12 Reminders
These striking photographs are a stark reminder of the challenges faced every day by people around the world, from climate change to recycling. Let's not just look at these photos and maybe shed a few tears. Let's do something to make this world a better place for everyone. A simple prayer everyday. A helping hand. A small donation. A little extra effort to recycle. A thankful heart for what we have.
1. Inside an ice cave on the edge of the Marr Ice Piedmont, Anvers Island, Antarctica (photo by Gary Braasch). This cave reportedly has since disappeared as the glacier retreated. For a long time - the first fifteen years that we knew about global warming and did nothing - there were no pictures. That was one of the reasons for inaction. Climate change was still 'theoretical', the word that people in power use to dismiss anything for which pictures do not exist. But now the pictures, like this one, have started to come, and they will not cease.
2. A Ghanaian father watches over his son as a guinea worm is slowly removed from the boy's scrotum (photo by Brent Stirton). Guinea worms live in the mud around water holes and are ingested by people who drink infected water. Water is the key to life. It is fundamental to all human activities. Water grows the food we eat, generates the energy that supports our modern economies and maintains the ecological services on which we all depend. Yet billions of people worldwide still lack access to the most basic human right: safe, clean, adequate water.
3. Women and children are responsible for hauling water in Africa (photo by Brent Stirton). This four year old girl in Ghana walks four kilometres twice each day to fetch buckets of water for her family.
4. An eleven year old girl in Ghana helps her blind mother and brother fetch water from a swamp (photo by Brent Stirton). She has cared for them for six years, since they both lost their sight to trachoma, a bacterial infection of the eyelids linked to dirty water. Our failure to provide safe water and sanitation will cause sickness, blindness, lost opportunities and, for a staggeringly large number of people, early death.
5. Using water pumped from the Buriganga River, a young girl washes carbon rods from used batteries at a battery recycling workshop in Ayena Ghat, Bangladesh (photo by Shehzad Noorani). Day in and day out, women and children as young as three or four break open discarded batteries with hammers in order to remove the recyclable carbon rods and tiny pieces of reusable metal. Depending upon the speed of their work, they earn between 30 and 50 taka per day (1 USD = 68.7 taka), i.e. about 13 dollars per month.
6. Kelvin Kalasha, 30, is helped into his bath at the Mother of Mercy Hospice in Zambia (photo by Tom Stoddart). Unlike in the rest of the world, where HIV is largely confined to 'high-risk groups' - mainly prostitutes, intravenous-drug users and gay men - in East and Southern Africa everyone is at risk. Outside Uganda the HIV epidemic is finally beginning to subside in a number of African countries. As a result, a growing number of African men and women are raising their voices and talking about AIDS as never before. The courageous man in this photograph is among the seed corn of that movement. His dignified refusal to accept shame and denial is a powerful remind that AIDS is neither an act of God nor a punishment for a sin, but a terrible disease that no one deserves.
7. Wastewater flows from a pipe at the state-owned Lianhua MSG factory (photo by Steven Voss). Lianhua is the largest producer of MSG in China and one of the largest polluters in the Huai River Basin. Decades of extraordinary growth have catapulted China to the top of the world's economic charts, earning the admiration of much of the rest of the world. Indeed, China's continued economic rise has been one of the few certainties of the twenty-first century. Increasingly, however, the China story is not one of economic miracle but of environmental disaster.
8. Wang Zi Qing, 60, shows the scar where a tumour was removed from his stomach (photo by Stephen Voss). He was a fisherman but is now too sick to work. His two brothers died from cancer within a month of each other. Wang blames polluted water.
9. Trans Amadi Slaughter is the largest slaughterhouse in the Niger Delta (photo by Ed Kashi). Workers kill thousands of animals a day, roast them over burning tires and prepare the meat for sale throughout the delta. Fish was traditionally the main source of protein here, but fish stocks have dwindled due to overfishing and oil pollution.
10. Chernobyl unit 4 (photo by Gerd Ludwig). This unit is so radioactive that even workers in protective gear and respirators can stay inside for only fifteen minutes a day. The site for Chernobyl was chosen in 1970: in northern Ukraine, on the left bank of the Pripyat Rives, which links up through the Kyiv Reservoir to the Dnipro or Dnepr River, the Ukraine's main water supply. The first Chernobyl reactor came on line in October 1977. Three more followed in 1978, 1981 and 1983.
11. To repel malarial mosquitoes, the Mora people of Amazonian Peru wear a natural insect repellent made from two fruits that stains the skin for several weeks (photo by Maggie Hallahan). It seems unthinkable that malaria, a disease carried by a fragile, seemingly insignificant mosquito, could be responsible for a global tragedy on the scale of 9/11... every single day. But it is true. Three thousand children, the equivalent of seven jumbo jets full of infants, toddler and small children - die each day from malaria. This is an unacceptable reality that has only recently pulled at the heartstrings of the international community.
12. Workers push gasoline barrels from the water-front onto the main market road of Yenagoa, Nigeria (photo by Ed Kashi). By almost any measure, Nigeria's oil-producing states are a calamity. The UN estimates that between 1996 and 2002, the human development indices (education, life expectancy, income) actually fell in the core oil-producing states. Since 2000, the rage felt by the marginalised and unemployed men across the Niger Delta has taken a militant turn and for the better part of 2 years, has been more or less a war zone. The history of our addiction to oil is a chronicle of violence, corruption and the worst excesses of frontier capitalism and social Darwinism.
These striking photographs are a stark reminder of the challenges faced every day by people around the world, from climate change to recycling. Let's not just look at these photos and maybe shed a few tears. Let's do something to make this world a better place for everyone. A simple prayer everyday. A helping hand. A small donation. A little extra effort to recycle. A thankful heart for what we have.
