There are far too many reports of environmental injustice suffered here and around the world. Governments can be the problem and even when it can be the solution, lawmakers tied up with corporate interests deny real remedies for years. As Martin Luther King, Jr. stated so eloquently, we don't have to remain in neutral waiting for governments to take action. All it takes is one person who believes we are joined in "an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny" to reach out to others. It is just one person who stood up to provide access to potable water to tens of thousands, two people who succeeded in protecting indigenous lands from corporate eco rapists, one person who introduced functional bamboo bikes to villages and just one person who decided the people needed a simple device to monitor corporate polluters.
Nearly 1.1 billion people or 20% of our global population do not have access to safe drinking water supplies that ends up killing almost 4,500 children each day. One bartender decided to take action by helping to turn wine into water in the developing world.
That something is Wine to Water, Hendley's organization that provides clean water to people in developing countries through funds raised at wine tasting events.
Since 2004, Hendley has traveled to Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda and Cambodia, working with local communities to build clean water wells and sanitation systems.
Hendley's project focuses on digging wells and constructing water-purification systems for remote villages that don't have access to clean water. Thus far Henley's project has provided potable water to 26,500 people with the construction of over 110 wells and household filtration systems. (Video at CNN.)
He also seeks to inform Americans about the gravity of this water crisis because not having access to water is something most do not experience:
We might know what it’s like to be hungry or to have a debilitating disease or to be homeless. But anyone in this country, no matter how poor, whether you’ve lost loved ones or lost your job or are a bum on the street with nothing to your name, you can still walk into the nearest public restroom, turn on the tap and get clean water. We have no idea what it’s like to walk four miles every day to get water and know that it still might kill your child when you bring it back. It’s not that we in Western culture are purposely ignoring it; it’s just not something we think about because it’s something we’ve never had to face.
To donate, host a wine to water event or learn more, please click here. Or, buy your wine from a winery or distributor that donates a portion of their sales to Turning Wine Into Water.
Another injustice happens when companies steal natural resources from the traditional lands of indigenous peoples. Suriname allowed industries to extract natural resources (trees, mine exploration) from the tropical forests on the traditional lands used for shelter, food and life without local consent. Wanze Eduards and Hugo Jabini, Saramaka members of a Maroon community that are descendants of African slaves, organized their communities to successfully fight back against the logging.
To obtain justice, the communities created the Association of Saramaka Authorities (ASA), which then filed a petition with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). IACHR issued recommendations that did stop development on an interim basis but the Suriname government failed to stop all projects. So, the IACHR filed a claim with the Inter-American court, a legal entity that includes membership by Suriname. The court issued an order mandating legal recognition of "their rights to manage, distribute, and effectively control such territory, in accordance with their customary laws and traditional collective land tenure system." The Suriname government finally stopped logging and mining operations to implement this judgment. Every development project now requires prior, informed consent from the people.
Bamboo bikes provided a solution in developing countries for the transportation of water, people, food and other material as the imported steel bikes are not built for rough roads. The bamboo is strong and has "excellent vibration-dampening properties, making it comfortable for riding over long distances."
The other problem is in the developing world, especially in countries throughout Africa, where people rely on bicycles as a primary form of transportation—but where the bicycles they buy are Chinese imports modeled on bikes used for smooth-road leisure riding. We started thinking about the possibility of people building their own bikes, more suited for use on rough roads, using locally grown bamboo. Instead of supporting Chinese industry, these workers could invest their earnings into their own communities, building them from the ground up.
Craig Calfee taught this group of young men how to build their own bamboo bikes that can take a week to build by hand. The construction of bamboo bikes in the community with local raw material also provides a new business of skilled employment for their economy. Bamboo bike construction is also not conducive to large factories and this "keeps large industrialized countries from getting into the business and competing on an unfair level." The builders are now taking orders to construct Mountain bikes and Cargo bikes. And, now some will be constructed in these communities for sale in the U.S.
Another eco injustice is the corporate polluters sickening and killing people. Remember the film Erin Brockovich? Edward Masry was the lawyer and he became ill when exposed to fumes from a petroleum refinery yet the government claimed that their monitors did not detect any problems. Masry was outraged that his clients were exposed to these toxic releases.
Masry responded by hiring an engineer to create an economical device (bucket) that communities could use (brigade) to monitor levels of toxins. It is a simple device of a "five-gallon bucket equipped with a sturdy plastic bag and a hand-held vacuum pump" that has been approved by the EPA.
This bucket provides power to the community to take air samples to prove violations when there are "strange odors, particles clouding up windows, and high rates of respiratory illness" that industry and government ignore. The community take the air samples that are analyzed at a lab and then the data is used as evidence against the polluters. The Louisiana Bucket Brigade (LBB) this month reported that "frequent accidents at 10 of the state's biggest refineries resulted in the release of millions of pounds of toxic chemicals into the air and millions of gallons of polluted water into state water courses between 2005 and 2008." Oil refineries think that automated phone calls to neighboring families to "turn off their air-conditioning system when the refinery had an accident requiring a large release of sulfur dioxide" is sufficient remedial action. Communities now can show their disagreement by collecting evidence that has been used to compel justice and was "instrumental in a successful federal lawsuit."
The bucket brigades have now spread in the U.S. and around the world.
These few examples show how one person can take action that may reap real justice for thousands.
EcoJustice series discuss environmental justice, or the disproportionate impacts on human health and environmental effects on minority communities in the U.S. and around the world. All people have a human right to clean, healthy and sustainable communities.
Almost 4 decades ago, the EPA was created partially in response to the public health problems caused in our country by environmental conditions, which included unhealthy air, polluted rivers, unsafe drinking water and waste disposal. Oftentimes, the answer has been to locate factories and other pollution-emitting facilities in poor, culturally diverse, or minority communities.
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