Apr 04

Gobiernos Locales Esenciales en el Problema del Agua

El otro día que estaba sentada en mi clase de Economía Política, mi profesor dio una respuesta muy sencilla de por qué surgen diferencias de desarrollo económico entre países: LAS INSTITUCIONES. Por supuesto, esta respuesta no es una epifanía, sino que más bien es una realización de lo que algunos países realmente carecen. Quizás no pensemos en ello aquí en los EE.UU. debido al sistema estable y continuo que tenemos en las instituciones. Sin embargo, esto se vuelve mucho más opaco cuando pensamos en los países que no pueden implementar soluciones reales a problemas reales por la falta de estas instituciones. Uno de estos problemas es el agua, que el Sexto Foro Mundial del Agua discutió la semana pasada. Después de escribir mi blog anterior sobre lo que el Sexto Foro podría traer, mire hacia los efectos consecuentes del foro y qué soluciones sostenibles podrían estar flotando alrededor. El lema del Sexto Foro fue “Es tiempo de soluciones y compromisos”, pero lo que más encontré de los resultados de este foro fueron ideas sobre soluciones y sobre compromisos.  Pero son estas ideas las que necesitan iniciativa para que se materialicen en soluciones exitosas. Lo que creo que falta y lo cual muchos líderes enfatizan son respuestas prácticas.

Muchos líderes señalan que respuestas prácticas se pueden encontrar con una administración adecuada en el área de la disposición del agua, con énfasis en las autoridades locales. Como Sulton Rahimov, el primer ministerio de la Secretaría de Mejoramiento & Recursos Hídricos de Tayikistán, señaló: “Si podemos aprender y practicar el manejo básico de la gestión del agua entonces  podremos alcanzar a más y más gente”. Lo que debemos subrayar aquí es que esta gestión tiene que venir de las autoridades locales que están dispuestas a poner en práctica políticas realistas sobre recursos hídricos y en el sector de la sanidad.

Vamos a dar un paso atrás. Hemos llegado al punto donde ya hemos dicho claramente todas las quejas sobre la falta del agua potable y la necesidad de soluciones y compromisos como el Sexto Foro indicó. Muchas personas también han reconocido que cuesta producir el agua potable y que cada gobierno debe ser responsable de esto.  Pero en cuanto más y más ideas se producen en un esfuerzo de encontrar la mejor respuesta, más tiempo se pierde en vez de producir proyectos prácticos que se necesitan alrededor del mundo.
La idea de que los mecanismos institucionales desempeñan un papel importante en el desarrollo económico es cierto, especialmente en sectores como de recursos hídricos y del agua potable. Sin embargo, la solución no es encuentra tan simple como en una palabra. Las soluciones de cada problema local que cada país tiene sobre el agua provienen de las necesidades y deseos de los accionistas y de los políticos a nivel local. Como Hamilton Karugendo, que trabaja para la Compania EMBU de Agua y Saneamiento en Kenia, dijo: el accionista es el consumidor principal, y ya no podemos darnos el lujo de seguir hablando de teorías e ideas (mientras tantos sufren), al contrario tenemos que ser prácticos y tomar medidas. Las ideas que el Sexto Foro ha traído dicen que se necesita tomara acciones practicas y colectivas al nivel local, un perspectiva de trabajar de abajo hacia arriba que Mats Karlsson de Suecia (director del Centro para la Integración Mediterránea) explicó puede comprometer a las autoridades locales de una manera diferente. Karlsson resume lo que creo que la mayoría de los líderes están de acuerdo en, pero lo cual no están realmente escuchando:

“A veces nos perdemos en la política de este o aquel país, la migración y otros problemas, pero tenemos que darnos cuenta que somos un espacio económico común. Y cuanto más podemos hacer para proveer este fondo y fuerza  institucional, más gente surgirá que realmente instituya cosas buenas de esto- más de lo que los procesos internacionales puedan”

Es esta afirmación en las instituciones que está llevando a los líderes a crear soluciones sostenibles. Ahora debemos preguntarnos cuánto de esto se aplica realmente en los gobiernos locales; como muchos han dicho en el Sexto Foro, las tecnologías y soluciones teóricas están ahí, pero ¿cómo podemos aplicarlas?

