Hi everyone! Thank you for tagging along and reading up on what I’ve learnt throughout the past few weeks! Oftentimes, we tend to push aside the struggles faced by marginalized people because we do not see how they suffer, and we do not have direct contact with them. Our indifference to pollution might also be caused by our country’s good governance. We forget about the problems faced by other people because we live a satisfactory society, and always compare ourselves with people who are doing better than us, than comparing ourselves with people doing worse than us.
Due to time constraints, I was only able to cover these unique countries on my blog. If any of you decide to start a blog, do consider researching and writing on other countries in the Global South! Raising awareness first starts with effective communication, and to communicate effectively, we can use blogs! If you do take up the challenge, do update me. You can reach me on my LinkedIn! Let’s stay in touch. Until then, I hope I have managed to spark your interest in learning beyond books, and to learn through lived experiences.
Hi everyone! This will be my final post of the week, and the penultimate post of the semester! We have discussed a lot of things through my research on 11 different countries in the Global South. One thing I find in common between these countries is the severity of pollution, and the lack of motivation to fight pollution. I cannot recall the number of times I saw statements that talked about the dangers of high levels of PM2.5 in the atmosphere; they caused heart and lung diseases, various cancers, diabetes, thyroid problems, devastating effects on children, and so on. Yet, we see that even though these countries try to tackle the problem, there is rarely any improvement in the environment. The only remarkable change that occurred was during the lockdown season when the COVID-19 pandemic began. Even though the situation seems unpromising, I believe there is a way forward.
I echo the suggestions made by the World Bank, a source I covered in my blog post on Bangladesh. The only way we can help countries in the Global South is by pressurizing their nation leaders to enhance environmental institutions and their policies, to strengthen their levels of enforcement and accountability, and to promote resource-efficient and cleaner production of materials. By forcing leaders to be more transparent and engage better with their citizens in decision-making processes, we can even leverage on market-based instruments to unlock opportunities for green financing. If these leaders came they do not have the financial resources to do so, we should encourage our nation leaders from the Global North to help. The environment is shared by all of us, and if we do not help these countries, we will eventually suffer the consequences brought about by environmental pollution, which does not restrict or limit itself between territorial boundaries on the world map.
Of course, all of this is easier said than done. What do you think about the situation? Do you have any suggestions for these countries?
Up next, my actual final post. See you in the next one! ✿
Hi everyone! This will be my final week of publishing blog posts, before the blog gets accessed by Prof Taylor and Dr Chen. As such, I would like of my first post of the week by listing out several things I discovered and learnt through my research, and the module.
I always began each week’s series of posts by looking for data on IQAir. Some countries have data on their air quality, whereas others do not. Even if countries had monitoring stations to report to IQAir, some of these real-time AQI indices do not reflect the severe pollution experienced by citizens throughout the years.
When researching on Mongolia, I discovered an article that neatly summarizes why studying pollution in the Global South is extremely important. I echo the sentiments by Jun, in the world, the negative impacts of air pollution fall disproportionately on the most vulnerable people from poor countries. As such, it is important for all sectors from affected and non-affected countries to work in tandem to analyze the root problems of pollution, and design policies that allow each sector to use its expertise and resources to tackle the issue from a multi-dimensional perspective.
Another article also discusses the potential for cooperation. Irfan questioned when and how the responsibility to fight pollution will be evenly distributed in the future. As of now, countries that do not have to struggle with pollution are not assisting other countries who are fighting for their lives. But should non-polluted countries help? What will they get in return? Then again, did these countries not pollute in the past as well? Are the damaging environmental impacts caused by their high levels of development in the past forgotten, simply because they have the technologies and capacity today to develop further?
At the same time, should we argue with leaders of the Global South who defend their pollution levels by claiming that it is imperative in order for them to catch up with the Global North? A report by Greenwood-Nguyen & Roth explains why some forms of pollution are not the fault of the Global South. They posit that pollution is not produced by a group of individuals, but rather, produced by socioeconomic systems that contribute to the making of waste and encourages wasting. They focus more on the plastic pollution in oceans, and how many news headlines tend to sensationalize who to blame. These questions listed above are widely discussed in academia. This article by Bello sums up the environmental movement against pollution and other harmful activities in the Global South.
I encourage you to watch this video from the World Health Organization, because it explains to you the recent initiative set up less than a year ago.
You can read this link which summarizes the video pretty succinctly. You can also refer to this article to see another smaller-scale example of communities trying to fight pollution on their own. If you click on the hyperlink, you will be directed to a brief summary of pollution done by Harting, and her insights on the Clean Air Toolbox, which is a project that aims to help many poor countries grapple with pollution.
