A Mercy Corps beneficiaries show off their garden in Niger. Photo: Jeremy Barnicle/Mercy Corps

Last week the UN announced that the number of people suffering from hunger now totals one billion worldwide.

Not too surprisingly, a BBC article points out that the vast majority of the world's hungry live in developing countries. Only 15 million are in the developed world. In contrast, 265 million live in sub-Saharan Africa and more than two times as many — 642 million to be exact — live in the Asia-Pacific region.

Since the economic crisis hit, there are about 100 million more people that are hungry. The UN attributes this rise in world hunger to unemployment and low wages. This is turn hurts people's ability to buy and grow food.

Jacques Diouf, the director general of the UNFAO, focused on agricultural investment as one of the solutions to help developing countries address hunger issues. Diouf is quoted by the BBC as saying, "Investment in agriculture must be increased because for the majority of poor countries a healthy agricultural sector is essential to overcome poverty and hunger and is a pre-requisite for overall economic growth."

At a time when need has never been greater, Mercy Corps has been able to expand our capacity to address hunger in the communities where we work.

China's Three Gorges Dam, the world's largest hydro-electric power station. Photo: PVCG (flickr)

Can China go green without disrupting their economic growth?

Fossil fuels provide most of the energy powering the world’s post populated country, but last month China committed to producing more energy from cleaner sources.

Liu Zhenya — the president of China's largest electric provider — said that China aims to produce 35 percent of its energy from "low-emissions" sources by 2020 at a press conference in Beijing, tells Bloomberg.com.

China is currently the world's leader in renewable energy production. However, a study by Wharton University shows that low emissions sources like hydro-electricity, wind power, and solar power make up only 8 percent of the nation's total energy capacity.

China’s demand for energy is expected to double over the next decade as well — increasing consumption rates, massive amounts of industrial exports, and construction growth could potentially push electricity consumption to nearly 8 trillion kilowatt-hours a year. At that rate China would consume twice as much the United States, which is the next biggest energy consumer after China.

Considering that China’s growth in energy consumption has more than tripled the world’s average in past years and nearly 90 percent of China's energy still comes from coal and oil, the Wharton University report estimates that the nation will need $3.7 trillion to maintain its projected energy growth.

For China, the numbers don’t add up. Their demand for energy is going to double over the next eleven years and the majority of their energy capacity is highly dependent on coal. The climb to 35 percent is either going to be relatively steep or they are going to spend a lot of money converting fossil fuels.

One of the many slums in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil. Photo: World Resources Institute (flickr)

In Brazil, forests are rapidly being destroyed, slums are expanding, and crime has reached an all-time high.

The solution? Government officials in Rio de Janeiro insist that building a nine mile, cinder-block wall around their slums will help to prevent the Atlantic rain forest from further deforestation, and restrict the expansion of these shanty towns. Human rights groups and many residents of the slums — known as favelas — disagree, reports the Wall Street Journal. They claim the purpose of the walls is to further separate the slums from Rio's beautiful beaches and wealthier residents.

To give the government's claims some credit, the expansion of favelas has contributed to Rio De Janeiro's rain forest destruction over the years. In 2004, deforestation reached its peak when 10,588 square miles of forest were destroyed. The Atlantic rain forest, an ecosystem that once was a large and flourishing part of Brazil, has lost 93 percent of its forest cover. The walls are meant to serve as "ecobarriers," to prevent the favelas from expanding into the already at-risk, forested hillsides.

But it seems that the reason for the wall stems beyond the goal to protect the rain forest. The Journal explains:

it's all part of a wider plan by Rio officials to clean up the famously freewheeling city. Under Mr. Cabral, the state intends to hire 22,000 police officers in part to occupy favelas now under control of drug gangs.

Residents of Rio's slums claim the wall will only cage them in and restrict their ability to come and go as they please. Human rights groups are up in arms as well — referring to the proposed wall as a means of "social apartheid."

Representatives of Rochina, one of the many Rio slums in, convinced government officials to replace the high wall with ecological parks, paths, and low walls that still mark the limits of the neighborhood. Other favelas are are trying to follow suit and some government officials are reportedly considering alternatives to the wall. In the meantime, the construction of the walls continue until perhaps a different idea is agreed upon that makes the barrier clear without making residents feel trapped.

