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TechnoratiEnding Poverty: Moving Beyond More Aid and Fair Trade
As the United Nations seeks increased financial assistance from donor countries to help meet the flagging Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the inadequacy of international aid and fairer trade agreements has never been so clear. In 2007 alone, aid to developing countries fell by 8.4%, leaving huge challenges ahead to meet the Gleneagles G-8 target of doubling aid to Africa by 2010. In July, the Doha round of trade talks collapsed again for the third time as developing countries refused to bow down to US pressure allowing increased access to their markets. These factors, alongside the rise in hunger as a result of the food crisis and the worsening global financial crisis, underline the low global priority given by rich nations to the world's poor.
Pledges and promises of aid to eradicate poverty made by rich nations over the past four decades have resulted in few changes for the Global South. If genuinely concerned with poverty reduction, all OECD member states would have long ago reached the 0.7% target for aid, pledged via the United Nations in 1970. Thirty-eight years later, not a single G8 country has met this target. Any reasons or excuses are rendered largely irrelevant when considering that it took a matter of days for Western governments to find an estimated three trillion dollars to bailout banks caught in the financial crisis. The Jubilee Debt Campaign estimates that less than a quarter of this amount is needed to wipe the debts of the poorest 100 countries -- simply to allow them to meet their people's most basic needs.
At a time when the rise in food prices has caused an additional 105 million people to join the ranks of the hungry, the impact of the economic crisis is likely to see the needs of the developing countries further sidelined as Western governments rush to divert money to contain the problem.
Systemic Failures
As these crises worsen, the global trading system continues to do more harm than good. Import surges of heavily subsidised goods flood the markets of poor countries, wreaking havoc on domestic producers and driving many out of business and into poverty. Additionally, rich nations consistently force developing countries to lower their tariffs while refusing to do so themselves, thereby denying poor farmers the right to protect their livelihoods. The situation is further exacerbated when considering that two-thirds of developing countries are now net food importers. The WTO and the international trading system that it promotes has served to strengthen the status quo, keeping those at the top of the ladder in place while kicking away the ladder from those at the bottom.
Even if the targets for aid and trade were met in the near future, the underlying problems of how trade and aid are administered would continue. Aid would still leave developing countries in a state of dependence upon rich nations and continue to come with conditions attached forcing them to open up their markets to foreign goods and services. Furthermore, aid used by poor countries to pay their external debts would detract them from providing the most basic needs for their citizens. On a broader level, the unaccountable and undemocratic ways in which the World Bank, the IMF and the WTO function would not be addressed, much less resolved, while the enormous influence of corporate lobbying groups would persist.
Calling for better trade rules and more aid to reduce poverty and growing inequality is not enough to achieve real change. The neoliberal ideologies of economic growth are enshrined in the very institutions that are designed to help developing countries prosper. A belief in the free market, deregulation, privatisation and corporate globalisation is the basis upon which these institutions operate. We have seen in recent weeks how unsustainable the current economic system is and how liable it is of causing a financial tsunami upon the lives of people everywhere.
The biggest financial crisis since the 1930s is not taking place in a vacuum -- its roots are based in the neoliberal ideologies stemming from the Washington Consensus dating back to the 1980s. Only a few weeks ago, it seemed we had reached a stage where the conceptual apparatus of neoliberalism had become "so embedded in common sense as to be taken for granted and not open to question." Since then, the world's most profitable banks have been part-nationalised, a worldwide recession is looming and a global crisis in confidence in the current economic model has become the norm.
Recent events have demonstrated that to continue working within the confines of the global economic framework may result in slight changes for a small proportion of the world's poor, but will not be significant enough to achieve targets such as the UN's Millennium Development Goal of halving hunger by 2015. This goal, which is already insufficient, was made further unattainable since the World Bank revised the international poverty line from $1.08 to $1.25 per day, effectively plunging a further 430 million people into extreme poverty overnight.
Securing Basic Human Needs
The current economic system, based on ever-increasing economic growth as the overarching solution to fighting poverty, is both ineffective and unsustainable. The key to tackling poverty and inequality must come from a change in principles and priorities from which practical steps can be taken to put long-term structures in place. One such solution would be to define and redistribute essential resources in order to immediately secure basic human needs. The universal right to a life of dignity and survival has long been enshrined in article 25 of the 1948 UN Declaration of Human Rights which states that "everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing, medical care and necessary social services."
