurdling through space. We can’t condemn what others do or do not see, we can only begin with ourselves, because NO government is going to clean up this mess that’s been made by “needing” to make profits, not taking care of people and other living things. Recyle, reuse, reduce, replant, replenish and RETHINK. There are plenty of things to get upset about, but what are we each going to do about it. Judgments of others doesn’t help. More than one “side” can be right.
When You Live in a Desert
The precautionary tale for Americans is simple:
Arnold’s comment is fascinating. It perfectly illustrates how well pro-business interests have mounted an attack on pro-environmental interests by first, marring the credibility of the term “liberal” and then, linking it to those issues they wish to be discounted by the illogical bias of partisanship.
Arnold–your conclusion, that “liberals” are out of step (as represented by your exclamation “duh”) with bigger issues (‘natural’ claimate change vs. human practice) in decrying unrelated world-wide die-offs sounds good but in fact is off target for these reasons: first, when you were in school in the 50′s or 60′s there was as yet unmeasureable effect on climate change that could compare geological time sweeps to much shorter time spans. Current science can now clearly show that in the last 50 years, unaccountable spikes have developed. They can be distinctly correlated to human activity. Second, and this goes outside the topic of climate change and into the topic of American intervention in the business practices of sovereign nations…there is no correlation. However, “liberals” would like to know what prevented an administration with five years advance notice on a potential flu threat, from investing government resources in developing and securing the vaccine necessary to protect it’s citizens (and on a snarky note) that is unless you would have us invade Asia to fight the flu “there” so we don’t have to do it “here”?
Current science can now clearly show that in the last 50 years, unaccountable spikes have developed. They can be distinctly correlated to human activity.
Really? Sources?
African nations, which are hugely rich in natural resources, could solve all of these problems by themselves if only they were free. This is a government and freedom issue. It’s only sad that so many well meaning, but misguided, Westerners think that the solution is to throw money at these problems.
this web site need to get more information!!!!!!!!!!!
What we do have is GREAT information. Yes, it would be nice to have more. I do my “bit” by blogging and buildling an Earthlings Anonymous list and writing frequent editorials.
This technology at our fingertips is not that easy to learn, and not all of us have the resources to use it properly.
But ANYTHING that pulls out of our comfort zone (Disturb the comfortable; comfort the disturb ~ counselling tenet), is good, especially if it propels our own creativity.
I have a “feeling” that Sprol’s day will come .. and soon.