myMADRE

On Earth Day and Every Day, Women Protect the Planet

For Earth Day, MADRE released this statement celebrating the great strides women around the world and in our sister organizations are making to combat climate change and environmental degredation.

It’s easy to feel desolate about the terrible damage being done to our planet by resource exploitation, industrial agriculture, pollution, deforestation, fossil fuel consumption and more. The BP oil spill, the nuclear crisis in Japan and the mounting threat of climate change can leave us feeling hopeless about the fate of the planet.

Women worldwide in the communities of MADRE’s sister organizations refuse to give in to despair. They’re focused on creating solutions, both local and systemic, with the support of MADRE members. So this year, for Earth Day, let’s take this chance to remind ourselves of the good news. In communities across the globe, our sisters are on the cutting edge of sustainable alternatives to climate change and environmental degradation.

Clean Water in Kenya

In Kenya, MADRE has partnered with the Indigenous Information Network (IIN) to pioneer improved ways to conserve and manage water in rural communities. We work with women who know well the threats they face: droughts intensifying Kenya’s water crisis, women losing hours each day in the search for water and diseases like cholera spreading when scarce water supplies are shared with livestock.

And they know the solution. Working with IIN in multiple communities, we facilitated the repair of water tanks and pipelines to provide clean water for Indigenous women and families. We also built separate water troughs for their animals, to prevent the spread of disease and control soil erosion around water sources.

Seeds for Life in Nicaragua

In Nicaragua, MADRE helped create a seed bank for women farmers. Our Harvesting Hope Project also trains women in small-scale organic farming and livestock management.

Through the seed bank, women are now able to cultivate, save and share local, organic seeds from one growing season to the next. The program emphasizes sustainable land use and safeguards traditional Indigenous knowledge of how to conserve biodiversity and natural resources. We’ve also supported the creation of local farmers markets so that the women can earn income from the produce they grow.

Collective Organizing in Sudan

Women farmers in Sudan are often the backbone of their community, struggling to ensure food for their families in the midst of drought and unpredictable seasons triggered by climate change. But discrimination against women by government agencies often denies them access to the seeds, tools and training that could help them boost their harvests.

With the support of MADRE and our partner organization, Zenab for Women in Development, these women banded together. They formed the first Women Farmers’ Union in Sudan, sharing resources and combining their efforts to generate harvests that sustain their communities. They have built a cooperative model of land management and crop harvesting, and the ripple effects of their success have ensured that their communities thrive. With income from their harvests, women have been able to send their daughters to school and even to put a roof on a school where the women have come together to learn to read.

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These are local solutions that change women’s lives, over and over again. We must learn from these successes. They show us that the path to a sustainable, greener future is already being charted – by Indigenous women in rural Kenya, by small-scale organic farmers in Nicaragua, by unionized women in Sudan. All of this is happening thanks to the support of MADRE members who understand that women in communities hold the key to solutions that we all need.

New York Times Article Highlights Adverse Effects of "Biofuels"

On the front page of the New York Times yesterday was an article entitled, Rush to Use Crops for Fuel Raises Food Prices and Hunger Fears. The article disusses how biofuels, also known as agrofuels, drive up food prices and heighten the danger of hunger and malnutrition around the world.  As the New York Times notes:

[W]ith food prices  rising sharply in recent months, many experts are calling on countries to scale back their headlong rush into green fuel development, arguing that the combination of ambitious biofuel targets and mediocre harvests of some crucial crops is contributing to high prices, hunger and political instability.

This year, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization reported that its index of food prices was the highest in its more than 20 years of existence. Prices rose 15 percent from October to January alone, potentially “throwing an additional 44 million people in low- and middle-income countries into poverty,” the World Bank said.

