So Long, and Thanks for All the Injustice

So, apparently the world’s ending today. Maybe it’ll all end up looking like this? On the upside, it’ll make things a lot simpler for landscape photographers, because you won’t end up with people barging into your frame, or unwanted vehicles, or anthropometric clutter, or people telling you to stop standing in their field.

Also, the skiing will be killer without all those lift-lines. Especially for those of us smart enough to preposition ourselves with seal-skins and randonée bindings.

Okay, so maybe it isn’t. NASA‘s certainly pretty adamant that it will be a very ordinary Winter Solstice for most of us. In fact, Dr Karl Kruszelnicki presents my personal favourite quote on the whole conversation about theories the world will end today:

On the 21st of December, inconveniently only two shopping days before Christmas the Mayan calendar will click over. But to say the world will end is like saying today’s date is the 29th and therefore your cut lunch will turn into a shoe. That’s how rational and logical it is.

However, for some of us, it will be the end of the world. In a very personal sense, for some of us, our world will end: We will die today. In fact, around 70 million people die each year, which means 190-odd thousand people are going to die today. It is a part of the world we live in. Most of these deaths are natural, just a part of growing older and moving on. For friends and family members, this is often a time of grief, although can also be a time of celebration for a life well lived, under gracious circumstances.

For many people, though, their world will end too quickly. Far sooner than it ought. Their deaths are preventable, in as far as contemporary science and medicine are concerned, but due to a range of injustices- many of them economic, some of them social, others political- they will not have access to the services and technology that might have saved their lives. For example, today:

Roughly 13,000 of us around the world will die because we don’t have access to clean drinking water or sanitation facilities. We will get diseases, most involving diarrhoea and vomiting, dehydrate and die.

Around 1,800 of us will die of malaria, just a small portion of those who will die from a long list of preventable diseases. Around 3,800 children under five will die from vaccine-preventable diseases alone today, and 4,900 people will die of AIDS.

As many as 98,000 people in the world today- as much as half the daily total- will die from causes related to hunger and malnutrition- including that deadly interplay of malnutrition, unclean water and disease.

You get the picture. And that’s just today. Tomorrow, the same thing will happen, the same number, roughly, will die. And the day after that. And the day after that, too.

We have the resources to stop these deaths. And we’re doing it. In terms of disease control especially. With the right regime of drugs, nutrition support and care, HIV/AIDS is no longer the death sentence it used to be. Child mortality in Africa has recently been noted to have fallen significantly, as this widely-acknowledged piece in the Economist from May this year points out:

16 of the 20 African countries which have had detailed surveys of living conditions since 2005 reported falls in their child-mortality rates (this rate is the number of deaths of children under five per 1,000 live births). Twelve had falls of over 4.4% a year, which is the rate of decline that is needed to meet the millennium development goal (MDG) of cutting by two-thirds the child-mortality rate between 1990 and 2015 (see chart). Three countries—Senegal, Rwanda and Kenya—have seen falls of more than 8% a year, almost twice the MDG rate and enough to halve child mortality in about a decade.

Access to clean water is improving in many parts of the world (though in other parts of the world it is falling as water sources become increasingly polluted or used for agricultural production), and emergency interventions by the World Food Program, NGOs and Governments keep millions of people alive each year. We know that world has enough food resources to feed everybody- in fact, we’re producing 17% more food per person today than we were 30 years ago, and that’s despite a 70% population increase (or a good hefty 3 billion-or-so people)- a total of over 2,700 kcal per person per day, enough to sustain the world at the recommended level for adult males in the USA (2,700 kcal, versus females at 2,200 kcal), and well above the recognized average minimum requirement of 1,800 kcal.

We have the resources. The problem is distribution. Which in turn is an issue, as Amartya Sen, the Nobel-prize winning economist pointed out long ago now, of entitlements. In short, power, and will.

There have been many victories in the journey towards solving some of these problems. We still have a long way to go. The situation remains unacceptable. And we’re facing an uphill struggle in many areas. The increasing extremes and erratic nature of global climate patterns are having a direct and tangible impact on marginal communities around the world, and will exacerbate both hunger and water issues, especially in sub-Saharan Africa and large swathes of Asia. As industrialization and technology become increasingly available in poorer, populous parts of the world, demand for unsustainable lifestyles is increasing, resulting in dissatisfaction and the risk of extremism and violence. Industrialization and the intensification of agriculture is reducing the supply of clean water available to maintain healthy people even as water facilities are rolled out to higher and higher portions of the world’s population.

In short, this isn’t a problem with a fixed horizon. This is a constantly moving equation, one that requires continual recalibration.

