Goal 7. All

Goal 7: All Country Cases

Bangladesh

Anne Castronovo, Emma Kast, Claire McQuillen and Matt Miller

Bangladesh’s progress on Goal Seven, ensure environmental sustainability, has been very mixed. The percent of land area with forest cover has increased from 9 percent in1991 to 19.2 percent in 2008 (Millennium Development Goals: Bangladesh Progress Report 2008, 68). If this trend continues, Bangladesh should easily be on track to meet the goal of 20 percent forest cover by 2015. In fact, the percent of protected forest area has also risen slightly, from 1.28 percent to 1.46 percent (Paths to 2015, 52).  The country has also increased the proportion of terrestrial and marine areas that are protected from 1.64 percent in 1991 to 1.68 percent in 2008 but this increase is not large enough to put them on track for reaching the indicator (Millennium Development Goals: Bangladesh Progress Report 2008, 68). The metric tons per capita CO2 emissions have risen from .14 in 1991 to .30 in 2007 (Millennium Development Goals: Bangladesh Progress Report 2008, 68). It is likely that Bangladesh will continue to see higher CO2 emissions over the next five years as the country is still developing, but despite the increase Bangladesh is still considered a low emitter (Millennium Development Goals: Bangladesh Progress Report 2008, 68). The consumption of ozone depleting CFC’s in metric tons has actually decreased despite development from 195 metric tons in 1991 to 155 metric tons in 2007, putting Bangladesh on track for this indicator as well (Millennium Development Goals: Bangladesh Progress Report 2008, 68).  

Photo Credit: Claire McQuillen.

       There are a few indicators of Goal Seven on which Bangladesh is doing very well. These are the indicators that focus directly on improvements for the population. In 1991, 89 percent of the population had access to safe drinking water, a very encouraging baseline, which was then increased to 97.8 in 2007, thereby achieving this indicator (Millennium Development Goals: Bangladesh Progress Report 2008, 68). The percent of the population with access to basic sanitation began at a much lower baseline, but has made more progress. In 1990 only 34 percent of the population had basic sanitation, but this number increased to 53 percent in 2008 (Millennium Development Goals: Bangladesh Progress Report 2008, 68). While there certainly has been in increase in people with access to basic sanitation, there is much more that needs to be done. The main problem with this target is that the indicators are very wary. The definition of “safe” drinking water is not consistent. The percentage of “safe” drinking water varies drastically when arsenic is considered unsafe. When arsenic is not considered in 2009, 98.7 percent of Bangladesh is using an improved drinking water source. When the figures are adjusted to incorporate arsenic the percent changes to 86 (Khandker 2013, 83). The discrepancy in the goal is incredible. Are the numbers changed to fool the country and public into thinking that they are on track? It is not possible for arsenic to be safe for consumption.  There are many fundamental changes that need to be done in order for this target to be considered on track including a reevaluation of target measures.

                There are four targets that Bangladesh had insufficient data. Two of the indicators have no information at all, the proportion of fish stocks within safe biological limits and the indicator regarding the proportion of species threatened with extinction (Millennium Development Goals: Bangladesh Progress Report 2008, 68). Two others indicators have only one piece of data, the proportion of total water resources used was 6.6 percent in 2000 and the proportion of the urban population living in slums was 7.8 percent in 2001 (Millennium Development Goals: Bangladesh Progress Report 2008, 68). Both of these indicators call for an increase in these proportions, and thus without further data it is impossible to establish any sort of trend.

                The UN published data, which indicates that Bangladesh is doing very well on millennium development goal seven. It is important to note a large discrepancy in information. The data presented here came from the UN “Millennium Development Goals: Bangladesh Progress Report 2008”. However another UN published paper, “Paths to 2015: MDG Priorities in Asia and the Pacific” offered much different data that indicated far less progress. Because the first paper focused solely on Bangladesh rather than the region, it was deemed the more reliable source. Nonetheless it is very important to note that the discrepancy in data that throws into doubt the actual achievability of this goal.

                While the MDGs do not have any specific indicators regarding the extent of water pollution it is something that should be considered in reference to Bangladesh’s efforts toward environmental sustainability. In fishing areas there is high water pollution as a result of the use of commercial pesticides. The ground water in the country is often contaminated with naturally occurring arsenic. The country also experiences significant soil degradation and erosion, as much of the land is actually river deltas. While Bangladesh may appear to be reaching the Goal based on environmental sustainability there are many other issues at play that warrant the country’s attention. 