Creo que una gran idea que he visto salir del Sexto Foro viene de David Winberg, un becario de investigación para el IIASA de Austria. Él describió un modelo de hipótesis (que puede ser cuantificado) que puede mejorar las decisiones entre los accionistas ??y los politicos. Lo describió como un mecanismo que demuestra distintos modelos de posible opciones y es capaz de capturar las ideologías necesarias para producir decisiones que les guste a los accionistas.  Esto permite una comunicación y un mejoramiento en el modelo que finalmente es lo que se llevaría a cabo como política (una especie de método de prueba y error).

Señalo esto porque es fantástico decir que las instituciones ayudan al desarrollo económico y que son herramientas necesarias para legislaciones como en el sector del agua, pero tenemos que mirar más allá de la idea de que todas las instituciones van a funcionar. En efecto, creo que la razón porque muchas de estas ideas se quedan en papel se debe al riesgo que las personas no están dispuestas a tomar—la incertidumbre de si una ley o institución en particular trabajará

Desde luego, no tengo la gran respuesta a nuestro problema del agua. Sin embargo, creo que los gobiernos locales tienen que informarse adecuadamente para poder  tomar la mejor decisión para sus propias comunidades. Aprender por experiencia y los “150 años de la gestión adaptativa”, es lo que los EE.UU. ha estado implementando en relación con el sector del agua. Como John Tubbs de EE.UU. Agua y Ciencia dijo, los EE.UU. fue al Sexto Foro no sólo a reconocer su gran logro, pero también a reconocer las consecuencias derivadas de estos logros. Con las soluciones de la “gestión adaptiva”, que describe Karen Fraser, las respuestas cambian constantemente dependiendo de los problemas que surgen.  De esta manera se les da una gran cantidad de autonomía a los gobiernos estatales a través de las dotaciones federales a los estados para la mejoría en la construcción de la infraestructura hidráulica.

¿Es este ejemplo de los EE.UU.  el mejor y el único referente a la eficacia institucional? No. Pero si ha implementado muchas de las ideas en las cuales la mayoría de los líderes están de acuerdo: las instituciones locales, la gestión adecuada y el compromiso local, y la ejecución de todas estas ideas. ¿No es hora de que los gobiernos locales tomen medidas?

Share

Apr 03

Water: Profits vs Humanity?

One of the issues that I’ve become increasingly interested in has been the inaccessibility to water and the privatization of water.  The last couple of weeks, I have been following the World Water Council and the World Water Forum, which were established in order to address some of these issues.  Overall, I have found that the dialogue to such issues is extremely important.  Yet, as I have mentioned before, there seems to be too much talk and not enough action.  In my last post, I mentioned that one of the structural initiatives governments needed to implement is institutions that would directly oversee the sanitation departments in their local regions.  I emphasize local governments a lot because of the diverse problems that branch out with the scarcity and inaccessibility of water, each distinct issue pertaining to each distinct corner of the world.  But now I want to go beyond my simple emphasize on institutions and local governments.

First, I do believe that institutions serve as an appropriate management system where laws can be overseen and implemented, given the right political environment.  However, I don’t believe that this means privatizing water around the world.  A couple of years ago was the first time I had ever come across this concept of making a public good into a commodity.  When I say public, it is to demonstrate that water can be a non-rivalrous and non-excludable good when provided by governments, such as clean air and national defense.  But it is exactly this that is the problem: governments are not providing this essential “good” to people.  Because government inefficiency in the public water sector has been dire to many people across the globe, some governments have decided to privatize water, making water a private good: a good that can be excludable and rivalrous.  This means that people would be able to exercise private property rights, preventing those people who have not paid for the good from obtaining it or benefiting from it.  Private goods also emphasize their existence for means of profit.

Profit vs. Humanity

Is it too drastic to say that people need water to survive? Is it too drastic to say that people should receive potable water from governments they are obliged to obey?  To some, it might surprisingly be so.  The privatization of water, however, takes governments’ obligation to provide drinkable water to its citizens and turns it to the fate of the free market.  Don’t get me wrong, the free market is a wonderful concept that works.  But, does it work for water?

