A Beautiful Dump

Singapore, which is located at the tip of the Malay Peninsula in Southeast Asia, is a small nation and when their landfill filled up in 1999 it needed to find a new place to dispose of its refuse. The limited amount of open space on land meant that Singapore had to create a place to dispose of its sold waste offshore. The Semakau landfill fulfills these disposal needs in a rather pleasant way. An 865-acre space offshore was divided into cells that could be used for solid waste disposal that had been incinerated on land. By incinerating the waste, all organic matter is destroyed and therefore there is little smell associated with the landfill. When a cell has been filled it is covered with soil, then grass and trees are planted and the landfill comes a park for visitors to enjoy.

By incinerating the trash, it cuts down the volume of solid waste by 90 percent. Many argue that the incineration defeats the purpose of a ‘greener’ landfill because of carbon emissions that are released from the incinerators, but today the emissions are sucked back into combustion chambers in the incineration plants. Also, trash that cannot be recycled or burnt is buried.

In order to ensure that the offshore landfill is not harming the surrounding waters and oceans, the waters are tested monthly surrounding the walls of Semakau. Semakau is home to many different species of birds and it is a park that is enjoyed by tourists and locals alike. It is estimated that Semakau will be able to take care of Singapore’s landfill needs until at least 2045.

Christian Science Monitor. It's a landfill - and an ecopark. Singapore’s only landfill is more like a recreation area than a dumping ground.

Source for previous blog:

Christian Science Monitor. http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0629/p25s01-litr.htm

Poorism: A preservation or commodification of culture?

An increasing number of tourists are visiting the poorest areas of different countries to experience how the other “five-sixths” of the world lives. The idea has come to be known as poorism and experts believe that it is not much more than just an excursion people take to see how poor the poor in other countries really are. However, there are people who seek out poverty in their travels so that they can help the locals by putting some cash in their hands, by buying their hand made products.

Unfortunately, these products are often not a traditional part of the culture of certain countries, but the locals produce new products that they know the tourists will buy. In Rwanada, Jeanne d’Arc Mukamurigo and her daughter weave bamboo into placemats, and although these placemats are not traditionally Rwandan, they know that the tourists will buy them. Therefore, locals are changing their traditions in order to supply the tourists with certain products.

Tourists also visit poor countries because “the economic poor are often culturally rich” and people seek what they feel they lack in their own countries. The townships of South Africa are some of the most popular destinations of poverty tourism in the world and tourists go there to get a sense of the devastation that apartheid left behind.

On the immediate side of things, poverty tourism helps those who live with next to nothing to make some extra money by selling their products to the tourists. However, the locals in poverty stricken areas are changing and commodifying their traditions so that they can sell to the tourists.

The Christian Science Monitor. June 29, 2009

The Fate of the World's Endangered Languages

Today, a growing number of languages are only spoken by the elders in certain communities and when they pass the languages die with them because they were never passed on to the younger generations.

In the past, countries such as America, Canada and Australia have forced the use of English on to people by taking native children away from their families and putting them in boarding schools. Also, in the British Isles, children were once punished for speaking their native languages. However, parents are also one of the reasons why native languages are lost. Parents stop using their native languages because they believe that it is better for their children to grow up using the dominant language.

Marie Smith died last year at the age of 89 and she was the last person to speak the native language of the Eyak people. Keeping languages such as Marie’s alive is difficult when there are limited funds available to spend on educating younger members of the community in the native language. Nicholas Ostler is one of the supporters in the preservation of languages and the head of the Foundation for Endangered Languages, which is a non-profit group focused on preserving endangered languages. Ostler says that bilingual children tend to do better in school than monolingual ones. On the other hand, many argue that no matter what language is spoken at home, priority should be placed on a person’s ability to speak English.

Electronics play a big part in the preservation of languages and with new technology systems, accessibility to learning new languages has greatly increased (especially with the advancement of the internet). In some communities the elders have groups in which they teach the children certain native tongues, but even with such advancements and efforts no language can survive if they are not spoken.

Endangered Species. When nobody understands. Oct, 2008. http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12483451

Preparing for the Worst

Will we be ready when the next pandemic strikes?

Until recently the world has not seen a pandemic of influenza since 1968 and the generals of global health assumed that the next major pandemic involving influenza would be the avian flu. As it turns out, the world had its influenza radar so set on southern China and South-East Asia that no one was expecting the attack to come from just south of the U.S border in Mexico. Not only was it from an unexpected place, but also the strain of flu came from a pig and not a chicken.

When the new epidemic was raised on April 29^th of this year, the World Health Organization placed it only one step below the level of a certified pandemic. Influenza pandemics strike every few decades, and the last pandemic killed one million people in 1968. Many influenza pandemics are ubiquitous as they emerge during the normal flu season and they often have a mild beginning before they turn extremely dangerous.

The world must be prepared for the worst concerning influenza pandemics because they may go unnoticed during the normal flu season and only become apparent when they lag on past a certain time period. Antiviral factories must be ready with both the funding and equipment to produce vaccines as soon as new influenza mutations become a threat. Active caution is necessarily in order for threatening strains of influenza to be detected and vaccines to be produced because “its is only a matter of time before a deadlier one comes along.” High caution and awareness today could prevent millions of deaths in the future.

This article raises caution and reminds us that prevention is better than cure, and in the case of influenza prevention is all we have. However, one of the main problems concerning vaccines for global epidemics (pandemics) is that there is both a lack of access and a lack of money. Millions of people around the world cannot afford or do not have access to the vaccines necessary to prevent the spread of influenza viruses and this will lead to tragic outcomes when another influenza pandemic breaks out.

The Economist. "The Pandemic Threat." April 30, 2009. http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13576183