Carbon for Water: A New Sustainable Finance Model Saves Lives and the Environment
An innovative carbon finance scheme tackles several issues at once: climate change, deforestation, poverty, disease and lack of clean water
Clean water is something that most people take for granted. You probably just have to go to your kitchen and turn on the tap. But almost 1 billion people (about 1 in every 8 individuals) don't have access to clean water. The Water Project says that lack of access to clean water is "one of the greatest causes of poverty in Africa [and] also the most overlooked" problems.[1]
The organization notes that the United Nations estimates that "Sub-Saharan Africa alone loses 40 billion hours per year collecting water; that's the same as a whole year's worth of labor by France's entire workforce."[2] Between clean water and wages, what would you choose?
DIRTY WATER = DEATH
But the lack of clean water doesn't just keep people mired in poverty—it also kills. Almost 5,000 children in Africa die every single day because of it, many of them from such easily treatable ailments like diarrhea.[3] For those of us living in the West, this figure is incomprehensible. That it continues, unconscionable.
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Reynard is a Justmeans staff writer for Sustainable Finance and Corporate Social Responsibility. A former media executive with 15 years experience in the private and non-profit sectors, Reynard is the co-founder of MomenTech, a New York-based experimental production studio that explores transnational progressivism, neo-nomadism, post-humanism and futurism. He is also author of the blog 13.7 Billion Years, covering cosmology, biodiversity, animal welfare, conservation and ethical consumption. He is currently developing the Underground Desert Living Unit (UDLU), a sustainable single-family dwelling envisioned as a potential adaptation response to the future loss of human habitat due to the effects of anthropogenic climate change. Reynard is also a contributing author of "Biomes and Ecosystems," a comprehensive reference encyclopedia of the Earth's key biological and geographic classifications, to be published by Salem Press in 2013.
