In my post on consumerism there was this challenging comment made:
"Marc said " I know Jesus has provided me with what I need but not what I want. I don't really ask for much from God, forgiveness, Health & communication."
I am not knocking you Marc, but when I read this I thought hmmmm, what if it wasn’t replaced though? What if God doesn’t give you health & communication….. maybe we focus on consumerism too much as things outside of daily needs….. maybe wanting a happy healthy family is just as consumeristic?"
I am not knocking Marc either, what he wrote seemed perfectly reasonable to me and reminded me again about something that I had written in that post that I am as much in touch my consumerism as an alcoholic is with their drinking problem. Really how much is enough, what do I expect as a normal level of life? Well food to eat of course, an education that allows me to write this blog and earn a living, money to meet my bills and have a little left over, a house to call my own, access to health care when I need it, the ability to feel safe, to be under the rule of law & order, justice and good government. It is not much is it? Is it? Well consider below some of the stats of how my normal cosumer life compares with the rest of the world, let me compare how i eat, where i live, the prospects of education for my children and my access to health care and my corresponding life expectancy.
And as you read those words consider these lyrics to the Mike & the Mechanics song, Beggar on a beach of gold...
"I didn't know when I was lucky
Discontented feeling bad
Filled with envy
For possessions other people had
I found my pride had always hurt me
Fought the world to gain control
Not realising
I was sitting on a beach of gold
Oh lord I'm a poor man
With all the riches I can hold
I'm a beggar
And I'm sitting on a beach of gold.."
Causes of poverty are related to hunger, consider the following:
· Over 9 million people die worldwide each year because of hunger and malnutrition. 5 million are children.
· Approximately 1.2 billion people suffer from hunger (deficiency of calories and protein);
· Some 2 to 3.5 billion people have micronutrient deficiency (deficiency of vitamins and minerals);
· Yet, some 1.2 billion suffer from obesity (excess of fats and salt, often accompanied by deficiency of vitamins and minerals);
· Food wastage is also high:
o In the United Kingdom, “a shocking 30-40% of all food is never eaten;”
§ In the last decade the amount of food British people threw into the bin went up by 15%;
§ Overall, £20 billion (approximately $38 billion US dollars) worth of food is thrown away, every year.
o In the US40-50% of all food ready for harvest never gets eaten;
o The impact of this waste is not just financial. Environmentally this leads to:
§ Wasteful use of chemicals such as fertilizers and pesticides;
§ More fuel used for transportation;
§ More rotting food, creating more methane — one of the most harmful greenhouse gases that contributes to climate change.
· The direct medical cost of hunger and malnutrition is estimated at $30 billion each year.
>>Sources
A long and healthy life...?
There still remains a big gap in life expectancy between the west and the third world (blue high to red low)...
In part this is because according to the World Health Organisation's 2006 report:
· At least 1.3 billion people worldwide lack access to the most basic healthcare, often because there is no health worker.
· The shortage is global, but the burden is greatest in countries overwhelmed by poverty and disease where these health workers are needed most.
· Estimated shortage of almost 4.3 million doctors, midwives, nurses and support workers worldwide.
· 57 countries, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa have critical shortages. This region has 11% of the world's population and 24% of the global burden of disease but only 3% of the world's health workers.
· By way of contrast the Americas have 37% of health workers but only 10% of GBD.
School days can be the shortest of your life...?
More children are going to school than ever before, but many drop out before grade 5 of primary school or graduate without mastering even a minimum set of cognitive skills, according to the Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2005.
The Report finds that significant efforts are being made to increase resources, broaden access to school and improve gender parity. However, the low quality of education systems is failing children in many parts of the world, and could prevent many countries from achieving Education for All by the target date of 2015.
The Report also finds that:
· the highest numbers of out-of-school children are in Africa and South Asia – in sub-Saharan Africa, some countries record net enrolment ratios for primary education below 70% or even below 50%, and only a handful of countries have net enrolment ratios above 90%.
· there are still 103.5 million out-of-school children, of which 57% are girls. Ninety-six percent of out-of-school children live in developing countries, and three-quarters are concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa and South and West Asia.
