Environment and Children’s Deaths

Much attention is being focused this week in Rio de Janeiro on the health of the Earth. Scientists, sociologists, politicians and even clergy are asking heavy questions: How seriously is mankind affecting its own future on Earth? Are we irrevocably poisoning the natural resources to which we cling so tentatively? Are we irreversibly sacrificing our children’s future for the transitory pleasures of technology and modern convenience?

When reflecting on the mess we have made of God’s creation, it becomes obvious that our greatest natural resource--not the fish or the flowers, but the next generation of humanity--is being squandered by shortsighted policies and selfish assumptions about the way life ought to be lived.

The horrible nightmare that World Vision and other relief workers around the world confront daily is that nearly 40,000 small children die from poverty and related diseases each day. Each day!

Much of the poverty-related death in the Third World is environmentally induced. As we discuss the environment and the future of our planet, let’s never forget the impact that the environment has on our most precious resource--the children.

ROBERT A. SEIPLE, President

World Vision, Monrovia