World's Water Glass: Half Full

Around the world, people who have taken to heart United Nations statistics about water, 663,000,000 people don't have access to safe drinking water and 80% of untreated human wastewater discharges into rivers and seas, are coming up with creative methods to reach the U.N.'s goal: universal access to safe, affordable water.

     Members of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR), which includes religious orders, are activist shareholders in key companies. At corporate meetings, they file resolutions requiring corporations to hold suppliers responsible for safe water practices, since, under the U.S. Clean Water Act, companies can be charged with criminal violations in federal courts. Tyson Foods, for example, has paid millions in fines for dumping fish-killing water from its chicken slaughtering and processing facility into a Missouri creek.

     Even if ICCR resolutions don't gain enough support for a vote at a corporate annual meeting, ICCR members meet with corporation executives directly. They successfully pressured the Campbell Soup Corporation to monitor activities in its supply chain. Farmers who fail to meet Campbell's standards for water conservation practices are no longer suppliers. In Africa and Central Asia, ICCR members help villagers who wash in polluted water where mines and tanneries dump harmful chemicals, contact executives in multinational corporations and present their cases for pressuring suppliers to treat water responsibly.

     Lack of access to drinkable water in developing countries is especially hard on the women and children who walk miles to wells each day rather than attend school or work for an income. Children also have drowned when water swept them away, while they were filling buckets in streams. Working in villages in 41 countries, including in disaster areas after earthquakes in Mexico and during the war in Syria, nongovernmental organizations, Mother's Hope and Water with Blessings, identify smart young mothers they call "water women" and educate them to share free information about hygiene and how to purify dirty water using a portable filtration system.

     Unlike India and Bangladesh, countries that worry a Chinese dam will cut off their water supply from a river that flows south from Tibet, conflict between Muslims in northern Cameroon and the Christians in the South does not prevent harmonious cooperation on OK Clean Water projects in over 50 villages. First, villagers locate an accessible source of spring water. Then, the OK Clean Water organization's partnership of unskilled workers and skilled help from a local water engineer go to work using local materials. From the top of a hill, gravity carries spring water through pipes to a large storage tank and then to faucets close to villages.

     In The House of Unexpected Sisters, the latest book in an Alexander McCall Smith series, the protagonist describes a system for watering her vegetable garden in Botswana, Africa.
     From a drain in the house, a hose pipe stretches across the dusty garden to raised vegetable beds in the back of their plot. "There the hose fed the water into an old oil drum that acted as reservoir and from which much smaller pipes led to the individual beds. The final stage in the engineering marvel was the trailing of cotton threads from a bucket suspended above the plants; water would run down this thread drop by drop to the foot of each plant's stem. No water thus fell on ground where nothing grew; every drop reached exactly the tiny patch of ground where it was needed."

     Contributions to both kiva.org and Water.org fund small loans to help villagers gain access to safe water. At kiva, for $25, individuals can choose water and sanitation projects in the regions of the world where they want to invest. Kiva gift cards are wonderful holiday stocking stuffers and birthday gifts that help students get involved in solving world problems.

     UNICEF USA (at PO Box 96964, Washington, DC 20077-7399) collects donations of:
$92     for the personal hygiene and dignity kits 2 families need in emergencies
$234   for 50,000 water tablets that purify deadly, polluted water to make it safe for a child to drink
$415   for a water hand pump that provides clean, safe drinking water for an entire community

     Wells of Life (wellsoflife.org), a nonprofit organization that builds wells in East Africa, gratefully accepts donations from those who would like to build a well dedicated to an individual or group. A member of the organization's advisory board, John Velasquez, recently dedicated his contribution for a bore hole and water well in Uganda to a Benedictine nun on her 104th birthday.

     Finally, major research projects are working on large scale government policy solutions to the world's water crisis. Based on studies, mayflies, stoneflies, and caddisflies have been found to help governments predict the health of streams and rivers all over the world. When these aquatic insects disappear, water is in trouble.

      As urban populations grow throughout the world and pavement covers land that used to absorb water, policies for managing both scarce water and floods become critically important. When Sao Paulo, Brazil, managed a drought by reducing pump pressure at certain times of the day, there were unintended consequences. Homes on higher elevations often had no water, while tanks serving homes in lower elevations never had a shortage. Studies showed a lack of central control over water management in Mumbai, India, gave control to plumbers who knew each area and those who had the political connections to hire them. It is no surprise to find flood conditions require government budgeting for backup energy sources to provide electricity to keep water pumps and drinking water treatment plants working.