Chile's salmon industry is worth $2 billion and the fish are one of the country's top four exports. Chile is the biggest supplier of salmon to the U.S. and second to the world. But in the past year, a flue-like virus called Infectious Salmon Anemia (ISA) has spread through the country's salmon fisheries, sometimes infecting entire salmon stocks.

Hoping to curb the devastating effects of ISA, the Chilean government has stepped up controls and passed stricter regulations for antibiotic use and addressing overcrowding. But, compliance is costly and the industry complained of having trouble securing loans at a time when most banks aren't lending. To help fulfill the new requirements, the Chilean government announced a $120 million bailout for the salmon industry.

New Tang Dynasty Television, an independent, non-profit television broadcaster based in New York, reports on at the toll the virus has taken on the industry and what the future for the industry looks like in the following video.

Barbara Ehrenreich, author of the New York Times best-seller Nickel and Dimed, recently visited a few of the families she profiled in her book to check in on how the recession was affecting their lives.

"In good times and grim ones, the misery at the bottom just keeps piling up, like a bad debt that will eventually come due."

The economic crisis hasn't changed the situation for many of the poor families Ehrenreich profiled because things were already pretty bad before the economy started tanking. They still face the same daily struggles of low wages, little job security, and limited safety nets like savings and family members to fall back on.

These families aren't coping with the economic crisis by canceling vacations and shopping at the Dollar Tree instead of Pier One Imports, for them the impacts of a poor economy are less obvious. Maybe this is why their story isn't often covered by ABC's the View and the local evening news.

Even after the recession ends and the economy begins to rebuild, many Americans will still be living paycheck to paycheck. The Wal-Mart clerk. Your corner grocery owner. Your office-building janitor. In her recent Op-Ed for the New York Times Ehrenreich again gives a voice to today's overlooked citizens.

Photo: Urban Poor Associates (UPA) (flickr)

In March of 2008, over 250 people from 34 different countries gathered to talk about trash in Bogotá.

Why? These people came together to attend the First International and Third Latin American Conference of Waste Pickers in Bogota, Colombia. The goal of the conference was to help waste pickers organize around the challenges they face and learn from each other's experiences.

Worldwide there are about 15 million people that earn their living by collecting and sorting through trash in order to find materials that can be recycled, resold and reused. Some waste pickers are actually hired by local governments and businesses to sort through trash to find recyclables, others do it illegally.

But waste pickers want more respect from their communities. They see waste picking is a business that is saving hundreds of thousands of pounds of salvageable material from landfills each year.

Conference participants devised strategies to work with their communities to legalize their trade in places where sorting through trash is prohibited. They broke out into groups and agreed on goals specific to their region. For instance, waste pickers in Asia are working to integrate the voices of environmental activists into their work. Waste pickers in Latin America plan to collaborate and organize with each other by using a community website.

Conferences like this one will help draw attention to the waste pickers' cause, as well as allow them to organize and establish a unified voice. Silvo Ruiz, a legal representatives working with the waste pickers, echoed the call for greater unity among waste pickers in the conference's final report.

We waste pickers will keep our hands in the garbage bag that provides our livelihood, but our head outside of the bag, to fight for the public policies we need to improve our situation. Intermediaries wait comfortably in their warehouses, and [w]aste [p]ickers do the hard work of collecting. Waste should not be for the intermediaries, but for the waste pickers who do all the work. United, we can fight for what is needed.

Kamwi Alphonse, 65, lives in the Bulengo displacement camp and makes charcoal primarily for his family, but occasionally sells it as well. He sells a plastic bag for 600 Francs — about a dollar. Photo: Miguel Samper for Mercy Corps

This has been reposted from the Mercy Corps blog.

Most people have heard of conflict or "blood" diamonds, but fewer may be aware of conflict charcoal. The charcoal trade in Congo's North Kivu Province is primarily controlled by a long-standing rebel group. Much of the charcoal in Goma is produced from trees in Virunga National Park.

While in Goma recently, Balemba, an employee of the park service (ICCN), came to speak to Mercy Corps about activities in the park. The ICCN patrols the park regularly, both to protect the gorilla population, but also to discourage charcoal production in the park. Balemba works with communities that live on the borders of Virunga National Park and strives to find ways to increase revenue for the local population in an environmentally friendly way.

Currently it is common practice for communities to engage in the charcoal trade as a way to make money. As an alternative, the ICCN is distributing biomass briquette presses to local associations. The associations receive training on how to make the briquettes and are responsible for collecting the biomass (which includes dried grass, sawdust or paper) needed to make them.