Bolivia and Peru are case studies for this question.  In 1997 and 1999 two regions of Bolivia underwent the privatization of water supply and sanitation: La Paz/El Alto and Cochabamba.  The privatization of water was pushed by The World Bank and the International Development Bank as a requirement for the Bolivian government to retain its ongoing state loans.  This can also be in the “Lima Rehabilitation and Management Project” of Peru that was approved by The World Bank.  This was a 150 million dollar loan given in order to modernize SEDAPAL (Servicio de Agua Potable y Alcantarillado), the water supply and sanitation of Lima and Callao.  The results of these water privatizations, however have not demonstrated to be efficient or to reduce the world’s water issues.  Water tariffs increased by 200-300 percent in Cochabamba after the privatization of water of SEMAPA, Cochabamba’s water system, increasing the burden of the already poor Bolivians.  Similarly in Peru, from 1980 to 1996, residential water rose from $0.17 per cubic meter to $0.41 per cubic meter which is more than double!  These rates also have to be compared to the amount of money the average citizens earn, which is less than $2 a day for more than 40% of the population in Peru.

From the perspective of the private water companies, water privatization is embraced because of its profits.  But looking at the people that remain in poverty and are unable to sustain themselves because of the lack of potable water, water privatization has not demonstrated to be a sustainable solution for our world’s water problem.  Weighing the two against each other, we find a struggle between profits and the right to water.  Which one wins depends on the political state of each country and their agenda.  The institutions that are established will follow the result between these two struggles.  How can you as individuals promote what you believe should be the outcome?

 

Share

Apr 02

Unsustainable Consumerism Part 3: Distribution and Consumption

So far we’ve explored the incredible destruction of finite environmental resources as we extracted materials for our consumer products.  We’ve been shocked by the amount of conflict around our world that was literally caused from the fight over possession of these resources.  We’ve seen how millions of people globally suffer unhealthy, unfair working conditions to produce our consumer goods, and we’ve seen how the toxins and over pollution generated from the production of our products is threatening our world’s health.  Today, we’ll look at why.  Why would we possibly go through all of this mess just to fill our houses, cars, and vacation homes with more and more stuff?

Specific plans in history artificially created the consumer society that our American world revolves around today.  For younger generations, such as mine, we just assumed that cheaply made plastic toys always accompanied every child’s chicken nuggets and chocolate frosty, but the truth is that our generation consumes twice as much as the generation fifty years ago.

After World War II we had an incredibly productive economy, but we needed to build a design that exploited this productivity to create an effective and sustainable economy.  Victor Lebow, an economist and retail analyst, wrote on the state of U.S. consumerism in 1955 in the Journal of Retailing. 

” Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfactions, our ego satisfactions, in consumption. The measure of social status, of social acceptance, of prestige, is now to be found in our consumptive patterns. The very meaning and significance of our lives today expressed in consumptive terms. The greater the pressures upon the individual to conform to safe and accepted social standards, the more does he tends to express his aspirations and his individuality in terms of what he wears, drives, eats- his home, his car, his pattern of food serving, his hobbies.”

His words perfectly summarize the direction the Eisenhower Administration adopted in order to ingrain consumerism into the American values system.  Eisenhower’s Economic Advisor Chair claimed that the American economy’s ultimate purpose was to produce more consumer goods.  It seems that this theory of American values has definitely translated throughout the decades.

It’s clear that consumerism is entrenched in our country’s values, but how did we get there?  What really makes us consume over and over again.  Of all the products that we purchase, only 1% of those have not been thrown away six months after their purchase.  Every six months we go through 99% of the stuff we buy! Unreal.  Why are we constantly buying and getting rid of new things?

Well first, there’s obvious things like individual sized frozen dinners, disposable razors, even daily contact lenses.  These one-use items were purposefully built into our consumer society so that we are forced to buy new products.  In the planning stages of our consumer economy, two terms were used to describe how Americans could be convinced to consume, consume, consume.

First, planned obsolescence is the actual design of consumer products that makes them break within a certain time frame.  Industrial designers actually planned the way they could make stuff break fast enough that consumers would need to purchase new products without losing faith in the product in general.  After realizing I was being duped by economic planners, I feel really foolish for actually buying into this strategy with disposable mop heads or those on-the-go miniature toothbrushes.