Agrofuels have long been promoted as a renewable, natural and safe alternative to fossil fuels. But as articulated in the New York Times article, as well as by MADRE in our resource entitled, Feed People, Not Cars, agrofuels come with a range of potentially disastrous outcomes. Agrofuels:

• Worsen hunger: When economic demand increases, so do costs, meaning staple foods will become more expensive and potentially unobtainable by poor sectors of the population. Increased costs also increase incentive for farmers to grow "fuel crops" as opposed to food crops, which are sustainable.
• Violate land rights: Often, biofuel plantations are created on Indigeous land, forcing Indigenous peoples to give up their land, way of life, and food self-sufficiency.
• Worsen global warming, deforestation, and threaten biodiversity: Agrofuels do not necessarily reduce carbon emissions, and corporate plans for increasing agrofuel production involve destroying forests and unique ecosystems. Unfortunately, in the United States, Congress has mandated that agrofuel use must reach 36 billion gallons annually by 2022.

To read the New York Times article in full, click here. To learn more on MADRE's stance on agrofuels, click here and here.

Project Update: Engineering a Solution for Clean Water in Nicaragua

In celebration of World Water Day earlier this week, we have been posting project updates about MADRE's water projects around the world. On Wednesday, we posted about Palestine. Today, we're posting about Nicaragua.

In the North Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua, Indigenous Peoples often live without health or sanitation services, a result of government neglect and marginalization. This has left people facing life-threatening risks. We have heard women in the communities of our partner organizations speak of their worries that their children will fall sick because of the water-borne illnesses that peak during hurricane season when flooding carries raw sewage and other contaminants into their water supply.

MADRE and our sister organization, Wangki Tangni, are working together through our project, Liwa Mairin | Women Waterkeepers to reduce the incidence of water-borne disease. We train Indigenous women and their family members to maintain latrines and wells, and we build a clean water culture through educational posters, seminars and radio programs.

We also received an update from Rose Cunningham, Director of Wangki Tangni, earlier this week. Read what she had to say by clicking here.To read the full Nicaragua project update on the MADRE website, click here.

Finally, you can take action by demanding that the right to water be upheld by signing MADRE's petition to President Obama. Click here to sign on.

Celebrating 100 Years of International Women's Day: Farming for the Future in Guatemala

Women have come a long way since the first International Women's Day was celebrated 100 years ago--and our work continues. This International Women's Day, myMADRE is sharing stories from our partners. These stories serve to illuminate the struggles women and girls continue to face around the globe. But they also demonstrate the strength and innovation women display in combating these obstacles.

This next entry is from Rosa, an Indigenous Ixil woman from Guatemala. After years of war, Rosa's community was impoverished, and the people were hungry. Thanks to MADRE's sister organization Muixil, Rosa now runs a small-scale sustainable farm that both feeds her and empowers her to educate members of the community about Indigenous women's rights.

“Everything changed when the soldiers arrived,” said Rosa, an Indigenous Ixil woman living in the Quiché region of Guatemala. “They burned our homes and killed many of my friends and neighbors.” It was 1982, the height of the Guatemalan civil war. Although Rosa fled with her family to the mountains, they were eventually captured by armed forces. “When I was imprisoned, I will never forget the sight of soldiers raping the young women,” recalled Rosa. After six months, Rosa and her family were released. However, they remained displaced from their home and faced extreme poverty and hunger.

Then Rosa joined MADRE’s Farming for the Future program, which is run in partnership with our sister organization, Muixil. Farming for the Future empowers women by supporting the establishment of small-scale, sustainable chicken and pig farms. The communally owned farms generate food security and income for families who would otherwise go hungry. “I am grateful to MADRE and Muixil for helping us rebuild our communities after years of war,” said Rosa. “My family is eating better because we have eggs and meat. I am learning about human rights and teaching other women in my community to recognize their rights as Indigenous women.” With MADRE’s support, 135 women have received chickens. MADRE and Muixil hope to expand the Farming for the Future program to 350 women this year, supporting a total of 2,450 people.

To learn more about MADRE's Farming for the Future program in Guatemala, and how your support is helping Indigenous women like Rosa, click here.

