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AGI Newsletter in print
Summer 2007
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Climate Change / Global Warming
Can people in poverty survive?
The poor suffer first.

“A report released earlier this year by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change--made up of hundreds of the world’s leading climate experts--said with 90 percent certainty that most of the warming since 1950 has been driven by the buildup of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. The report concluded with “high confidence” that human-caused climate change was already affecting regional conditions from the poles to the Tropics, and that hundreds of millions of people could be harmed by coastal flooding, dwindling water supplies and shifting weather patterns within a few decades. The changes could also drive many species toward extinction, particularly those with rapidly shrinking habitats, such as polar bears. Warming in this century, by many estimates, could be between three and eight times the warming in the 20th century, when the planet’s average temperate rose just over one degree Fahrenheit in all.”

Excerpt from July/August 2007 issue of AARP Magazine

TOO MUCH WATER . . . . . . .

Americans’ first glimpse of the devastation caused by global warming came in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina drowned the major gulf city of New Orleans. People of every economic level lost their homes, but it was the poorest citizens of Ward 9 who were hit the hardest. Still, they are essentially homeless, having lost everything. It is the rural people of Bangladesh who live at sea level who are trying to survive today on the water. Their houses built on stilts are floating or they scramble to live on a boat. Too much water makes life almost impossible and certainly unbearable. Their crops and livestock are lost. These unfortunate folk are among the first refugees of global warming.

TOO LITTLE WATER . . . . . . . .
The droughts across the Sahara desert and in many parts of Africa have been present for decades, largely caused by the buildup of greenhouse gases in the global atmosphere. Lake Chad, which once supplied the northern Sahara with abundant water, is dried up, and so the people try to survive on land that is essentially lifeless, a wasteland. Millions of Darfur refugees cannot survive much longer in the camps, but where can they go? The search for subsistence and good land is an underlying cause of the conflicts in Sudan and Darfur, known today as the greatest humanitarian crisis on the planet in this century.

The poorest people on the planet are already suffering the massive effects of climate change from flooding, severe storms, low coastal plains with ruined wetlands, disease, loss of habitat, loss of agricultural lands, water deficits and pollution causing water wars. But, the poor have almost no resources to withstand this onslaught of desperation and misery.

Water in the Desert
This article is part of a report submitted to AGI from Water for Sudan, after receiving funding from the 2005-06 Catalog.

Each day hundreds of thousands of people in Sudan and in greater East Africa walk for hours through the dangers of the desert to collect water to drink. This water is often contaminated with parasites such as Guinea Worm, Schistosomes; and the dangerous Cholera bacteria. The United Nations reported in April, 2001, that 36% of all reported hospitalizations in Sudan pertain to parasitic intrusions. Another consequence of the lack of having safe water available locally is the instability of villages. Every dry season, entire villages migrate with their livestock to find water. Such migration prevents the establishment of schools, health clinics, markets, and a general social infrastructure.
During 2005, Water for Sudan (the NGO founded by one of the “lost boys of Sudan”) drilled five wells which now supply clean drinking water to more than 17,000 people of the Dinka tribe. Recently WfS was able to purchase their own drilling rig, allowing them to be less dependent on other contractors, and reducing the cost per well from about $10,000 to $5,000.
For more info, go to www.waterforsudan.org.

New Hope in Haiti

Can a major reforestation of Haiti affect global climate change?
Can the planting of millions of trees and ground cover help an unfinished nation restore economic stability and food security?

Haiti has lost extreme amounts of topsoil because of deforestation.

The government of Haiti and its environmental ministry believes tree reforestation should be their number one objective, in the present emergency crisis. AGI and 35 Haitian and international NGOs believe this too and are poised to act to begin the planting of millions of trees on the steep slopes of Haiti’s mountains. This group formed a coalition, calling their action THE NATIONAL MOVEMENT FOR THE ENVIRONMENT IN HAITI. It is their commitment to work first with the Haitian people
who must have a voice and sense of ownership for the benefit of their beloved land. Meeting in Jacmel on the southern coast of Haiti in July, fifty delegates heard the major objectives of the government and adopted each one:

Engage in a massive, intensive reforestation of Haiti’s land, since only 1% of the land cover exists today.
Develop an alternative energy source, like solar, to replace Haiti’s existing charcoal economy.
Reduce the poverty that entraps the people, while meeting the UN development goals by 2015.

AGI joins its Haitian and NGO partners to affect environmental change in Haiti.

Click here for more information about AGI's Spring 2007 Newsletter

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