Lionel Messi, considered the world's top football player at the moment, takes aim at more than just the back of the net. Photo: prettyfriendship (flickr)

Many of us dream of bending it like Beckham. But star-quality soccer — football, to most of its 250 million players worldwide — is almost impossible without a healthy childhood.

That's why the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, with an assist from the 2011 UEFA Champions League victors FC Barcelona, is teaming up to draw attention to the importance that vaccines hold for the world's future football stars. They're taking aim at polio in particular, seeing the potential to eradicate the disease completely.

With millions of fans worldwide, FC Barcelona has the ability to reach global masses. There is benefit for FC Barcelona as well. In partnering with the Gates Foundation, FC Barcelona is capturing the hearts of a whole new market and adding a social edge to their organization.

Polio is an infectious viral disease, spread from human to human. The disease attacks the central nervous system, resulting in severe paralysis and disability or death. But the vaccine, which costs about 13 cents a dose, protects children from this devastating disease and keeps them in school and in the workforce.

The effects of polio are not only damaging for the individual, but for poor families and countries as well. Caring for polio-stricken family members taps already limited resources, and polio victims struggle to work and effectively contribute monetarily. As children have had access to the vaccine “cases of this devastating disease have fallen by 99 percent in the past 20 years,” according to the Gates Foundation.

If the vaccination of at-risk children can continue, the potential for complete elimination is in sight. But to reach this goal, so that every child has the chance to score, the fight must continue. And as the Gates Foundation says, “polio anywhere is a threat everywhere."

Over one billion people live on less than one dollar a day, according to the U.N. But what can you actually buy with a dollar?

It seems like something that would vary across countries. Luckily, the World Food Programme recently released a series of videos in which it seeks to answer that question. Country specialists in Nepal, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Haiti, Guatemala, Somalia, Kenya, and the Philippines each went to their local markets with the equivalent of about one U.S. dollar and attempted to put together a meal. Watch as Reem Nada visits a market in Alexandria, Egypt.

The shorts are entertaining, but present a rather bleak reality. Almost all of the investigators come up short nutritionally. In Nepal, Deepesh Das Shresta leaves the market holding a few small bananas and a loaf of white bread. Meat is categorically too expensive, and staying within budget means many investigators can’t purchase all of the components necessary to create the meals that are considered cultural staples. It appears that those living on less than a dollar a day are also living far below their daily caloric and nutrient requirements.

Feeding oneself on less than a dollar is tricky business under the best of circumstances. Even worse, the recent volatility of the price of staple foods such as rice has jumped three times since 2008, says the New York Times — meaning that dollar must now be stretched even further.

The rest of the videos can be found on the World Food Programme website. The videos for Ethiopia, Kenya, and the Philippines are listed separately.

Margo Conner is a senior at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, majoring in international affairs. Read her other contributions to Global Envision.

China's getting wealthier, but the U.S. still leads by a wide margin. Photo: Fab O Lens (flickr)

For most economists, it isn't a question of if China will surpass the U.S. in terms of GDP, it's when.

Goldman Sachs estimates China will take the lead by 2027 and Standard Chartered suggests it will happen as soon as 2020, according to a recent article from the Economist.

So what does China's rise mean for the United States? Two recent articles in Foreign Policy explores what has become conventional wisdom regarding China's growing economic and military power, and turns this wisdom on it's head.

There's no doubt China has become one of the world's great powers. But American's tendency to view China’s rise as symbolic of U.S. decline and a new world order is an incorrect and even dangerous fear, argues Foreign policy contributor and Tufts University professor Daniel W. Drezner in Foreign Policy.

Exaggerating Chinese power has consequences. Inside the Beltway, attitudes about American hegemony have shifted from complacency to panic. Fearful politicians representing scared voters have an incentive to scapegoat or lash out against a rising power — to the detriment of all.

According to a recent poll by the Pew Research Center, 44 percent of Americans believe China is already the world’s top economic power, compared to 27 percent who think it’s the U.S. “That perception is completely at odds with the facts," explains a recent article in the Washington Post.

And even if China's economy does overtake that of the United States, China still has massive infrastructure and poverty challenges, explains Harvard University's Joseph S. Nye in another Foreign Policy report.

Even if China's GDP passes U.S. GDP around 2027 (as Goldman Sachs now projects), the two economies would be equivalent in size, not equal in composition. China would still face massive rural poverty and enormous inequality, and it will begin to encounter demographic problems from the delayed effects of its one-child policy. Moreover, as countries develop, there is a natural tendency for growth rates to slow.

