Blog for a Better World

In the developing countries, it is the rural areas that face the greatest threat from indoor pollution, where some 3.5 billion people continue to rely on traditional fuels such as firewood and charcoal for cooking and heating. Burning such fuels produces large amount of smoke and other air pollutants in the confined space of the home, resulting in high exposure. Women and children are the groups most vulnerable as they spend more time indoors and are exposed to the smoke. In 1992, the World Bank designated indoor air pollution in the developing countries as one of the four most critical global environmental problems.  Although many hundreds of separate chemical agents have been identified in the smoke from biofuels, the four most serious pollutants are particulates, carbon monoxide, polycyclic organic matter, and formaldehyde.

One problem behind world hunger is that many developing countries, where hunger is most severe, owe hundreds of billions of dollars in debt to many of the developed countries, thus money governments should be investing in their local region gets spent on repaying the debt instead.  Negotiations are underway to pressure governments from developing nations to cancel the debt owed by these less developed countries.  Another factor behind world hunger is the fact that most food is produced in developing nations.  Because of this, the huge cost of packaging, transporting and distributing the food increases the cost of food exorbitantly.  When food can be produced in greater quantities more efficiently in areas geographically closer to where it is needed, costs for this food are reduced. When food costs less, more people can buy sufficient amounts to feed themselves and their families.

Most countries worldwide acknowledge the fact that exploiting children for regular and sustained labor should be prohibited and in most developed countries, laws do exist that prohibit the use of children under a certain age from economic exploitation.  But instituting laws against child labor may cause more harm than good in developing countries.  Many youth rights groups, other organizations and some scholars argue that banning child labor or boycotting companies that use children in their workforce only forces these children to turn to more dangerous and exploitive professions such as stone-crushing, street hustling and prostitution.  For example, in the 1990s, the U.S. banned carpet exports from India due to child labor issue and this action caused 5,000 – 7,000 Nepalese children to turn to prostitution.  As long as extremely poor families in developing countries are struggling to survive, children will be forced to work; and laboring away in sweatshops and the garment industries is a far better alternative than hustling and prostituting in the streets.