Environmental Problems in the Developing World

Featured image courtesy of Danielle King, of Nstoralé, Grande Comore, Comoros

Continuing from the concepts I introduced in my previous two posts, today we will be learning about environmental issues present in the developing parts of our world. According to the International Monetary Fund, developing countries are countries that have not reached a certain level of industrialization relative to their populations, and, in most cases, have a medium to low standard of living. A common characteristic of developing countries is an association between low income and high population growth. These countries all have millions of people with unique cultures, languages, lifestyles, religions, etc. that make them different than any other place in the world. It is important that when we talk about environmental issues in these regions, we do so in a way that respects the people and the history of the place. This means refraining from pointing fingers, developing solutions that honor the lifestyle and culture of the people and are feasible, and trying to see these places without the view of someone coming from a highly developed, affluent country.

It is also important to stress that every country, state, region, city, etc. on this planet has played its own part in environmental degradation, while some may hold more responsibility for it than others.

The Health and Environment Linkages Initiatives (HELI) published a detailed report about the environment and health in developing countries. You can read the full article at https://www.who.int/heli/risks/ehindevcoun/en/index1.html, but I will go into a brief summary of it below!

The importance of these issues lies in developing countries’ urban areas. HELI says that most of the world’s population growth will occur in the urban areas of poor countries in the next 30 years. Rapid and unplanned patterns of urban development in these countries, especially since this style tends to be very unsustainable, is putting stress on the environment. This leads to make environmental and health hazards, which often go hand-in-hand:

• Air pollution– from industry, traffic/vehicles
  • health risks, especially in children and the elderly
• Loss of habitat– as people move to the urban areas and the population increases rapidly, houses of and the resources needed by the people building in these areas results in the loss of habitat
  • decreased biodiversity, degradation of natural space, leads to decreased health and recreation
• Emission of chemicals– as developing countries try to keep up with the world economy, agriculture and industry demand the production and emission of many chemicals, even those that have been banned in other countries. The lack of regulation and policy when it comes to emitting pollution in any form is huge.
  • many health/environmental risks
• Unsustainable agriculture– combination of the need to produce much and lack of understanding of sustainable farming leads to soil degradation and more pollution
  • bad for crops, and therefore the health of people who rely on these crops, loss of natural space
• Water pollution– poor countries have the bulk of unclean water, as many of these places do not have the infrastructure or political will for waste services and water treatment.
  • Disease, harms marine wildlife
• Climate change– mining, oil, and other fossil fuels demanded by other countries forces reliance on these industries for a better economy. These methods are big contributors to climate change.
  • countless heath/environmental hazards are introduced do to global warming, and even more are exacerbated by it.

These are just a few examples HELI is focusing on, and are common in many but not all developing countries. It is also clear that environmental issues and the risks that come along with them do not discriminate when it comes to their impacts on wealthy and poor countries; many of these same issues happen is wealthy cities across the world that are viewed as “better off.” However, the solutions to the same problems that occur in wealthy vs. poor countries are not identical, or even different countries within each category, because each place has other complications or factors that riddle some solutions ineffective. HELI has a list of things that would be “solutions” to the environmental problems of developing countries, but many of them are still unclear because it is hard to know how to manifest thee solutions country to country. HELI calls these goals Millennium Development Goals, and a few are listed below:

• Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger: this one is just the first goal listed, and I already feel hopeless. How do you completely get rid of something is so rampant, and so historical? Should this responsibility fall on the leaders in each country, or should it be up to a global organization like the United Nations? What role can wealthy countries with an interest in helping people lacking basic human rights play in this? HELI lays out a few things that can help reduce extreme poverty and hunger, and almost all of them have to do with policy or the education of citizens and leaders alike.
• Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women– gender inequality is everywhere, but reaches new heights in many developing countries. It’s more than an unequal paycheck, it’s the inability of a woman to hold a job at all, get an education needed to have a job and achieve autonomy, and the lack of choice within many aspects of a woman’s life. It might be unclear why gender inequality needs to stop in order to change the direction of environmental degradations and the health problems associated with them. But inequality of any kind creates a domino effect of problems, all of which spiral all the way up to environmental issues and therefore public health; a broader scope of focus is needed in order to tackle environmental problems.

There are more Millennium Development Goals besides those, as well as solutions to end environmental problems outside of HELI’s ideas. I encourage you guys to do some research of your own about these topics and ask yourself what you think might be a good way to handle them!

In regards to what I said in my description of the first Goal on the list, eradicating extreme poverty, I want to emphasize that there is many complications when it comes down to how to achieve the solutions that are being presented. These complications come from broad aspects, such as lack of political will and education, economic issues, inaccessibility to the resources and funds needed to set plans for improvement into motion, the understanding of culture, and keeping these developing countries autonomous. Getting into all of these things would take too much time for this post, so again use this post as a jumping off point for more individual research into these topics! I will of course try to go into them more in future posts.

The HELI article I linked above has links taking you to different case studies about the topics discussed here in countries all over the world, so if you feel so inclined, check those out to see these things at work in real life! They are super detailed and interesting, so I highly recommend checking that out.

Next week, my post will be about the environmental issues of developing countries and the role they play in the environmental degradation of our world globally. Be sure to check it out next week, thank you for reading!