Millennium Development Goal #7

The Hunger Project and the Environment

Most hungry people work on the land. Thus, it is the hungry people of our world whose lives and livelihoods are most immediately dependent upon our natural environment.

At the same time, environmental problems cannot be solved without resolving the problem of hunger. If hungry people must eke out a living that damages fragile soil, or cut down scarce trees for firewood, or burn precious rain forests to create cropland, they will have no alternative but to do so.

The Hunger Project has contributed to the now widely-shared consensus that environmental sustainability and the end of hunger must go together. At the Rio "Earth Summit" in 1992, it was The Hunger Project that articulated the first principle that was adopted - that all people have the right to a healthy and productive life in harmony with nature.

In all the areas where it works, The Hunger Project empowers local communities to restore and preserve the environment, and to adopt technologies such as composting, water harvesting and drip irrigation that help them improve their lives in harmony with nature.

In Bangladesh, hundreds of thousands of malnourished children die due to water and air pollution. Hunger Project animators are mobilizing a nationwide movement to protect the environment. Through awareness-raising rallies, The Hunger Project has challenged the government to address the issue, to stop the hazardous use of polyethylene bags, and to take two-stroke engine vehicles - a main cause of air pollution - off the streets of the capital city, Dhaka.

In Benin, the Wawata epicenter generates power from biogas produced from garbage, manure and sewage. The epicenter’s electricity now enables the women and men of nearby villages to participate in a literacy program and other trainings in the evening. This experiment will be replicated in the other six epicenters in Benin.