Solutions

“More and more and higher-level technology” is heralded as the way that the human population will eventually get itself out of the global troubles it has wreaked. Under-researched genetically modified seeds to be sold to poor rural farmers in India; financially, socially and environmentally expensive Three Dams Project in China; and ethically dubious biofuel alternatives made in order to stem the toxic air pollution of the global transport industry. Each high-tech solution has its merits and its downfalls, of course, but do we always need to be looking forward or could we learn something from our ancestors? Read More »

Meat production is thirsty business. Do you know much water do you eat? INESAD’s latest inforgraphic provides some real food for thought. Did you know, for example that a beef burger takes 2,400 litres of water to produce, compared to 170 litres for a vegetarian burger.

Imagine yourself in a different world. You wake up on an ordinary sunny weekend morning like any other and go shopping for a birthday gift for your mum. You go to her favourite high street retailer and find the perfect looking present, a beautiful silk shawl. You look for the price, but instead of a normal price tag indicator, you find a fold out label like THIS. What would you pay?

Do you think that changing our shopping environments would encourage more ethics, responsibility and sustainability? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Ioulia Fenton leads the food and agriculture research stream at the Center for Economic and Environmental Modeling and Analysis (CEEMA) at INESAD. 

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Noah Marwil, Latin America Regional Director of Pencils of Promise(PoP) shares his views on working with indigenous Guatemalan communities where ‘communities’ as such do not really exist.

This past July, Adam Braun, the founder and Executive Director of Pencils of Promise (PoP), wrote a piece for the Huffington Post reflecting on the recent Greg Mortenson controversy. Comparing the PoP approach to that of CAI’s, Adam speaks to the type of support education projects need beyond construction and proclaims that CAI’s shortcomings “should serve as a rallying call to invest more heavily in school support and sustainability.”

As the Pencils of Promise Latin America Regional Director I know all too well how true this statement is. Read More »

There is more to life than money and by now it is well established that gross domestic product (GDP) is an inadequate measure of development. It allows for a crude assessment of economic activity within a country, but does not account for side effects known as externalities. These include environmental destruction and pollution, human lives lost in other countries from the development and sales of weapons technologies or negative effects on health of products and technologies that otherwise make money and therefore contribute to GDP. Furthermore, negative contributions of products developed by tobacco, weapons and other companies all count towards a positive GDP figure, further diminishing the emphasis we should place on it as an indicator of human progress. Read More »

Thomas Hart has been called ‘a fine example of a “citizen of the world”’* and an expert on traditional Maya practices having lived, worked and studied in Guatemala for the best part of two decades. Thomas is an anthropologist at heart and has consolidated his vast knowledge in his book “The Ancient Spirituality of the Modern Maya”. He works for a British NGO called Health, Poverty, Action and as a guest roaster shares with us some potential solutions to high maternal mortality rates in Guatemala**.

Comadronas, Guatemala’s Traditional Birth Attendants (TBAs), are community midwives who are estimated to deliver up to 90% of births in rural Guatemala. Their relationship with the Ministry of Health has been a complicated one. In many communities, they have been derided by health professionals as uneducated (they sometimes are), illiterate (they sometimes are) and even superstitious (for practicing their own indigenous culture). As such they have served as convenient scapegoats for high maternal mortality rates, which are estimated to be twenty times higher in developing nations (1). Read More »

“Forty-five, maybe fifty, I don’t remember anymore,” seventy one year old Juan Chúl Yaxon tells me through a warming toothless chuckle that causes his leathery skin to crease around his eyes as we talk about his grandchildren. “If they study, they get lazy and do not want to work. There is no use for someone who has an education title but no land or job… and the women, they should cook and do housework.”

Juan makes his assertions over the noisy hustle and bustle of market day in Sololá, the capital of a district of the same name, half an hour North of the volcano-lined lake Atitlán. The plaza of this small rural Guatemalan city  is overwhelmingly filled with tipica- (traditionally-) clad indigenous faces curiously watching our interaction. In his eyes, his five sons and three daughters are better off working the land on their family finca. He wants his grandchildren to follow suit. Read More »

“I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it”
 Thomas Jefferson

Between the determinism of religion and the randomness of everyday life, anybody should be able to find an excuse for taking it easy, going with the flow, and relax on a Sunday afternoon. Indeed, our lives are to a large extent determined by random events (or God’s unpredictable will), and effort may seem pointless, especially if the odds are discouraging.  

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