Then why do so many Americans think China is the world’s economic leader? Drezner argues Americans are looking at the wrong metrics – total GDP being one, currency reserves being another. China’s currency reserves are the largest in the world. People assume this gives China leverage over the U.S., and let’s them dictate terms. This just isn’t true, explains Drezner, “China needs American consumers at least as much as the United States needs China to buy its debt.”

Even though China and the U.S. may need each other, Nye worries American fear could get in the way of a mutually beneficial relationship between the two superpowers.

China and the United States also have much to gain from working together. Unfortunately, faulty projections that create hubris among some Chinese and unnecessary fear of decline among some Americans could make it difficult to ensure this future.

So, what does it mean for Americans if China surpasses the U.S. as the world’s largest economy? Given the arguments made in Foreign Policy, maybe the best response is to stop worrying about it. What do you think?

In the early 1990s Saddam Hussein drained what biblical scholars believe to be the Garden of Eden. With the water went the people, known as the Ma’dan, and their way of life. Now, Iraqi-American hydraulic engineer Dr. Azzam Alwash and his organization Nature Iraq, are working with the Ma’dan to restore the marshes of southern Iraq, in a project Alwash calls “Eden Again." He hopes the exiled people will come back as water and wildlife return to what had been turned into a desert, according to a segment on the PBS show, Nature.

For thousands of years the Ma’dan called the marshes home. They lived on floating islands made of reeds that grew in the marshes. They caught fish, hunted birds, and kept water buffalo, says an article from Spiegel Online. Without water this life wasn’t possible and the Ma’dan people either migrated to the city or suffered in poverty.

Alwash returned to the marshes in 2003 after Hussein fled from power. He found that those that had remained in the area had already begun to dig through the man-made embankments that diverted the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers away from the marshes, he explained in a recent NPR interview. Flash forward seven years and the Ma’dan have destroyed up to 98 percent of the embankments, Alwash tells the Guardian. Their motivations more economic, than anything else.

Not because they are tree-huggers or bird-lovers, but because it's a source of economic income to them, because they can harvest reeds and sell them. They can fish and feed a family or sell them to earn extra income.

Hundreds of thousands of Ma’dan people who have been living in urban exile are now used to many aspects of modern life, Alwash explains in another article in the Guardian. They’ve become familiar with electricity, television, air-conditioning and wifi. But Alwash sees no reason why comforts such as these can’t be incorporated into the traditional Ma’dan way of life. Once services are in place Alwash anticipates a flood of “reverse migration.”

Right now, the biggest stressors to the marshes are ongoing drought and hydro-dams in Iraq's northern neighbor, Turkey. In the NPR interview Alwash explains that the drought has reduced the marshes to about 35 percent of their former size. But Alwash is confident that 75 percent of the marshes can be restored despite the drought and dams in Turkey.

When Saddam Hussein drained the marshes in the early 1990s he attempted to turn a paradise into a desert and wipe one of the oldest civilizations on earth off the face of the earth itself. He nearly succeeded. But with the help of Dr. Azzam Alwash and Nature Iraq, the Ma’dan have proved the resilient force that nature and humanity are, as a desert becomes Eden again.

Iraqi photographer Sate Al Abbasi's beautiful shots of Ma'dan people at home in the marshes can be viewed in the slideshow below.

In Los Angeles, California, a poor city in a debt-ridden state, a movement to end poverty is gaining popularity. Joyce Appleby, a UCLA professor and living wage advocate, recently wrote an op-ed article for the L.A. Times about the living wage movement.

The living wage movement is not new. In 1997, the L.A. City Council passed a living wage ordinance to guarantee that all people with jobs can provide for themselves and their families. Since then, several U.S. cities and cities around the world have been joining the fight for living wages.

A living wage is defined as a wage that guarantees a worker and her or his family all that they need to live on: food, housing, healthcare, transportation, utilities, and recreation. Minimum wage is supposed to equal a living wage. However 13 percent of U.S. citizens who are living below the poverty line will be quick to tell you that minimum wage often isn't enough to pay the bills. Appleby writes that despite periodic increases to minimum wage, the purchasing power of the current minimum wage is 17 percent lower than it was in 1968.

In a study of the 1997 L.A. living wage law, experimenters found that the law increased pay of over 10,000 jobs, all with only a 1 percent reduction to the workforce. Most firms studied also decreased employee turnover, which can be expensive.

