Blogging for Change.org

22 Oct 2009

I’m applying to blog at change.org, and as part of the process I’ve been asked to submit three sample posts for their upcoming Global Poverty section.

I’ve posted them here (they’re the last three posts), so they don’t go to waste. Let me know what you think.

Beyond Sustainable Development

18 Oct 2009

I had a minor epiphany the other day, one that has me changing the way I think about activism. If you’ve spent any time at all reading about global poverty, you know that climate change and poverty are closely connected. You know that the poorest people in the world are the worst hit. You know that the number of natural disasters are rising, that food supplies are becoming more insecure, and that the government of the Maldives thinks this is so important that they’ve taken to holding cabinet meetings underwater to make a statement. Climate change is the single most critical issue facing us right now. And we’re not doing enough to stop it.

In fact, I think we might be going about it all wrong. Continue reading…

Typhoon’s Poorest Victims Shortchanged — Again

17 Oct 2009

It’s a well-documented fact that the poor suffer disproportionately when natural disasters hit. It makes sense — they are more likely to live in dangerous conditions, and less likely to have the necessary resources to rebuild their lives. But what’s rarely mentioned is the double-whammy poor survivors are often dealt in the aftermath, when governments use the disaster as an excuse to ‘clean up’ low-income neighborhoods, shanty-towns and slums. It happened after Katrina, it happened after the 2004 tsunami, and it looks like it’s happening again in the Philippines after typhoon Ketsana.

Bulatlat, an online news magazine based in the Philippines, reports that the government will be forcing former slum dwellers in Manila to relocate to faraway suburbs. Floating debris generated by riverside settlements (as in the picture above) is being blamed for the worst of the flooding, and many of the areas inhabited by the city’s poorest residents are now designated as danger zones, where reconstruction is prohibited. To the extent that these are truly dangerous places to live, this decision is not a bad thing.

What is worrisome is that it looks like the proposed relocation sites are underserved by social services and lacking in job opportunities. Many of these squatters rely on being close to the city’s center for their livelihoods — for them, being moved far away will mean having to choose between money for food and money for transit, or simply spiraling deeper into poverty. Continue reading…