We won’t fix it today. We won’t fix it tomorrow. But we need to try.

As you head into the Christmas period, I don’t expect us to save the world. But I do ask that we consider the question of what we can contribute to make the planet immediately around us a little better. Is what we’re purchasing really necessary? Has it come from a place of injustice, like the technology used in cell phones contributing to conflict in the DRC, or will its disposal simply add more non-biodegradable poison to the planet? Is there something I can do to help people far away who are not able to meet their basic needs, whose world could well end in the near future despite the human race having the potential to stop it? Or is there somebody closer to home who I could support? Only each of us as individuals can answer these questions. But I’d like to think that this season, this Silly Season of over the top purchases and wild conspiracies about the end of the world, is far better represented by asking these questions honestly of ourselves, and then acting.

Shalom, Salaam, Peace (for those of you without a Babel Fish). Merry Christmas, and see you on the other side of the Apocalypse.

Photo: Burning rubbish tip outside Bahir Dar, Amhara Region, Ethiopia

Dear Santa…

It’s Christmas tomorrow. Cue M. bursting into our bedroom at 7am (not unusual for a Saturday) to announce excitedly that Santa Claus would be visiting tonight. Santa & Mrs. Claus were less enthusiastic about the early morning announcement, but we get it. We were six once too. In the meantime, there’s fairy lights on the Christmas tree and draped all up the staircase, a small but growing pile of wrapped gifts on the living room floor, and the girls are planning on making a gingerbread house this afternoon.

Except for the tinsel and a reduced staff load, however, you wouldn’t know it’s Christmas at work. Humanitarian life goes on. If anything, this week’s been a doozy. I got back Monday night from a brief visit to Dili, Timor Leste, to do some planning ahead of next year’s elections, and my week hasn’t really stopped since.

In the West African countries of Chad, Niger, Mali, Mauritania and Burkina Faso, there’s a growing food crisis. Really it’s just an extension of the chronic food insecurity and malnutrition that exists across much of the region. Fragile economies, unreliable rainfall, deteriorating soils, climate change, population pressure, feeding practices, access to clean water and health care- in brief, a whole host of reasons- all make rural populations highly vulnerable to any shocks in their livelihood production systems. While the indicators for the coming season across the region as a whole are not all bad, and while there isn’t the threat of widespread emergency or famine as in the Horn of Africa this year, but regardless millions of people (around 6 millions of them) in pockets in all five of those countries are going to struggle to feed themselves. The hunger season- traditionally beginning any time between February (in a bad year) and May and running until the harvest in September, has already begun in places, with some households out of food already, and some child deaths reported. Niger is still recovering from a difficult year in 2010, and 2012 is likely to see elevated rates of malnutrition and, realistically, the likelihood of significant numbers of child deaths if relief efforts are not stepped up.

The food security outlook for Sudan has been released this week by the USAID-sponsored Famine Early Warning System- the gospel when it comes to classifying global food shortages. It rates areas on a five-point scale (IPC- the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification)- No Food Insecurity, Stressed, Crisis, Emergency and Catastrophe. Large areas of western Sudan (Darfur) are forecast to be in Crisis (IPC level 3), while several areas- significantly those in ongoing conflict, particularly South Kordofan and Blue Nile- are anticipated to be at Emergency levels- levels similar to those seen across most of northern Kenya, Puntland and southern Somalia earlier this year.

And while on the subject of Sudan and conflict, tensions between Sudan and South Sudan (which earlier this year separated from Khartoum-led Sudan following a popular referendum) continue to escalate. Aerial bombardments of populations in disputed areas continue. Troop build-ups are reported. Pro-north militias in the south are allegedly forcibly recruiting southern Sudanese refugees in Khartoum and making them fight against the south. MSF reports large-scale displacements. While the food security outlook for South Sudan is less alarming than for Sudan, the combination of unpredictable population movement and the increasing indicators that large-scale conflict is likely are major concerns over the coming months.

