The news keeps coming in on smartphones, so we have all caught something of the extreme weather of the past few weeks. Extreme hail in Italy, extreme heat in Spain, extreme forest fires in Rhodes, and extreme rainfall in Slovenia. It is the first time we have felt climate change to this extent in Europe. It is more and more drastic than usual. And things are wrong not just in Europe; the cancelled jamboree in South Korea (extreme heat) and the forest fires in Maui/ Hawaii (extreme drought) are two more incidents we read about. It is extreme, more extreme extreme. And so it gets in the news.
In sub-Saharan Africa, people have been affected by climate change for much longer. That doesn’t make the news. It’s kind of part of it by now; hunger, drought, crop failures, water shortages. All this leads to conflict and killings, but you don’t hear much about it. It’s what characterises Africa, it seems. Oh yes, and coups. Like in Niger. That will still be in the news because a coup is pretty extreme. We don’t experience that every day anymore.
It all has to be extreme to make an impression still. That people live in poverty every day, lack water every day, and have to face the increasing heat every day to bring in the harvest, we no longer see that at all. When there is a disaster, we sound the alarm as a sector. Then people listen, and they still donate. And thankfully so. But poverty, and especially countering it, is hardly talked about anymore—or at least not enough.
SDG 1 is No Poverty. Fighting poverty is a story of the long haul, systemic change, slow solutions, moderation, and a difficult and complicated story. Telling that story takes time. And there are doubts about whether people still have the patience to understand it. As organisations, we are working towards elections and poverty only speaks to us regarding the Netherlands. So we do tell that story if possible.
I believe we need to have the guts within our industry to tell those complicated stories. And to believe in the fact that those stories matter. Fighting poverty actually helps. And that it matters to make people in the Netherlands aware that it is also essential to stand up for people living in poverty outside the Netherlands. And especially that extremes should not become the standard by which we judge whether a story is worth telling. I believe we ultimately decide for ourselves what we want to tell. If we do it often enough and repeat it consistently (and perhaps go against public opinion), the penny will naturally drop.
Development cooperation matters. Believe it!