1. Inside an ice cave on the edge of the Marr Ice Piedmont, Anvers Island, Antarctica (photo by Gary Braasch). This cave reportedly has since disappeared as the glacier retreated. For a long time - the first fifteen years that we knew about global warming and did nothing - there were no pictures. That was one of the reasons for inaction. Climate change was still 'theoretical', the word that people in power use to dismiss anything for which pictures do not exist. But now the pictures, like this one, have started to come, and they will not cease.
2. A Ghanaian father watches over his son as a guinea worm is slowly removed from the boy's scrotum (photo by Brent Stirton). Guinea worms live in the mud around water holes and are ingested by people who drink infected water. Water is the key to life. It is fundamental to all human activities. Water grows the food we eat, generates the energy that supports our modern economies and maintains the ecological services on which we all depend. Yet billions of people worldwide still lack access to the most basic human right: safe, clean, adequate water.
3. Women and children are responsible for hauling water in Africa (photo by Brent Stirton). This four year old girl in Ghana walks four kilometres twice each day to fetch buckets of water for her family.
4. An eleven year old girl in Ghana helps her blind mother and brother fetch water from a swamp (photo by Brent Stirton). She has cared for them for six years, since they both lost their sight to trachoma, a bacterial infection of the eyelids linked to dirty water. Our failure to provide safe water and sanitation will cause sickness, blindness, lost opportunities and, for a staggeringly large number of people, early death.
5. Using water pumped from the Buriganga River, a young girl washes carbon rods from used batteries at a battery recycling workshop in Ayena Ghat, Bangladesh (photo by Shehzad Noorani). Day in and day out, women and children as young as three or four break open discarded batteries with hammers in order to remove the recyclable carbon rods and tiny pieces of reusable metal. Depending upon the speed of their work, they earn between 30 and 50 taka per day (1 USD = 68.7 taka), i.e. about 13 dollars per month.
6. Kelvin Kalasha, 30, is helped into his bath at the Mother of Mercy Hospice in Zambia (photo by Tom Stoddart). Unlike in the rest of the world, where HIV is largely confined to 'high-risk groups' - mainly prostitutes, intravenous-drug users and gay men - in East and Southern Africa everyone is at risk. Outside Uganda the HIV epidemic is finally beginning to subside in a number of African countries. As a result, a growing number of African men and women are raising their voices and talking about AIDS as never before. The courageous man in this photograph is among the seed corn of that movement. His dignified refusal to accept shame and denial is a powerful remind that AIDS is neither an act of God nor a punishment for a sin, but a terrible disease that no one deserves.
7. Wastewater flows from a pipe at the state-owned Lianhua MSG factory (photo by Steven Voss). Lianhua is the largest producer of MSG in China and one of the largest polluters in the Huai River Basin. Decades of extraordinary growth have catapulted China to the top of the world's economic charts, earning the admiration of much of the rest of the world. Indeed, China's continued economic rise has been one of the few certainties of the twenty-first century. Increasingly, however, the China story is not one of economic miracle but of environmental disaster.
8. Wang Zi Qing, 60, shows the scar where a tumour was removed from his stomach (photo by Stephen Voss). He was a fisherman but is now too sick to work. His two brothers died from cancer within a month of each other. Wang blames polluted water.
9. Trans Amadi Slaughter is the largest slaughterhouse in the Niger Delta (photo by Ed Kashi). Workers kill thousands of animals a day, roast them over burning tires and prepare the meat for sale throughout the delta. Fish was traditionally the main source of protein here, but fish stocks have dwindled due to overfishing and oil pollution.
10. Chernobyl unit 4 (photo by Gerd Ludwig). This unit is so radioactive that even workers in protective gear and respirators can stay inside for only fifteen minutes a day. The site for Chernobyl was chosen in 1970: in northern Ukraine, on the left bank of the Pripyat Rives, which links up through the Kyiv Reservoir to the Dnipro or Dnepr River, the Ukraine's main water supply. The first Chernobyl reactor came on line in October 1977. Three more followed in 1978, 1981 and 1983.
11. To repel malarial mosquitoes, the Mora people of Amazonian Peru wear a natural insect repellent made from two fruits that stains the skin for several weeks (photo by Maggie Hallahan). It seems unthinkable that malaria, a disease carried by a fragile, seemingly insignificant mosquito, could be responsible for a global tragedy on the scale of 9/11... every single day. But it is true. Three thousand children, the equivalent of seven jumbo jets full of infants, toddler and small children - die each day from malaria. This is an unacceptable reality that has only recently pulled at the heartstrings of the international community.
12. Workers push gasoline barrels from the water-front onto the main market road of Yenagoa, Nigeria (photo by Ed Kashi). By almost any measure, Nigeria's oil-producing states are a calamity. The UN estimates that between 1996 and 2002, the human development indices (education, life expectancy, income) actually fell in the core oil-producing states. Since 2000, the rage felt by the marginalised and unemployed men across the Niger Delta has taken a militant turn and for the better part of 2 years, has been more or less a war zone. The history of our addiction to oil is a chronicle of violence, corruption and the worst excesses of frontier capitalism and social Darwinism.
But whoever has this world’s goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him?
My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth. And by this we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before Him.
My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth. And by this we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before Him.
~ 1 John 3:17-19 (New King James Version) ~
1 Comments:
These are by far some of the most startling and eye opening photographs I have seen in a long time.
When I think of what atrocities the human race has inflicted upon one another it makes me sick. We treat our pets better than the unborn or poor.
Thank you for this reality check John. You are right tears prayer and action is what is needed by all of us if this kind of thing is to stop.
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