Hi everyone! To start off the week, let’s check out Madagascar’s air quality! As seen in the screenshot from IQAir, Madagascar’s air seems relatively clean. Does this mean Madagascar is free from pollution?
Let’s take a look at this video:
You can easily see how Madagascar is as polluted as many of the other countries we previously looked at in my earlier blogposts! Can the Pollution Action Plan and Global Alliance on Health and Pollution really help the people in Madagascar fight pollution? Or is it just an uncommitted initiative to satisfy certain parties in the country?
I would not have known how polluted Madagascar was if I did not search it up on various news sites. UNICEF reported that more than 1 in 5 deaths in Madagascar is caused by pollution exposure. Just as in Indonesia, car idling in constant traffic jams is one of the major reasons for air pollution. Just as in Haiti and Fiji, indoor cooking and the use of coal-operated stoves lead to various respiratory diseases. Water pollution that happens in Madagascar, and likewise, in many other countries in the Global South is due to widespread open defecation. In turn, these contaminated water supply causes children to suffer from diarrhea and in turn, malnutrition because these children are unable to digest and absorb the relevant nutrients to survive. You can read more about indoor air pollution in Madagascar here, or here.
At this point, do you feel like everything is starting to get hopeless? It seems that a lot of these countries are facing the same causes of pollution, yet no real change is happening. It’d be great to know what you think!
Fortunately, the Global Alliance on Health and Pollution published a report to provide a concrete action plan to manage the harms of pollution in Madagascar. Unfortunately, they do not take into consideration the consequences pollution brings to wildlife. I don’t know about you, but when I think of Madagascar, I immediately think of the 2 movies produced by Dreamworks Animation. Yet, why is the world not worried about the animals of Madagascar? This article explores how pollution harms birds. It’s a pity that this once-oasis has now become a living hell for birds. My next post this week will look into some interesting papers done by researchers studying various aspects of pollution.
See you in the next one! ✿
References
Dasgupta, S., Martin, P., Samad, H. A. (2013) Addressing Household Air Pollution: A Case Study in Rural Madagascar. 13 November. World Bank Policy Research Working Papers. Available from: https://elibrary.worldbank.org/doi/abs/10.1596/1813-9450-6627 [Accessed: 1 March 2022].
Duke University (n. d.) Cookstoves and Air Pollution in Madagascar: Finding Winning Solutions for Human Health and Biodiversity (2016-2017). Available from: https://bassconnections.duke.edu/project-teams/cookstoves-and-air-pollution-madagascar-finding-winning-solutions-human-health-and [Accessed: 1 March 2022].
Environment Care (2019) Overcoming Madagascar’s number one killer: Pollution. 6 August. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4abE7pEr6k&feature=emb_imp_woyt [Accessed: 1 March 2022].
GAHP (n. d.) Madagascar Health and Pollution Action Plan Accelerating the Implementation of Actions to Reduce Pollution-Related Illness. Available from: http://gahp.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Madagascar-HPAP_EN.pdf [Accessed: 1 March 2022].
IQAir (2022) Air Quality in Madagascar. 1 March. Available from: https://www.iqair.com/madagascar [Accessed: 1 March 2022].
Rasolofomboahangy, V. (2020) In Madagascar’s Capital, Pollution Threatens an Oasis for Birds. 2 July. Available from: https://news.mongabay.com/2020/07/in-madagascars-capital-pollution-threatens-an-oasis-for-birds/ [Accessed: 1 March 2022].
Solve Pollution Network (2021) Overcoming Madagascar’s Number One Killer: Pollution. 1 April. Available from: https://solutions.leverforchange.org/100-change-2020/overcoming-madagascars-number-one-killer-pollution/ [Accessed: 1 March 2022].
UNICEF (2019) Combatting Pollution and its Effects on the Health of Children in Madagascar. 10 July. Available from: https://www.unicef.org/madagascar/en/press-releases/combatting-pollution-and-its-effects-health-children-madagascar [Accessed: 1 March 2022].