I have a relevant example to this inefficient and wasteful buying scheme.  Last week I had to buy my cap and Continue reading

Share

Mar 30

Fukushima vs Deepwater Horizon: political reactions

April 2010: Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. During three months, oil flows unabated. This is the largest accidental marine oil spill in the history of oil extraction. The explosion kills 11 men. The spill caused extensive environmental damage to marine and wildlife habitats, as well as economic damage to the fishing and tourism industries.

March 2011: Nuclear disaster of Fukushima Daiichi. It is the largest nuclear disaster since Chernorbyl in 1986. As a consequence: population migrations, land pollution, released radiation.The levels of radiation are high enough that the government bans the sale of food grown in the area. “Forbidden zones” were declared, probably to stay there for decades.

The accidents had disastrous and irreversible consequences. They created important environmental and social costs, such as pollution, migrations, and loss of economic activity. However, the political reaction that emerged from each of these events were very different.

After Fukushima, nuclear energy has become a focus point of many international discussions as well as of domestic politics. In Japan, only one reactor out of 54 is currently working. As a consequence of the nuclear energy shut down, the country has been forced to increase its imports of gas an oil, along with restricting general supply overall: households and private companies are constantly asked to significantly reduce their energy consumption. In post-Fukushima Europe, Germany has permanently shut down five of its reactors and declared that it would eliminate nuclear energy by 2022. Italians have voted to keep their country non-nuclear. Whether these policies are fully implemented or not, the sole fact that they are been suggested shows that nuclear energy is being questioned and re-examined, the Fukushima disaster seemed to be a sort of “tipping point” that would allow us to re-evaluate its benefits vs. its costs.

However, since the Oil Spill, there has been no sustainable, credible policy to move beyond fossil fuel production. Of course, in the months following up the event Obama created a moratorium for deep-water drilling. But the moratorium stopped (it ended early, October 2011) and now deep water drilling is becoming a standard again. Event though the risks associated with deep water drilling have been proven and experienced, fossil fuels from deep water remains as an important sources of energy as it was before the oil spill. Additionally, there didn’t seem to be an international reaction to the oil spill; politicians treated it as a national event and that was to remain in national politics. No matter what, fossil fuels as a source of energy was never doubted, nor did politicians demonstrate an interest in a serious discussion regarding the sustainability of fossil fuels.

I think Germany’s reaction towards nuclear energy was somehow exaggerated, given the circumstance of the accident. Japan is situated under two tectonic plates; the nuclear disaster was the consequence of an earthquake. If nuclear reactors are placed in low seismic zones, the risks related to nuclear power can be significantly reduced. Nuclear energy can be a solution: France’s most important source of energy is nuclear, and every citizen lives at leas 75km away from a reactor. The industry is highly regulated and supervised, and thus it has not experienced any accident.

It could also be said that the reactions to the oil spill were not ambitious enough . The moratorium, because of its Continue reading

Share

Mar 29

Separatism in Libya

I’m sure that you were expecting to read a post about the latest development in Syria today, and, to be honest, that’s what I was planning on writing about.  But as I was reading news article about Assad’s latest peace plan and the continued violence, I realized I really didn’t have much to say that I hadn’t already said.  I’ve written several posts about Assad making peace agreements and then breaking them, and they’ve all ended in almost the exact same way.  Why write it again just because his latest peace deal has been all over the news?

So instead this post is about Libya; specifically a southern tribe that threatened to break away from Libya and form a separate state on Wednesday.  Violence erupted between the African Tabu tribe and nearby Arab tribes in southern Libya three days ago, and over 50 people have died since then.  Tabu leaders stated that they would declare their own state to protect their people—one said that the Tabu were being subjected to genocide—after the central government in Tripoli failed to intervene and stop the violence.  A leader of one of the Arab tribes, the Zwiya, however, said that his tribe would fight anyone who calls for dividing Libya.