Appleby writes that living wage's greatest ally is capitalism. Market growth has decreased poverty by more than 300 million people in developing countries in East, Southeast, and Central Asia. And the recent attention given to the disgruntled workers in China will help. Dr. Appleby says, "economic development raises expectations among workers." Cheap labor is becoming a thing of the past, as the plight of the laborer is gaining momentum.

An end to poverty once seemed impossible, but the progress made over the last few years is encouraging. Dr. Appleby, at least, concludes that the end of poverty may actually be in sight.

A 1989 poster celebrating Congress of South African Trade Unions' Living Wage Campaign and May Day. Photo: Gardens Media Group/CAP (flickr)

Street vendors in Calcutta are among the 300 million Indians who aren't cashing in on the prosperity generated by the growing Indian economy. Photo: FriskoDude (Flickr)

Imagine the entire population of the United States — just over 300 million people — living in ramshackle homes, struggling to feed and clothe their families. That's about how many Indians are impoverished. According to a recent report by NPR, although India’s economy is growing at around 8 percent a year, about a quarter of the population is missing out on the benefits of robust economic growth.

Many of the jobs being added to the Indian economy aren’t accessible to everyone, says NPR. For example, rural villagers and poor city dwellers lack the skills to fill jobs in India’s expanding service sector, meaning you can't work in a call center if you can’t speak English or have never used a computer. Partha Sen, director of the Delhi School of Economics, suggests that manufacturing jobs would help create income for impoverished Indians. He says, "so far as I know the only way out of poverty for [a] hugely overpopulated economy is through manufacturing."

NPR reports that unless a country discovers oil, manufacturing is a necessary step between poverty and prosperity. Nations that are prosperous now, like the U.S., the UK and China, went through an era of manufacturing that allowed the lower classes to pull themselves out of poverty over a few generations. But in India, certain laws discourage corporations from setting up shop. As a result, many of India’s poor can’t find work.

To make matters worse, because many impoverished Indians don’t technically qualify as “poor” under government standards, they are ineligible for subsidized food and other services, reports The Wall Street Journal. For 25 kilograms of rice and 10 kilograms of wheat, a family with a rare, government-issued ration card pays $4 per month, about half of what others pay.

The Wall Street Journal says that the government plans to adjust their criteria so that an estimated 100 million more Indians will become “poor,” even though this figure may still underestimate the number of people in need. If job creation continues to be limited to the service sector, India's poor could be left behind as the economy booms without them.

The money that men spend while socializing in cafes, in some cases, prevents them from meeting their families' basic needs. Photo: Dave Blume (Flicker)

Is it mean to suggest that poor people may be responsible for their own poverty? New York Times writer Nicholas Kristof is willing to risk that label. He recently suggested that the poor could often improve their situations dramatically just by budgeting:

Look, I don’t want to be an unctuous party-pooper. But I’ve seen too many children dying of malaria for want of a bed net that the father tells me is unaffordable, even as he spends larger sums on liquor. If we want Mr. Obamza’s children to get an education and sleep under a bed net — well, the simplest option is for their dad to spend fewer evenings in the bar.

And Kristof isn't the only one that thinks this. Two economists at M.I.T. reportedly found that the poor spend roughly two percent of their income on their children's education and anywhere from 4 to 8 percent on alcohol and tobacco. Sodas, festivals and prostitutes are also popular ways to blow a paycheck.

However, Kristof does present a few solutions to help the poor cope with their daily expenses, such as microsavings programs that give women more control over the family budget. The most helpful aspect of this article, however, is the refreshingly honest tone it brings to the discussion on development and poverty.

How many times have you seen a picture of a rural African farmer dressed in his Sunday best? Probably not very many.

In an ongoing project called Perspectives of Poverty, Canadian Duncan McNicholl is taking photos of people he meets while working on water and sanitation projects in Malawi to illustrate how photographs can be manipulated to convey different messages.

His latest model is a young girl named Gertrude, who's maybe five or six years old . The mood of the first photo is dreary. Gertrude is looking up at the camera with big, sad eyes and a despondent expression. Her yellow dress is slipping off her small shoulders. Little bits of cereal are stuck to her hand and lips, and she seems to be caught in the act of eating.

In contrast, the second photo is sunny and well lit. Gertrude is hamming it up for the camera with a big grin and mischievous eyes. She’s wearing the same yellow dress, but this time it doesn’t look shabby. A thatched hut in the background is the only clue that this girl lives in poverty. You certainly wouldn’t be able to tell from her smile.

