Climate Change and Prostitution

Is there any nexus between the climate change and the prostitution? What the heck of this linkage! You might be thinking like this. But wait, wait a minute; there is indeed a direct relationship between both of them. Graver the climate change, higher the rate of conversion into sex workers; it does not happen happily but owing to certain compulsions. Let me make you recall some past memories.

Sex workers protest to green leaders

Four years back a mega conference was held in Copenhagen on the issue of the climate change. The mayor of the city restricted the hotels not to offer any sort of physical entertainment to the delegates of the conference. What was the end result? In extreme protest most of the Danish sex workers offered free service of sexual pleasure to all the delegates on the condition the hotel - where they were staying - just show the restriction order issued by the Copenhagen mayor to prove before the world they were debarred from earning their livelihood through the oldest profession of the world. Wasn’t it obstacle to the employment-based cultural heritage simultaneously? We all know that prostitution is one of the oldest professions of the world.

Rise in prostition because of climate change

The second incident also occurred about four years ago. When the country representative of the United Nations Food Population Fund (UNFPA) of Philippines admitted in a report that owing to omnipresent impact of climate change in coastal areas of the archipelago in the southwestern Pacific, the poverty was rising and the communities’ women folk didn’t have any choice but to sell sexual pleasures to the tourists and other merry-makers.

It's a serious issue

One can take this issue just to seek pleasure from it but it is actually a horrendous issue. The worst scenario of this issue is that those who are falling in the vicious circle of poverty actually themselves don’t know the exact reason of their abject poverty. Apparent causes of the poverty may be several but very few of us know the actual cause of the rising level of the poverty. We casually read the daily, monthly and annual losses in terms of the production and in terms of the dollar in newspaper headlines but don’t bother to know what is the immediate impact of these losses is? Obviously those who are at receiving end are the worst sufferer. These losses have to be borne by those amongst whom produced-wealth in cash and kind is distributed through the wages. When the production would fall obviously the wages would also move in the same proportion.

How vicious circle of poverty emerges

How it all does happen? Let’s try to understand it with an individual example. Suppose you are flour mill owner. You buy wheat and sell them in the market as flour after grinding it in your mill. You feel the prices of wheat are rising every year. Its reason is less agriculture produce owing to erratic weather of your region. It is obviously owing to the climate change when the load of the gaseous emissions on ambient air rises abnormally high and keeps changing the climate during all types of weather. Because of less production you have to pay more for the output of your mill. Eventually you sell the flour on higher prices and consumer doesn’t have any choice but to buy the flour to continue his or her physical survival. The consumer has to pay more for the basic needs. Similarly you would not raise the wages of your workers because of steep rise in the prices of wheat – main raw material of your final product. Who are your laborers? Obviously they are the consumers of the flour and have to pay higher prices for the flour. It means on one side they have to pay higher prices for their basic necessities like flour and on the other side their wages are at the standstill. This is called the vicious circle of the poverty.

Climate change main cause of poverty

So the climate change impacts the overall production of the countries where its effects are huge. As a result of lesser production the prices of finish goods go higher with static wages of workers in every sector of an economy. What would they be doing in this situation? Their women would sell their flesh for rejoicing to raise income and men would obviously resort to unfair means to fulfill their unavoidable basic necessities.