     Water is everywhere and so are the people determined to find it, keep it clean, and manage it effectively.

   

   

Coming Soon: Global Citizen Festival

Saturday, September 24, 2016 is the day to be at the Global Citizen Festival. (MSNBC will carry the festival on TV. Check local listings.) On the Great Lawn at New York's Central Park, the agenda will include solutions to world problems, especially poverty, and performances by Rihanna, Kendrick Lamar, Demi Lovato, and Metallica.

    Global Citizen is a worldwide effort that mixes music with actions to support girls and women, health, education, food and hunger remedies, water and sanitation, and the environment.

     Speaking at the UN General Assembly on September 20, 2016, President Obama echoed the ideas of Global Citizen. He repeatedly said young people throughout the world have unprecedented access to information and ways through social media to express themselves. They care about the environment, and they are more tolerant than previous generations of differences in religion, race, sex, sexual orientation, and ethnic and historical backgrounds. Technology and their own eyes enable them to see the contrast between poor and rich, slums and skyscrapers. They want greater control over their own lives and to share the benefits of free trade and advances in technology. They are not satisfied to let 1% of humanity control the world's wealth.

      When global citizens take actions (emails, tweets, petition signatures, phone calls) to fight poverty and worldwide injustices, they earn points they can redeem for tickets to attend shows, events, and concerts, such as Bieber's Helsinki on Sept. 26, 2016 and Sia's in Boston on October 18, 2016. Details are available at globalcitizen.org.

   

Front-Runners for UN Secretary-General

Considerations for choosing a new UN Secretary-General before Ban Ki-Moon's term ends this year:

• Eastern Europe has never been represented in this position
• A woman has never been the UN's Secretary-General
• All permanent UN members (US, UK, France, Russia, and China) have to agree on the nominee
• He/she has to have the support of his/her country

Front-runners:

• Irina Bokova from Bulgaria
• Vuk Jeremic from Serbia
• Danilo Turk from Slovenia
• Vesna Pusic from Croatia

Others who have shown interest:

• Helen Clark from New Zealand
• Natalia Gherman from Moldova
• Antonio Guterres from Portugal: Chosen by Security Council members Oct. 6, 2016 
• Srgjan Kerim from Macedonia
• Igo Luksic from Montenegro

Why Is the Pope Going to Philadelphia?

Pope Francis will attend the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia. He has nothing in common with the aristocratic slave owner who wrote the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia, but he agrees with the essence of what Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1776. That is, people are entitled to "the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them...."

     Specifically, to what rights are people entitled? Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. For Pope Francis, the pursuit of happiness goes beyond searching for gratification or escape with sex, drugs, or alcohol. The pursuit extends all the way to the eternal happiness of heaven. And what is heaven? No one knows for sure, but I believe it was St. Frances of Assisi, Pope Frances's namesake, who posited heaven could be like the Garden of Eden before Adam and Eve gave into Satan's temptation. Could be. When I lived in Hawaii, I often heard people refer to the natural beauty of the islands as "a little piece of Paradise." When, in the Pope's recent encyclical, Laudato Si, he asks individuals and countries to make changes needed to protect the environment, perhaps he is inviting us to find a bit of heaven on earth.

     In any case, Philadelphia will be for the Pope, as it has been for the many who have visited the city since 1776, a reminder that governments are instituted to secure the rights God has endowed on all people. After the Declaration of Independence listed the ways government by the King of Great Britain failed to secure basic human rights, delegates again met in Philadelphia in 1787 to write the Constitution. Not satisfied that the Constitution sufficiently safeguarded individual rights, a Bill of Rights, the first ten Amendments to the Constitution, was added in 1791. When the United Nations, which Pope Francis addresses September 25, 2015, was founded after World War II, it adopted a similar Declaration of Human Rights to promote respect for human rights and basic freedoms for people all over the world.

     Does God see countries with secure borders? It seems He sees people with secure rights, the way Thomas Jefferson did in 1776 and the way Pope Frances does in 2015.

   

   

   

 

Why Do They Love Us?

We believe that human rights are universal. As embedded in the United Nations' Declaration of Human Rights, "all human beings are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood." The Declaration declares everyone has the right to life, liberty, security, privacy, freedom from torture and arbitrary arrest or detention, equal protection before the law, and many freedoms, including the freedom to travel, receive an education, marry, own property, express an opinion, and associate with others.

