ENVIRONMENT: Taking Aim at MDG Targets

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Marina Penderis

JOHANNESBURG, Mar 17 2006 (IPS) - Halving the number of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and sanitation, improving the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers…The targets for the seventh United Nations Millennium Development Goal (MDG) sound impressive.

This MDG focuses on ensuring environmental sustainability. Eight goals were adopted by the international community at the U.N. Millennium Summit, held in 2000, in a bid to raise living standards around the globe by 2015.

They also include eradicating extreme hunger and poverty, achieving universal primary education, promoting gender equality – and reducing child mortality. In addition, there are MDGs for improving maternal health, combating disease, and developing partnerships to tackle issues such as unfair trade rules, and the need for decent employment opportunities for the youth.

However, Muna Lakhani, a member of the South-Africa based environmental action group, Earthlife Africa, has concerns about the targets for MDG seven – and indicators used to measure progress towards these targets. In an interview with Marina Penderis, he warned they could do more harm than good.

MP: What do you believe needs to happen over the next ten years to achieve the MDG for environmental sustainability?

ML: The most urgent need in the short term is to rewrite the indicators for the MDGs. The goals themselves are good, but the current indicators do not necessarily benefit people. In some cases they can even exacerbate the problem.

When it comes to the MDG relating to environmental sustainability, one of the indicators is the proportion of land area covered by forest. A forest can be alien, mono-crop, (planted with) commercial trees: you can just suck the environment dry if it is not mixed, indigenous forest.

We talk about halving, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and sanitation. But, but what does “access” mean? Just because someone lives somewhere where there is clean, piped water does not mean they can afford to pay for it.

In South Africa improved sanitation typically means ventilated pit toilets. These count towards the MDGs, but they must be cleaned every year. Many local governments cannot clean them. That means people have safe sanitation for a year and inadequate toilets after that.

MP: Are there innovative and cost-efficient methods of bringing sanitation to poor communities which are not being used?

ML: There are many existing, economically-viable options. One example is the urine diversion toilet. It looks like a normal toilet, but has two compartments. Urine goes into the one container and is used as a fertilizer. Faeces are held back and are sprinkled with sawdust. The toilet is well-ventilated, so it does not smell.

When that vault is full, you move to a second vault. Within six months or less, depending on weather conditions, the faeces will have become high-grade compost. By the time you have filled one vault the next one will be ready for use again.

The idea that flush toilets are the best is a type of mental colonisation. We believe we have only “arrived” if we have a flush toilet, because that is what white people have. That is why in the Western Cape (province, of South Africa) protestors recently held up placards saying “We want flush toilets now”…The easiest way to address that is to pass a bylaw saying no more flush toilets, giving everyone three years to convert all current flush toilets.

MP: Various African countries – notably those around the Nile – have been reported as being at loggerheads over scarce water resources. Realistically speaking, is there enough water to go around in Africa at present?

ML: I absolutely believe there is. If you consider current usage of water, little goes to the people. The vast majority goes to industries that are more inefficient than those in the North, because of relatively thin environmental legislation. It is possible to address this.

MP: What considerations – political and financial, for instance – are standing in the way of addressing environmental sustainability?

ML: There is an economic myth in the minds of politicians and decision-makers that you cannot have economic growth without pollution. The message that goes with that is: “If you want to give people jobs, you have to have pollution.”

Another stumbling block in Africa is that we sometimes have a lack of belief in our own ability and judgment. That must change. We may be black and poor, but we are not stupid.

Further, the idea that overpopulation is the biggest environmental threat is the biggest load of racist hogwash. The North houses 25 percent of the population, but they use 80 percent of the reserves. An Indian child only causes one fiftieth of the environmental degradation that a child in the United States causes.

Surely too many rich people are the threat to the environment, not too many poor people?

MP: Do you believe the MDG for ensuring environmental sustainability will be reached?

ML: No. The lack of political will and the skewing of resources diminish the chance of success. I am sorry to say that, but if we do not question underlying assumptions, such as those I mentioned earlier, we will not ensure environmental sustainability.