McNicholl started the project because he didn't think the "poverty" photos used by some charities accurately reflected the lives of the friends he had made in Malawi, he explains in his blog.

I thought that these images were robbing people of their dignity, and I felt that the rest of the story should be told as well … I want to bring to light some of the different assumptions we make about a person, especially when we see an image of “poverty” from rural Africa.

An estimated 8.4 million payroll jobs were lost during the recession. Photo: wools (flickr)

What's most effective in helping people climb out of poverty? Jobs and education, according to New York Times columnist Nick Kristof, who cites several recent studies by economists.

Quality youth education programs targeting youth pay off immediately and in the long run — especially those that focus on ninth-grade students, considered a critical juncture for at-risk youth. And jobs are important because they boost entire families.

But as Kristof points out, both employment and school funding have been severely affected by the economic crisis, "harming the two most effective stairways out of poverty." In response, Kristof is calling for a greater commitment.

This wave of research suggests that there’s no magic bullet, that helping people is hard, and that even when pilot programs succeed they can be difficult to scale up. But evidence also suggests that we increasingly have the tools to chip away at poverty. We know what to do if we just can summon the political will.

One of J-PAL's studies tested the effectiveness of computer-assisted learning in certain Indian schools. Photo: niyam bhushan (flickr)

A research group thinks the best way to determine whether aid programs work is to evaluate them using the scientific method.

J-PAL, short for for the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, is a group of researchers - loosely affiliated with MIT - who help design and publish academic-quality studies of existing poverty alleviation programs in an effort to find out exactly what works and what doesn't. These researchers partner with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to evaluate their programs. They also offer courses for other researchers to share their methods. (Class materials are available here for free.)

As J-PAL's website explains, the key to their approach lies in randomization, which is an important part of a well-designed study:

Suppose we would like to see whether one thing (e.g. "schooling") really improves a life outcome (e.g. "health"). The natural instinct is to compare the health of those who have schooling to those who don't. But this would be like comparing apples and oranges: People who have been to school are different in so many ways from those who haven't. Perhaps they have more advantaged social backgrounds, greater access to government services and so better access to schools. And only a few of these factors can be measured and accounted for in a standard statistical analysis. So this simple comparison — those with schooling to those without — may tell us little about the effect of schooling: It may instead be the effect of any of these numerous other differences like social background. If policy are set on the basis of such apples and oranges comparisons, quite a bit of disappointment may result.

J-PAL uses this approach to evaluate existing programs. For example, J-PAL researchers cooperated with an NGO called Pratham to study how much weekly computer use could boost Indian students' academic achievement. They introduced computer-based learning only into randomly selected schools that Pratham was already serving. Students at these schools received basic computer skills training and two hours per week of independent computer time with educational software. After a year, J-PAL found that these students' math test scores had risen, but that their other skills hadn't changed significantly — and all for slightly more money than another effective Pratham program J-PAL had also evaluated.

What makes J-PAL's work innovative is that such randomized studies haven't typically been used in evaluating poverty-alleviation programs, or even in the wider field of economics.

Such data is designed to help aid organizations and governmental bodies decide the most effective way to allocate their funds. For the extra cost of designing an extra study now, J-PAL believes, more money can be directed toward the most effective programs for better poverty-alleviation strategies in the future.

October's comment of the month comes from James in Portland, Oregon. James commented on our story Poverty Isn't Always Ugly. He reminds us that poverty rears its ugly head in many forms — not just monetarily. For his efforts, we will make a $25 donation to a project of his choice on Global Giving.

There are definitely a few issues to consider and discuss relating poverty. In reading Muhammad Yunus' book "Creating a World Without Poverty". He felt, and I agree, that the definition of poverty isn't going to be the same from country to country. For Bangladesh the Grameen Bank developed there own definition of poverty for their internal purposes and to measure impact over time.

Many organization attempt to place a dollar amount of income/day to determine poverty, we've heard the $2.00 per day used frequently. Income isn't a solid method because it doesn't factor variables outside of money. Location and access to natural resources for instance are variables that change the need for money, or an individuals dependence upon it.

Bottom line, I think it's important to realize that poverty can't be defined the same way in every community we visit. Poverty includes physical need and extends into the mindset of individuals and how they view the world around them. It's also important to be culturally sensitive when working with people around the world. Sure, we have it pretty good here in the U.S. but we have problems too. We shouldn't seek to cookie cut our cultural values everywhere we go.

