CASE STUDY 1: http://allafrica.com/stories/201602101046.html

The source AllAfrica is an aggregator of news from all across the African Continent. From the article I picked, it talks about how Ethiopia is on the verge of running out of their food aid unless donors step in. In Ethiopia, the El Nino weather phenomenon has caused drought and flooding across Africa, potentially causing a great catastrophic escalation in severe acute malnutrition (SAM), especially amongst children. The goals of development are to try and bring in $245 million dollars in emergency food aid to help prevent malnutrition from occurring. In our reading, it talked about how agriculture is not equal amongst different parts in our country. This is true because Ethiopia does not have key factors for the regions growing conditions such as good temperature, precipitation, or soils. Their environment is very dry and destroys the growing areas. Another topic that the article relates to is end uses. Unfortunately, Ethiopia does not have good end uses. Because Ethiopia does not have successful agriculture, their end uses do not include proper nutrition, and obviously not tasty meals because they need a substantial amount of food.

http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/ourwork/our-projects-and-initiatives/crisis_in_haiti.html

CASE STUDY 2: From the United Nations Development Programme, it talks about Haiti’s recovery from its devastating earthquake to sustainable development. Since 2010, Haiti has successfully pulled through the humanitarian recovery phase and seen significant socio-economic gains. Their goals of development are focused on long-term support to help build a structurally sound, resilient, and sustainable Haiti by reducing their disaster risk and bettering their environmental protection. However, like our reading, Haiti faces environmental determinism. Their lack of forests and the degradation of ecosystems increase Haiti’s vulnerability to natural disasters. Our reading discusses how humanity impacted Haiti’s environment; however, the disastrous earthquake cleared a large majority of it. Haiti also connects to environmental possibilism by their recovery methods. For example, what seemed impossible in 2010 happened over the course of years. The country has steadily boosted the net enrollment rate in primary education and achieved equal participation of boys and girls. The prevalence of HIV/AIDS has stabilized, and nearly 70 percent of households now have access to an improved source of water.

Currently, I live in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, where I am from, there is a surplus amount of food supplied in multiple grocery stores, fast food restaurants, and basically all around. My town differs tremendously from Ethiopia’s catastrophe of lack of food. Malnourishment is a problem that Doylestown rarely faces, unless a family cannot afford the proper foods to eat and feed their children. Also, my environment has very good agriculture to grow crops. Many families grow their own foods in their gardens because of the good temperature, precipitation, as well as soils. However, similarly to Haiti, Doylestown is destroying the environment and forests. Although Doylestown did not face an earthquake like Haiti did, trees are still being knocked down so new houses and developments can be built. Doylestown differs from Haiti because it is not prone to natural disasters. Based on the case studies, Doylestown’s development surpasses both Ethiopia’s and Haiti’s.