Celebrating 100 Years of International Women's Day: Building a Brighter Future in Nicaragua

Women have come a long way since the first International Women's Day was celebrated 100 years ago--and our work continues. This International Women's Day, myMADRE is sharing stories from our partners. These stories serve to illuminate the struggles women and girls continue to face around the globe. But they also demonstrate the strength and innovation women display in combating these obstacles.

This next story is from Bibidilia, an elderly Nicaraguan Indigenous woman who turned to MADRE's sister organization, Wangki Tangni, to secure an income for herself when she was no longer able to farm.

An elderly woman and an Indigenous healer and midwife, Bibidilia is a godmother to nearly half of the children of her community of Waspam, located on the North Atlantic coast of Nicaragua. She provides traditional healing services at no charge to many poor people, and she is a community leader, revered for her skills and dedication.

On a typical day, Bibidilia wakes up at 5 a.m. to prepare the day's food. By 6 a.m., she is tending to patients or collecting medicinal plants and flowers for her treatments. At 8 a.m., Bibidilia crosses the Coco River in her small boat and walks two hours to her farm. She works alone, growing beans, rice, and vegetables. Every afternoon, she walks the two hours back to the river, carrying whatever she has harvested. Usually, it is only enough to feed herself; there is rarely anything left over to sell.

As Bibidilia began to age and her capacity for farm work diminished, she worried about how she would feed herself. Fortunately, MADRE’s partner organization in Nicaragua, Wangki Tangni, was able to start a program called “Seeds of Success,” which provided Bibidilia with the resources and training to start a modest bread-baking venture. The money she earns ensures that she can continue to live independently and with dignity.

Now, Bibidilia is able to give back to her community. Every week, she welcomes more than 40 community members to the Children's Book Corner where she coordinates play and learning activities for young and old alike. Bibidilia is determined to help build a brighter future for her community.

To learn more about MADRE's work in Nicaragua, and what your support enables us to do in Indigenous communities like Bibidilia's, click here.

Climate Change Conference in Cancún, Mexico Comes To A Close

The UN Conference on Climate Change in Cancún, Mexico began on November 29th and ended today. Following last year's highly anticipated but extremely disappointing conference in Copenhagen, this time around attendees were not only much fewer in number but also much less optimistic.

The bleak outcomes of last year's conference produced the Copenhagen Accord, a vague document that failed to legally bind any of its signatories to an effective agreement. Contrast that with the Kyoto Protocol, adopted at the climate change conference in 1997, which set binding targets for 37 industrialized countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. The Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012, adding urgency to this conference and next year's conference in South Africa.

But as international leaders and officials negotiate climate change within the walls of a luxury resort, members of grassroots organizations continued to protest outside, demanding policies that acknowledge those people most directly affected by climate change, including Indigenous Peoples.

MADRE and our partners have long advocated that Indigenous Peoples possess valuable knowledge about climate change and must be involved in the decision-making concerning climate change. MADRE's projects in Guatemala, Nicaragua and Panama, address this link between Indigenous rights, climate change, and food sovereignty. Friends of MADRE, like Tarcila Rivera of our partner organization CHIRAPAQ and Victoria Tauli-Corpuz of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, were also in Cancún pressuring officials to recognize the central role Indigenous Peoples and women must play in the climate change conferences.

(For more information on the links between women's rights and climate change, see our resources entitled "Climate Change and Women's Human Rights: The MADRE Model" and "A Women's Rights-based Approach to Climate Change".)

Unfortunately, civil society and officials alike remain pessimistic about the outcomes of the Cancún conferences. Even as UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon acknowledged that "nature will not wait while we negotiate", most acknowledge that no overarching, binding agreement to reduce greenhouse gases will come out of this year's conference. And as Tom Goldtooth, one of the most prominent North American Indigenous activists was barred from attending the conference on Wednesday, the UN's readiness to engage with Indigenous Peoples in the process has been called into question.