This is not the first time that partition has been suggested since Gaddafi’s fall.  A tribe in eastern Libya announced they were considering forming an autonomous state, Barqa, which would take up almost half the country.  And the Tabu tribe got into similar ethnic conflict with the Zwiya tribe just last month, which resulted in several deaths and injuries.  The fledgling national government has tried to keep a handle on the situation but has been largely ineffective, leading critics to suggest that Libya may break up into at least two parts.

So why the sudden outpouring of ethnic conflict and separatist sentiments?  Gaddafi suppressed tribal conflicts and turmoil, and since his fall these old hatreds have risen up to the surface once more.  It reminds me of the situation in Yugoslavia after Tito’s death, when all the ethnic tensions he had managed to suppress broke out in incredibly violent conflict between the Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks, Kosovars, etc.  We all know how that ended: years of war, hundreds of thousands dead, UN and NATO intervention, and the dissolution of Yugoslavia into several states, many of which are still dealing with tensions.

Of course the situation is a bit different in Libya.  For one, in Yugoslavia the various leaders vying for power in Tito’s void exacerbated tensions by reinforcing ethnic differences, which helped ignite the violence.  So far there don’t seem to be any demagogue-type leaders in Libya attempting to exploit old wounds, though the transition government doesn’t exactly have control over the ethnic conflicts, either.  Tabu leaders have even suggested that the central government has sided with the Arab tribes and in response have requested UN intervention.

Now let me be clear here.  I am not suggesting that Libya will be the next Yugoslavia, but only pointing out that there are some similarities.  Gaddafi was in no way like Tito, but both were fairly effective at suppressing ethnic conflict, which then broke out after they left power.  And no matter what happens in Libya, whether it remains one country or breaks up into two or more, it isn’t going to be easy, nor was it easy in Yugoslavia. What do you think would be the best option?  Remaining one country or splitting up?

Share

Mar 29

Local Governments Essential In Water Problem

As I sat in my Political Economics class the other day, my professor gave a very simple answer to differences in economic development between countries: INSTITUTIONS.  Of course, this answer is not an epiphany by any means, but rather it is a realization of what some countries really do lack.  We may not think about it here in the U.S because of the continuously stable system we have in institution.  However, this becomes far more obscure when we think about countries which are unable to implement real solutions to real problems because of the lack of these institutions.  One of these problems is water, which the 6th World Water Forum addressed last week.  After writing my previous post on what the 6th WWF could bring, I looked at the effects of it afterwards and what sustainable solutions might be floating about.  The slogan for the 6th WWF was “It’s time for solutions and commitments”, but what I mostly found from the outcome of this forum were ideas on solutions and commitments; that is ideas that need initiative for them to be successful solutions.  What I think is lacking and which many leaders pointed out are practical answers.

Many leaders point out that practical answers can be found from proper management of water provisions, with an emphasis on local authorities.  As Sulton Rahimov, first ministry of the Ministry of Melioration & Water Resources of Tajikistan, pointed out “If we learn and practice the basic management of water management than we can reach out to more and more people”.  What we must emphasize here is that this management has to come from local authorities, who are willing to realistically implement policies of water resources and water sanitation.

Let’s step back.  We have reached a point in time where we have clearly stated all the grievances on the lack of potable water and the need for solutions and commitments as the 6th WWF stated.  Many people have also recognized that water costs money and that each government needs to be responsible for this.  But the more Continue reading

Share

Mar 28

Was Jenna Talackova a Victim of Discrimination?

If you’ve watched the news, listened to the radio, or opened up any homepage on the internet lately, you have probably heard or read about Canadian contestant, Jenna Talackova, being disqualified from the Miss Universe pageant. Jenna is a 23 year old transgender who has stated that she knew she was a female by the age of 4, began hormone therapy years after, and had sexual reassignment surgery at 19. Jenna is a woman. Regardless of whom she is and how hard she must have fought to get there, though, Jenna has been thrown out of the competition of her dreams.

The Miss Universe website is unclear about the fine print rules regarding the pageant. It’s easy to see that you have to be between the ages of 18 and 27; currently or formerly being married, divorced, or pregnant results in direct disqualification. However, as far as I can see, there is no rule against technically being born a male. Even so, this isn’t a solid argument against pointing discrimination against judges and competition council. Once pageant candidates qualify past the initial requirements, they are required to fill out an additional form that delves further into their personal history.

