The effects of racism, social exclusion, and discrimination on achieving universal safe water and sanitation in high-income countries

Joe Brown, PhD 

Charisma S Acey, PhD

Carmen Anthonj, PhD

Dani J Barrington, PhD

Cara D Beal, PhD

Drew Capone, PhD

Oliver Cumming, MSc

Kristi Pullen Fedinick, PhD

Jacqueline MacDonald Gibson, PhD

Brittany Hicks, BS

Michal Kozubik, PhD

Nikoleta Lakatosova, MA

Karl G Linden, PhD

Nancy G Love, PhD

Kaitlin J Mattos, PhD

Heather M Murphy, PhD

Inga T Winkler, PhD

The Lancet | Open Access | Published: April, 2023 | DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(23)00006-2

Summary

Drinking water and sanitation services in high-income countries typically bring widespread health and other benefits to their populations. Yet gaps in this essential public health infrastructure persist, driven by structural inequalities, racism, poverty, housing instability, migration, climate change, insufficient continued investment, and poor planning. Although the burden of disease attributable to these gaps is mostly uncharacterised in high-income settings, case studies from marginalised communities and data from targeted studies of microbial and chemical contaminants underscore the need for continued investment to realise the human rights to water and sanitation. Delivering on these rights requires: applying a systems approach to the problems; accessible, disaggregated data; new approaches to service provision that centre communities and groups without consistent access; and actionable policies that recognise safe water and sanitation provision as an obligation of government, regardless of factors such as race, ethnicity, gender, ability to pay, citizenship status, disability, land tenure, or property rights.

Climate crisis: Exploitation and justice

Farooque Chowdhury

Countercurrents | November 10, 2022

The climate crisis question today has turned into the question of exploitation and justice – exploitation by a few, and justice for the entire humanity.

The recently released Oxfam report – Carbon billionaires, The investment emissions of the world’s richest people (Nov. 22, 2022, https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/621446/bn-carbon-billlionaires-071122-en.pdf?sequence=14) – says a lot about this reality of exploitation by a few rich, and of the rest of the humanity. The first group is the exploiters while the other is the exploited.

The study by Oxfam and the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) calculates the annual carbon footprint of the investments of just 125 of the world’s richest billionaires. The study findings include:

Addressing racial and ethnic inequity in health-care, a collection

eClinicalMedicine Editorial | Open Access | Published: March, 2022 | DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eclinm.2022.101372

Health-care systems worldwide are fraught with inequalities that have a disproportionate impact on minoritised ethnic and racial groups. These inequalities may lead to reduced access to appropriate health care services, and consequently, poorer health outcomes. Furthermore, research focusing on health outcomes of racial minorities is vastly lacking. In an effort to address the need for research on racial inequality, eClinicalMedicine launched part 1 of an online collection entitled “Racial Inequity in Health” in June 2021.We have now curated part 2 of the collection, which forms part of The Lancet’s strategy to address racial inequity in health care. The papers in this collection highlight racial and ethnic inequality across global healthcare settings, and emphasise that without targeted action, such inequalities are maintained and reinforced. The collection will therefore provide a platform for the dissemination of relevant research on racial disparities in chronic kidney disease (CKD) cardiovascular disease and maternal outcomes, amongst others. This Editorial will discuss several of the papers available in the collection.

World Inequality Report: Class Divide Explains More than Regional Divisions

by Sanjay Roy

Peoples Democracy | January 23, 2022

WORLD Inequality Report 2022 underlines the sharp divide between the rich and the poor that occurred as a result of neoliberal policies pursued by global capital using the hegemonic and asymmetric architecture of global institutions. The report clearly shows how the class divide has become relatively more important than the regional divide in determining global inequality. This simply tells that in today’s world where one is born and brought up has relatively less impact than in which class the person belongs to in explaining relative earnings and wealth status. It however says further that even if inequality between countries shows a decline but still the difference continues to be high.