But you can support Indigenous rights and Indigenous participation in combating climate change by supporting MADRE's various projects on climate change and environmental justice by clicking here.

http://unfccc.int/home/items/5262.php

Why No One Should Die of Cholera

On the occasion of my first post as a MADRE blogger, let me talk frankly about poop--more specifically, diarrhea. While in the West we may think of it as a schoolyard song or a day-ruining embarrassment, in poor areas of the world, it is actually terrifying. The World Health Organization estimates that at least 2.2 million people per year die from diarrhea--  a staggering four percent of annual deaths worldwide. And cholera--a waterborne bacterial infection--is one of its most common causes. Once cholera strikes, a patient can become dehydrated quickly, and if untreated, die within hours.

The disease, though, is heartbreakingly easy to prevent. Why? Well, for the same reason it's such a ruthless killer: it's all about access to clean water. Quite simply--since cholera lives in water--if you have access to clean water, you probably won't get cholera. If you don't, you're constantly at risk. On top of that, the disease only manifests itself in about 25% of those infected, and because it can take up to two weeks to make its presence known, it can be difficult to detect until it's too late. But when you look at the recommended methods of preventing cholera, you get a pretty good idea of why cholera is virtually unheard of in the Global North, but is a constant threat in the Global South: as I alluded to above, the best prevention methods are drinking clean water, handwashing, and using clean sanitary facilities.

You can connect the dots: it's a perfect disease of the world's poor. There's no reason anyone in this age should die of something so preventable, but without access to clean water, people in the Global South are sitting ducks.

The reason I say this, of course, is that relief agencies and the Haitian government are bracing for a cholera epidemic to reach the nation's capital, Port-au-Prince. Once there, it could devastate people uprooted by January's earthquake; still living in displacement camps. In short, prevention only works to contain an outbreak if people have the right resources, and enough of them. And Haiti just doesn't have enough-- while impressive public education campaigns are being mounted and supplies are being distributed, officials are planning for cholera to be a big problem in Haiti for the coming months.

But it's not as dire as it could be. Even though clean water and sanitation (and therefore, the most effective preventative measures) are unavailable to many Haitians, treatment is comparably simple and much more available. Treatment of cholera involves early detection, and an IV drip of simple electrolytes, sometimes accompanied by antibiotics. It's inexpensive and effective. And it can be done on a fairly large scale.

If Haiti can make it through this epidemic without the displacement camps being decimated, it will be a success of emergency efforts to contain and treat cholera. But emergency efforts aren't, in the long run, going to cut it for Haiti. Along with earthquake reconstruction will need to come serious investment in Haiti's water infrastructure. And the US has not been a good-faith player in Haiti's natural resource development in the past: our government has consistently supported anti-democratic forces and foreign control of Haiti's agricultural infrastructure. In 2000, the Bush Administration pressured the Inter-American Development Bank to cancel more than $650 million in development assistance and approved loans to Haiti -- money that was slated to pay for not only safe drinking water, but also literacy programs and health services, both of which also fight infectious disease. 

The cholera epidemic is yet another reminder about post-earthquake Haiti: stopgaps aren't going to work. Once the threat of disease has been eliminated, let's get the problem at its source (no pun intended) and fund development that helps Haitians and not large American businesses. People shouldn't have to die from cholera, and it's in our government's power to help make that a reality for Haiti.

Thinking about Food Sovereignty and Gender

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) recently released their 2010 report on the State of Food Insecurity in the World.

"The number of undernourished people remains unacceptably high," the report begins - higher, in fact, than it was 40 years ago. To address this problem, the report lays out various key messages: the importance of long-term responses, supporting local institutions, agriculture and the rural economy, modifying the current aid architecture to address both immediate needs and underlying structural causes of crises, and employing humanitarian food assistance and social protection.

Clearly, a report proposing ways to ensure food security would be incomplete without a focus on gender; women and girls around the world play a primary role in managing the household's food and water, as well as a substantial role in actually growing and selling the food produced. In fact, investing in women is proven to enhance food security.

Where this report falters is in discussing the disproportionate affect crises have on women and girls, without simultaneously centering the value of women's leadership in solving the issue of food insecurity. As community members with crucial expertise in sustainable farming practices, the key role of women in agriculture must be recognized if we are to combat food crises.

