Community Guide to Environmental Health supports local action to fight climate change
December’s Durban Summit on Climate Change (COP17) ended with governments demonstrating a singular lack of concern about the fate of our earth and our health. Thankfully, small farmers around the world are taking the future into their own hands and putting sustainable agriculture and agroforestry techniques into practice. Not only do they promote environmental health and mitigate climate change, they also improve their crop yields and their livelihoods.
When farmers in Malawi intercrop “fertilizer trees” with maize, they provide shade, preserve moisture, resist erosion and boost the soil’s fertility. Their maize yields double and they save the money they would have spent on poisoning the earth with chemical fertilizers.
Principles and practices to improve health and turn back the tide of climate change can be found in Hesperian’s Community Guide to Environmental Health, which covers a wide range of environmental health topics including sustainable farming, forestry and reforestation and pesticide exposure. Written in clear, simple language with an emphasis on integrating health promotion with environmental rights and justice, this book has proven invaluable around the world.
Originally published in English, A Community Guide to Environmental Health is now available in Spanish, Pashto, Indonesian, Russian, Mongolian, Khmer and Turkish, with many more translations in progress! Purchase a copy for yourself or through our Gratis Books program to help fight climate change in a poor community. If you purchase before the end of February, shipping is free!
This book is an excellent source of information about agriculture and health, and present l complex concepts of agronomy in an accessible way. As an agronomist myself, I appreciate this work, because often farmers themselves are the least informed about the consequences of industrial agricultural models.
-Saulo Araujo, Program Coordinator for Latin America, Grassroots International