Showing posts from category video.
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New Video “Water Wars or Water Woes?” Unveils Surprising Truths About Water, Conflict
›September 18, 2008 // By Wilson Center StaffIn the new video “Water Wars or Water Woes? Water Management as Conflict Management,” Environmental Change and Security Program (ECSP) Director Geoff Dabelko explains that although newspapers and politicians constantly warn of impending “water wars,” water rarely leads to interstate violence. By focusing on “water wars” – which evidence shows are extremely rare – we “are missing a lot of what is important around conflict management around water,” argues Dabelko.
According to Dabelko, cooperative water management can also help resolve conflicts caused by unrelated problems, such as those between India and Pakistan or Israel and Palestine. “You’ve got to go through it to get out of the conflict and support a sustainable peace,” he says.
“Water Wars or Water Woes?” is the newest addition to ECSP’s YouTube channel, which was launched earlier this summer with “Population, Health, and Environment: Exploring the Connections,” which offers a lively, brief, and accessible explanation of population, health, and environment (PHE) connections, with examples and photos from successful programs in the Philippines. -
World Water Week Draws Attention to Taboo Topics Like Sanitation
›August 22, 2008 // By Geoffrey D. DabelkoA recent post on Andy Revkin’s Dot Earth blog—entitled “Poop is Funny, But It’s Fatal”—highlights a UNICEF World Water Day video about the necessity of destigmatizing human waste. Bacterial infections caused by contact with human waste kill 1.5 million people every year—most of them children. The stakes are high. The film uses kids and humor—two good ingredients for education through entertainment—to explain the importance of sanitation. The film emphasizes that although we may not like talking about feces, urine, toilets, and the like, we need to because the fact that 2.6 billion of us lack adequate sanitation is a fundamental threat to human health, productivity, and dignity. It’s a short film—YouTube friendly—and these are complex links, but they are key to understanding the need to invest in available technologies.
The UNICEF video rightly emphasizes the additional costs of lack of sanitation, noting that girls often won’t attend school if there isn’t adequate sanitation. The benefits of attending school longer include higher educational attainment, of course, but also the less-obvious knock-on effects: These young women are more likely to know and assert their rights in the household; they are more likely to earn more income; they often choose to have smaller families and better-spaced births, and are consequently able to concentrate their resources on the well-being of those children; their children are more likely to be better-educated—the list goes on.
The video leaves unspoken another sensitive topic: When adolescent girls begin to menstruate, they often either choose not to come to school or their parents (usually the father) pull them out of school if there aren’t “adequate” and separate facilities. This timing often correlates with young women’s assumption of greater responsibilities in the household, but it is also about the stigma associated with menstruation.
I’ve seen the connections between sanitation, education, and women’s equality have tremendous resonance with what is presumably a primary target audience of the UNICEF film—leaders in donor, government, and civil society communities who can mobilize resources. This example illustrates the urgency of overcoming the stovepiping that plagues so many development efforts, which often tackle education, economic growth, sanitation, and human health in isolation from one another, rather than in an integrated fashion. This year, the International Year of Sanitation, we should all make an effort to step out of our comfort zones and speak out about these “taboo” topics. -
Al Jazeera Films the Evaporating Way of Life of Niger’s Tuareg Rebels
›July 29, 2008 // By Sonia SchmanskiThe land of Niger’s Tuareg Bedouin tribes—and thus the Tuareg way of life—is drying up. The steadily advancing Sahara desert is swallowing northern Niger at a rate of six kilometers per year, part of a centuries-old process recently accelerated by climate change and groundwater withdrawals by the nation’s booming uranium mining industry.
French nuclear giant Areva flies in workers rather than hiring locals to man the mines, and as a result, the Tuareg and other tribal groups have little or no opportunity to find employment. Cut out of the revenue stream, rebel fighters, made up of Tuaregs as well as members of other Bedouin tribes, are demanding a percentage (20-30 percent, by most accounts) of the revenue generated by the uranium mined on their land.
Defying a government ban on reporting on the conflict, Al Jazeera television reporter May Welsh interview the rebels in a five-part video series on the Tuareg. “They’re fighting a state that’s ignoring their problems,” she says. For example, a family suffering from a new and mysterious ailment claim they have been denied care by Areva’s medical offices. Welsh suggests their illness could be attributed to the radioactive water around Areva’s facilities.
Areva, for its part, rejects the notion that it is poisoning the people of northern Niger. In a document released in August 2007, the company reports that 60-70 percent of its private hospital patients are members of surrounding communities. Areva also states it gives preference to local sub-contractors in its exploration and procurement activities. But the yawning gulf between Areva’s position and the reality in northern Niger belies the company’s claims.
Conflict between rebel groups and the Nigerien army has separated families, displaced people, destroyed schools—and interfered with humanitarian missions. The government ordered the French NGO Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) to suspend its activity in Niger based on unsubstantiated suspicions that members of the organization were colluding with rebels. Welsh’s daring reports illuminate these and other dangers of life in Niger’s desert, a life that may soon become impossible. -
Population-Health-Environment Video Featuring Lori Hunter Now on YouTube
›July 18, 2008 // By Sean Peoples“Population, Health, and Environment: Exploring the Connections,” an original ECSP video, offers a lively, brief, and accessible explanation of population-health-environment connections, with examples and photos from successful programs in the Philippines. Presenter Lori Hunter of the University of Colorado, Boulder, spoke at the Wilson Center earlier this year as part of ECSP’s PHE meeting series. View the video on YouTube, then rate it, comment on it, favorite it, or post a video response.