In reading the report, it is an important complement to think about the move away from the term "food security" and towards the term "food sovereignty". Food sovereignty is a term coined by the international organization Via Campesina in 1996, and goes beyond the concept of food security in that it promotes the right of all people to not only have access to food, but to exercise agency over what food they eat, how and where it is produced, and by whom.

In addition, food sovereignty confronts neoliberal trade policies that emphasize export, defending instead the right of local populations to their own food, as well as promoting local participation is defining agrarian policies, and acknowledging the rights of women farmers - rights that are too often abused.

For more on the links between food security, food sovereignty, and gender, MADRE's projects in Nicaragua and Sudan offer great examples of how supporting women farmers and backing sustainable, local projects can enhance not only a population's access to food but a population's access to good, sustainable, local, and healthy food.

Take Action for World Food Day: Tell USAID to Buy Local in Sudan

Today is World Food Day, a chance for us to recognize the lethal threat that hunger poses to millions across the globe and to uplift innovative solutions.  MADRE sister organization in Sudan, Zenab for Women in Development, is creating just those solutions.  We've written on this blog about how their successful efforts to create a union of women farmers has helped them to see more fruitful harvests that generate income for their communities.  Women have pooled their resources to pay for their daughters' educations, to build a community center and to expand opportunities for themselves and for their families.

You can support women farmers, like the ones supported by Zenab for Women in Development and MADRE.  Sign this petition today and call for your tax dollars to support women farmers--not giant agribusinesses. 

Here's how it currently works in Sudan: Our tax dollars are used to buy grain from US factory farms—the same giant corporations that already receive $26 billion in tax subsidies. Then the grain is transported halfway around the world, using thousands of gallons of fossil fuel and releasing tons of harmful carbon emissions into the atmosphere. The transport typically takes months while hungry people grow more desperate. Once the food finally arrives, it floods agricultural markets, weakening farmers' abilities to make a living from their work. Small-scale farmers are the first to go bankrupt. Most are small-holder women farmers, who work small plots of land hoping to sell enough at market to buy cooking oil, flour, a bar of soap and a pair of shoes so a child can stay in school. This kind of globalized distribution method undermines the very people it seeks to help.

Click here to send a message to US policymakers: food aid crops should be purchased directly from women farmers in the regions targeted to receive assistance.

Blog Action Day 2010 - MADRE's 'Water Rights Are Human Rights' Project in Kenya

This is the last of three blogs we are posting today as participants in Blog Action Day. This year's Blog Action Day topic is water. Our first two blogs discussed two MADRE projects - 'Clean Water for Gaza' in Palestine, and 'Women Waterkeepers' in Nicaragua - both of which work to secure access to clean water for people in the communities of our sister organizations.

Access to clean water is a human right, and yet women and their families around the globe still struggle, everyday, to obtain it. Lack of access to clean water also had broad-reaching consequences. Water-borne illnesses significantly impact a population's health, productivity is lessened due to these health problems, and women and girls must spend their time and energy fetching water and caring for the sick, instead of contributing to productivity or going to school.

In Kenya, climate change and environmental degredation have intensified the water crisis. When people in the United States flush the toilet, they use as much water as most people in Kenya use in an entire day. The Indigenous Maasai Peoples of Southwest Kenya do not have a centralized system to bring water into their community. As a result, women must walk to the nearest spring to collect water. The spring is 2.5 km away and also serves as a watering hole for livestock. The water is thus not only difficult to access, but also highly contaminated, leading to a high incidence of water-borne diseases, including cholera, typhoid and scabies. MADRE and our sister organization, the Indigenous Information Network (IIN), are working together to make clean, easily accessible water a reality in this Indigenous Kenyan community.

To do this, a water purification system has been put in place that will be managed by members of the community. This system will not only eliminate contaminants from the drinking water, but will additionally transport the water to the community, thereby drastically reducing the amount of time these women have to spend obtaining water.

For more information about MADRE's projects, and information on how to donate, click here.