Month: June 2017

A new report by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) finds child poverty and hunger are widespread in 41 of the world’s richest countries. The report says one in five children in rich countries lives in poverty, while one in eight often do not have enough to eat.

The report finds high income does not necessarily lead to a good outcome for children and often serves to widen the gap between rich and poor. UN Children’s Fund Chief of Social Policy and Economic Analysis, Jose Cuesta says all 41 countries surveyed, in one way or another, are failing to protect the well-being of their children.

“If I were to grade all countries, no one will get an A,” he said. “There is good news, of course, in quite a number of targets and areas. For instance, childhood learning or reductions in neonatal mortality rates. But, there are also substantive gaps in some targets. For instance, poverty reduction of children, increasing inequality, increasing obesity and worsening mental health.”

The seven top ranked countries in UNICEF’s League Table of 41 countries includes all the Nordic countries — Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Iceland, as well as Germany and Switzerland. The seven countries holding up the bottom are Chili, Mexico, the United States, Bulgaria, Romania, Israel and Turkey.

Cuesta tells VOA the United States, which ranks 37th does not perform well in areas such as poverty, hunger, good health and well-being, and quality education.

“Actually, it is a surprise and it is not a surprise at the same time because consistently the U.S. is doing poorly across these key indicators. So, it is not really one indicator driving the results here,” he said.

The report notes wealth and economic growth alone are not enough to ensure the well-being of children. UNICEF is urging rich countries to put children’s needs at the heart of their policy agenda.

 
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Thailand’s industrial development faces fresh calls for greater local community participation in addressing the challenges of environmental pollution, especially as reports point to an escalation in the production of hazardous industrial pollution.

Industrialization has been a core of Thailand’s economic progress over the past three decades as the country progressed from agricultural to industrial and manufacturing development.

Investments in major chemical and manufacturing industries have been marked by industrial estates, especially in the Eastern Seaboard some 150 kilometers from Bangkok.

The military government is now looking to expand industrial development to boost the economy through 10 special economic zones throughout the country and further investment near Bangkok by way of an Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC).

But Thailand’s push for growth has raised concerns by local communities about increasing pollution, despite controls and legislation.

Thailand’s Pollution Control Department (PCD), in its latest report, estimates some 37.4 million metric tons of industrial waste was generated nationwide in 2015, of which 2.8 million tons — or 7.5 percent of the total, were hazardous industrial waste.

Hazardous waste

At the same time, hazardous waste — covering all waste from communities, industrial activities and infectious waste — stood at 3.45 million tons, an increase of 28 percent from the previous year.

“The production and use of hazardous substances in the country has caused pollution as hazardous substances were released into the environment and may cause contamination or remain in the environment,” the PCD said.

A European Union funded report with the Thai-based Ecological Alert and Recovery Thailand (EARTH) and Prague-based University of Chemistry and Technology covered eight provinces and the impact on local communities from dangerous heavy metal pollution.

The heavy metals examined in the study included arsenic, mercury, zinc, cadmium, chromium, and lead along with organic contaminants such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and petroleum products, which medical authorities warn can be potential dangers to health.

Key areas of concern were the eastern seaboard industrial areas of Map Ta Phut and the provinces of Samut Sakorn Saraburi and Praeksa — which was affected by leakages from industrial landfills into the local environment.

Heavy metal pollution

Marek Sir, a chemistry researcher from the University of Chemistry and Technology in the Czech Republic, said the studies indicated concerns over heavy metal pollution in areas near industrial plants.

“In some areas there are real problems with the mixture of heavy metals or with the mixture of pollution. I was surprised mainly by the levels of heavy metals around recycling plants and smelting plants,” Sir told VOA.

“That’s a problem — still there are toxic fumes released into the environment and the easiest way to spread the pollution of heavy metals, which are absorbed on solid particles and they can diffuse into the air and can be transported. So that’s the problem — one of the problems,” he said.

EARTH director Penchom Saetang said there is a need for local communities to participate in the studies or projects in the future, as well as taking part in any process to rehabilitate affected polluted areas or studies.

Thailand has more than 139,000 large and medium-sized industrial plants, both inside and outside industrial estates and parks which number some 87 throughout the country.

The EARTH/ARNIKA report accused factory owners responsible for pollution of “uncaring management,” with the result of water pollution, toxic air pollution and hazardous industrial waste — especially those mismanaged and illegally dumped.

Contaminated areas are often not restored with local people increasingly lacking trust in officials and the state, and leading to opposition to further industrial development.

Cost of rehabilitation

EARTH director Penchom said access to funding for land rehabilitation remains a major stopping block.

“The big problem is rehabilitation and remediation will consume lots or money. I think the private corporations and the polluters are not willing to pay and this is the fundamental cost in Thailand. It’s very difficult to enforce the law for the polluters to pay,” she said.

Greenpeace Thailand country director Tara Buakameri said too often environmental policy depends on “top down” decision making, failing to address the pollution at the source.

Tara said policy often compromises the environment to the benefit to industry and development.

“It is a compromise situation – the compromise that benefits the polluter, benefits irresponsible companies that pollute the environment. When we can see that the result from the toxic contamination in different regions in Thailand — also affects the community,” Tara told VOA.

He said communities have a “right to know” when pollution has occurred and the amount and toxicity to be able to respond and to seek solutions and treatments.

