In this week’s edition of the Economist, there is an interesting article on how one of the gravest problems affecting the world today is environmental health — in particular, clean water. Unfortunately, this environmental issue takes a back seat to Climate Change. Without getting into a debate on the best ways to combat Climate Change, be it through the Kyoto Protocol or other means, what is clear (and unquestionable) is that the economics required for compliance with Kyoto have a very limited positive environmental impact in the long term (and none in the short term). At the same time, for a tiny fraction of that money, millions of lives (almost all of them in the poorest countries) could be saved simply by providing people access to clean water. Now it is not uncommon for resources to be dedicated to “sexier” illnesses than for ones that kill more people in less advantaged places — say for example, the lack of funding for something like malaria prevention.
One of my closest friends, Fadi, is an environmental health expert and works on providing clean water (and cleaner indoor air quality) to places in Africa and Asia. In the more developed of these nations, the cause of serious health risks comes from toxic waste, whereas in the poorest nations of Africa the danger comes from a simple lack of clean water. For example, Fadi tells me that, according to Unicef, some “29,000 children under the age of five — 21 each minute — die every day, mainly from preventable causes, of which 4000 from lack of improved water, sanitation and hygiene, i.e., about 1.5 million per year.”
Sometimes I get the feeling that the whole Climate Change/Kyoto debate is really just a silly game of tug-of-war between the US and Europe. In the meantime, children die. Here is the Economist article . . .
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