When I give food to the poor…

Saw this quote from Dom Hélder Câmara on the Sandals at the Gate blog:

 

Bono and Oprah launch (RED) products

Bono and Oprah have gone on a shopping spree launching the (Product) Red line, a collection of products including phones, clothing, and a special-edition iPod to raise money for HIV / AIDs in Africa. There’s a MySpace site about (Product) Red, too. Buy (Red)!

 

Nobel Prize awarded to bank providing microcredit to poor

Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank have been awarded the Nobel Prize “for their efforts to create economic and social development from below”. The Grameen Bank has provided microcredit loans to more than seven million people, without demanding collateral.

In awarding the Prize, the Nobel committee said:

“Across cultures and civilisations, Yunus and Grameen Bank have shown that even the poorest of the poor can work to bring about their own development,” the secretive five-member committee said in announcing the award.

“Lasting peace cannot be achieved unless large population groups find ways in which to break out of poverty,” it said, adding Yunus’s goal was to end poverty in the world.

 

Act now to fight climate change, report warns

A coalition of aid, development and environmental non-government organisations has researched, and commissioned the CSIRO to research, the effects of climate change on development, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region. The results of the research showed that the likely effect of rising sea levels due to global warming will be to cause a mass exodus to Australia. The Australian Government is being urged to review its immigration program in light of this.

Australia has made a disproportionate contribution to global warming.

The report found, for example:

• Millions in the Asia-Pacific region will be forced to relocate, from sea level rises up to 50cm by 2070, having an economic impact of thousands of billions. Most affected will be islands in the Pacific, India, Bangladesh, Vietnam and China.
• The climate changes will trigger the increase of heat-related illnesses, while flooding and cyclones will also increase injuries and deaths.
• Water resources will be challenged with both drought, and intrusion of salt-water into freshwater sources.

World Vision Australia chief executive, Tom Costello, has said that it is the poorest of the poor who will be hardest hit. Climate change “fundamentally change the way we aid the world’s poor. It will undermine the value and impact of current aid spending and will lead to far greater calls for assistance from those hurt most. The impacts of climate change will require Australia to respond far more frequently.”

The World Vision Australia Media Release reported:

Victorian and Tasmanian moderator of the Uniting Church Rev Jason Kioa, himself a Pacific Islander, said global warming was as much a moral, social, economic and theological issue as an environmental one: “We’re deeply concerned about the impact climate change will have on the lives of vulnerable people in our region.”

The report recommends that Australian aid needs help the nations most likely to be affected by climate change to prepare for those changes, and to assist in working towards more use of renewable energy and energy efficiency. And, Australia needs to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, while assisting those displaced by climate change.

For more details, see:

• The Climate Change & Development Roundtable reports, particularly the Executive Summary and “Australia responds: Helping our neighbours fight climate change”
• The World Vision Australia Media Release about the report.
• News.com.au’s summary