One press can produce approximately 500 briquettes per day. The briquettes can be used to cook with and are a cleaner energy source than charcoal. Mercy Corps is currently distributing briquettes to 700 beneficiaries for use in fuel efficient stoves.

Balemba warned that while the briquettes are largely a positive development, there are negative consequences to offsetting the charcoal trade. Briquette presses may be destroyed by the rebels that control the charcoal trade, or community members may be forced to produce or transport charcoal for them.

As with most things in Congo, it's a complex situation.

By the summer of 2008, the price of rice had increased five times from the average price in 2005. Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps

The following post is from One Table, a Mercy Corps campaign to fight world hunger by investing in the world's women.

Today almost a billion people worldwide are unable to buy or grow enough food to avoid malnutrition. That's 120 million more than were hungry in 2006.

What happened? Basically, the world saw dramatic spikes in food prices. But there were many underlying causes of what's known as the global food crisis:

• Drought and other climate-related problems that resulted in smaller harvests
• Changing diets — rise of the middle class in India and China and an increased demand for food, especially meat, which requires large amounts of grain to raise
• Diversion of crops from food production to the production of biofuels
• High fuel prices during 2008 — if it costs more to transport food, prices go up
• Declining investments in agricultural productivity — total agriculture development aid to poor countries plunged from $8 billion in 1984 to $3.4 billion in 2004. At the same time, the developing world's cities have been ballooning with people who do not grow any of their food
• Export bans and restrictions last year in several major grain-producing countries like China as governments sought to lower food prices for their own citizens, with the result of reducing the global supply on hand.

While food prices have come down from their highs of 2008, they remain substantially above historic levels. Many economists feel this trend, which most severely affects those who can least afford it, is likely to continue for some time.

The economic, health and societal costs of the global food crisis have been severe. One of the first things Mercy Corps did to figure out how and where to direct our efforts was to survey the communities where we work. We discovered that within communities Mercy Corps serves, roughly 70 percent of income is spent on food, and 80 percent of the population had been affected by rising food prices over the past year. The survey also confirmed something we already suspected: that families were coping with higher prices by eating fewer meals, selling off household belongings, going into debt and removing children from school so that they can work.

In addition to being a record year for food prices, it's also been a record year for our food security team, allowing Mercy Corps to aggressively respond to this crisis. We now have 17 programs in 13 countries designed specifically to respond to this on-going problem. Through support from donors including USAID, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Gap Foundation, the Hunger Site, and private individuals, our Food Crisis Response employs a strategy designed to ensure that the groundwork for increased prosperity in the future is laid — even while addressing the immediate problem of accessing sufficient food.

Food distributions, much of which are specifically targeted to improve child nutrition, are taking place in Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Zimbabwe. Meanwhile, in the Central African Republic, India, Indonesia, Liberia, Nepal, Niger, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Uganda and again Zimbabwe, Mercy Corps is helping hungry households to access food by providing employment opportunities, agricultural training and inputs (such as seeds and tools), and helping people establish and grow small businesses.

Combined, these programs are reaching almost 1.5 million individuals who have been directly impacted by higher food prices. Overall, Mercy Corps’ Crisis Response will lead to a sustainable increase in income for these people, leading in turn to greater food security over the long-term.

Organic tea leaves in Darjeeling, India. Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps.

Over the past few years, hundreds of thousands of farmers in rural India have transitioned organic farming. But can these families grow enough to compete with conventional agriculture?

India’s agricultural history, especially in the 20th century, has been haunted by the Bengal famine of 1943, in which food scarcity led to the deaths of 4 million people. In order to combat a future national hunger crisis, the American plant breeder Norman Borlaug worked with Indian scientists, farmers, and politicians to promote the Green Revolution of the 1960s and 70s. New seeds, fertilizers and agricultural technology were introduced and, for a while, dramatically improved crop yields to feed India’s hungry and growing population.

After its initial success, however, the accumulation of chemicals in the ground damaged the soil and crop yields declined. Over time, more and more fertilizer had to be used to achieve the same yields as before, and for some farmers, the benefit of fertilizers and pesticides eventually outweighed by the costs it incurred.

But according to recent report from NPR, some farmers are making the switch to more varied crops instead of a single-crop farms to improve the nutrients in the soil.

Despite its growing popularity in India as well as around the world, some agribusiness companies like Monsanto worry that organic techniques just aren't as efficient as those developed during the green revolution, and will leave those immediately affected by the switch to organic without enough food to survive.