If there’s good news to be found in sub-Saharan Africa right now, it is in the Horn of Africa, where rains have started to bring about an improvement in the drought and famine over the past couple of months. Grazing pasture is reported to be returning, which will support pastoralists, while wells are replenishing and food will soon be able to be grown in some areas. The UN has declassified some areas of Somalia from Famine (Catastrophe) to Emergency, and humanitarian support has been credited with having had a significant impact in this area. That said, huge portions of the Horn of Africa remain in very serious food crisis, and some populations still remain at Catastrophe (IPC Level 5) levels, particularly areas around Mogadishu and with high IDP populations. In addition, while the rains have improved some conditions, they have worsened others, making runways unusable by relief flights, bogging down overland trips which now take three days in place of one, and, most serious of all, spreading Acute Watery Diarrhoea (AWD) which has been credited with hundreds of deaths in recent weeks among Somali IDPs. We won’t talk about the security situation, which continues to simmer at the very most unstable end of the spectrum, with troops from Kenya and Ethiopia engaged in de facto unilateral action against al Shabab militants, who in turn appear to be strengthening ties with global terror networks like al Qaeda, and continue to destabilize the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and the Africa Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM). 3 Somali aid workers were killed in Somalia yesterday, motive as yet unreported.

Leaving the African continent, more than forty thousand people have been impacted by heavy rains in northern Sri Lanka this week. The districts of Kilinochchi, Mulaitivu and Jaffna have all been hit by moderate flooding, with the government calling on local NGOs to respond. The past eighteen months have seen northern Sri Lanka slowly being rebuilt in the wake of a thirty-year civil war that saw twenty thousand reportedly die in the early months of 2009 alone, and as such is an immensely fragile area. More heavy rain is forecast.

Heavy rain this week in the Philippines also triggered tragedy in Mindinao, in the southern Philippines, when flash floods tore through several areas during the night. A thousand dead have been recovered, and the government reports another thousand remain unaccounted for. The Philippines sees death and destruction on an annual basis at the hands of powerful storm systems, like Typhoon Ketsana in 2009 that caused extensive damage in Manila. This however remains one of the deadliest events in recent years.

Even closer to home, a storm system is building off the north coast of Australia and is due to make landfall on Boxing Day some hundred kilometres east of Darwin as a Category Two tropical cyclone, with the potential for damage. And yesterday, two large, shallow aftershocks struck Christchurch- where nearly 200 people lost their lives earlier this year and large portions of the city were destroyed- triggering fear and distressing memories for many folks living there.

Papua New Guinea’s government remains in a state of considerable uncertainty as two senior politicians- Sir Michael Somare and Peter O’Neill- face off over disputed leadership, with the threat of unrest and violence a major concern. President Laurent Kabila’s victory in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s polls has been confirmed by the courts, but criticized by international observers and denounced by political rivals. Police action in that country has lead to the deaths of over two dozen people in recent days, and the country remains under scrutiny to see whether further political violence will spiral out. Iraq has experienced a massive series of coordinated terror attacks in the wake of the US pullout of troops, with its government split along sectarian lines as Vice President al-Hashemi is accused of ties with terrorism and a looming threat of spiralling civil violence. Syria’s internal conflict has stepped up a notch, with a powerful and sophisticated car bomb targeting security forces and civilians in Damascus killing 44 people and injuring scores more. Drug-related violence continues in Mexico at a rate rivalling that of many civil wars, while concerns over insecurity in Afghanistan in the face of a US troop drawdown there in 2012 are increasing, given ongoing levels of insurgency across the country and a fragile, divided state government. A recent leak claims that Pakistan’s government fears a coup by the military is on the cards.

You could say things are busy right now.

I don’t write this to be a downer, or guilt you out, or anything else. Christmas is a time for celebration, for remembering those people and values in your life that are important, for those of us with faith to celebrate what we believe to be a pivotal gift to human kind, and to be close to the ones you love. For me, however, the values of being a humanitarian- remembering those people who are in need in a wide range of ways- is central to reflecting on this season which can be so materialistic, shallow and self-focused. It’s an opportunity for me to take a look around, take a breath, get some perspective, and reflect on what I can do to make the world around me a better place- starting with my family and working outwards from there.

Friend, fellow humanitarian & social media-ite @richendag, who works for INGO World Vision, posted this letter that the Grade 2 daughter of one of their supporters wrote in class for Santa Claus a couple of weeks ago.

If that’s a little unclear, it reads:

Dear Santa,

This year I have tried hard in school, helped mum clean the house tidy, and made new friends. All I really would like is the Kenya people to have a home and something to eat and drink please. Right now they are probably eating dirt. Thank you. Love from Lauren.

Nuff said really. She gets it. You go, Lauren.

Tonight, M. asked if Santa Claus was going to be visiting all the kids in the world, even the ones in places I go and visit when I travel for work. We had to tell her that no, Santa doesn’t visit all the kids in the world, that there are some kids who miss out at Christmas. At bed time, she reflected sadly that it wasn’t right that Santa didn’t visit some of the sick kids. With luck, she’s on her way to getting it too.

