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	Development programs help people to help themselves by Hugh Jackman World Vision   More than 200 years ago, Adam Smith observed that: "No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable." Central to making a society flourishing and happy is helping people find ways to increase their incomes.   The World Bank''s Commission on Growth and Development has put it succinctly: ''Economic growth is not an end in itself. But it makes it possible to achieve other important objectives of individuals and societies. It can spare people en masse from poverty and drudgery. Nothing else ever has.''   Over the past few years I have had a crash course on poverty and how it can be overcome. I have spoken with the likes of the Nobel Peace Prize winner and pioneer of microfinance for the poor Muhammad Yunus, and the development economist Jeffrey Sachs. I have been on field trips with the chief executive of World Vision Australia, Tim Costello, and met people who are benefiting from development projects run by various organisations and charities.   What I have learnt is that economic development projects, funded by aid, can and do work. They work by tackling poverty on many levels - by introducing initiatives such as education and skills training, agricultural development and access to finance, technology and markets.   At their core, these projects work because they are all about empowering people - giving a community a hand-up, not a handout. They''re about teaching a person to fish rather than giving them a fish. They''re about setting up a community to succeed and stand on its own two feet.   The ongoing challenge is to identify how we can help initiate and sustain the development of the poorest countries. There is no blueprint, but there is broad agreement that the changes necessary for development must come from within the society itself - they cannot be imposed from outside.   The Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has noted the key ingredients to successful development are ownership and participation. That is, he says policies imposed from outside may be superficially accepted, but for transformation, you need people owning a project and participating in it.   I travelled to Ethiopia last year and visited projects where World Vision Australia is working with coffee farmers to give them low-energy solutions to their agriculture and other needs. The project was aimed at lifting their export commodities and increasing crop yields.   The story of one man I met, Dukale, is one of the most inspiring stories I''ve come across. He is an example of how economic development projects help communities to lift themselves out of poverty.   Dukale has five children and grows coffee on a small farm. A lack of opportunities meant he was unable to finish primary school. Instead his father taught him coffee farming but, despite a strong work ethic, he was later unable to earn enough money to take adequate care of his family.   He joined a World Vision coffee co-operative, where he learnt more efficient and organic cultivation, and income diversification opportunities. He was helped to improve his coffee yield, and ensure his methods are sustainable and do not harm the local environment.   He has installed a converter to harness the methane gas from manure from his two goats and a cow to power the stove he cooks with and the lights his family read by at night. Most importantly, it also powers a roadside cafe he operates to sell coffee to make extra income. He can now look after the day-to-day expenses of his family and save for the future.   Dukale''s farm and the cafe have become so successful that he now employs other people from his community, so not only is he lifting himself out of poverty, he is providing families around him with the opportunity to change their future too.   Because economic development is complex, field projects take many forms: microfinance programs to enable the poor to purchase income-producing assets; education and training to increase employment prospects; and advocating on behalf of the poor for land rights, roads and social safety nets to see them through times of hardship.   History has shown development is possible, but not inevitable. Our challenge in the developed world is to help people to be more productively involved in the economy, to raise themselves out of poverty, and achieve a life with choices for their children. From what I have seen, economic development projects do work. They are the best answer to one of the biggest social issues of our time.   * Hugh Jackman is a World Vision Australia ambassador. Visit the related web page
	On World Water Day, 1.2 billion people worldwide lack access to safe drinking water by News agencies   Mar. 2008   A thousand tons of water produces just one ton of grain, by Brad Knickerbocker.   For 15 years, the United Nations has been observing "World Water Day," a time to consider the opportunities and challenges presented by a resource essential to the environment and to humankind.   It''s becoming clear now that climate change may be altering the way people and governments think about water.   The UN reported this week that the world''s glaciers are melting at "an alarming rate." Like reservoirs, glaciers store water and then release it at predictable rates, around which humans have formed communities and built economies. Agency France-Presse, the French news service, quotes Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environment Program, as saying:   "Millions if not billions of people depend directly or indirectly on these natural water storage facilities for drinking water, agriculture, industry, and power generation during key parts of the year."   