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——
“Because
there IS a connection between what we do, how we
choose to live our lives, and the fortunes or misfortunes
of others around the world.” Craig
Keys, Co-founder NextAid
——
"I'd like
to tell people in your place that the drink they
are enjoying [coffee] is the cause of all our problems.
We grow it with our sweat and sell it for nothing."
Lawrence Seguya,
Uganda
Taken from the Oxfam
Make Trade Fair website
www.maketradefair.com
——————
WHAT IS SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT?
Sustainable development is the practice of
building and developing utilizing available resources
so that they are either continually renewed or preserved
for use for future generations.
Sustainable development requires a balancing of
social, economic, and environmental needs. By robbing
communities of their greatest resource, their people,
AIDS drains the human and institutional capacities
needed to manage resources. Earth-friendly, sustainable
development, at the very least, includes social,
economic and environmental plans and strategies
for both short- and long-term consumption in a way
that extends their benefit to all. This ensures
that vital resources are managed, maintained and
preserved for generations to come.
——
Poverty
As HIV prevalence levels rise, poverty deepens.
The incomes of the poorest quarter of households
in Botswana are projected to drop by 13% by 2010.
A study in neighboring Zambia has shown that two-thirds
of urban households that have lost their main breadwinner
to AIDS have experienced an income loss of 80%.
——
The Economy
(World Bank Report)
The outbreak of AIDS leads to an increase in premature
adult mortality, and if the prevalence of the disease
becomes sufficiently high, there may be a progressive
collapse of human capital and productivity. The
policy problem, therefore, is to avoid such a collapse.
The instruments available for this purpose are (i)
spending on measures to contain the disease and
treat the infected, (ii) aiding orphans, in the
form of either income-support or subsidies contingent
on school attendance, and (iii) taxes to finance
these expenditures.
When calibrated to South Africa, the model yields
the following results. In the absence of AIDS, the
counterfactual benchmark, there is modest growth,
with universal and complete education attained within
three generations. If nothing is done to combat
the epidemic, however, a complete economic collapse
will occur within three generations. See
full article here.
——
Food production/Hunger
In combination with other setbacks, AIDS
can trigger food crises, even famine. As many
as 13 million people faced possible starvation in
southern Africa in 2002. Causing this is a mix of
adverse weather conditions, policy mistakes, environmental
degradation, and AIDS. Each of the affected countries
is in the midst of a long-standing, severe HIV/AIDS
epidemic, with prevalence rates exceeding 10%.
——
Southern Africa Food Crisis
HIV/AIDS has made hunger an even greater peril.
An HIV-affected household can see its income drop
by up to 80%, and its food consumption by 15 to
30%. This means that fewer adults must support more
people, and the burden of care is shifted to society’s
weakest and most marginalized, especially women
and girls. Desperate people adopt damaging and high-risk
‘survival strategies,’ such as selling
off land or exchanging sex for food or cash. These
strategies undercut people’s ability to recover
and contribute to long term poverty. read
more
——
Malnutrition (from
Action Against Hunger)
People who suffer from hunger are more susceptible
to infection and more vulnerable to its repercussions.
Malnutrition accelerates the effects of diseases
and sicknesses such as tuberculosis, pneumonia and
diarrhea that cause a deterioration of a person’s
nutritional state. Moreover, HIV positive women
who are malnourished run an even greater risk of
transmitting the virus to their babies.
An HIV infected individual can require up to 50
percent more protein and up to 15 percent more calories
than a healthy individual -- not to mention the
metabolic disruption of proper vitamin and mineral
absorption. This means that the onset of the disease
(and let’s not forget about the long incubation
period) or even death strikes earlier for people
suffering from malnutrition compared to their well-nourished
counterparts also living with HIV.”
——
The Environment and AIDS
The key Millennium Goal of halving poverty in a
decade cannot be met without better environmental
protection, according to a new report. The World
Resources 2005 document says that most of the
world's poor depend on nature for their income.
The World Bank estimates
that 90% of those earning less than US$1 per day
derive part of their income from forests.
When forests disappear, so does the livelihood.
See full article here.
"Most of rural
Africa's trees are now being lost because of high
rates of AIDS-related deaths occurring in rural
communities. When someone dies in rural Africa
a lot of wood fuel or firewood is consumed when
food is prepared for a big number of people. Men
also stay up all night outside by the fireside,
meaning that more wood is consumed for heating.
Most African families spend an average of five days
mourning their loved ones, and with it the loss
of trees." See
full article here.
——
Effects on Education
(taken
from The Guardian)
Children are being taken out of school to care for
parents and family members and to avoid unaffordable
schooling costs. AIDS-related infertility, resulting
in a decline in the birth rate, is further depleting
family resources. More and more children and young
people are themselves infected and do not survive
their schooling years. In some countries in Africa,
school enrollment is reported to have fallen by
20-36% due to AIDS and orphanhood, with girls being
the most affected.
AIDS is also undermining the ability of education
systems to perform their basic social mandates,
as more teachers and administrative staff are lost
to the disease. These implications can be dramatic
in rural areas where schools can depend heavily
on one or two teachers, the loss of whom can deprive
an entire community of students of their schooling.
The Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) in Johannesburg
found that nearly 13% of South African teachers
are HIV-positive. Last year, about 4,000 teachers
died of AIDS. It is a crisis gripping much of sub-Saharan
Africa. The World Bank estimates that Aids has killed
40% of teachers in urban areas of Malawi, swelling
the pupil-teacher ratio in some schools to about
100 to one.
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