By Paul Kimumwe
During the United Nations Millennium Summit in 2000, 189 Heads of State and Governments pledged to work together to make a better world for all by 2015. On our behalf, they signed the Millennium Declaration, which promised to free men, women and children from the dehumanizing conditions of extreme poverty and make the right to development a reality for us all!
To this end, Eight Millennium Development Goals were adopted, committing both the rich and poor countries to work together to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, achieve universal primary education, promote gender equality and empower women,reduce childe mortality, improve maternal health, combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, ensure environmental sustainability and develop a global partnership for development – all by the year 2015.
While some progress has been made in the right direction in regards to all eight goals, with less than 10 years left for the deadline, goal number 7, which is, “Ensuring Environmental Sustainability,” still lags behind.
According to the Millennium Developmental Goals Progressive report that was released in May 2005, there should be drastic improvements in our efforts; otherwise, “sustainability will not be achieved with current patterns of resource consumption and use. Land is becoming degraded at an alarming rate. Plant and animal species are being lost in record numbers. The climate is changing, bringing with it threats of rising sea levels and worsening droughts and floods,” is warns.
“Environmental sustainability means using natural resources wisely and protecting the complex ecosystems on which our survival depends,” says the report.
Missing link
Unfortunately, the failure to make a linkage of all these eight goals has left gaps and uncoordinated strategies that have undermined the very essence of working for sustainable development.
“For most people, environmental protection means planting trees. They can not understand how their health, farming methods, means of income and feeding habits are important in protecting the environment,” says Mr. Maurice Bafirawala, the District Environment and Forest Officer of Kalangala District.
Howevr, “if people are poor, then chances are that they will resort to using any means in search for survival, and in a fishing community like ours (Kalangala Islands) that is when they start using poor fishing methods like fish poisoning, using small nets, and this has a negative impact on the state of our fish stocks and quality of fish products,” adds Bafirawala.
Dr. Peter Waiswa, the Deputy Director of Iganga District Health Services says that the interrelationship (among all these goals) is so great that it si becoming increasingly importantt to revise our approach to both health promotion and poverty alleviation strategies.
“When people live in a health environment with access to clean water, the chances of suffering from communicable diseases are lessened. In turn, the number of children and women, who are the main victims of these backward diseases, reduces greatly. Besides that, the high rate of school drop outs especially for the girls is highly associated with poor sanitation facilities at their schools,” he says.
Thus, by ensuring a health environment (goal 7), child mortality (goal 4) and maternal mortality (goal 5) would have been catered for, and so is goal 2 (achieving universal primary education) and promoting gender equality and women empowerment (goal 3) by ensuring more girls finish school.
No ones concerned
It is however sad to note that protecting the environment is a duty that no one has been willing to take upon his/her sleeves.
“No body seems to mind about the state of environment, especially in their day-to-day lifestyles,” Says Kayondo Titus, a field officer with Uganda Environmental Education Forum.
“People are so eager to get rid of water bottles, airtime cards, milk pouches, polythene (kaveera) bags and other wastes both at their homes and places of work without regard of where these wastes end up and their impact on the environment. It is frustrating to see grown up people littering everywhere without feeling guilty,” he adds.
The tendency however stems from the deep-rooted apathy within the population, and the failure to think beyond the self. There exits wrong thinking that issues to do with environmental protection are a responsibility of the politicians and other authorities.
Bafirawala however says that this apathy can partly be attributed to the chronic poverty that has been mistreating our people for so long, with the least opportunity of escape.
“When people are poor and not sure of survival the next day, chances are that they will cut the next tree for charcoal, clear a forest to get land for cultivation, poison the fish, and it is these unsustainable behaviours that have exacerbated the situation,” he says.
Challenges
The biggest challenge however has been the failure on the part of the development-oriented activists to include environment concerns in their search for prosperity. Unfortunately, the environmentalists have also been short sighted in their cause to conserve the environment with little or no regard at all to the prevailing political, social, cultural and economic concerns of the populations.
Secondly, the ever increasing population has systematically been exerting pressure and overwhelming the capacity of the support systems to recuperate from the shocks that are so often inflicted by natural disasters such as storms, droughts.
This population explosion has also been accompanied with its own evils, yet reversing the situation is more of a myth especially in developing nations, which have very alarming fertility rates. According to the MDG progressive report, by 2007, the number of people living in cities is expected to exceed the rural population in developing regions.
“Nearly one in three city dwellers — almost 1 billion people — lives in slums, in conditions characterized by overcrowding, little employment or security of tenure, poor water, sanitation and health services, and widespread insecurity, including violence against women. Not surprisingly, disease, mortality and unemployment are considerably higher in slums than in planned urban settlements,” says the report.
Yet these are just but two of thousands of environmental issues that must addressed.
