I have shown in my previous two posts some of the aspects of poverty and wealth discrepancy that challenge us as a species. And now I want, with the input of D, to pose some further questions. Let me state at the outset that any attempt to tackle the subject of poverty in a single blog post is impossible – it is too big and complex a subject. What I propose to do here is take a broad overview, which might at least stimulate some thinking and debate, by raising, and perhaps answering, a part of the issue.
Let’s start by trying to get a grip on what poverty is. The internationally accepted definition of poverty is having less income than is necessary to sustain an adequate standard of living. But here’s the rub: this definition differs from nation to nation. The poor in the US, for example, are not remotely comparable to the poor in Cambodia. So, perhaps we need to look at it differently and say that poverty means having less income than is needed to meet the lowest level of Maslowian needs, namely, food, water and shelter. You might think of this as absolute poverty – it’s a self limiting condition; people who suffer from it, die.
Now there’s a simple reality that strikes me when I consider the question of poverty: while there are millions who live in poverty, there are also a small number who live with vast wealth and others who live with relative wealth. To get an idea of the ratio, I suggest you look at the global Gini coefficients. Considering this discrepancy between rich and poor, I’m inclined to a view which says the rich would appear to be rich at the cost of the poor (the story of South Africa’s gold mines highlights this perfectly). And the truth is, poverty will remain with us until the imbalance and injustice is redressed.
I’m not talking about handouts or communism as solutions here. Neither is the answer as history has already shown. Instead what is needed is a multi-pronged approach, which starts with a fundamental change of mindset and an improvement in education. I say this with one caveat: there appears to be a level of inequality that is natural. I hasten to add that this inequality is not exclusively a human phenomenon. Look at the natural world and you’ll see it at work there too. The strongest survive, the rest get eaten or beaten (you may recall my posts on the Kruger National Park). That said though, I would hope, given our human intelligence and compassion – our basic humanity - we can go beyond the “wilder” response. Unless that is too much for us as a species?
Let’s postulate for a moment. Could it perhaps be that the rich nations need the poor nations to be just that – poor? What might happen to the economy of Europe or the US, for example, if Africa were magically transformed overnight into the largest economy on earth? Given that the US consumes 25% of the world’s energy resources and has only 5% of its population, it depends on other countries to underconsume resources in relation to their population, because when those poorer nations start to consume at higher levels – as, for example, China has been doing – then the cost of those resources rises massively. And increased costs mean rich countries can no longer sustain extravagant consumption. And that’s not a comfortable prospect when you’ve been used to having it all.
Let’s look at the problem from a different angle: Why is it that the poor don’t die? After all, if being poor means having less income than is needed to survive, you’d expect the poor to disappear quite quickly.
But here’s the thing: they are dying - all the time. Between 25,000 and 50,000 people starve to death each day – an exceptionally awful way to die. Yet the world produces more than enough food to feed them. The food thrown away each year in the UK alone would probably sustain these hapless people. The $720 million spent each day on the war in Iraq – that is, between $14,400 and $28,800 for each person who starves to death on a given day – would certainly make a big difference if it were applied to poverty relief. Surely this is one of the easier problems to fix? So why then aren’t we fixing it, really fixing it?
Yes, of course, we believe we are, we’d like to think we are but… let’s go back to the first point – do the rich economies really want the problem to be fixed?
Let’s assume for one moment that they did. What might they do?
Two things would make an enormous difference. First, the dismantling of agricultural subsidies that make poor countries’ products uncompetitive would allow them to compete fairly. Second, a meaningful effort to tackle the scourges of poverty - fundamental infrastructural deficits (water, sewage, road and rail transport, electricity) and preventable disease – would massively boost productivity levels and allow education levels to rise. Access to credit without structural adjustment burdens would be a good start.
But here’s the rub: Aid at current levels won’t fix these problems – it’s too little – almost all rich nations constantly fail to meet their target aid obligations - and its purposes are generally skewed. To see what I mean consider the observations of Pekka Hirvonen of the Global Policy Forum:
Development assistance is often of dubious quality. In many cases,
· Aid is primarily designed to serve the strategic and economic interests of the donor countries;
· Or [aid is primarily designed] to benefit powerful domestic interest groups;
· Aid systems based on the interests of donors instead of the needs of recipients’ make development assistance inefficient;
· Too little aid reaches countries that most desperately need it; and,
· All too often, aid is wasted on overpriced goods and services from donor countries.
To my mind these failures leaves us with one fundamental question which must be answered if we are to ever truly tackle poverty and create improved global equality: Are rich nations truly willing to allow the poor to join them at the banquet table? Until the answer is an unequivocal and unbiased “yes”, poverty will remain with us.
© October 2008. No part of this article may be reproduced or otherwise used without prior written permission from the authors.
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