                Overall, there is no obvious conclusion as the achievability of Goal Seven. Significant amounts of data are not available, and much of the data that is available contradicts itself. It can be said, however, that Bangladesh has put significant effort into many of the indicators on these goals, and for the most part that effort has been paying off. In order to successfully achieve Goal Seven all of the other goals need to be increasing at the same rate. All of the Millennium Development Goals are interconnected.

Brazil
Alexa Coleman

Brazil has not achieved goal seven of ensuring environmental sustainability, although they have made noteworthy strides. The targets for this goal include, integrating the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programs and reverse the loss of environmental resources, also to reduce biodiversity loss by 2010. Countries must halve the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation by 2015. Finally, countries must achieve significant improvements in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers by 2020.

                One of the most successful achievements Brazil has seen under goal seven has been the decline in the number of people living in slums. The Urban population share living in slums fell from 36.7% in 1990 to 16.9% in 2009. Brazil is also improving living conditions in urban slums by halving the proportion of people living without access to drinking water. In 2008 an impressive 91.6% of the population had access to indoor plumbing. This is a direct result from another government initiative called “Agua Para Todos,” whose aim is to provide everyone with sanitary drinking water. In 2013 98% of Brazil’s population is using an improved drinking water source (UNDP, 2010). The proportion of the population using an improved sanitation facility rose to 79%. (UNDP, 2010)

                The area that Brazil struggles most with in goal seven is land conservation. Land area covered by forest fell from 69% in 1990 to 62.4% in 2010. The government has attempted to launch an initiative to improve the protection of the Amazon Region, which is the region most threatened by deforestation. This initiative is known popularly as Bolsa Verde. Another notable achievement can we attributed once again to Bolsa Familia. The Urban population share living in slums fell from 36.7% in 1990 to 16.9% in 2009. (Ministerio do Desenvolvimento, 2010)

                The creation of Protected Areas (PAs) has been one of the benchmarks of the Brazilian strategy to protect biodiversity, with an increase of 69% compared to the total protected area from 2002 to 2009. In 2009 there were 923 PAs in the country accounting for 17.3% of the Brazilian continental area, mostly located in the Amazon biome.

The country also has drastically reduced the consumption of CFCs from 10,000 tons of PDO in 1995 to 290 tons in 2008, with complete elimination of CFC consumption predicted for 2010, fulfilling the goal of the Montreal Protocol. (Ministério do Desenvolvimento, 2010)

EcuadorJerry Carter, Lauren Cosgrove, Andrew Driscoll and Alyssa Malone

Integrating environmental concerns into domestic policy and preserving biologically diverse ecosystems are the necessary means for the successful completion of UN’s MDG 7.  In 2008, under the Correa administration, Ecuador passed a new constitution and became the first country to declare the unalienable rights of nature.  In this progressive document the natural environment must be allowed to: “exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution” (Political Database of the Americas 2008).  In total there are 42 protected areas in Ecuador, ranging in size and tropical ecology.  The revised Constitution acknowledges and preserves Ecuador’s lush ecosystems and unique endangered species that exist in parts of the Amazon Rainforest, Andes Mountains, and coastal zone most well known for the Galapagos Islands.

Photo Credit: Hannah Lynch

In the jungle town of Tena we met an independent guide who discussed with us the growing ecotourism sector in Ecuador.  Before his family began working in the tourism industry they farmed coffee and yucca in a smaller village called Riobamba, but profits were an unsustainable source of income.  As global public interest grew around the natural wonders of the Amazon, his family prospered leading excursions with groups that range in size from twenty to forty people.  When speaking of the overall benefits of ecotourism, the guide believed that it is a good solution for the economy and the environment.  “It has helped to decrease hunting,” he said.  The question is, whether or not this money can meet the widening demand for capital (Guide 1, 2011).

                While some people are fortunate enough to take advantage of the growing ecotourism field, like the guide that we interviewed, it does not seem to be a permanent solution or strong argument against mineral extraction which remains of high concern in Ecuador today.  Rather, it is only one part of the answer to a larger and comprehensive plan for achieving MDG 7 by 2015.  Therefore, maintaining the preservation of Yasuni National Park is an additional and crucial part of Ecuador’s plan to meet the MDGs.  The Yasuni National Park is the largest reserve in South America, encompassing one million hectares.  The ecological diversity within this park is unparalleled.  According to the Ministry of the Environment, the park’s seclusive location allows only an average of 300 visitors each year.  Financially, it will be difficult for the Ecuadorian government to justify maintaining a park of this size considering the lack of visitor revenue. In hopes of mitigating this financial gap, Yasuni was declared a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in 1989 before the mining industry could buy the land.  Inside this Biological Reserve live many indigenous groups, some whom have never contacted the outside world (Ministry of the Environment 2011).