There is no reason why 967 million people should go to bed hungry every day. The problem is not defined by a scarcity of food, but by the insufficient access to resources for millions of the world's poor who lack the necessary purchasing power to survive. The ‘trickle-down theory' of economic growth, or the political promise that wealth accumulated by the rich would eventually permeate down through society, has proven to be grossly insufficient in dealing with the urgent demand for basic and essential needs.
To immediately reduce inequality and end extreme poverty, a new international mechanism is required which can facilitate a greater economic sharing of essential resources. The most critical of these are land, basic agricultural produce, water, energy and essential medicines, which together need to be defined, withdrawn and protected from international markets and no longer traded by multinational corporations. A similar initiative was supported by over 100 civil society organisations at the recent WTO talks. Bolivia, Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua presented a proposal to remove healthcare, education, water, telecommunications and energy from the WTO "on the basis that these essential public services are human rights which governments have an obligation to provide, and should not be treated as tradable commodities."
Although the UN is in need of considerable reform, it should play a lead role in redistributing essential resources. It is the only international body with the experience, expertise and financial resources to initiate and coordinate such a crucial program. A new body within the UN needs to be responsible for a short-term emergency relief program to address the urgent needs of the 50,000 people who die each day from poverty, of which 30,000 are children. Simultaneously, a long-term program could begin to coordinate securing the wider basic needs of the global public.
A genuine change in principles and a renewed sense of commitment is urgently needed to tackle extreme poverty and inequality. A global undertaking of this scale would not come without further challenges and complexities, but it would lead to rapid and progressive change as low-income countries lift themselves out of poverty without permanently relying on financial hand-outs. Campaigning for the redistribution of essential resources, rather than just more aid or fairer trade, is the first vital step to securing the basic needs of the world community.
13 Comments so far
Show All1. On Greed. Paradoxically, the U.S. has been unwilling to make a profit on food/farm-commodity exports, driving down world prices and destroying economies of poor rural countries (most of the poor countries). It's like our citizens aren't greedy enough to insist on making a profit on exports. The greed comes in when giant corporations get below cost farm commodities (exporters like Cargill, animal factories like Tyson and Smithfield, feed and food mills including major cereal brands, other processors including ethanol (ADM). And of course, many of the biggest of these corporations operate in multiple categories. To make a profit we need, (not a "free" market free of subsidies, but) price floors with supply management. The U.S. is huge in some of these exports and can act alone, but we need international agreements, on supply management, for example, as once called for by EU and now called for by the Africa Group. That's for help on the long term solution. The above "below cost gains" are much bigger than actual U.S. farm commodity subidies (see #2 below), and were almost totally hidden from view during discussions of the farm bill 2007-8. So we need to start talking about this huge issue. Historically I estimate that this scandall is in the multitrillions in world impact.
2. On Subsidies. To say that "heavily subsidized goods flood the markets of poor countries, wreaking havoc on domestic producers and driving many out of business and into poverty" or to speak of "dump(ing) subsidized food" is to miss the bigger argument (#1 above). Yes, this is how people have been taught to frame the argument, but it misses the big billions and trillions (#1). Yes, this all happens, but not because of subsidies. We know this from the historical record. Subsidies were not used to lower market prices, just to compensate farmers for some of their losses from that lowering. The lowering of price floors (with supply management) caused the lowering of farm prices and the "havoc" and "poverty." Please, let's not give a free ride to the biggest, most greedy culprits, the Cargills, ADMs, Smithfields, Tysons, Kelloggs, etc. See also the econometric studies on this point, showing that for many of the main program crops, getting rid of subsidies only helps prices a few percent, (and that is probably helping some go up while others go down). See "The Paradox of Agricultural Subsidies," (online) p. 21 for a chart of some major studies. Get rid of subsidies with price floors and supply management.
3. Grain Reserves and Price Ceilings. They're needed to address price spikes. Corn prices rose to $7 and up, but recently dropped back to $3.50.
4. Economic Stimulus. These policies were used as an economic stimulus here in the U.S. with the Steagall Amendment of 1941, for parity (100% or equal parity for agriculture with the rest of the economy). Yes, this is what poor countries need, decent farm prices. We could sure use the money here in the U.S. economy as well. We can't afford to give away our wealth by the billions yearly on these program commodities, just to destroy farmers elsewhere. I don't see OPEC trying to lose billions every year for a quarter century by overproducing. Our policy has been anti-business and anti-small-business, and I'm talking about U.S. businesses (farms and supportive rural businesses), as well as the world's poor farmers.
I remember years ago watching a TV program showing how an organization was helping small farmers in developing countries expand production without purchasing large tractors, combines... One example was a small engine that could pull a plow with a wire on a spool.
