We hear on the news about floods in Pakistan, droughts in Niger and typhoons in Indonesia but these communities are reassuringly distant enough for us to ignore. It is an invidious trait of humans that we, as with most other animals, are largely concerned with self-preservation.

It is therefore, slightly ironic that we face a situation where human survival may well rest on whether we can overcome our egocentric instincts, work with others and to think beyond our immediate surroundings. We need to see the bigger picture.

Above images sourced from:

(left) DFID (flickr) under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dfid/4855987287/

(middle) flickr under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license
http://www.flickr.com/photos/un_photo/5407749521/

(right) flickr under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike- 2.0 Generic license
http://www.flickr.com/photos/allhandsvolunteers/6922031901/in/photostream