                However, this sacred place is constantly threatened by the natural resources that lie beneath its surfaces, namely oil. In 2007 the Ecuadorian government created the ITT Initiative, which claims to leave Ishpingo-Tiputini-Tambococha oil fields untapped in exchange for compensation from the international community for lost revenue.  ITT oil fields are just one section within Yasuni National Park.  When first instituted, the “ITT plan would have kept an estimated 410 million tons of CO2 – the major greenhouse gas driving climate change – from reaching the atmosphere” (Amazon Watch 2013).  If the ITT initiative fails and Yasuni’s oil is harvested, the ecological diversity and indigenous communities within the park would be seriously threatened.  An employee of the Ministry of the Environment said that without ITT, and without the protection of the park, the land would be colonized because of its natural resources (Ministry of the Environment 2011).

                An independent guide working in Yasuni has seen minimal ecological change, owing to the protection that the government bestows upon the park from the invasion of extractive industries.  With that being said, this guide does not fully trust the Ecuadorian government to maintain this preservation, and thinks that betraying the ITT initiative is a “Plan B” of the Correa administration (Guide 2, 2011). 

          The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Ecuador works closely on policy issues and local investments with central and regional governments to improve sustainability and preserve biodiversity.  The organization does not support Ecuador’s recent billion dollar oil agreements with China but understands the benefits of exporting oil, as long as it is done in socially and environmentally responsible ways.  A representative of UNDP does not believe that there is a tradeoff between economic growth and environmental sustainability, but believes that Ecuador will definitely forgo the ITT initiative in favor of revenue (UNDP 2011).

Although Ecuador has received French and German support for the ITT initiative, recent economic dealings with China and the United States make it difficult to ascertain Yasuni National Park’s future.  On August 15, 2013 President Rafael Correa proved the UNDP, the Ministry of the Environment, and independent Guide 2 right in announcing the termination of the ITT initiative.  PetroAmazonas, the state run oil company, is said to “exploit the Ishpingo, Tambococha, and Tiputini oil fields that lie beneath the eastern part of Yasuni National Park within weeks [of termination]” (Amazon Watch 2013).  According to the group Amazon Watch, by 2013 only $336 million was raised under the ITT; a combination of cash contributions, debt cancellation, and in-kind donations.

President Correa is expected to create programs that aim to reduce national poverty through increased social spending, but besides mining, it is unclear where funds for these plans will come from.  For now the economic alternative to drilling is ecotourism, but with that industry come its own set of risks.  As of 2013, The UN has not collected enough data to justify either a success or failure of Goal 7 (MDG Monitor 2007).  However, through our research we have justified that Ecuador will fail this goal because they are far from fully integrating environmental concerns into their political and economic policy.  So far, the only real way to achieve long-term environmental sustainability is to create a society that is educated to conserve and preserve nature.

Palestine
Kate Bailey, Alexsis Regan and Trish Siplon

Achieving environmental sustainability, the heart of MDG goal 7, has proven to be a challenge for most of the world’s developing countries.  But the Palestinian Territories labor under an additional and largely unique constraint – the fact of Israeli military occupation.  The four targets of goal 7 – integrating sustainability into country policies and programs, decreasing biodiversity losses, increasing access to water and sanitation and improving the lives of slum dwellers – are all largely predicated on a country’s ability to create and implement autonomous policy, a n ability that is by definition at odds with the day to day reality of military occupation.  The fact that a significant portion of the occupied Palestinian population lives in the Gaza Strip, one of most densely-populated and tightly controlled areas of the planet, renders attempts to improve the lives of slum dwellers in the area similarly problematic.

In order to rehabilitate and/or reallocate environmental resources, the state must own, or at least have authority over, these resources.  But in the Palestinian Territories, the Palestinian Authority does not have these powers.  Looking at the two most fundamental resources, land and water, offers a stark illustration.  The 1995 Oslo II Agreement between Palestine and Israel set many of the parameters still being used for water allocation, while deferring final water agreements to an indefinite future arrangement.  Thirteen years later, key provisions – such as allocating only one quarter of the three West Bank aquifers to Palestinians with the remainder going to Israel and the Israeli-populated settlements in the West Bank and the establishment of a Joint Water Committee that gives Israel essential veto power over proposed Palestinian water and/or sanitation projects – have translated into enormous disparities in access to water and sanitation (World Bank 2009).  One particularly telling figure noted by Friends of the Earth Middle East is that average per capita consumption of water in Israel is 300 liters a day, compared to 120 in Jordan and only 60 in Palestine (Friends of the Earth Middle East 2005, p. 6).

