Most people think of sustainable development as saving the environment and talking about climate change but it is also about providing food, shelter, and health care to everyone with hope that our future generations will better. We all need to remember that to have a clean environment we must first provide food and shelter to make sure everyone can stay healthy. Because without healthy individuals our resources our stretched thin when trying to promote a healthy environment.
The WHO states that the goal of sustainable development cannot be achieved when there is a high relevance between poverty and health. With a responsive health system a healthy environment will follow.
According to Global Issues 1.1 billion people live with adequate water supply and 2.6 billion lack the basic sanitation. Again we see that poverty plays a role in water supply. With about 2 out of 3 people who lack water supply living on 2 dollars a day. Close to half of all people in developing countries suffer at any given time from a health problem caused by water and sanitation deficits. Millions of women spending several hours a day collecting water. To these human costs can be added the massive economic waste associated with the water and sanitation deficit. The costs associated with health spending, productivity losses and labor diversions … are greatest in some of the poorest countries. Sub-Saharan Africa loses about 5% of GDP, or some $28.4 billion annually, a figure that exceeds total aid flows and debt relief to the region in 2003.
While everyone in the United States continues to fight and call for budget cuts we all need to think and remember it could be worst. There are billions of people who
wish that is all they could argue about, but instead they are worrying how them and their kids are going to survive without clean water to cook their food with or even bath in.
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