Category: Hope

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Hope Public Health

Move Upstream

heart-for-the-needy-logo-without-words

“Many children in this area have families that are unable to care for them. Fortunately, there are orphanages here in town that are able to care for small babies until their families are able to care for them again. The situation here is desperate, and many of the babies brought to the orphanages are severely malnourished.”                                                                        Phil and Laura Olaniyi

            Laura and Phil formerly lived in Durango but moved to Mozambique where they are starting an orphanage, “Heart for the Needy”. Let’s look at some of the statistics for this East African country.

Mozambique is one of the fastest growing countries in the world; women there have an average of almost 6 children. The country’s infant mortality is tragic, with 83 of every thousand children dying before they reach one year of age. This is one reason for the high fertility, since couples usually don’t choose to have small families until they know their children will live to adulthood. The maternal mortality rate is also very high. The average per capita income is only $3 a day.

These statistics don’t begin to tell the anguish of a mother who cannot care for her child, or the grief of a family who cannot care for a baby whose mother died in childbirth. Fortunately there are compassionate people such as Laura and Phil to care for these abandoned children. Even though they are far away I feel close to them in a way since I have worked with both of them—and I helped when Laura was born.

I agree with a statement Laura made on her blog: “Let’s be honest for a second, though. An orphanage is only putting a Band-Aid on the real problem – poverty & oppression.”

I admire Laura for being so perceptive, but I want to add another cause of “the real problem”—undesired fertility. In Mozambique only a quarter of girls are enrolled in secondary school, and only 11% of married women use modern contraception. The fertility of non-educated women is twice that of women with secondary school education, 6.8 and 3.4, respectively. This is an example of the wonderful power of educating women!

In the developing world young women often have very little power or control over their lives. Older men approach them with offers of money or coveted goods in exchange for sex. Rape is also common. The story of such an unfortunate young woman is told in the short YouTube video “Not Yet Rain”, filmed in Ethiopia.

“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” Karen Shragg has used a similar expression in the title of her book: “Move Upstream: A Call to Solve Overpopulation”. In it Karen points out that so many of the problems we face, including climate change, ocean fisheries depletion, and extinction of species, are caused by increasing human overpopulation. Similarly, the need for orphanages is (in part) a symptom of unwanted fertility.

I have two friends who live in Bayfield who spent part of their childhoods in orphanages. Both are productive citizens who might not have survived if there had not been institutions to care for them as small children. In addition, relatives adopted a boy from the Democratic Republic of Congo when he was 3 years old. Mason’s birth parents died when he was small, so his grandmother took over his care. Unfortunately, she was unable to meet his needs then he was well cared for in an orphanage. Mason has joined a loving family in Durango who are giving him opportunities that would be impossible in Congo.

Orphanages provide a wonderful opportunity to care for some of the world’s most vulnerable children. There are few orphanages left in the U.S.A., but in developing countries there are many, and there is much need. As Laura points out, however, orphanages are just a Band-Aid for the real problems—terrible poverty, low status of women and many unplanned pregnancies.

We should “move upstream” to get at the root of the problem rather than just using Band-Aids. Steps that will help include supporting international family planning organizations such as the Population Media Center, and help the Population Connection terminate the Helms amendment, which restricts government funded agencies from even talking about abortion.

Until we have solved the problem of unplanned pregnancies, the only humane action is to care for orphans the way Laura and Phil are. I am sending them a check to help them as they build Heart for the Needy. What a boon it will be for orphans in Mozambique!

© Richard Grossman MD, 2016

Categories
conservation biology Family Planning Greenhouse gases Hope

Offset Your Carbon Impact with PopOffsets

 

 

 

 

Below, underlined, is the preview of the version of the article that I sent out by email in July.