· an average of 1.7 percent of primary students repeat a grade in the world’s richest countries; In the poorest, the average is 7.7 percent, with rates reaching nearly 20 percent in sub-Saharan Africa.
· less than 75 percent of students reach grade 5 of primary school in one-third of countries providing data. In Chad, for example, only one in three pupils starting school reaches the final grade.
- pupil/teacher ratios have actually risen in many countries of sub-Saharan Africa and South and West Asia , where education has expanded rapidly over the past decade. In most countries of these regions, the number of pupils per teacher exceeds 40 in primary education and climbs above 60 in several countries, including Malawi, Mozambique, Central African Republic and Chad.
· teachers do not meet even the minimum standards for the profession in many low-income countries. In Togo, for example, only two percent of teachers met the minimum national standard of lower secondary education. In Botswana, only 10 percent of teachers made the grade.
· teachers’ real wages have declined relative to average incomes and their earnings are too low to provide an acceptable standard of living in many low-income countries.
· just over eight out of ten adults (15 years and over) are literate, which means that globally there are 800 million illiterates. However, behind this figure lies great inequalities between the world’s regions – in South and West Asiafor example, more than four out of ten adults are illiterate.
· the HIV/AIDS pandemic is severely undermining the quality of education. In Zambia, for example, about 815 school teachers died from AIDS in 2000 – the equivalent of 45% of the teachers trained that year.
· education spending has increased over the past decade in many developing countries, and access to education continues to improve. However, it is estimated that an additional US$ 5.6 billion per year is required for achieving universal primary education by 2015. Currently international aid to basic education is estimated to be around US$1.5 billion (recent pledges potentially increasing this figure to US$ 3.5 bn).
A space, let alone a place, to lay your head...?
The words a generation ago of Barbara Ward, the author who popularized the term "Spaceship Earth", look as if they could have been written today: "In the world at large, the millions will be born. The settlements will grow-in squalor and violence, or in work and hope. The whole world-linked by its communications, its airlines, its hijackers and its terrorists-has really only one choice: to become a place worth living in or face 'the way to dusty death'. And where else do people live save in their settlements? So where else is the salvation to begin?" Her prophetic statement is borne out by the crux of the message from Vancouver 2006-that sustainable urbanization is arguably the greatest challenge facing the global community in the twenty-first century as "Spaceship Earth" spirals irreversibly into the urban era.
Key figures from UN-HABITAT give a measure of the urban crisis:
· Asia accounts for nearly 60 per cent of the world's slum population, with a total of 581 million slum dwellers in 2005, while sub-Saharan Africa had 199 million slum dwellers, constituting some 20 per cent of the world's total, and Latin America had 134 million, making up 14 per cent of the total.
· At the global level, 30 per cent of all urban dwellers lived in slums in 2005, a proportion that has not changed significantly since 1990. However, in the last 15 years the magnitude of the problem has increased substantially: 283 million more slum dwellers have joined the global urban population.
· About 156 million people in South Asia, 75 million in Africa and 49 million in Latin America live four or more persons to a room, thus increasing the chances of disease and domestic violence.
· Diseases arising from poor sanitation kill up to 1.6 million slum dwellers annually, more than the 2004 tsunami death toll.
· Urban health statistics show that 65 per cent of Indian hospital patients are treated for waterborne diseases. In Africa , slum dwellers spend a third of their income for treatment against these diseases.
· Africa, slum dwellers spend a third of their income for treatment against these diseases.
Source: UN-HABITAT, State of the World's Cities 2006/7
When is enough, enough?
So I ask myself the same Q as before, how much is enough? Is what I expect what everyone in the world should expect? How am I part of the problem, where do I fit into a system of oppression which focuses on not having enough, not being good enough, not being healthy, rich, smart enough...
And how much instead am I doing /being like the God who sent Jesus with a message of I love you enough, I care for you enough, I accept you enough...
how much am I willing to change sides, from a kingdom of consumption to a Kingdom of life, hope, care for the poor, the oppressed and the hurting? Will I just have some new interesting facts for my next dinner party... or will I follow this path of care and action?
Recent Comments