I have a feeling...

For a long while now, it seems the level of society has been decided by what happens in the First World Nations. However, I have a feeling that the future is being decided now by what the First World Nations can do for the Third World Nations. For example, UNICEF and SOIL held a Sustainable Santitation Conference in Haiti last year about what they are doing to improve the situation there. One of the presenters, Vladimir Fachini put it well when he said that ‘in Rio de Janeiro right now, politicians and planners are discussing the future of the world at Rio +20. But here, today, we are making the real practical changes that will affect people’s lives’. On the other side of the world, I recently went to a seminar presented by the UNHabitat in Fukuoka, Japan, and Mr. Lalith Lankatilleke gave a presentation about what is being done to reconstruct the communities in Sri Lanka and Afghanistan through guiding the communities and empowerment of women; placing the monetary power in the women's hands. Great progress has been made with this method. There are volunteers giving aid in all sorts of ways, ranging from solar ovens to orphanages. Social progress and change is happening quickly in these areas for a variety of reasons. But there is one main one. That is that they are the new frontier. Beaurocratic, social, and commercial systems are already in place in First World Countries. However, we have many problems facing the world, especially environmental ones. I think that living trial and error experiments in Third World Countries may provide us with the necessary information to move forward into another age. Not only will we have improved their lives, we will also use much of that knowledge indirectly in our own cities and towns at some point, probably due to need, somewhere down the road.