World’s Richest Now Own 11% Of Global Wealth – The Biggest Leap In Recent History, Says Report

Countercurrents | December 08, 2021

The world’s richest people got a whole lot richer during the COVID-19 crisis.

In 2021, billionaires saw the steepest increase in their share of wealth on record, according to The World Inequality Lab’s annual World Inequality Report.

The top 0.01% richest individuals — the 520,000 people who have at least $19 million — now hold 11% of the world’s wealth, up a full percentage point from 2020, the report found. Meanwhile, the share of global wealth owned by billionaires has grown from 1% in 1995 to 3% in 2021.

World inequality

Michael Robert’s Blog | December 08, 2021

The world has become more unequal in income and wealth in the last 40 years.  That’s according to the World Inequality Report 2022, available here.  Produced by the World Inequality Lab, run by Thomas Piketty and a group of over 100 analysts from around the world, the report has the most up-to-date and complete data on the various facets of inequality worldwide: global wealth, income, gender and ecological inequality.

The report shows how in 2021, “after three decades of trade and financial globalisation, global inequalities remain extremely pronounced … about as great today as they were at the peak of Western imperialism in the early 20th century.”  Although the World Inequality report found inequalities between nations had declined since the end of the cold war (mainly due to the rise in living standards in China), it said inequality had increased within most countries and had become more pronounced as a result of the global pandemic over the past two years.

CAPITALISM 

The divide between the poor and the rich is known to many and for centuries. Yet the truth goes without meaningful notice by many. The divide’s political meaning mostly goes without discussion. Still the fact of this divide should be told and re-told. The following reports say about the divide.

A Los Angeles Times Editorial – Not even beach parking lots can be off-limits in a study of sites for temporary homeless housing – (Sun, May 23, 2021) – said:

“Among the many obstacles to providing shelter and housing for homeless people is finding available land. Private property is often too expensive for the city of Los Angeles to buy for housing, so there is a constant search by city officials to locate publicly owned land that is empty or underutilized and can be transformed into safe camping grounds, tiny-house villages or more permanent housing.

Effect of socioeconomic inequalities and vulnerabilities on health-system preparedness and response to COVID-19 in Brazil: a comprehensive analysis

COVID-19 PANDEMIC AND INEQUALITY IN BRAZIL

Rudi Rocha, PhD; Prof Rifat Atun, FRCP; Adriano Massuda, PhD; Beatriz Rache, MSc; Paula Spinola, MSc; Letícia Nunes, PhD; Miguel Lago, MSc & Prof Marcia C Castro, PhD

The Lancet | Open Access | Published: April 12, 2021 | DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(21)00081-4

Summary

Background

COVID-19 spread rapidly in Brazil despite the country’s well established health and social protection systems. Understanding the relationships between health-system preparedness, responses to COVID-19, and the pattern of spread of the epidemic is particularly important in a country marked by wide inequalities in socioeconomic characteristics (eg, housing and employment status) and other health risks (age structure and burden of chronic disease).

On the Origins of Great Wealth

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF INEQUALITY 

Gary Olson

Virtually everything was created at public expense and then gobbled up by enterprising opportunists like Gates.

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in one of his short stories, “The very rich are very different than you and me”. Ernest Hemingway has a character in one his reply by saying “Yes, they have more money.” A more concise retort might be that the secret behind every great fortune is a great theft, to paraphrase Honore de Balzac.

There are 657 billionaires in the United States, whose combined wealth grew by more than $1.7 trillion in the year of the pandemic. Further, we know that the one-tenth of the 1% own more than than the bottom 90%. Where does this wealth originate?

Number of World Billionaires Increases to 2,755

INEQUALITY RISING 

POLITSTURM | April 15, 2021

Forbes released its data surrounding billionaires in 2021 whose wealth exploded amidst the pandemic. The number of billionaires increased by 660 over the past year to 2,755. The U.S. has the most billionaires at 770 followed by China at 698 (including Hong Kong and Macao).