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	Sanitation and shelter are for everyone, says Jockin Arputham by Aparna Karthikeyan Slum Dwellers International India   October 2014   Sanitation and shelter are for everyone, says Jockin Arputham, the Mumbai-based activist who has been nominated for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize.   “Jockin, Slum Dweller.” That is how, Jockin Arputham, from Dharavi, Mumbai, nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize this year, introduces himself in any public forum. All his life Jockin has been fighting for dignity, for the ‘weakest of the poorest person’. Except that when he chanced into his line of work, in 1969, he had ‘no theory, philosophy, nor a political compulsion.’   Like the great majority that lives in Dharavi, Arputham is a migrant, who came to Mumbai looking for work. But the city appalled the young man. “It was a culture shock,” he says. He had come expecting a rich city. Instead, it had the worst slums.   He lived in one such slum, Janata Colony. In the first few difficult days, when he felt he had ‘fallen into the pit’, he contemplated taking his own life. So he climbed up a nearby hill, and stayed there for three days, but then he decided he wouldn’t die. Nor go back.   The next morning, he put his carpentry skills to good use, made some money and, in a few days, began sub-contracting work at the nearby Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC). He learnt to give orders in Hindi; and soon the 21-year-old settled down in his new life in Mumbai.   Arputham, now 68, knows what he wants. He wants shelter, sanitation and water for every slum-dweller in Mumbai, in India, in the world. He wants every pavement-dweller relocated. He wants to see change — redevelopment — happening with people’s participation.   It was mosquitoes that made him aware of his potential as a change-maker. Arputham was conducting a coaching class for slum kids when he found the kids unable to focus because they were being bitten. The problem was mounting piles of garbage. To show the municipality the magnitude of the problem, Jockin made the kids carry a newspaper parcel of rubbish and dump it outside the municipal office in Chembur. When the police came to arrest him, Arputham said he would repeat his act until the garbage was cleared. The municipality was shamed into doing its work, for the first time in 22 years in that settlement.   Having tasted the power of protest, he decided to do more. He cleaned the filthy community toilet, again with children’s help. “By that evening, it was a beautiful new toilet!” After that, he was summarily adopted by the people who sought him to sort out civic issues. He learnt English, became an activist, a ‘self-built leader’, led huge demonstrations against the proposed eviction of Janata Colony. In 1974, when he got married, he finally rented a small house.   Arputham still lives in a rented house. He has no property, no assets. His immediate family is small — he has two grandchildren, one from each of his daughters. But his extended family is very large — the urban poor from 33 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. They are all members of Slum/Shack Dwellers International (SDI), an organisation founded in 1999, to provide alternatives to eviction. SDI’s headquarters is in Cape Town, South Africa, and Arputham is its president.   But the path to fame was not smooth. In the 1970s, there were many attempts to arrest him. Each time, people, especially thousands of women from the slum, surrounded him and hid him.   When Emergency was declared in India in 1975, Arputham found that he would be put away; so he fled to the Philippines and stayed there until the new government was elected. But he carried on with his work. He set up the Bombay Slum Dwellers Federation in 1975. Slowly, the movement grew and became the National Slum Dwellers Federation (NSDF). “The organisation is a very huge one,” he says. “I work in around 70 cities in India.”   While Arputham never wavered in his ideals, his approach changed over the years. In the early 1980s, he swapped the ‘shirt of militancy’ for one of negotiation. He moved from Janata Colony — the slum made way for BARC — to Dharavi.   Dharavi alone has 89 slum pockets, he says, sitting in his office. The walls are painted in jewel colours. But the real jewels in the room are Jockin’s awards — the Ramon Magsaysay in 2000; Padma Shri in 2011; and an honorary Ph.D. from KIIT University, Bhubaneswar, in 2009.   As the founder, and now reluctant president of NSDF (he wishes to resign, but nobody will hear of it), he’s especially keen to include women in the organisation’s activities. “I’m running this organisation because of the strength of the women. In India itself, more than 10-12 lakh women are members. Men are good bullies; they tend to take the credit, even if women run the show.”   In the slums where NSDF functions, migrations from rural to urban India are touching new highs, and sleepy little towns are today being transformed into bustling shanty towns.   ‘Achche din’ has to reach out to these people too, argues Arputham. “Show me one budget that is talking about the other citizen of the city. You look at the city corporation agenda, which I look at every week. Three per cent of the agenda is connected with the slum-dwellers whereas their population is 60 per cent. The rest of the city hogs the whole agenda.”   “I’m known world over as ‘Toilet Man’. In South Africa, where it’s a stigma to say toilet, I made them talk about it. In the United Nations, I built a demonstration toilet in the UN plaza.” And demonstrated to Kofi Annan how Indians squat! He has built more than 20,000 (toilet) seats in Mumbai alone.   It was from Dharavi that Arputham drew plans for inclusive growth. He insisted on new standards on redeveloped housing, an increased floor-space-index. Over the years, Arputham has built 30,000 houses in India, and 1,00,000 houses abroad.   * The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize 2014 will be announced on October 10. Visit the related web page