If the model is now dump money, force lower tariffs, dump subsidized food, and when the money is gone everyone is broke, the local farmers are impoverished... How did things get so twisted?
This is a great article and this process needs to be fixed, and the damage done needs to be repaired. It is missing, however, climate change from GHGs, decline of fish populations, and over population (partly thanks to the "globl gag rule").
Man's current population and economic growth is unsustainable, and we probably hit the wall about 2 billion people ago, but just don't know it yet.
The U.S. gives massive amounts of aid to Israel. In fact the U.S. federal government gives more aid to Israel on a per capita basis than the U.S. federal government gives to the U.S.
herbalist November 18th, 2008 10:31 pm
It appears you have failed and failed miserably to read the news papers these past several years. When the "rich white men controlled the farm land" in Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe was a net EXPORTER of food and grains. Hunger was less than that in the US. Then Robert Mugabe became president and took all the land from the "rich white men" and gave it to the people. Now Zimbabwe imports all it's food, has one of the highest rates of poverty and hunger in the world and is an economic disaster.
I forgot, in the land of the "progressives" only white people can be rich racist bigots and deprive the natives of the right to sustenance to survive.
The problem is the sickness of greed, not being rich or poor or black or white. One will do or destroy anything to make a buck, whether it be the land, environment, or jobs. Such voracious ruthlessness does not care, and seemingly knows no bounds. Ultimately, though, you cannot destroy the economic life of others without destroying your own. That is the lesson we are starting to learn even here, in the 'richest' country in the world. Unregulated greed is the most regressive thing of all and, in one way or another, always exploitative.
Absolutely true.
Those hungry are never going to be fed as long as rich white men control all the land. Fix that problem first. When the poor have access to land for community gardens, organic horticulture and the ability to forage, they won't go to bed hungry.
Until the hyper-individualistic Western nations start realizing that all humanity holds commonalities, we will never achieve the admirable goals of poverty reduction, if not elimination. Besides hyper-individualism is the fact that people have forgotten how to participate in community economics, depending far too much on market economics which are theories and therefore, fallible as we are all too aware since the bubble burst. People, even those who are in need, and especially in the global North, are too keen to make sure that they have for themselves before considering others; most specifically, those whom they do not, nor never will, come to know. Compassion for fellow humans, wherever they are, is at the lowest ebb ever. Will we ever come close, as humans, to being civilized?
ladybug:
Re the low number of posts to this article;perhaps many folks are just temporarily numbed by not only the current economic crisis,but even more battered by the unjust response to it.
Twenty nations hold a conference and not one multi-billionaire steps forward to say they'll donate a portion of their fortune as a first step to blunt the hardships.That says it all.
Perhaps the labor movement can assemble a volume of the worst of these greedy rich-filth.No services are to be provided to them,especially plumbing and electrical work.I know,a Utopian wish,but it provides certain scenes of these scum trying to do some actual important work that helps me cope.
Come see the prosperity in Appalachia thanks to THE COAL INDUSTRY !
http://www.wisecountyissues.com
This is a great article, and to think that rich countries can come up with 4 trillion dolars in a matter of days to save the greedy elites but haven't been able eradicate poverty is obscene. Especially since only a fraction of those 4 trillion is necesary to cover basic needs of most people.
It's also sad that in a website like this there's only a couple comments on this issue.
Healthcare, Education, Water, Telecommunications and Energy - five - the number for change. Five sacred social connections to bridge the divisiveness of the neo-liberal profit- no accountability system.
One question that begs to be asked is what does it mean to those who advocate the existing system to know that 50,000 people die each day from hunger. That the caballs that have cornered resource markets hold their dynamics above all law, civilized reasoning, etc... for profitability. Until this is recognized for the insanity that it is, the consequences will increase in ecological loss, instability of all kinds -
Most of the time the response is - its always been that way. A bogus claim of consistancy EXCEPT for within the western model.
Another answer is just as MLK was told - slow down you can't get everything at once. Note: with this system violence, warmaking, poverty, hunger, genocide have only INCREASED consistantly and murdered and attempted to re-educate peace loving peoples.
Finally, perhaps people will wake up to the fact that the rest of the world is fully capable of "developing". All it needs is to have the hobnail boot bringing ecological destruction, removal(export) of a peoples natural resources by transnationals... etc.
Sioux Rose
OLD GOAT: Applying Darwin's theory, survival of the fittest/economically would suggest that the conscience itself, is fast becoming an effete "organ." I ponder the same questions you do; and appreciate your thoughtful analysis.