Tackling Poverty with Sustainable Living

In September 2010, the UN Summit adopted a list of 8 Millennium Development Goals (MDG) aimed at reducing poverty by 2015, of which environmental sustainability is a contributing factor. Many organizations across the world are working on one to several of these goals, but the work of the Watershed Organization Trust (WOTR) works towards 5 of these goals. Their mission includes reducing poverty by increasing the capacity of individuals and communities to help themselves, “regenerate the eco-space”, and live sustainably in their environment.

Through their mission, WOTR is helping India achieve 5 of the MDGs including: Eradicate Extreme Poverty and Hunger, Achieve Universal Primary Education, Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women, Reduce Child Mortality, and Ensure Environmental Sustainability. Other current initiatives are working with climate change to help reduce our effects on the climate and how to cope with the change, watershed development that helps people live sustainably in rain dry areas, and local self-governance. Their training center in Darewadi offers live training and workshops to organizations and governments across the globe looking for guidance on implementing similar projects in their areas. Even with all these initiatives, WOTR is still finding new areas requiring attention that the organization believes they have the competencies and capacity to implement, including a School for Sustainable Living and Livelihood to help with the current gap between current skills and skills required for available jobs, Community Eco-Tourism, and Renewable Energy.

WOTR is able to handle all these initiatives due to their organization structure. As a specific department reaches approximately 60 employees, they spin off the department to a sister organization such as the Sampada Trust , which organizes women into self help groups to raise money for the village for purchases such as 'clean stoves' and SEID, which focuses specifically on the program implementation for the rural watershed development related projects in Maharashtra. However, this organizational structure may become too unwieldy in the future as it raises the question of how to spin off organizations when the resources to a specific region grow too large. Also, partially due to a vague mission statement, WOTR finds itself expanding into areas where it originally did not have any intention of being involved. When observing the range of current and new initiatives, one could argue WOTR is experiencing mission drift or mission creep as they no longer focus their efforts on only Watersheds and instead focus more on overall sustainable living for these rural areas.

For more information on watershed's specifically:
EPA.gov - What is a Watershed?
Sustainable on Watershed Development

Photos courtesy of WOTR.org

Indigenous Cooking Practices

1.9 million people die premature deaths due to exposure of the toxic smoke from their indoor traditional cook-stoves according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Traditional cook-stoves and open fires are the primary means of cooking and heating for nearly three billion people in the developing world. Many of the people who use these cooking practices are indigenous populations. The Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves has noted that: “Cookstove smoke contributes to a range of chronic illnesses and acute health impacts such as early childhood pneumonia, emphysema, cataracts, lung cancer, bronchitis, cardiovascular disease, and low birth weight.” The health risks that these populations are exposed to are alarming. The World Health Organization estimates harmful cook-stove smoke to be the fourth worst overall health risk factor in developing countries.

In developing countries, like Guatemala, inefficient traditional stoves require fuel usually in the form of wood. Children usually do the gathering of the wood; this is problematic because they spend many hours collecting wood instead of being in school or studying. Wood gathering seems to be a gendered practice that mostly is left to women and girls. Women and girls also are exposed to severe personal security risks as they forage for fuel from refugee camps and in conflict zones.

(Image provided by Bryan Willson from The Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves)

The negative impact that the cook-stoves have on the environment leads to massive deforestation and black carbon air pollution. Dependence on biomass for cooking and heating increases pressures on local natural resources. Inefficient cook-stoves also contribute to climate change through emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane. Other gases that are emitted into the environment are aerosols such as black carbon.

Indigenous cooking practices have a deleterious impact on the environment, affect the health of billions of people across the globe, and women and children are the demographics that are affected the most. This is an issue that can be addressed through sustainable development. The U.S. State Department is pledging $50.82 million over the next five years to ensure that the The Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves reaches 100 million homes to adopt sustainable stoves and fuels by 2020, with a long-term vision of universal adoption of clean and efficient cooking solutions.

For more information:

• The quest for a stove that can save the world by The New Yorker
• The Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves 
• Project Cookstoves
• U.S. State Department Initiatives