Worries about food distribution are justified. Approximately 2.1 million children under five die each year in India, with over half of those deaths directly related to malnutrition — of those who survive, another half will suffer from malnutrition-related stunted growth. Still, organic farmers around the world argue that given time, government support, and technological advances, the sustainability of organic farming will in fact increase the productivity and the safety of food given to those at greatest risk.

According to international organizations like the World Bank and the farmers themselves, it is not just agriculture itself that needs a face-lift in India, but also the bureaucracy and policy that surrounds it. A recent study by the Punjab State Farmers Commission cited by NPR found that 70 percent of India's farms could go organic and maintain appropriate food production. It also suggests that India redirect some of it's government funding to organic farming infrastructure and research, thus recognizing its future place in India's food production.

Gurcharan Kalkat, a member of the commission, told NPR he believes in the organic movement. "Only one thing can save Punjab: India has to launch a brand new Green Revolution. But … this one has to be sustainable."

With a population of 1.15 billion, the population of India is three times that of the United States. It also has 30 times the number of organic farmers. Some, like Grist food editor Tom Philpott, think the rest of the world could learn a thing or two from an Indian organic farmer, rethinking the ways to feed a massive population on healthy, sustainable crops.

Photo: Pan-African News Wire File Photos (flickr)

Jacob Zuma, South Africa's newly elected president, sure has his work cut out for him.

Zuma came into power just before the country announced that its economy is experiencing it's worst recession in 17 years. The country is also faced with the challenges of high unemployment — nearly 22 percent — and about a quarter of the population lives in poverty.

But the leader of Africa's most influential country says he's determined to turn this situation around.

In his first state of the nation address Zuma ambitiously promised to create 500,000 jobs by the end of the year. Zuma also committed to a new era of fiscal discipline, saying that "In the face of the economic downturn, we will have to act prudently — no wastage, no rollovers of funds — every cent must be spent wisely and fruitfully."

In order to survive this recession, Zuma needs to follow through on his promises. The New York Times quotes Harvard economist Dani Rodrik on the importance of job creation for South Africa: "If you don’t get these people in the work force, you’ll lose them forever to lives of distress."

Poor and out-of-work South Africans are placing a lot of hope in Zuma's pledge to create jobs. Interviewed by the Times, Josephine Nontando Mahlangu, an unemployed mother, reacted to Zuma's speech with some optimism: "Maybe Zuma will change everything the way he’s promised."

"Peace from Rwanda." Photo: courtesy of Adam Bacher

Rwanda, 1994: Hundreds of thousands of people, mostly members of the Tutsi minority, are slaughtered by their ethnic Hutu neighbors in one of the worst genocides of the 20th century.

Today, the words "Hutu" and "Tutsi," once ripe with divisiveness and hatred, are no longer spoken on the streets of Rwanda. Reconciliation efforts have led perpetrators and survivors to work together to rebuild their common livelihoods.

Photographer Adam Bacher is documenting the efforts of this New Rwanda, giving readers of his blog a reason to be hopeful about the country's future. He provides a sweeping visual tour of reconciliation efforts, from a progressive rehabilitation center for former child soldiers, to a community-service program for former prisoners who rebuild the homes of survivors. He also documents programs meant to empower victims and rebuild the Rwandan economy. He visits a community-driven hospital construction project for infectious disease patients, and follows a non-profit that teaches vocational micro-business skills to children orphaned by the genocide.

The inspiration behind Bacher's work lies in the resilience of the Rwandan people:

Today Rwanda is an example of peace. The people have chosen not to allow themselves to become captive to decades of retributional killings. Distinctions between ethnic groups, political extremism, wide spread corruption, media manipulation, and other factors that led to the genocide have all but disappeared. Rwandans are working hard to reconcile their differences, and grow themselves out of poverty - toward peace and prosperity. They are an example to the world of what is possible.

Workers at a footwear factory in Dongguan, China. Photo: clayirving (flickr)

Made in China.

It's a label you might associate with cheap labor and mass production — but a recent study featured in BusinessWeek says that China's products may no longer be the best bargain for U.S. companies.

Outsourcing to mainland China has several "hidden costs" related to rising labor and currency rates, the report reveals. In the last three years, the yuan has gained ground on the weakened U.S. dollar and factory workers wages are going up. This translates to a drop in the average price gap between China and U.S.-manufactured products — from 22 percent to 5.5 percent.