Keep writing in and share your though-provoking comments for a chance to win $25 towards the well-deserving charity of your choice!

* Lest anyone think $25 is not a lot, consider these figures from our affiliate Mercy Corps: $25 delivers clean, safe drinking water to 50 people in one of eastern Congo's sprawling displacement camps. $25 provides seeds to farmers in cyclone-devastated areas of Myanmar to plant five acres of rice. $25 gives traumatized children in Darfur 12 weeks of activities and psychological care to help them heal.

Poverty isn’t always ugly. But it is always real. I recently visited the small village of Beru in the southwest corner of Haiti. For this slightly out-of-shape professor, it’s a hard day-and-a-half hike into the mountains northwest of Les Anglais. I went up there seeking to learn more about the satellite churches that had been planted by our sister church in Les Anglais. In 20 years of sponsoring our sister church in Les Anglais, no one from our congregation had ever gone up there. I am told that I’m the third “blanc” ever to visit.

Beru perches on the ridge of a mountain peak. Its nearly 2,000 inhabitants live in a few dozen roughly 200 square foot thatched-roof or tin-roof huts that neatly line the one red clay path that is the only “road” in and out of the village. Homes here are a kind of wattle (woven wood) and daub made by combining cow dung and mud that is painted white. Some of the homes have designs drawn on the walls. All of them have little white rock borders filled with gravel around the outside. Most have some kind of flowering plants to decorate the outside. The floors are packed earth, neatly swept. As many as ten people occupy each home. No electricity. No plumbing. The nearest running water is a polluted spring that's a two hour’s walk down the mountain. Food is cooked in a community kitchen, a thatched hut with a charcoal fire constantly tended by two women.

My guide for the trip was Etienne Francois, a young Haitian man that our church had funded over a decade ago to attend school to learn agronomy and veterinarian science. Beru is part of the district that Etienne serves. As we approach the village, it is clear that Etienne is well known and well liked. By the time we enter Beru proper, Etienne is holding half a dozen softball-sized avocados — gifts from those too poor to offer anything else.

Etienne shows me the town’s two churches. The Catholic Church is an open pavilion with one crumbling wall. The rusted tin roof is held up by wooden poles. Part of the roof has collapsed. The church also serves as a community center. Kids and adults have a running game of dominoes going all day. In the evening it hosts our meeting with the town’s elders and farmer’s group. The Christian church, a satellite church planted by our sister church, is in relatively better shape. Its concrete block walls and rusted roof are intact. Inside, it is furnished with a couple of wooden benches and a rough wooden lectern that serves as a pulpit. We’re told that the preacher lives back in Les Anglais and walks ten hours every Sunday to preach a service.

Camera in hand, I was wandering around the village of Beru when I heard singing coming from around the corner. When I poked my camera around the corner of a house, the children spotted me and came running to put on an impromptu show. As the children sang, I wondered how many of them would be here on my next visit; how many would die from typhoid or dysentery caused by polluted water; how many would die of starvation; how many would be drawn to Port au Prince or Cap Hatien looking for work only to end up victims of the sex trafficking trade or lured into drug-related gang activity.

A little further down the road is the government-built school. I’m aghast at what is not there. It’s a scene right out of Greg Mortensen’s book, Three Cups of Tea. The tin roof pavilion is supported by concrete pillars and a partial wall. The floor is dirt. When I ask, I’m told that there are no materials, no books and no teachers for first through sixth graders. They simply sit by grade and talk to one another. The older children look after the younger.

That night I’m offered the master bedroom in the village leader’s house as my own. It’s roughly 12 feet square and Etienne tells me that it would be rude to refuse the honor. I feel guilty knowing that the rest of the family is doubled up somewhere else in town. A tarantula the size of my hand watches over me from a corner. I make sure that my mosquito netting is tucked in tight.

In the morning the village leader’s wife gives us a “walking farewell.” She walks us to the edge of the village, chattering all the way, giving Etienne messages to pass on to other people. Just before she turns back, she hands Etienne another of the huge avocados as a going-away gift. She takes my hand in the almost intimate way that Haitians do when friends chat, kisses me on the cheek European style — another Haitian custom — and through Etienne tells me, “we live in abject poverty. We know that. But when you have no choice, then you must choose to be happy.” As we head back down the mountain, I feel like I’ve just been blessed.

