National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. (2021, July 16). Global Environmental Health and Sustainable Development. Retrieved August 15, 2021, from https://www.niehs.nih.gov/health/topics/population/global/index.cfm.
Most diseases closely related to poverty have a connection to the environment. The World Health Organization has estimated about 25% of diseases are due to environmental factors. Low-income communities are greatly affected by this. Poorer people are more likely to be exposed to environmental hazards, such as air pollution, which generates diseases, and then economic development is slowed, only increasing air pollution. A cycle is created as sickness is expensive and disables people from working, which continues to weaken the chance of these communities becoming wealthy. Through the help of higher-income communities and sustainable development, this cycle could be broken.
Cycles such as the one mentioned in this article are not only damaging ourselves, but the environment. These environmental diseases, such as heart disease and cancer, are deepening the decrease in human health worldwide, and increasing poverty. It is important that we acknowledge these problems and work to come up with solutions. I found this article very interesting as it mentioned the huge impact that wealth and money has on the health of your surrounding environment and yourself. I think that to solve the problems in our world’s environment, we must work together and share some of our wealth to help lower-income communities (and this would help solve the issue of poverty as well!).
I agree that that the relationship between communities of lower socioeconomic status and the higher levels of pollution in their surrounding environment is an increasingly alarming issue. People living in poverty have less access to healthier foods and healthcare and instead often find themselves overworked and eating unhealthy manufactured foods; the cycle of the environment harming those in poverty who in-turn inadvertently negatively impact the environment as well must be reversed somehow to mitigate its impact on the climate crisis. I really liked your idea that excess wealth should be redistributed to lower-income communities to help combat this issue. How could excess wealth be shared with communities in poverty in the most effective way to support these communities while offsetting the impact of climate change on them?
Thank you for reading my post and your comments. I think it is difficult to find a way to redistribute wealth, taxes and the government may be involved, but I think that even using these taxes to help the communities in poverty will decrease the impact of climate change on them, and can also help reduce the impact of climate change on the environment overall!