Our health and The Arctic

I have just returned from the high Arctic, having done a circumnavigation of Spitsbergen, the largest of the islands making up Svalbard. We called at a number of the other islands, and saw stunning ice scenes, mountains, glaciers, and polar bears, walrus, reindeer…. Svalbard is about as far north as you can go, and is on a level with the top of Greenland. It was a huge privilege to have the money, time and ability to get there and to see it for myself. For me, wild places are essential to my ability to function in the modern world and the world of work; it’s what I want to do in my free time. I’m aware of course of what a luxury that is, and the danger of these areas being playgrounds for the rich. The paradox often, is that tourism destroys the wildness that we seek; I went with an environmentally-conscious and allegedly ‘responsible’ tour operator. The Association of Artic Expedition Cruise Operators (AECO) is an international association aiming to manage responsible and environmentally-friendly cruise operations in the Arctic and to educate those who visit about the issues facing this amazing part of the world. It undertakes studies to assess the impact on wildlife, the cultures and people and environment, in the hope of minimizing unwanted impacts.

Tourism however, is a complex area, and I’m not going into it here. (I do supervise a PhD student looking at pro-poor tourism in The Gambia, and that could be the subject of another blog…) Apart from being important to me, the Arctic is essential to the health of everyone in the world. Everyone on the planet depends on the health of the Arctic. It is what keeps the planet cool – the ice reflects the sun’s rays off its ice, thus acting like a giant air-conditioner. However, we know that the Arctic is heating up twice as fast as anywhere else.

Glaciologists have noted the seventh successive summer of a pattern of warm air circulating on the ice sheet of Greenland, and earlier this month, over only four days, a rapid melting took place over 97% of the surface of Greenland. NASA was so surprised at the findings that it first questioned the instrumentation, but the results have since been confirmed. Although conditions returned to normal by a couple of weeks later, it was highly unusual, as was the breaking off of a huge iceberg (about the size of Manhattan island) from the Petermann Glacier.  There are periods of natural rapid thawing occurring about every 150 years, but there is no doubt that some of the well-documented trends are due to human-made global warming. About a fifth of the annual sea level rise (at the moment about 3mm) is due to the Greenland ice sheet melting.  The National Centre for Atmospheric Science at Reading University in England has recently published studies carried out by Dr. Jonny Day, which concludes that more than 70% of the decline in sea ice is due to human activity, and could be up to 95%. They have compared the variability in the extent of ice over its natural cycle (a cycle of cooling and warming which occurs every 60 to 80 years), using computer simulations to see what would have happened without the input of greenhouse gases. The frightening thing is that as the ice melts, the effect accelerates (the ice-albedo feedback effect), with the sea absorbing even more radiation and therefore warming faster.  Prof. Peter Wadhams from the University of Cambridge predicts that all ice might be lost during the summer months from the Arctic Ocean by 2016. His views are mentioned in the newspaper article highlighted below.

The burning of fossil fuels, is of course one of key contributors to global warming, and the Arctic is now under threat itself from the scramble to find more fuel resources. The reduction in ice means the area is more opened up to exploration. This article of July 21^st explores the issues:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/22/arctic-ice-melting-oil-drilling

The rush to extract resources from the Arctic is being spearheaded by companies that already have poor records for environmental pollution. According to Greenpeace Russia, at least 300,000 to 500,000 tonnes of oil leaks into the Arctic Ocean every year from on-land drilling. The oil industry has polluted major water bodies such as Lake Baikal and its surrounding waterways, meaning that locals cannot catch fish or use water for drinking. The key Russian-owned company, Gazprom, is now expanding north into even more risky waters. It has established a second rig in the Pechora Sea off Siberia this year, in an area surrounded by wildlife sanctuaries and national parks. Greenpeace has been holding up icebreakers en route to the Arctic in advance of the drilling ships and have also started a campaign to establish a global sanctuary in the uninhabited area around the North Pole. The goal is to get the UN to designate it as a protected area for the sake of the health of the planet. Greenpeace also calls for a ban on offshore drilling and unsustainable fishing in the Arctic. The campaign is at:

www.SaveTheArctic.org

It seems clear that the Arctic is a huge part of the problem of global warming and therefore a major part of finding solutions. Greenpeace’s actions are therefore welcome in an age where governments and the UN seem to be taking action too slowly, and where they have conflicting agendas.

How the health promotion community responds to these issues is vital. Of course, people can take action in their personal lives, and as with any community, opinions will vary as to how seriously to take the threats of global warming. However, as health practitioners, our responsibilities to get involved are to me, very clear. Jenny Griffiths in the UK is perhaps the best-known advocate on the role of health practitioners on climate change. With three other editors, she has produced “The Health Practitioner’s Guide to Climate Change, Diagnosis and Cure”, a packed book of 350 pages on understanding climate change, but more importantly, on how to take steps to tackle it. It’s a practical book explaining how we can take action within the compass of our own work lives and practice. Health promotion is the professional area of practice that can persuade people to take action on something as important as climate change. Chapter 7 uses Mahatma Gandhi’s saying “Be the change you want to see in the world” to encourage us as health workers to make changes in our own lives, and then other chapters tackle organizational change, community change and so on.  It’s an essential book to help to start organizing your own response to these dire environmental challenges.

Meanwhile, who or what within the epistemic health promotion community is taking the lead on the threat to the health of the planet? Please use the 'comments' option in this blog to add your views. 

Reference:

Griffiths, J., Rao, M., Adshead, F., and Thorpe, A. (2009) The Health Practitioner’s Guide to Climate Change, Diagnosis and Cure. Earthscan.