Boxing is opening new doors for some Muslim girls from India. Photo: flickr(slack12)

An article in Friday's Wall Street Journal looks at how boxing is giving Muslim girls in India an alternative to their "practically scripted" life.

For many of these girls, the Wall Street Journal says life goes like this: "they stay home, help their mothers, and get married so they aren't a burden to their families anymore."

Sabihal Hussain, a women's studies professor at a New Delhi university explains how boxing is opening up new doors for the girls.

They find (boxing) as a way of coming out from conservativeness. They have very limited role — poor Muslim women — in the public sphere. So thes women, these boxers, they find a way to come out and this is an outlet for them to fight poverty.

The boxers train hard and those that are good enough to compete internationally, fight for cash prizes. But for many girls, boxing can be a gateway into a job with the the police or land them a college scholarship for a spot on the university sports team.

"Greed is ok when you let others profit from it, but greed for oneself is bad, it makes you ill," the Dalai Lama said in an interview with Welt Online. Photo: Giandomenico Ricci (flickr)

At the beginning of July, two influential religious and spiritual leaders made statements within days of each other about the financial crisis and the responsibility of the wealthy to help the poor: Pope Benedict XVI and the Dalai Lama.

In the past month we have watched the world's wealthiest and most powerful meet to discuss the economic crisis and the future for the international community's poorest members. The WTO warned of the dangers of protectionism while meeting in Geneva. The UN announced that the number of hungry people now exceeds one billion worldwide. And the G-8 announced a $20-billion commitment to fight hunger when they convened in Italy for their annual summit. The comments by the Pope and the Dalai Lama seem particularly relevant considering these recent events.

On July 7, a letter written by Pope Benedict XVI was sent to all Bishops of the Roman Catholic Church, entitled "Charity in Truth." In the letter the Pope questioned the value of today's corporations.

Today's international economic scene, marked by grave deviations and failures, requires a profoundly new way of understanding human enterprise. Without doubt, one of the greatest risks for business is that they are almost exclusively answerable to their investors, thereby limited in their social value.

Earlier in that same week, the Dalai Lama was interviewed by the German news site, Welt Online. In the interview the Dalai Lama talked about the role he sees for corporations and the wealthy to make a positive difference for the world's poor. When questioned about globalization, the Dalai Lama responded:

I am essentially a supporter of globalization. In the past societies and countries could seal themselves off from the rest of the world, but today this has become impossible. When we search for organizations that have the capacity and ability to improve our world, global companies are at the top of the list. In particular integrated global corporations are in an ideal position to support developing countries to close the gap to leading national economies.

He also talked about greed as a root cause of the financial crisis, but was careful to note that wealth on its own "is not necessarily a bad thing."

Wealth is not necessarily a bad thing when it has been earned in an honest manner and neither other individuals nor the environment suffered for it. As Buddhists we recognize that wealth is a basic prerequisite for a happy life. But a billionaire also only has ten fingers. He can fit three or four rings on each finger, but that would look weird. The satisfaction many millionaires who don’t share their wealth have in their heads is fictitious and not real. Rich people should help reduce poverty.

Amid the flurry of black suits, interpreters and diplomatic cordiality we might usually associate with discussions of trade and economic policy, the sentiments expressed by Pope Benedict XVI and the Dalai Lama offer additional views about wealth and responsibility that are worthy of reflection.

Urban overcrowding, like that seen here in Kampala, has lead many Ugandans to build on top of ecologically important wetlands. Photo: kloppster (flickr)

They arrive during the night with their construction tools. Some come with hired security guards. These are the wetland encroachers of Kampala, hoping to claim land before the watchful eye of the National Environmental Management Authority notices and evicts them.

Poverty is compelling many people to build on the wetlands as population growth and urbanization increase land competition. The construction destroys the land's ecological value, Uganda's The Monitor reports.

Uganda's wetlands filter water and prevent destructive flooding downstream. They are also a source of material for profitable products like papyrus. Wetlands provide employment for 2.7 million Ugandans in a country where just five percent of the total work force has a consistent income.

Uganda was the first African country to develop a national wetlands program. The government has spent millions of dollars and partnered with the World Resources Institute (WRI) to develop an information system to track wetland use. Also, Ugandans who build on wetlands without permits are subject to fines and evictions.

The WRI and the Ugandan government are concerned that the services and products wetlands provide, and on which many poor households depend, are at risk. But, despite Uganda's pioneering status in wetlands management, the country faces many trade-offs as it balances land needs with the desire to preserve the ecosystem and alleviate poverty.