     Since all human beings have a conscience, they have the right to choose to be an atheist or agnostic or whatever religion their conscience selects. Like Muslims, more than a billion Christians in the West and elsewhere choose to believe there is only one God. Only conversion, not coercion, may cause those who hold no belief, or a different one, to change their minds. No fatwa dispensation can consecrate the criminal slaughter of those who are not Muslim. The West believes that God needs to be allowed to let great sinners, like Paul, Augustine, and Ignatius of Loyola, choose to become great saints.

     Whether someone lives in the West, East, North, or South, life, not suicide, is a basic human right. Despite being blind, Chen Guangcheng defended the right of women, not the Chinese government, to determine the number of children a family should have. His opposition to forced abortions led to his house arrest and beatings of his wife. Like the millions of others who are fleeing from violence and murder in Syria, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, or Libya, Chen escaped. Due to the good offices of the United States, he lives here now. He tells his story in The Barefoot Lawyer: A Blind Man's Fight for Justice and Freedom in China. 

     Persecution is not the only reason refugees flee to the West. Poverty and lack of opportunity cause many to take great risks at sea and through deserts to find jobs here. In an interview by Robert Christian, published on the Millennial blog (millennialjournal.com), Chen reports that in the real China 70% of the population live in awful rural conditions not the modern skyscraper cities of Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. In the United States, slaves, women, homosexuals, every ethnic and religious group, and people with disabilities have been able to appeal to the Declaration of Independence and Constitution in order to get their rights recognized and enforced. American blacks. women, and other groups have overcome job discrimination. They vote, attend public schools, and obtain small business loans. The social media that ISIS blithely uses to make bombs and recruit other terrorists was created by students educated in the West, not the Taliban who shot Malala in the head because she wanted to go to school. In the West, freedom of speech and opinions do not lead to murder. They lead to the formation of unions, media coverage, and legal remedies.

     Western researchers have come to the aid of the world's health. They have searched for and found cures for small pox, polio, pneumonia, and numerous other diseases that have plagued the world throughout history. Rather than shun, and even kill, homosexuals, Western researchers kept experimenting until they found a cocktail of drugs that could keep an HIV/AIDS diagnosis from being a death sentence. Because a French doctor founded Medecins sans Frontieres in 1971 and because charities and the Red Cross were willing to go to Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea, the Ebola epidemic has been stopped. And these Western organization continue to go everywhere, such as to Nepal, when natural disasters strike. Even when individuals like Kayla Mueller hear about people suffering in foreign countries, they leave their comfortable lives and go to help (See the earlier post, "The Continuing Battle of Good and Evil.).                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 Democracy is not perfect. People love the West, because we are free to laugh at ourselves and admit our faults. Britain's Winston Churchill summed it up. "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

Know the Issues

When world leaders speak, it is a good opportunity to remind students that The Daily Show and Saturday Night Live's "Weekend Update" are not their only sources of world news.

     There are at least two ways for students to participate in structured discussions of foreign policy. Model UN conferences held in classrooms, schools, and regional, national, and international venues attract more than 400,000 middle school, high school, and college students annually. Conference participants, who act as country ambassadors to the United Nations, study and discuss global issues. The website, cyberschoolbus.un.org, provides information about Model UN sessions. The website also provides a list of UN publications that describe the UN, its declaration of human rights, environmental programs, and other topics for K-12 students.

     At fpa.org, the Foreign Policy Association's website, students and adults can find full details about a Headline Series and Great Decisions program. Discussions using the Headline Series are limited to a single geographic area or topic, such as nuclear weapons. On the other hand, a Great Decisions briefing book presents nonpartisan information about eight new foreign policy issues every year. In 2016, the discussion topics are: Shifting Alliances in the Middle East, The Rise of ISIS, The Future of Kurdistan, International Migration, Korean Choices, The UN after 2015, Climate Geopolitics, and Cuba and the US. Each topic includes a television episode and a quiz. Students are invited to suggest topics for future discussions.

     In World Peace and Other 4th Grade Achievements, John Hunter writes about how children have used a World Peace Game to solve world issues. And in his speech to the United Nations in 2012, President Obama quoted South Africa's Nelson Mandela and India's Gandhi. Reading, on their own, the writings of inspiring world leaders can broaden a student's perspective on global issues.