SIMON Moss, the general manager of the Global Poverty Project, asked a simple question at a lecture theatre at the University of Canberra this week. “Do you think that global poverty has got worse or better in the past two decades?” he asked an audience of mainly students.
The great majority, of course, out their hands up for “worse”. My guess is that an even greater proportion of a random audience would also say “worse”.
The fact is that there have been vast improvements in global poverty since the measure began in 1981. We are talking extreme poverty here — $1.25 a day. In 1981 a tad over half the world’s population – 52 per cent — lived in extreme poverty. Now it is a tad under a quarter – 22 per cent.
Sure, the absolute number has not halved, but it has gone down substantially.
That’s the media for you. Each individual story you see on the box or in the newspapers is usually pretty accurate. It is just that the cumulative effect of so many stories of poverty, famine and despair is such that most people would be excused for believing that things are getting worse.
One should not blame the media – it is too easy. After all, how would be know about global poverty to do anything about it without the media coverage. But the trouble with the endless diet of bad news is that it engenders a sense of hopelessness – “What can we do about the vast mass of starving Africans? We pour in aid and nothing changes.”
Well, things can change and, indeed, are changing and individuals can make a difference.
Oddly enough because poverty is so extreme it does not take a great deal to profoundly affect people’s lives.
Sure, there are 1.4 billion people living on less than $1.25 a day. But that is 1.4 billion reasons for doing something.
About a score of charities are supporting the Global Poverty Project. The project has begun with 45 presentations – titled 1.4 Billion Reasons — across Australia and New Zealand in July and this month. The presentation at UC was one of them.
One of the aims is to convince governments that people care and want something done.
Australia, one of the wealthiest nations, is falling well short. Australia signed the United Nations Millennium Declaration in 2000. That committed Australia to a target of giving 0.7 per cent of GDP in development aid by 2015. Before the election, Kevin Rudd promised a Labor Government would commit to a foreign aid target of 0.5 per cent of GDP by 2015, which falls short of the 0.7 per cent target.
As things stand, Australia gave 0.32 per cent in 2008-09 – about the cost of cup of coffee per person. In 2009-10 it will rise to 0.34 per cent – about the cost of a cup of coffee with a pinch of sugar in it per person.
At $3.8 billion it sounds a lot, but when you see what it can do – help people who have to choose between going to the doctor or going hungry or helping people who cannot send their children to school – you would want it doubled to the Millennium target, not merely added to as Labor now proposes.
Australia is down there with the bottom third of the rich OECD countries, yet we are in the top third when it comes to wealth.
It is inexcusable and our representatives need to be told that. We make much of the Australian fair go and our compassion and tolerance, but it does not look good on paper.
Of course, just throwing money is not going to solve poverty. The Global Poverty Project wants to encourage the right sort of development aid. One of the most effective ways to lift countries out of poverty is to educate and empower more women.
All development research shows that societies which educate women and enable them to get into decision-making roles improve in virtually all measures of human well-being. Government money gets spent more effectively. Corruption is reduced. Literacy rates rise. Infant mortality falls. The society gets wealthier.
Fair trade is more important than hand-outs. The project calls on people to buy goods with the Fairtrade logo which certifies that the mainly third-world producers have not been exploited.
The project’s message is one of hope. Extreme poverty was once the condition of nearly everyone on earth. As recently as the mid-19th century, London, the world’s richest city, had cholera epidemics caused by the Thames being little more than an open sewer. Now it has one of the highest standards of health on earth.
South Korea was an aid recipient into the 1960s and is now a donor. There is no reason that similar transformations cannot be made in Africa.
The world is wealthy enough now for no-one to live in extreme poverty. A small redistribution would profoundly affect 1.4 billion lives.
And as a footnote on subject of doing just a small thing to make a dramatic difference in other people’s lives, next time you fill out a Medicare claim form, fill out the section on organ donation.
A friend of mine’s 22-year-old son was killed in a skateboarding accident in Queensland a week ago. (Yes, he was wearing a helmet.) The only solace for his obviously bereft parents was that he was an organ donor with a rare AB+ blood ground.
His liver saved a four-year-old girl’s life. His kidneys have transformed the lives of two others.
It seems absurd that Australia cannot have an opt-out rather than opt-in system of organ donation.
“It seems absurd that Australia cannot have an opt-out rather than opt-in system of organ donation.”
Absolutely. There are so few opportunities for solace for the bereaved. In the absence of others, donation of organs is an obvious one.
As for overseas aid, education and empowerment of women (the productive element of mammalian plague species) is the most effective target – though that is difficult to achieve in the face of so many obstructionist elements of society. Powerful elements from fundamentalists, both in the developed world and within less-developed societies themselves.
The most cheerfully effective I have come across is Bill Ryerson’s approach involving radio programs acceptable to those societies most in need.