In the case of Jenna Talackova, judges claim that the forms were filled out inaccurately. Apparently, Jenna was disqualified due to the fact that she stated on her form that she was born a woman. Rules are rules, claim Miss Universe officials, and so there goes Jenna’s spot. Just like contestants cannot have been formerly married, they also must have been female from birth.

Not surprisingly, social media outlets saw a huge influx of protests from followers. Countless people argued against the disqualification, and a petition with tens of thousands of signatures formed in support of Jenna. Those whom understand the internal difficulties and pressures of being born into the wrong body, and those who simply support equality, have not gotten over the injustice that Jenna has received from Miss Universe.

To lay out my stance on this issue, let me first state that Continue reading

Share

Mar 28

Unsustainable Consumerism Part 2- Production

In my last post I introduced the concept of the materials economy.  We took a look at the ridiculous rate at which the American consumer is driving the destruction and exploitation of our planet’s natural resources and native cultures.  These themes will perfectly translate into this post’s discussion of the second step in the materials economy, production.

When I was fourteen years old, I was ready to work.  My ten dollars allowance every two weeks (Mom you weren’t tricking me, I knew that was only five bucks a week) was just not enough to sustain my pre-teen dreams of saving for a car, college, and still having enough for movie theatre popcorn.  So I found no problem in applying at my local McDonald’s.  It was my only option.  There was no alternative job that would accept me at my age.  While my mom was in principle okay with the idea, I was unable to drive and it seemed that she never did drop me off to fill out my application, so, alas I never worked under the golden arches and ended up waiting until I was fifteen to begin at my neighborhood diner (which I loved and continue to work at on my school breaks).  My point is that my desperation for a job led me to the only place that would have me; with no alternatives I had one option for income.

Now take the insignificance and immaturity of my desperation in my American teenage years and amplify it to apply to entire families, entire communities, and even entire countries.  More than 1 billion people in the world today are living in extreme poverty and they lack opportunities for self-sustainment.  About 200,000 people a day move from their native environments to city centers to sustain themselves, because they have lost any alternative.  In the city, workers face poor labor rights, unfair wages, and most importantly unhealthy and dangerous working environments.

Continuing with the example of a cell phone purchase from Part 1 in the series, aside from awful conditions to extract materials for the shiny little things, terrible working conditions must be endured to get our phones into the stores.  As a top Apple executive said, “Right now, customers care more about a new iPhone than working conditions in China”.  Really? Those words actually came out of someone’s mouth? But if you think about it, it’s definitely true in our consumer society.  Its not well circulated in our pop culture that 4 people died in an iPod factory explosion, or that 137 workers at an Apple supplier in China were injured from the forced use of harmful chemicals to clean iPhone screens.  And it’s not necessarily our immediate fault we are unaware of these things, as our only media exposure to Apple comes from the commercials where people are too lazy to press their weather app and instead ask their phone out-loud if its going to rain tomorrow.

When it comes to consumer products, it’s hard to know what working conditions went into production, but it’s even harder to detect microscopic poisonous chemicals that are present in them.  Think about your pet’s chew toy, or your cosmetics, or your pillowcase.  Do you really expect that all of these are made up of dangerous toxins?  In your pillowcase, anti-flame chemicals are built in so that your head does not catch on fire in your Continue reading

Share

Mar 27

Unsustainable Consumerism Part 1 – Extraction

It’s been about a year and a half since I bought a new pair of running shoes, three times the “recommended” usage time frame.  Now there is only slight wear and tear, but what makes me, as a consumer, feel that I am doing something wrong by not buying the latest style or most updated version of a product I already own?  The culture of consumerism in the U.S. tells us when to buy things and when to throw things away.  And this culture has led us to own and waste a lot, a lot of stuff.  A linear materials economy outlines how the stuff we have goes through five distinction stages, extraction, production, distribution, consumption, and disposal without us even realizing it.