Up next, what lies ahead. See you in the next one! ✿
World Health Organization (WHO) (2021) LIVE: Launch of the WHO Global Air Quality Guidelines with Dr Tedros. 22 September. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiO5V4ZZRwI [Accessed: 4 April 2022].
Hi everyone! This is an entirely unplanned post (again) because I stumbled across a super interesting video on Youtube! It’s not relevant to countries in the Global South, but I find the need to comment on it.
As you can see, the video does not emphasize how this could be a way for the Global South to manage pollution. The video is focused on encouraging people worldwide to donate their hair, so that hair mats can be made, to clear oil spills, which are sources of water pollution.
It is heartening to know that the patent was not renewed, so that more people around the world who feel inspired can imitate the project, and tackle water pollution in their own ways. As students of GE4237, we know that water pollution is not limited to the pollution we visibly see on the water surface, but also the invisible contaminants hidden within the water body. As such, this may not an effective pollution management strategy.
However, I believe that if oil spills are managed in this way, rather than through the use of chemicals or other environmentally harmful methods that we have learnt in the seminar in week 5, we can protect more ocean life.
It may not help countries in the Global South that much, but it would be interesting to see how such a venture can be played out in such countries. Have you heard of these hair mats before reading this post? I certainly didn’t!
Hi everyone! This is another unplanned post I thought I could do since it’s recess week! I hope all of you are taking the time to rest, but also catch up on your assignments and submissions. On today’s post, I thought I could summarize some of the things I’ve noticed from doing research on the countries I have covered so far.
As mentioned by Larr & Neidel (2016), many countries that are going through rapid development often witness higher levels of pollution than countries that are already developed. These countries are mainly countries in the Global South. Also, equatorial regions are more likely to see warmer environmental conditions as a result of climate change. These regions tend to be homes to a much greater share of the poor nations of the Global South.
Children tend to suffer the most from pollution. Almost all the impacts of the main types of pollution (air, water, and land) affect their neurodevelopment, cognitive functioning, behaviour, and mental health. As argued by Perera (2017), unless our leaders act forcefully right now, the children of today and tomorrow will inherit an unsustainable world that lacks the ecological resources and social stability to support them. This is what Perera terms environmental injustice – the heavy health and economic burden brought by pollution fall disproportionately on the poor and the young, especially those from the Global South. They are the most vulnerable to the impacts of toxic pollutants.
This is a relatively short post but I just thought that I needed to include these reflections I made somewhere. That’s it for today’s post. Up next, my usual posts. See you in the next one! ✿
References
Larr, A.S. & Neidell, M. (2016) Pollution and Climate Change. The Future of Children. 26 (1), 93-113.
Perera, F. (2017) Pollution from Fossil-Fuel Combustion is the Leading Environmental Threat to Global Paediatric Health and Equity: Solutions Exist. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 15 (1), 16.
Hi everyone! On today’s second post of the week, let’s look at the group of people we will be learning about the following weeks. Where did the term Global South come from? Are countries included in this region from the Southern Hemisphere? Why do we need to learn more about them? Why study pollution in this region than in its counterpart, the Global North?
A simple search on Google will be able to give you a list of countries in the region. Countries in the Global South come from all parts of the earth, such as the African continent, South and Latin America, the Arab states, as well as Asia and the Pacific. The term explains the dominance countries in the Global North have over the Global South. Many scholars tend to interchangeably use the term with other terms such as the Third World or developing countries. These countries face various socio-economic and political issues more acutely than countries in the Global North (e.g. poverty, population growth, war, disease, and more) (Dados & Connell, 2012). In this blog, I plan to uncover how 11 different countries from the Global South grapple with pollution. These include Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Fiji, Haiti, Indonesia, Madagascar, Mongolia, Pakistan, Ukraine, and Vietnam.
Without paying much attention to what was being said in the video, any person would be able to grasp the severity of pollution in the Global South, just by viewing the grounded reality and experiences of these marginalized people. These countries do not have the capacity to manage pollution and prevent it from happening because they are grappling with other pressing issues. To make matters worse, different countries in the Global South face various forms of pollution, that vary in terms of how they are measured, and how they affect societies and their environments. For example, some countries measure air pollution by counting the number of particles, like dust and mould, that are 10 micrometers in diameter. Other countries focus on counting fine particles from combustion and metals that are 2.4 micrometers in diameter. The differences in measuring air quality exemplifies how pollution is interpreted and managed differently.
In each week, I will be summarizing insights from academic papers and attaching videos like the one today, so that we can engage more attentively with the serious issues faced by the countries I previously mentioned. I am excited to share with you all that I will discover during my research.
