Saadia Iqbal's blog

In my oddly varied career, I once worked for one of those overpriced retailers—you know, the ones that are euphemistically called “posh.” My job was to write product descriptions for their website, so imagine my horror when one day I was given the task of describing (fasten your seatbelts) gold plated toilet brushes. These little freaks were priced about £500 (about $800) and the scariest thing of all was, people actually bought them. To this day, I’ve never understood why anyone’s, uh, excrement smears, would need such fancy treatment. Talk about a royal flush, ha ha!

When it comes to climate change, the predictions are pretty scary: floods, drought, massive migration, increased hunger, erratic rainfall patterns...that's why I was heartened to hear Commonwealth Director of Economic Affairs, Dr. Cyrus Rustomjee speak at the Young Commonwealth Climate Change Summit. Dr. Rustomjee said that while climate change is a "terrible global threat," it also poses opportunities.

Dr. Rustomjee (right) along with Commonwealth Deputy Secretary-General Ransford Smith

As I mentioned in earlier blog posts, at the Young Commonwealth Climate Change Summit I discovered many inspiring people and organizations working toward tackling climate change. One of them was a social enterprise called Worldview Impact that works on mitigating climate change and reducing poverty by creating green jobs in poor communities. 

After watching a dynamic presentation by founder Bremley Lyngdoh, I asked if he’d have time to give the Youthink! audience a little more background and insight into his organization. When I arrived for our meeting at Worldview headquarters, Bremley first treated me to some “conflict resolution tea” (lemongrass, in case you’re interested, and delicious).

Curious? I was. It’s thus named, Bremley informed me, because it was grown on Paradise Farm.

Even more curious? It turns out Paradise Farm is one of Worldview Impact’s projects—a farm in Sri Lanka where both Tamil and Sinhalese women work together to produce organic food. For those of you who’ve been living on Mars for the past few decades (or ok, are out of touch with Sri Lankan politics), the Tamils and Singhalese were opposing factions in a decades-long civil war that took place in the country.)  “Farming releases the negative energy in people,” Bremley tells me. “You can’t fight over there.” From what it sounds like, the people who work on Paradise Farm are probably too busy to think about fighting. They not only grow crops like tea, cocoa and cashew nuts; they also grow rubber trees which they then harvest to make a host of products—yes, including carbon-free condoms. 

I recently attended the Young Commonwealth Climate Change Summit - for those of you not familiar with the Commonwealth, it's an association of 53 countries, most of which were formerly part of the British Empire. The summit brought together youth from a wide range of member countries, as well as many organizations and leaders working on tackling climate change. It was great opportunity to learn of some innovative projects, and also to see how active and motivated the delegates were, no matter where they came from, no matter whether they were seeing the impacts of climate change in their countries first-hand or not.

Did you know that climate change—along with its numerous other sins— poses a threat to food security? For example, changes in rainfall patterns will affect poeple's ability to grow food and feed livestock. There are other connections between climate change and food, too. Some foods require huge amounts of energy and water in their production. Others are exported and travel long distances, leaving big carbon footprints.

On World Food Day (October 16), the Food and Agricultural Association (FAO) and World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts launched the Food Security and Climate Change Challenge Badge. This awesome guide (pdf) is a great way to learn all about climate change and food security issues and is also full of ideas and ways in which you can take action to reduce your footprint and your impact on the environment.

According to 350.org, it's—you guessed it!—350. This is because scientists say that the safe upper limit for carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere is 350 parts per million.

350.org is organizing The International Day of Climate Action on October 24. Check out the website for ideas on how to get involved, whether it means spreading the word among family and friends, organizing an event, or raising awarness through the media.

Other ways to take part on this day: search the "action map" to see what others are doing around the world, or hone your photography skills. That's right—a hot number like this has to be pretty photogenic...so if you find a way to incorporate the number 350 in an iconic spot in your community, be sure to take a photo and upload to the website.

The outbreak of the H1N1 virus (otherwise known as "swine flu") has taught the world an important lesson: Strong public health surveillance systems are critical to deal with such situations.

World Bank expert Keith Hansen has said that such surveillance measures would not only help health care systems prepare for emergencies and pandemics, but would also help them deal with regular challenges. For example, following the H1N1 scare, health projects in Brazil and Argentina were set up to get funds quickly to communities with urgent medical needs, as well as to increase preparedness for pandemics. 

“The goal is not to just chase the disease du jour, but to really be prepared for what else may be coming down the pike, and strengthening countries overall in their readiness,” says Hansen.

Got a question about how to strengthen health care systems in devleoping countries? Hansen will be online today, Tuesday, October 6 at 10:30 a.m. EDT to answer questions on this topic. Submit your questions now.

How should the world look after the global finanical and economic crisis? Ask experts your questions and hear them debate the issue.

A special high-level panel will discuss the post-economic crisis world on Friday, October 2, in Istanbul during the Annual Meetings.

The panel will include Robert B. Zoellick, World Bank President; H. E. Sri Mulyani Indrawati, Minister of Finance, Indonesia; H.E. Mahmoud Mohieldin, Minister of Investment, Egypt; Ms. Eleni Gabre-Madhin, CEO, Ethiopian Commodity Exchange; and Professor Paul Collier, Department of Economics, University of Oxford.

The debate will be recorded on Friday, October 2, and will be broadcast over the next two days on France 24.

The panel is taking questions from people from around the world. If you have any questions for the panelists, you can ask them directly through the World Bank's online chat, Speak Out, from where they will be passed on.

This month, we’re talking about food on Youthink!, and how so many people don’t have enough. I recently came across a couple of blogs on the topic of food security—one had some good news, and the other not so good. Let’s start with the bad news first.

Deforestation is happening at alarming rates in many parts of the world. We often hear about the disastrous impact this can have in terms of climate change and biodiversity loss. Deforestation also poses a huge threat to food security. In fact, did you know that in the developing world, 1.6 billion people depend on forests for their food, fuel, and livelihoods? This blogger has seen deforestation and its consequences happen first-hand in his hometown.

Have you ever felt you're not learning much in school? I certainly had that problem, although I have to admit that was mostly because of an unfortunate tendency to daydream...the one thing I did learn was how to lie, but that's only because I went to a really strict school where you had to be quick with excuses for things like why you were late, or weren't wearing your school blazer and other such terrible misdemeanors.