	Hope and Justice from the People’s Climate March by Mary Robinson, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka The Mary Robinson Foundation - Climate Justice (MRFCJ)   September 22 2014   Joining the People’s Climate March in New York yesterday, I felt hopeful for future generations for the first time in a long time.   Standing in the midst of hundreds of thousands of people I sensed solidarity and a shared purpose. So many people from diverse backgrounds came together for change and for climate action.   It was uplifting to see grandparents, like myself, indigenous peoples, young people, people impacted by Hurricane Sandy, young women from small island developing states, unions, congresswomen, Ministers, and Mayors, all sharing the experience. There was a fantastic range of banners and posters but they can all be summed up in two words for me – climate justice.   Yesterday’s demonstration gave me hope that people get climate justice now; we must take urgent action to protect our most vulnerable communities and we must take that action in a way that is fair.   Many of the people who marched yesterday, in New York, and indeed all around the world, have been impacted by climate change. During the press conference we heard the voices of people from the frontlines who are coping with the impacts of climate change. Many of the people who marched today are worried about the world that their children and their grandchildren will inhabit if we continue on this fossil fuel driven path.   Lots of banners highlighted the solutions that already exist and that can be scaled up dramatically if world leaders take brave decisions and set the policy direction. There are solutions that can help transform our world into one that is safe, protects human rights, and treats current and future generations fairly.   While I am hopeful, I am not so naive to think that one climate march will be enough to change the world. I know that we have to build a social movement for climate justice that creates pressure on leaders to act. We must continue the momentum started with the People’s Climate March to show leaders that their constituents want change, to show the private sector that their consumers want choice and to show our children and grandchildren that we tried.   The People’s Climate March beautifully illustrated the need for climate justice.   “In climate change, we are facing the biggest challenge to human rights of the 21st century; this warrants an urgent transformation in leadership that is supported by all peoples in all nations. But we must ensure that when we design climate change policies they are fair and therefore consider the needs of the most vulnerable people. To do this, we have to engage those people who are most impacted by climate change; we must respect the right to participate in decision-making processes.”   Climate change impacts everyone, but the poor and the marginalized, many of them women and girls, are the most impacted. For instance, women are often constrained in their response to sudden onset of hazards such as floods, cyclones, mudslides when they are not authorized to leave the house without a male companion and are expected to care for children and the elderly and ensure their safety first before their own.   Similarly, women farmers are disproportionately affected by climate change because of their limited access to natural resources and to information and services about climate resilient and adaptive agricultural strategies and technologies.   Women leaders, however, are stepping up to the challenge. From all walks of life they are leading the way to a carbon-neutral and sustainable future for all. They are showing leadership on climate change action through leading global grass-roots movements to find common solutions to the climate crisis, promoting green investments, developing energy-efficient technology, managing small-scale irrigation projects, engaging in recycling and efficient waste management systems, and boosting efforts to increase awareness and mobilize mass action.   Sep 2014   Climate action now: Why there''s no time to lose, by UN Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka.   It’s real. It’s happening. It’s changing the world as we know it, and there’s no time to lose.   Climate change will affect us all – from the wealthiest countries to the poorest, from the smallest of islands to whole continents. But its worst impact will be felt by the world’s poorest and the most vulnerable, especially poor women and girls.   We know what we need to do to avoid a catastrophe: reduce carbon emissions; transition to clean, renewable energy; and ensure that the global temperature rise is less than two degrees Celsius. And we must ensure that our efforts towards mitigation, adaptation and resilience in the face of climate change include women’s voices, perspectives and leadership. I recently attended the Small Island Developing States Conference in Samoa, where it was clear how powerful a role women – as leaders, farmers and first responders – can and must play in efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change.   So what’s holding us up? Lack of political will and consensus about how to get there.   In the meantime, most of the 3.3 million deaths from climate disasters in the last 40 years have been in poorer nations and more women die in climate disasters than men. A survey conducted by Oxfam in Indonesia after the 2004 tsunami found that in the worst impacted village, up to four women died for every male. Lack of access to information and resources, cultural restrictions and entrenched inequality make women and girls even more vulnerable to climate risks than their male counterparts.   Declining crops and rising food prices are already impacting the world’s poor. Women and girls, and female-headed households are taking the hardest hit.   In developing countries, women and girls bear the primary responsibility for water collection. They have to walk farther and work harder to collect water and fuel. In sub-Saharan Africa, women and girls spend an estimated 16 million hours fetching water every day. The time spent on gathering water, fuel and food keeps women and girls from accessing education.   Women and men are experiencing, and will continue to experience, climate change differently. But women can be the game changers in reducing the impacts of climate change.   The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, the international roadmap on women’s rights adopted by world leaders in 1995, recognized the critical role that women play in protecting the environment.   Women have proven skills in managing natural resources sustainably and adapting to climate change, and are crucial partners in protecting fragile ecosystems. Indeed, if we are serious about tackling climate change, we must ensure that women are equal partners and drivers of environmental decision-making.   Climate change impacts are inevitable at this point, but if we act now, they may not be irreversible. Lives can be saved, economies can be made sustainable, the planet can be greener and societies can be more equitable. So let’s do everything we can to adopt climate-resilient pathways to sustainable development and commit ourselves to the pursuit of equality between men and women in every corner of the world. Visit the related web page
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