As a result of shrinking glaciers, people will have to change their lifestyles, their farming, even move their homes, Mr. Steiner says. Britain''s Sunday Observer further quotes Steiner as saying: "While I''m always cautious about ''water wars,'' certainly the potential for water to become a trigger for more tension and, where there''s already conflict, to exacerbate conflict is another issue that''s not hypothetical."   Global warming is raising ocean levels, meaning seawater will encroach on wetlands, rivers, and streams, according to recent reports by the US Environmental Protection Agency and the National Research Council (NRC), the research arm of the National Academy of Sciences.   Climate change also could adversely affect transportation, the NRC reported last week. The Associated Press reports: "The nation''s transportation system was built for local conditions based on historical weather data, but those data may no longer be reliable in the face of new weather extremes.… The report notes, for example, that drier conditions are likely in the watersheds supplying the St. Lawrence Seaway and the Great Lakes. The resulting lower water levels would reduce vessel shipping capacity, seriously impairing freight movements in the region, such as occurred during the drought of 1988."   Water also complicates a shift from fossil fuels, researchers pointed out at the recent annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The Toronto Star reports: "University of Texas professor Michael Webber, an environmental policy specialist, said so-called green fuels for vehicles all require much more water to produce than ordinary gasoline. Conventional oil refineries use comparatively modest amounts of water, largely for cooling. "Webber said the water required for an alternate fuel vehicle to travel a certain distance can be up to 100 times that required for a gas-powered vehicle. This extra water use stems from the irrigation of crops like corn that are turned into ethanol, or in the production of the electricity for recharging hybrids."   In China, drought has made it difficult to supply reservoir water for irrigation while also providing generating capacity for downstream hydropower dams. Reuters reports: "The frequency of both the droughts and floods that regularly batter China are expected to increase in a warmer world. And rural demands could compound the impact of short supplies, because China tends to time releases of water to suit the needs of farmers rather than power companies."   Lester Brown, head of the Earth Policy Institute think tank in Washington, is concerned that declining water supplies combined with the push for water-intensive biofuels could be a threat to global food security.   Another Reuters story reports: "The thing to keep in mind is that it takes 1,000 tons of water to produce one ton of grain.... Seventy percent of all the water we use in the world - that we pump from underground or divert from rivers - is used in irrigation. Not everyone has connected the dots to see that a future of water shortages will be a future of food shortages."   Mar. 2008   On World Water Day, a mighty Global Thirst, by Greg Lamb.   Some 1.2 billion people worldwide lack access to safe drinking water. Oceans splash across most of the earth''s surface. But they contain saltwater, unfit for human consumption. Only a tiny fraction of the world''s water - about 2.5 percent - is drinkable. That still would be an ample supply if it were clean and available where needed.   It''s not. Today some 1.2 billion people lack access to safe drinking water and 2.6 billion lack proper sanitation (adequate sewage disposal). As a result, tainted water supplies are blamed for the worldwide deaths of 1.8 million children, according to the United Nation''s Human Development Report for 2006. That''s 4,900 children per day under 5 years old.   What''s more, children worldwide miss 443 million days of school each year because of water-related illnesses. The UN also estimates that half of the world''s hospital beds are occupied by patients suffering from water-borne diseases.   Beyond that, millions of people (almost always women) wearily spend hours per day carrying water up to several miles for their family''s needs because no source is close at hand.   Since 1992, the UN has sponsored World Water Day, this year being observed Saturday, March 22, to raise awareness of the need to protect and improve access to clean water supplies.   "When the well is dry, then we know the worth of water," said Benjamin Franklin, long before today''s water challenges.   It''s clear that competition for water "will intensify in the decades ahead," said Kemal Dervis, administrator of the United Nations Development Program in its 2006 report.   "Water is the ultimate fugitive resource, traversing borders through rivers, lakes, and aquifers - a fact that points to the potential for cross-border tensions in water-stressed regions."   Growing populations, which spur demand for more industries and farmland, are draining water resources. And climate change is expected to exacerbate the problem as it alters rainfall patterns.   A new UN study shows that as temperatures have warmed, the world''s glaciers have begun retreating at accelerating rates and may disappear entirely within a few decades.   China, India, and the West Coast of the United States are among populous places that rely on glacial meltwater for their water supply. Glaciers feed some of the world''s great rivers, such as the Ganges, Yellow, and Mekong, which serve 1.5 billion people.   One of the UN''s Millennium Development Goals, established in 2000, is to cut in half by the year 2015 the proportion of people unable to reach or afford safe drinking water.   Achieving that goal is "critically important," says UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon. "When you look at the health and development challenges faced by the poorest of the world''s population - diseases like malaria or TB, rising food prices, environmental degradation - the common denominator often turns out to be water."
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