Gail and I will be sailing across the Atlantic to France–in the stratosphere–the day that this essay appears in the Durango (Colorado) Herald. We love to travel and we have a good reason for this trip. I have wondered for years why conservation biologists don’t pay more attention to human population: after all, if human numbers were smaller, biodiversity wouldn’t be so threatened. It’s kind of like a dentist ignoring candy!
Roger Martin (of the British organization Population Matters) and I will be hosting a roundtable to listen to conservation biologists at the International Congress of Conservation Biologists in Montpellier, France. We want to learn what their attitudes are toward human population, and why they don’t pay the issue more attention. Maybe I’ll have more information about this in another essay!
Thanks for reading.
Richard

PopOffsets picture handing BCPs

 

We all benefit from using fossil fuels. As a consequence we all cause carbon emissions, and thus contribute to climate change. Is it possible to compensate for our greenhouse gas emissions?

“Yes and no” is the answer. Once CO2 is in the atmosphere it is almost impossible to take it out. Fortunately there are some actions we can take to decrease our impact.

The most important action is to decrease emissions in the first place. In many cases decreasing emissions has the added benefit of also saving money. Thus there are at least two advantages to walking instead of driving, turning off lights you don’t need and—well, you know the litany.

I’m retired and love to travel. How can I make up for the trip to the south of France (largely for business) this summer? Offsets offer a partial solution.

I am writing about voluntary programs where a person voluntarily pays to compensate for his carbon emissions. The PopOffsets website explains this concept well:

“Offsetting is a way of compensating for our residual “footprint”: the level we won’t or cannot reasonably expect to go below. The idea is to pay for projects – which would not otherwise be implemented – which take emissions out of the system to compensate for what we put into it. In other words if an individual or organisation has done what it reasonably can to reduce its emissions (insulation, green energy, efficiency measures, waste reduction, etc), it can compensate for the remainder by investing in projects designed to reduce the amount released to the atmosphere and/or to capture what is being released. Typical projects have traditionally ranged from hydro-electric, solar and wind energy schemes to more efficient cooking stoves to (re)forestation to biofuels to Carbon Capture & Storage (Sequestration).”

There are many different organizations that will help you calculate your carbon emissions, then figure the amount of money that would offset those emissions. One of them is American Forests. Trees absorb CO2 as they grow as well as providing many other benefits. This organization’s website has a carbon calculator to help estimate your carbon footprint, and thus the number of trees that need to be planted to offset that footprint. It also makes it easy to make a donation to so they can plant those trees for you.

Where does human population fit into this? If there are fewer emitters, then there will be fewer emissions. Family planning programs are a good way to slow emissions and thereby slow climate change. Indeed, sophisticated calculations suggest that voluntary family planning programs can make a significant step toward limiting greenhouse gas emissions. A team headed by Brian O’Neill has shown “…that slowing population growth could provide 16–29% of the emissions reductions suggested to be necessary by 2050 to avoid dangerous climate change.”

My column shares its name with an organization in England. The British Population Matters has recognized the advantages of making family planning available to more people. In order to put this noble idea into action they started a unique offset program, PopOffsets. It collects money to support family planning programs. Remember World Vasectomy Day, in which men all over the world get snipped? it received funding from PopOffsets. So has a “backpack nurse” who provides family planning services to people in rural Kenya, and WINGS, a Guatemalan organization that provides reproductive healthcare. PopOffsets has also supported a Population, Health, Environment program in Ethiopia with contraceptive supplies. More surprising is that they also made a grant to an agency close to home—the Utah Population and Environment Coalition.

The goal of PopOffsets is “less carbon, smaller families”. They are apparently unique in the world, and would like to see similar organizations in other countries.

Back to my trip to France. It is roughly 5400 miles from Bayfield to Montpellier, France where my conference will be held. Doubling that for a round trip, we can round up to 11,000 miles, most of which will be flying. The PopOffsets website says that 230 grams of CO2 are emitted for every passenger mile or about 2 ½ tons for this trip. They estimate that $15 spent on family planning will offset one ton of CO2, thus my payment to them should be $37.50. I made a donation for more than that amount knowing that it will support good projects.

For the future of the planet it is important to minimize your carbon footprint. What you cannot get rid of you can offset with PopOffsets!

© Richard Grossman MD, 2015