The Pollution Control Department set out a strategic plan covering 2012-2021 calling for “rules and regulation amendments to facilitate effective waste management as well as strict enforcement of the laws. Additionally, compensation schemes for local administrations and residents should be developed.”
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Even though we know that exercising is good for us, far too many of us can not seem to work it into our day. But that is not a problem for workers at the Mortenson construction firm, as Faith Lapidus explains.
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A new satellite forecast tool could more than double the warning time for desert locust invasions, allowing vulnerable nations to prepare better against the crop-eating grasshoppers, the United Nations and European Space Agency (ESA) said Wednesday.

Desert locusts, found mainly in the Sahara, across the Arabian Peninsula and in India, pose a major threat to agricultural production when migrating in swarms, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says.

A one-kilometer-square swarm of about 40 million locusts can eat the same amount of food as 35,000 people in a day, according to the agency. FAO and ESA said they have developed a new remote sensing system that by processing satellite data on soil moisture and vegetation can predict the formation of swarms up to three months in advance.

“Longer warning periods give countries more time to act swiftly to control a potential outbreak and prevent massive food losses,” said Keith Cressman, FAO’s senior locust forecasting officer.

The tool is the latest in a series to apply satellite data to agricultural purposes.

For pest prevention teams, it is key to find locust breeding areas early in order to apply pesticides before grasshoppers grow wings and start migrating, Cressman said.

“Then you are chasing a moving target,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Best breeding conditions

Locusts breed in large numbers when good rains and rapid vegetation growth follow a period of drought.

Soil moisture data help authorities locate areas where the ground is wet enough for the locusts to lay eggs and to monitor them for signs of swarming.

Trials on data from a locust invasion in Mauritania in 2016 allowed ESA and FAO experts to identify hatching areas 70 days before the outbreak occurred.

That significantly improved upon current forecast systems based on satellite information of green vegetation that give a maximum notice of one month and sometimes give authorities just a few days to reach remote breeding locations, Cressman said.

“Often they are too late,” he said.

Up to 100 percent of cereals and 90 percent of legumes were destroyed in West Africa in a 2003-05 plague that affected 8 million people and took 13 million liters of pesticide to be reined in, the FAO said.

Cressman said FAO is hoping to make the new tool available to all countries at risk by the end of the year.
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Imagine that you could not see. Or hear. And that you were just a child.

What would your world be like? How would you communicate? Who would teach you to speak, to sign or to read Braille? To play?

For more than 6 million children around the world, many in developing countries, this is their reality.

Experts say the overwhelming majority of children with multiple disabilities are falling through the education system.

“These children for the most part don’t get an education — something on the order of 90 percent,” said Dave Power, president and chief executive officer of Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown, Massachusetts, the United States’ oldest academic institution serving blind, deaf-blind and low-vision students.

Children with these disabilities have tremendous potential, he and other educators say, but they need the right education to realize it.

Challenges

“The stigma and discrimination that exists around disabilities — it is the attitudinal barrier — it has a wide-ranging impact,” said Gopal Mitra, senior adviser on disabilities at UNICEF, the U.N. Children’s Fund.

Another hurdle is the availability of resources from governments and within families, which often means educating a disabled child becomes a lower priority. “Within the family, often parents do not see the value of educating the child who cannot see or cannot hear,” Mitra said.

There also is a general lack of programs to provide teachers with the specialized training required for teaching children with visual or hearing impairments.

“I think that the greatest challenge across the world is to get the government involved in the need for teacher training,” said educator Roseanne Silberman. “Even talking about being hungry, being thirsty, wanting to go to the bathroom, if you are in pain or in discomfort — our kids have no way of expressing it without having teachers who are expert in teaching communications skills.”

Depriving an entire part of the population of vital life skills ultimately has a negative impact on society, advocates say.

“Human capital is the most precious, most important resource any community has,” said Juan José Gómez Camacho, Mexico’s U.N. ambassador and an advocate for persons with disabilities. “What we are doing by not investing and educating young children with any kind of disability or visual impairment or blindness, we are not only depriving them of means to live meaningful lives, but countries and communities are depriving themselves from thriving members of society that can contribute enormously.”

Training teachers

This week at the United Nations on the sidelines of meetings for the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Perkins School for the Blind announced that it is launching an initiative to close this gap by training 1 million teachers worldwide by 2030 to educate children with multiple disabilities.

“We want to do that in a way that supports teachers who are in public schools and teachers that are in special schools, so all children will have a quality education,” said Michael Delaney, executive director of Perkins International. He said the program, which will have three different course levels ranging from two days to nine months, would train teachers to an international standard.

“We feel that we can get more people out there — better educators, better policymakers, better programmers — that are going to be able to make a change in their societies,” he added.

The Perkins school has a history of training teachers from other countries so they can go home and work with blind, deaf-blind and low-vision children. Now, Power said, they want to standardize that approach so they can have a wider reach.

“Because we already have the knowledge and know-how and have done it, we can do it very efficiently,” Power said.

The school expects to fund the program through a combination of government and philanthropic support.

Success story

Maricar Marquez was born deaf and at age 7 was diagnosed with Usher syndrome, an inherited condition that causes progressive vision loss. Today she is deaf-blind. She also has an older sister with the same condition.

Born in the Philippines, Marquez moved with her family to Canada, where both girls received specialized education. Marquez has defied stigmas that people with disabilities cannot learn. She earned a master’s degree, is married, works at a national center for deaf-blind youth and is a marathon runner, triathlete and skydiver.

“I am a very different person than anyone thought when I was younger,” she said through a sign language interpreter. “And had I not gotten the services that I did, I would not be where I am.”
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