Sovereignty over land, as with water, is highly problematic.  The Oslo Agreement also divided Palestinian land into Areas A (administered and controlled by the Palestinian Authority), B (administered by the PA but security controlled by Israel) and C (completely controlled by Israel).  More than half the land of the Palestinian Territories (60%) is designated Area C.  Additionally most of the 120 Israeli settlements and approximately 100 outposts (settler groups without official government approval but receiving support from the state) are in Area C (B’Tselem 2010).  The combination of limited or no sovereignty on the part of the Palestinian Authority in the majority of the land it nominally governs, and almost no regulation of the settlement activity means that the Palestinian Authority is left with almost no capacity to pursue environmental goals.

Sovereignty over water and land resources is self-evidently necessary to achieve the targets of access to water and sanitation.  But such control is also a necessary precondition for the other targets.  Creation and integration of sustainable environmental practices require the physical earth, water and air these practices will regulate; biodiversity cannot be encouraged if land and water are not available to support the species that need them; and slum dwellers lives cannot be improved if water and sanitation systems are either nonexistent or of very poor quality.

Despite these obstacles, there are some signs of hope. 

One example is the approach promoted by the regional environmental non-governmental organization Friends of the Earth Middle East (FoEME), which has offices in Jordan, the oPT and Israel.  Focusing on the ideas that water and land are shared resources and that lack of access and poor stewardship have negative impacts across boundaries, FoEME brings shareholders together to learn about each other’s realities and find common solutions.   One of the group’s most successful programs is it Good Water Neighbor Project.  Since its founding in 20xx, the Project has brought together x pairs of communities with different national identities but common challenges in water and/or sanitation.  The positive impact in the communities of Tsur Hadassah and Wadi Fukin show what is possible.  After a series of meetings and educational sessions where communities learned of each other’s water realities, including the fact that Wadi Fukin is suffering a drastic reduction in water because of activities of a nearby Israeli  settlement (completely separate from the Israeli village of Tsur Hadassah), the leadership of the communities created memorandums of understanding between the two villages.  Tsur Hadassah also opened its municipal pool to the children of Wadi Fukin.  Most notably, Tsur Hadassah joined Wadi Fukin in opposing the proposed extension of Israel’s separation wall through the two communities, with the collection of signatures from 300 families living in Tsur Hadassah on a petition.

RwandaJason DePecol, Siham Elhamoumi, Kate Mooney, Kelsey Morse and Amanda Rohdenburg

Goal Seven creates a serious challenge for the people of Rwanda. The population of the country is growing at high rates and as a result, the use of natural resources has continues to cause problems for completing this goal on time (UNDP 2013).

Over 87% of the Rwandese population is dependent on subsistence agriculture for its livelihood and more than 94% use fuel wood as their primary source of domestic and industrial energy consumption (Short 2008). Environmental sustainability is a key contributor to national economic development and the achievement of Goals One and Seven specifically.

         The increase of population is affecting land and water resources. The unsustainable spiral of growing population, decreasing food supplies, and declining environmental deprivation has been attributed to the loss of about 50.2 % of its forest and woodlands from 1990 to 2005 (UNDP 2007). There has been progress made toward this goal. Currently, the proportion of protected areas that are considered sensitive is 8% on a global scale and measures are in place to show that this goal can be achieved by 2015 (Short 2008).

          The second target of Goal Seven is reducing by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water. Although the number of people with access to safe water increased to about 900,000 between 2000 and 2005, the amount of households that have access to safe water remained unchanged at 64%. In 2011, data shows that there is still little change with only 66% of the population having access to clean drinking water (World Bank 2011). A series of actions are planned to improve access to safe water. Initiatives will be taken to provide, supply and repair water infrastructure, such as boreholes with hand pumps. The rapidly increasing population density is a challenge for this target as well as land deprivation which harmfully affects agricultural productivity (Short 2008).

Photo Credit: Jason De Pecol.

           Priorities that should be taken into account in order to achieve this goal include strengthening environmental institutions, capacity building for communities, and funding to implement laws, policies, and regulations. An important part of meeting Goal Seven is that the Rwandan government needs to continue efforts towards more natural resources management as well as sustainable development.

   Two agencies responsible for helping to reach Goal Seven are: the Ministry for Natural Resource Management and the Rwanda Environmental Management Authority. A very recent development is part of a five year plan called National Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP) Programme which was implemented in Rwanda to, “change consumption and production patterns” and so people will “produce more but with less resources in order to use our natural resources more efficiently” (REMA 2013). If more programs like this are implemented alongside general education on how to manage the resources of the country get out to the public, Rwanda has a much better chance of achieving Goal Seven (UNDP 2013).