Human Rights and Gay Rights

The European football championship was played in Poland and Ukraine a couple of weeks ago, inevitably focusing attention on those two countries.  Ukraine was in the news during the tournament, for failing to curb racist incidents directed at footballers, and it has remained in the news for further unfortunate reasons. Firstly there have been clashes between police and protesters angry at the “russification” of the language after the Parliament’s elevation of Russian to the status of a regional language, with the use of the Ukrainian language a statement of autonomy after years of Soviet rule. Secondly, the Ukrainian Parliament was, last week, debating draft law number 8711, that would make it an offence to talk about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) issues in the media. This threatens education and advice about sexuality, or sexually transmitted infections such as HIV; it threatens public gatherings where LGBT issues are discussed. There has been anti-gay violence in Ukraine, and the country is following the trend set by parts of Russia, which passed laws banning literature about homosexuality, making it illegal to hold film festivals, pride marches or exhibitions where LBGT people were expressing their identity and issues. 

Not so long ago, Britain had its own legislation, passed under Margaret Thatcher’s government and known as “Clause 28”, which made it an offence to ‘promote’ being gay as a ‘normal lifestyle’. Teachers and schools interpreted it as meaning that they could not talk about homosexuality. This law was finally repealed. The comparison is not an especially good one, as the laws currently being debated in Eastern Europe go further than this in terms of being much more punitive. The UN has come out to say that the laws proposed in the Ukraine would violate rights protected under treaties that the Ukraine has itself signed.

The Ukraine is not the only country currently to be debating gay rights. The Global Journal (theglobaljournal.net) featured the Ugandan gay rights activist Kasha Nabagesera in its May 2012 edition, with the headline, “Being gay in Uganda could soon attract the death penalty. Knowing and not reporting that your sister is a lesbian could soon be punishable with a prison sentence”. (p31) Kasha comments, “Uganda… (is)committed to uphold all human rights with no distinction, no exception…My government is proposing too kill me. What is the UN doing about it?” (p33). The ex-prime minister of the UK, Tony Blair, recently ran into a sticky moment in a meeting with the president of Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, where gay rights were alluded to.  She stated, “We like ourselves just the way we are”, defending a law that criminalises homosexual acts (Ford and Allen 2011:19). Other African countries appear to be strengthening anti-gay legislation and homosexuality remains illegal in 37 African countries.

Despite this, there is a lot of LGBT rights activity in Africa, which often only comes into public view when a crisis occurs, such as the murder of the Ugandan gay rights activist, David Kato. The extent of this grassroots activity in Africa is shown by Epprecht’s (2011) useful paper (see reference below). He also suggests that possibly, men who have sex with men (msm) is one of the overlooked factors which might help to explain why sub-Saharan Africa has such high rates of HIV. He reports that in one study in Uganda, for example, 90% of the respondents (msm) had (female) wives as did over 60% in a Kenyan study. Homosexuality is clearly present, and the fact that it is not acknowledged means that health education and promotion are compromised. In Lusaka central prison in Zambia, for example, a well-conducted study found HIV rates of 42% among male inmates. (In the general popualtion it is 14%). Condoms are not distributed in prison as msm is not felt to exist by those who would have the authority to provide condoms. The whole issue is too political, and meanwhile men’s health, and that of the women they go on to have sex with on release, is fundamentally compromised.

Under international law, criminalising homosexuality is illegal, but in many countries, homosexuality is indeed illegal. Wilkipedia provides a useful overview of LGBT rights by country:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_by_country_or_territory

The Human Dignity Trust has recently launched a campaign to combat homophobic legislation globally, and it includes activists from all over the world, including Africa:

http://www.humandignitytrust.org/

Homosexuality is illegal in 78 countries around the world. The maximum penalty in five of those countries is death. There is no clear reason for this extreme response; in Japan, homosexuality has been legal since 1880. What causes some countries to have no problems with respecting the rights of gay people and others to have major difficulties with it?  The Human Dignity Trust is campaigning on the single issue of decriminalising same-sex between consenting adults.

Even in a country such as the UK, where homosexuality is legal, and civil partnerships are available, there are effects on health due to the stigma still existing in some circles.  Stonewall, the gay rights campaigning organization posted this recently on its website:

“5 July 2012

Homophobic bullying ‘a daily nightmare’ for over half of Britain’s school pupils

Pioneering research reveals serious concerns about homophobic language
Nearly a quarter of gay young people attempt suicide

New research carried out by the University of Cambridge for Stonewall’s School Report 2012 has found that 55 per cent of lesbian, gay and bisexual pupils in Britain’s secondary schools experience homophobic bullying. The research, based on a national survey of 1,614 young people, also found that nearly a quarter (23 per cent) of gay young people have attempted to take their own life, and more than half (56 per cent) deliberately harm themselves.”

The report can be found at:

http://www.stonewall.org.uk/at_school/education_for_all/quick_links/education_resources/7956.asp

Gay people are humans like everyone else and thus should come under the same protection under international law, just like everyone else; gay rights are human rights and human rights are gay rights. An attack on gay people is an attack on human rights. And of course, human rights are fundamental to achieving health for all.

References:

Epprecht, M. (2011) Sexual Minorities, Human Rights and Public Health Strategies in Africa. African Affairs, 111/443, 223-243

Ford, T. & Allen, B. (2011) An awkward silence: Liberia’s President defends anti-gay laws – as Blair squirms. The Guardian, 20 March 2012.