Addressing Climate Change + Eradicating Poverty = Saving Civilization?!

“Aswan has never been this hot in May” Mamma* exclaimed. We were sitting in the guest parlor of Amira’s house, sipping karkedeh** with Bill Myers and Rami Lotfy during their short research trip here. And, she's right. This month it’s regularly hovered around 38 Celsius in Aswan… hot enough to mistake the wind for a hairdryer as it blows across your neck, and wonder if you could fry an egg on your back when caught out in the noon-day sun. What's more, we’re just approaching summer in the Northern Hemisphere. But already there are fresh cracks in the Arctic ice in Canada, and we have not yet neared the high end of the temperature range here in the desert (think low 50s!!). The harshest heat and sun are still to come... hmm.

Yet it's important to move beyond the doom and gloom of climate change... to focus on solutions. Let's break down this gargantuan problem into a more manageable conceptual framework. Bill once suggested that in order to bring about positive change three things need to be in place. First is an understanding of the problem... Thanks to folks like Al Gore, David Suzuki, and thousands of other intellectuals/activists we're finally cluing in on both individual and collective levels (with the exception of governments like the U.S. and Canada, to many of their citizens' embarrassment). Second is the will to bring about change... we still have a ways to go on this front, but the international community is finally stepping up to begin discussions! And third is the capability to bring about the change itself... to access and/or mobilize the needed resources (in this case collectively investing in and creating the needed solutions).

This is where Lester Brown comes in.

"Sorry, who is Lester Brown?!" you may be asking...

Well, he's the founder of the World Watch Institute, the president of the Earth Policy Institute and a man the Washington Post called "one of the world's most influential thinkers"on world population and resources. He's also the author of Plan B, 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization.
Whether you believe in climate change or not (indeed a few family members and friends still enjoy debating this with me) Brown's book is a must read!!

One of the things I appreciate most about Brown's thinking is how 'big picture' he is. He is able to coherently demonstrate the interconnectedness of the many challenges facing humanity, arguing that if we continue with 'Plan A', or ‘business as usual’, which implies not addressing climate change, food security, water scarcity, overpopulation and poverty at the scale and speed required, the cost will be human civilization itself! As much as I hope this is not so, I agree with him that we need to act NOW to change how we tread on the earth, how we co-exist as a species, and how we relate to all that crawl and canter and soar.

Brown was recently interviewed on CBC Radio’s “The Current,” about his take on the state of the world. As Anna Maria Tremonti summarized, he suggests that “we have pushed the natural systems that sustain us to the breaking point”. From Brown's perspective, the heart of our current challenges stem from our growing global population and lack of natural resource management (er, over-consumption!!). As is evident from the food protests/riots here, in Haiti, Bolivia, Cameroon, Malaysia, Pakistan etc etc we are feeling the stresses of our growing population and consumption needs already as food and oil prices climb.

However it is water, not food that Brown suggests is emerging as the principal constraint. He points out that Himalayan glacial melt is a serious concern in Asia... these glaciers are the major supplier of rivers like the Ganges and Yangtze. If they melt completely then their rivers would become seasonal. As Brown explains, "That would be the most massive threat to world food security we've ever been able to predict."

However Brown is a man of solutions. Now that we've got the basic awareness, and growing political will we simply need to invest $190 billion a year on eradicating poverty, stabilizing our global population and restoring the earth's natural systems. So providing micro finance solutions for SMEs is connected to climate change after all... On the development side the package he envisions involves universal primary education (particularly for girls), accessible basic health care and birth control in every village, and food security (supported through lunch programs at schools among other things). On the environmental side he explains the need to invest in soil conservation, reforestation, raising water productivity, and reducing our waste and consumption.

Brown recognizes that $190 billion is a lot of money, however he points out that "we're currently spending a thousand billion (or 1 trillion) dollars a year for military purposes... this is less than one fifth of that!" Here's his interconnectivity again: "What we're beginning to realise, and what some military strategists are beginning to realise is that climate change and population growth and environmental degradation, food and water shortages - these are the new threats to security. So when we look at this $190 billion budget we see it as, in effect, the new security budget." Security budget eh?! That sounds like rhetoric the U.S. administration could embrace!

Brown also talks about some of the things we can do on an individual level. Here's five that you, me and Mamma can get started on...

Beyond Doom and Gloom… 5 things we can do:

1. Work to address one or more of the many pressing issues of our time (eg. poverty, food security, water resource management, environmental degradation, conflict etc)
   
2. Encourage governments to invest in environmental research, provide humanitarian aid, and support development (that ol’ 0.7% as suggested in the Millennium Development Goals)
3. Eat lower down on the food chain!! (According to Brown avoiding meats is the equivalent of downsizing from an SUV to a Prius!!)
4. Reduce individual consumption (energy, water, resources)
5. Talk about these issues with others!!

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* 'Mamma' is Amira’s mother but has now suggested that she is my Nubian mama. (I wanted to do a cartwheel the day she told me I’m like a daughter to her). She is strong and patient and welcoming and kind. I’m grateful her family's presence in my life!