Merry Christmas all of you, and rich blessings to friends, family and loved ones for 2012.

 

The Road Ahead

Photo Notes: Shot taken paying close attention to potential traffic on a quiet stretch of highway half an hour east of Launceston, Tasmania.  Wide-angle (24mm at full-frame) with polarizer taken at partial crouch angled down with vanishing-point at centre of frame.  Slightly underexposed (EV -2/3) and processed for high contrast/saturation, increased vignetting and high blacks.  I was looking for a road like this one all trip long and only found a couple of places where the road straightened up and there was a nice high vantage (in this point a slight rise in the landscape) that gave a good perspective to create the sense of vanishing, depth and movement.

One for the Roads

I like roads.

I like roads for lots of reasons. Usually, they’re going somewhere, so if I’m on them, that means I am too. I particularly like roads across remote areas, because that means I’m in a remote area. They also look great. And in nice wild areas, they’re often really straight, too, which makes them look great as part of a landscape.

These are a few I’ve seen in the last few years, at various times.

The one at top was one of the first of this sort of shot I attempted. It was too good not to try, really. It’s taken in Flinders country, a few hours north of Port Augusta on the way up towards the Oodnadatta Track in the South Australian Outback. The next one is also from SA, but a different stretch of road very close to Port Augusta, set in attractive farmland near the Remarkables, a small range of picturesque hills not to be mistaken for the mountain range by the same name in New Zealand.

This shot is from Route 66 in California- I like the low wide perspective.

The one below is from Death Valley National Park. It’s an awesome stretch of black-top not far from Stovepipe Wells and the Mesquite Dunes- a fantastic strip to cruise if ever there was one.

This one is also from Death Valley- and from the heart of the valley, too, near the salt flats and one of the world’s lowest points above-ground below sea-level (if that makes any sense). It was also quite warm.

And this one is also Death Valley- on the way in to the park from the south. I like how the road just keeps going and going into the landscape.

I love this shot (which you may have seen before) of the North Coast Road in Madang Province, northern Papua New Guinea. The North Coast Road was one of only two sealed roads in Madang. From Madang you could head south and east, where the roads split, one towards Morobe Province and Lae, and the other towards Eastern Highlands Province and Goroka. Or you could head north, where the North Coast Road ran along the coastline for three hours, linking small villages until it hit the town of Bogia, at it’s far end. From there, it deteriorated into an unsealed road, and grew progressively rougher and rougher until it hit the swampy terrain around the Ramu River, and stopped altogether. From there, it was canoes only. There were no interior roads save for some violently rough four-wheel-drive tracks running like fluke-mines straight into the hills. Madang remains one of the poorest and least accessible parts of what is predominately a poor and inaccessible island. The North Coast Road is, however, a stunning drive, and was one of the highlights of working in Madang, with alternating views of spectacular tropical coastline, lush green hills, deep overhanging forest, and the idyllic little gardens and thatched housing of small hamlets along the way. (Note: Most of the way, the road was not this smooth!)

These two are a little more recent and both taken from Western Australia. The first is a highway between the Stirling Ranges and the Porongorups which I snapped one sleeping Sunday morning on an early photo-drive on my way to find a windmill. The second shows a sealed road running through the Stirling Ranges themselves, a great drive if ever you get the chance, with striking views of the mountains and a real sense of open, untouched wilderness.

No more road-trips on the horizon for me just yet, but I’m always on the lookout for an attractive road shot while cruising around, so I’ll hopefully have some more for my portfolio before too long.

Today

Today a man died and the world watched. He captivated the world’s imagination first through his talent, and later through his increasingly bizarre persona, and the chronic secrecy with which he veiled himself. By the end of the day there will barely be anybody in the Western world who won’t have heard this news, and probably not a great number of people in other parts of the world either. People will say many things about him in public. Most will be nice, and will overlook the sordid. Some will be sarcastic and unkind. I may even sitfle a snicker at some of these. There will be mountains of flowers, cards and weeping fans. There will be memorial services, and his music will be played ad nauseum for the next couple of weeks. People may remember but will not talk much about the fact that he was accused of inappropriate relationships with children, that he was an emotionally and socially damaged individual, and that he has forced his own three children to live largely as reclusive prisoners throughout their childhood. People may reflect on the fact that he too had his childhood taken from him at an early age, in an industry where a talented and precocious child will be swallowed whole and destroyed without the slightest twinge of concience.