And when you add in the costs that come with producing goods halfway around the world — storage fees, shipping delays and the price to repair or replace high-tech product parts — the ultimate savings are minimal. "A couple of years ago, outsourcing to China was a no-brainer," says Stephen T. Maurer, director of AlixPartners, the firm that led the study. Now, he tells BusinessWeek, manufacturers are thinking twice about where to send their business.

Some U.S. companies are turning to Mexico, where manufacturing rates are cheaper than China's and suppliers across the border are more accessible.

That doesn't necessarily mean that the label "Made in Mexico" will replace "Made in China." Low wages for factory workers still make China a top competitor when it comes to labor-intensive products like toys and clothes.

Photo: AdamCohn (flickr)

Cairo's trash-filled neighborhoods are the proud home of nearly 70,000 Coptic Christian zabaleen people and the majority of Egypt's pig population.

For decades, the zabaleen have earned a living off of collecting trash in Cairo's slums. In an average day, the zabaleen collect almost 6,000 tons of trash. Food scraps make up more than half of the trash and are fed to the pigs. Most of what remains is then recycled by zabaleen men.

Even though there are no reported cases of swine flu in Egypt — and you can't catch the virus from contact with pigs — the government has decided to slaughter all of Egypt's pigs as a preventative measure. Some think there there may be ulterior motives behind the mass slaughter as well. The New York Times reports that the government claims that getting rid of the pigs would force the zabaleen to clean up their neighborhoods.

The Egyptian government has promised to humanly butcher the swine according to Islamic law and freeze the meat. It is uncertain whether or not this meat will be consumed by Egypt's non-Muslim population. In compensation they will pay about $180 per pig.

Pigs importance goes beyond money for the zabaleen community. Along with the income their meat brings in they also play an important role as a cleaning crew of sorts, and the zabaleen feel targeted by the government. The Coptic Christian zabaleen are a minority in Egypt — 90 percent of the population is Muslim. Since it is against Islamic law to eat pigs, the zabaleen question whether or not the mass-slaughter in the name of swine flu is merely a disguise for religious motives.

More pigs are being slaughtered by the day and the zabaleen continue to plead with the government to not destroy their livelihoods. Ayman Saed told the BBC that when the government officers took his pigs it felt "as if they were killing me."

In a last ditch resort to save their pigs and their livelihoods, The New York Times reports that the zabaleen are now trying to get the government to let them keep their pigs on farms outside of they city. The zabaleen could cart out the organic waste to the farm and keep making a living off of collecting trash. So far, the government hasn't come around.

Barbers from the Swat Valley have more freedom in IDP camps than they did in their home towns under Taliban rule which found shaving off beards un-Islamic. Photo: Elias Pirasteh (flickr)

Barbers from the Swat Valley were forbidden to shave off the beards of their customers under Taliban rule, which condemned the practice as "un-Islamic." Since the Taliban took over the area, the Pakistani army has been trying to regain control over their territory. The resulting violence has made the beautiful and serene area a dangerous place to live. BBC News spoke to some of the men who fled the area, and are now living and working in camps for internally displaced people.

One of the barbers interviewed tells the BBC:

The Taliban threatened to attack the barber shops and their houses if they kept shaving customers' beards. Before the Taliban came along with their restrictions I used to do 15 to 20 shaves a day so as soon as they took over I saw my income plummet.

Most of these men want to return to their homes but also want the freedom to practice their livelihoods without the constant threat of violence. For now, the camps have become their home and source of income.

Read more about the Swat valley in Global Envision's post: The Economic Fallout From Pakistan's Taliban Troubles.

So All May Eat Cafe of Denver, Colorado. Photo: Stephen Swofford (flickr)

“Everyone, regardless of economic status, deserves the chance to eat healthy food while being treated with dignity.” This is the philosophy of So All May Eat, a cafe in Denver, Colorado.

In this quaint little restaurant located in the heart of the Mile-High city, a menu of fresh organic cuisine is prepared daily. However, the menu doesn't list prices and the there isn't a cash register on the counter. There is only a donation box at the front of the store.

The restaurant serves roughly 15,000 people a year, reports the Westword News of Denver, some pay more for their meal and some pay less. There are no suggested prices, allowing everyone to enjoy a quality meal at a price they can afford.

So far, the cafe’s donation system seems to balance itself out, as the restaurant has been in business for almost two years now.