The truth about the world we live in and the consumption habits we, as Americans, take part in is that it has limits; serious limits that lead a totally unsustainable linear process.  I was inspired to write on this topic after I saw The Story of Stuff video, which exposes the reality of linear consumption and the unbelievable facts that are hidden from us as consumers.  Out of the 100 largest economies on Earth, 51 of those are corporations.  This means the model in our world today revolves around pleasing the corporate machine and not the people of this planet.  Corporations, not people, are gaining more and more say in what is important from their government.  As the U.S. consumes more and more with each passing decade with little regard to health, safety, environmental sustainability, or economic equality, the rest of the world pays the price for our products.

Over the next four posts, I’ll discuss the five steps in the linear materials economy, and offer insight into the serious problems at each stage as well as discuss some real solutions to tackle these issues.  Today we’ll start with Stage 1, Extraction.

First, all of the materials that go into the stuff we buy have to be extracted from natural resources.  In the last few decades alone, 1/3 of the planet’s finite resources have been consumed, and who do you think is to blame?  Each year when I pack up my dorm room to leave campus for the summer, I can’t believe how much stuff, junk, paper, waste, I’ve accumulated in 8 short months.  We know as Americans that we have a lot of stuff, and hopefully we recognize that we have a lot of stuff we don’t actually use or need, while other parts of the world barely have basic materials to survive.  But to put these intuitions into perspective, the U.S. only has 5% of the world’s population, but uses 30% of the world’s resources. If the rest of the world were to consume at the same rate as Americans, we’d need four planets to sustain it.

This disproportionate use of resources means we as Americans benefit from the ability to consume while we exploit the natural resources, cultures, and environments of foreign nations.  In our own country, we cut trees all the time, maybe to add to the suburban sprawl, as happened where my plastic-sided, Pennsylvanian neighborhood was built 20 years ago at the expense of beautiful woodlands (try not to call me a hypocrite, my two-year-old self had little persuasion power when it came to environmental protection).  The reality is the U.S. only contains 4% of its original forests.  With these numbers, it’s no surprise we need to turn outside the country to exploit resources, but the sad truth is only 20% of the entire world’s original forests still exists.  While we cut down 2,000 trees per minute in the Amazon, we destroy our limited natural resources as well as add significantly to the global warming threat.

In addition to the unsustainable rate at which we are extracting, additional factors surround the ethics of extracting from certain regions.  We’ve probably all seen (or at least heard of) the movie Blood Diamond, with Leonardo Dicaprio’s amusing attempt at a South African accent.  The movie exposes the harsh realities of diamond mining in Africa, and hopefully this movie empowered us to research a little further into where our Continue reading

Share

Mar 26

Improving LGBT Rights with the Corporate Equality Index

Since 2002 the Human Rights Campaign has been creating and releasing a public Corporate Equality Index each year. This is a list of businesses and corporations that indicates their level of LGBT support and equality in terms of employment. Businesses are chosen from the Fortune Magazine’s 1000 largest publicly traded businesses and the American Lawyer Magazine’s top 200 revenue grossing law firms and then invited to take part in equity surveys and cross checks. Other private sector businesses with at least 500 full time employees and is not owned by a larger entity can request an invite as well. Each company is rated on a scale of 0 to 100 on how equally they treat their LGBT employees, consumers, and investors.

The HRC has developed a list of criteria on how each business is rated. These include evaluating a company’s written policy of nondiscrimination based on sexual orientation, gender expression, and gender identity; inclusion of sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression in its diversity and sensitivity training; parity in domestic partner benefits; appropriate and respectful advertising to the LGBT community; transgender-inclusive health insurance benefits; rejection of any activities that would undermine the goal of equal rights for LGBT people. These aspects decide where on the 0 to 100 scale a company will fall.

After requesting or receiving an invite, companies must have one person fill out a survey created by the HRC. This in depth questionnaire asks questions such as, “does your health insurance contract have a definition of spouse?” and “Does your primary non-discrimination or equal employment opportunity policy include the term “gender identity or expression” or “gender identity“?” The 36 pages of questions are specific and direct, and is unlikely to be falsified by any company. Likewise, HRC researchers routinely perform cross checks to verify survey answers.

Here is a video that tells more about the CEI and its impact.

As expected, an ongoing debate revolves around the Continue reading

Share