Today, about thirty thousand men, women and children will succomb to complications of the AIDS virus, a disease which effectively disables a person’s immune system, leaving them vulnerable to any disease, however mundane, to invade their bodies and slowly break them down until their shell can no longer support life. Most of these people will die in underdeveloped portions of underdeveloped countries. Some of these people will die alone, in anonymity, or under a blanket of stigma associated with the disease. Some will receive a small memorial service and some flowers. The families of many will not be able to afford such things. Nobody beyond their immediate families and friends will know of their names, know where they are buried, or remember them. Their stories will never be told. The mark they left during their passage on earth will not be known.

Today, hundreds of people will be violently killed in tribal violence in Darfur, Southern Sudan, northern Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. They will die alone with the malice directed at them and their names and fates may never be discovered. Today dozens of people will die in shootings, bombings and air-raids in Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. We may hear of their fate as a footnote on our evening news report. Today, thousands of children under the age of five will die in Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso, and a dozen other sub-Saharan African nations because they don’t have access to a sufficiently nutritious diet, clean water, and public health care. The youngest may not even have names, and they may be remembered even by their parents as nothing more than a number. “I have six children, and three who died”.

Death is an inescapable part of the world we live in. It is a passage to something new. Some believe it marks the start of a journey to a second life, or to a rebirth here on this earth, and may find cause for hope. Others believe it is the end of the seething brew of cerebral chemical reactions that define who we are as people, and that our molecules simply return to the physical universe from which they were once bonded. The process of death itself may be painful, it may be frightening, sometimes it can even be beautiful. Mostly, when we mourn it, we mourn for ourselves who are left behind by it, and the loss we must move on with in our own lives.

Death brings cause for reflection. It is why we celebrate it with services and wakes, why people in offices across Australia and the rest of the world will make small-talk over coffee-machines and water-coolers about the passing of Mr. Jackson for the rest of Friday, and why, two weeks from now, we will be begging our news providers to please, for the love of all that is precious, stop talking about Michael Jackson.

And so my question for you today is this. What is it that makes the death of a single musician cause for global reflection? Why will one man be the subject of thousands of hours worth of broadcasting time, while the deaths of today’s 30,000 AIDS victims, or the hundreds of people who will die in violent warfare, or the thousands of children who will slowly succomb to disease, will probably not be mentioned? What does it say about our society, about our media, about the authority in our lives, and about our priorities, when we will remain comfortably oblivious to the death of innocents, but publically mourn the loss of a single man as though he represents something about us. A man who suffered terrible social and emotional problems. A man whose last two decades of life appeared, from the outside at least, to merit great sadness and pity in as much as they clearly drew scorn and harsh mockery. A man who probably placed the wellbeing of several children, including his own, in jeopardy. A man who, materially-speaking, had everything a human being could possibly have imagined or aspired to in wealth and fame, and yet lived in tragic isolation and died young. Is this man our spokesperson? Our role-model? Does he represent what is important in our culture? And is our inability to reflect on the suffering of thousands a symptom of ignorance? Of callousness? An unwillingness to be challenged to change? Or will we simply, as we do so often, shrug off the question and say, “yes, well, that’s just how big media is and we can’t expect them to change”?

I don’t write to criticise. I don’t mourn the death of Michael Jackson personally as, to me, he meant nothing. I felt sympathy for him while he lived, and I feel sympathy that by the time his life ended prematurely, there is little about him to suggest he had found peace. There is nothing here to gloat over or to celebrate. But I take it as an opportunity to reflect, as death has wont. Likewise, I don’t criticize people unaware of or unable to grapple with issues of international poverty and humanitarianism. This is my paradigm and I don’t inflict it on others. But I do encourage people to think, to challenge themselves, and to risk asking big questions and so expand their own horizons and ways of thinking.

Thank you.

Note: Many people who read this blog left comments on my Facebook profile a few weeks ago when I raised a similar, less wordy question about the crash of AF447. They were thoughtful, intelligent and measured, and for those responses I thank you.

The Threat of ‘Terrorism’

I think it would be fair to say it’s extremely difficult to turn on a major international news network without being bombarded with messages about terrorism. If it’s not news about a suicide bombing in Fallujah or Kandahar, then it’s an embassy being placed on high alert in Jakarta, a Special Operations raid in Bradford, or some new airport screening measure designed to keep us safe. It seems that everywhere we set our foot (especially those of us whose feet set us in some of the world’s more colourful locales), we’re facing imminent annihilation at the twitchy trigger-finger of some suicidal anarcho-islamo-socio-fascist with enough RDX to level a city block in his (and increasingly, her) back pocket.

I don’t really want to talk much more about that.  What I want to talk about is the threat posed by the notion of terrorism, and specifically, its misapplication.  Click here to read more…