Tithing

In olden times we lived in families or tribes or villages where all but the most antisocial helped each other in kind with whatever they needed, without a need for money or prompting. As the world has become more and more global, some people have expanded that sense of wanting to support their community to supporting members of the global community whom they have never met. In many cases, this support has been formalised by religions.

Tithing means to pay or give a tenth part of your harvest or income especially, but not necessarily, for the support of one's church. Religions vary in the name of the charitable giving, the percentage to give, the purpose, the benefit the donor is expected to get from it, whether it is optional or required, and whether it should be done in public or in secret. Non-religious people also like to give to those less fortunate than themselves. Buddhists give dana to monks and nuns and teachers, Catholics give 5% to the church and 5% to charity, Jews give 10 to 20% for charity and also support their church, protestants give 10%, Hindus donate to holy men, temples and the poor, Muslims give zakat of 2.5% and may give additional charity, and so on. In some countries, as with zakat in Pakistan, the donation is paid through the government.

Help comes from a variety of sources after a disaster. Firstly, neighbours come to help. Then there are local and national charities, religious charities, government aid, international religious and secular charities, and the United Nations which often tries to co-ordinate all the aid. Often people who have already given through taxes and regular donations give extra for a major disaster. Others need to be persuaded, for example through tax exemptions, by exhortation by leaders (for example President Bush called for charitable donations for hurricane Katrina victims), or because they get favourable publicity for donations. One problem is that a lot of the aid is stockpiled centrally. Whilst this may make sense in the case of helicopters, the delay in getting food, water, blankets and tents to the people who need it is often unacceptable.

Earlier this year the United Nations told us that it was not receiving enough donations to deal with ongoing disasters such as starvation in Nigeria. It said that earlier donations or a larger reserve for future disasters would have enabled it to prevent the disaster far more cheaply. Since then a variety of disasters have befallen the human race, including the Indian Ocean tsunami on December 24 2004, flooding in Guatemala, hurricanes on the Gulf Coast and the earthquakes in the Kashmir region. The United Nations is now seriously overstretched.

Furthermore, the United Nations is predicting that the problem will get worse. Not only is the world population still growing, but thanks to global warming, people are being driven from their homes by desertification, rising sea levels, flooding and storms. It estimates there will be 50 million environmental refugees by 2010. There are already an estimated 20 million due to such changes as the Gobi desert in China expanding by more than 3,900 sq miles a year.

So, we may need to increase our tithing if we are to help each other to survive, and with each of us dependent on workers from all around the world for our food, clothes, energy and other products, it is in our own interests to help the global society keep functioning. The anticipated avian flu pandemic may well bring this home.

However, it is not just fellow humans we need to help. Whilst our distant ancestors took only what they needed from nature, and did no more harm than nature could cope with, more recently we have done a lot of taking without replacing. Whilst some gardeners and farmers replace some of what they take with composting and replanting, much of what we do now is coming back to haunt us.

Many of our disasters have been made worse by our own actions; for example, destruction of mangroves increases our vulnerability to tsunamis and storm surges, the destruction of wetlands contributed to the amount of Gulf Coast damage, deforestation increases flooding, and irrigation causes salinization which leads to crop failure and starvation.

Perhaps if we were all to give a proportion of our money to stockpiling emergency supplies in each community, preventative measures such as immunisation, and education, we might be able to help ourselves more quickly in future disasters and prevent or reduce the effect of some of them. If we devote a portion of the money spent on each project, whether development or business, to giving back to nature, for example by replanting, perhaps we could reduce our vulnerability to disasters in the first place. Otherwise, we are faced with a stark choice: either give a larger proportion of our wealth to dealing with disasters, let more people die, or dye ourselves through a shortage of aid.

This article relates to a news wire in the October 12 Environmental Roundup.

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