** Karkedeh is the Arabic name for hibiscus flower. It is delicious as a hot tea or cold juice… a little bitter like cranberry, and good for lowering blood pressure.

the PPIC-Work impact... Dr M's thoughts

As the PPIC-Work project continues in its final year of programming, one of the fun parts of my job is interviewing different people involved in the project for their thoughts. Here's a discussion I had with "Dr. M"...

But before we get going, let me give you a bit of context. Mamdouh Foad is the Executive Director of EACID – the Egyptian Association for Community Initiatives and Development – an MFI based in Aswan that serves as one of the core partners of the PPIC-Work project. Dr. Mamdouh (here shown with his wife and field coordinator Seham) is also the in-country Associate Director of the project and has been involved in PPIC-Work from the earliest planning stages. For all you MEDA members in the crowd he and EACID host MEDA tours that come through Egypt, connecting you folks to the local dynamics of the project.

While we're talking context, let me tell you a bit about the organization too. EACID has a history of working with micro and small enterprises in business startup and expansion. In this work, EACID learned that often, Egyptian children are drawn into work as businesses grow. Dr. Mamdouh, Richard Carothers and others asked themselves how they could use their knowledge of business support and microfinance in Egypt to maintain best practices in the industry and at the same time improve the situation for working children. Voila, in 2002, the PPIC-Work project was born.

So what pray tell is the impact of the PPIC-Work project?
Through PPIC-Work Dr. Mamdouh believes MEDA/PTE and their Egyptian partners are building a model whereby MFIs can play an active role in helping children who work without being confrontational to the business owners. By developing a series of participatory social interventions to improve the learning opportunities and working conditions of children who work, he describes project partners as “at the cutting edge” of the microfinance industry. As he explains, “Micro-credit is a very powerful tool. It’s a limitation if we only use it for accessibility… We as an MFI have to discover what we can do with it. It’s not only the accessibility: we can go beyond that. Now, it’s a fact: our skills and expertise have a very dramatic effect over the lives of businesses – for business owners, the businesses themselves, for the workers, for the children for even the community, for even laws and decisions and different stakeholders. I think we have begun to realize our own strengths here.”

Since Dr. Mamdouh has been involved with PPIC-Work from the very beginning, he has a unique perspective of the fruits of the project. In his own words: “If you saw the same children you are seeing now, [six years ago], you would not believe it!” When EACID first started their education classes, rights awareness sessions and artistic programming the children had low self-esteem, poor social skills, and felt stigmatized because they were working. They believed that others would look down on them as poor, as inferior, as children without a future who should not be associated with because they had to work. Dr. Mamdouh suggests that if you look at these same children now they have become more open, have a high self-esteem, believe they have a bright future, are proud that they are working, know about something called their rights and are practicing and demanding these. In short, he says, “There has been a 180 degree change.”

Dr Mamdouh recognizes that microfinance is not a magic tool that can solve all the complex challenges of poverty or inequality… it has its limitations. He suggests that even as an MFI “You need [to offer] other support programs, and non-financial services to provide a complete package.” Furthermore, protecting the interests of working children is bigger than any one organization can address alone. He explains, “That’s why we are sharing our information, techniques and model with other MFIs. We’d like to see these ideas implemented worldwide even!” He and the PPIC-Work team are optimistic that the intervention tools developed over the past six years will reach a much larger group of working children through the creation of a regional project in 2009. Insha’allah - God willing!

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In the coming months stay tuned for perspectives of parents and business owners about the impact of Canadian taxpayers' investments. One of these days, you may even get my twenty piesters!

Finding Home in Aswan

This afternoon I visited my new friend Amira. We enjoyed a meal she cooked for us, conversed in my broken Arabic, and watched an Egyptian film from the 1960s with her mother. In classic Nubian fashion, her family has a simple and clean house, with high rounded ceilings and open courtyards. It’s beautiful.

Amira and her mother (cutting okra, right) invited me to sleep over badda-bokrah (the day after tomorrow), to be a part of their family always, and host my own family if/when they come to visit this fall. I brought them cookies, as is the Egyptian custom, though I feel I’m the one who’s been given the gift. I feel I have been welcomed into Egyptian life in ways I have rarely been welcomed before. For the first time I feel that there is a place for me here. It brings tears of joy to my eyes, and silly smiles I could not hide on my walk home just now.

Moments before, as the small passenger ferry glided across the nile towards Aswan I was transported back to another city I felt at home in, on another continent… Geneva. I asked myself what triggered these feelings of belonging in each city, and realised it was that I felt accepted for who I was, despite my foreignness. It was the ability to communicate across cultures, to walk by the water and meet interesting people from around the world, to share a sense of humanness.

Today I feel I’ve finally made a breakthrough here… past people’s conception of me as ‘money’, ‘sex’ or ‘other’ to human. On the ferry I was chatting a little with the women around me, and it was comfortable. At the beginning one asked me for a pen (a typical thing to ask from a foreigner), and I obliged. A few minutes later when she learned that I live in Aswan she returned the pen - recognition of our common humanity, our common belonging here. I was moved.

As I walked home afterwards I was almost able to float above the hassling without notice, and dance along with the festivities in the ‘wedding district’ close to the flat. I feel I am starting to understand things, and am increasingly at peace with them. There will be times that I am judged, but there are times that I also judge. That is part of our humanness too. Hamdallah for moments beyond the judgments, for moments of belonging.