Photographer : Atom |
The meaning of povertyImagine you are hungry but the fridge is empty and the shops are closed. Imagine you are thirsty but the taps aren’t working. Imagine you are sick, or someone you love is sick, but the doctors won’t see you. Imagine never having gone to school. Imagine needing a job really badly but not being able to get one, and not being able to go to anyone for help. You may still be unable to imagine what it means to live in poverty, but you’re getting there.
In 2005, an estimated 3 billion people—about half the world’s population—were living on less than US$2 a day. Every day, 30,000 children die from causes directly related to poverty. The vast majority of these people live in developing countries in Africa, Asia and South America.
You’ve probably heard some of those stats before, but here’s one you may not know: in 1998, about US$13 billion was spent worldwide on providing basic health and nutrition to the world’s poor. That’s not pocket change by any means, but that same year, Europeans alone spent US$50 billion on cigarettes, US$105 billion on booze and US$11 billion on ice cream. Now, I like ice cream as much as the next guy, but really … haven’t we got our priorities wrong?
Why does poverty exist?The high standard of living we take for granted in Australia is the product of several hundred years of complex technological and social development. Much of this development has yet to take place in the countries most affected by poverty. Adequate hospitals and schools, reliable shelter, and easy access to food and water, simply do not exist, and very little is being done to put them in place. A lot of the hardships we associate with poverty are strongly linked to under-development. However, this is not the only reason for poverty.
In the countries most affected by poverty today, the experience of poverty is nothing new, but the problem has actually gotten worse over the last few centuries. In fact, many of the problems faced by African and Asian countries today are related to the fact that many of these countries were under Western colonial rule well into the twentieth century. As colonies, these countries were exploited for labour and resources in the interests of their colonial rulers. Very little was done by the government of the day to ensure people’s well-being, and colonial rule commonly saw a decline in living standards. Poverty today is often a legacy of yesterday’s injustice. And this injustice still continues. To this day, developed countries implement policies that make the developed world richer, while ignoring or even increasing poverty in the developing world.
How are wealthy countries helping to cause poverty? Global trade and aid policies, driven by wealthy nations, have long had disastrous consequences for the peoples of poor nations. These policies often destroy traditional ways of life and balances within communities, that people in developing countries rely on to avoid the worst effects of poverty.
A good example is the way that imports of food from a rich country into a poor one can destroy local agriculture and trade. The imported food is often cheaper or better quality, meaning that locals can’t sell their produce at a price that will support them. A widespread decline into extreme poverty is often the result.
The 'Banana Republic'This process is a bit easier to understand if you consider a practical example. Say you live in tropical Banania and make your living picking bananas. Since you’re a good banana picker, you can pick a hundred bananas a day. You sell each of your bananas for four cents at the local market. Half of this goes to the guy who grows the banana trees, and half is yours. Two cents per banana isn’t much, but you both manage to scrape by. Then, one day AustralianBananaCorp opens a stall at the market. Since they use machines to pick their bananas, and since they get funding from the Australian government, they can sell their bananas at two cents each. If you don’t cut your price in half, nobody will buy your bananas! On the other hand, if you do lower your price, both you and the banana-tree guy are in big trouble. If he can’t grow (and you can’t pick) twice as many bananas as usual, you’re both going to have trouble feeding yourselves. Unless you’re really fond of bananas, that is.
Ending povertyPoverty is obviously an immense global problem, but it is not one without possible solutions. In 2000, the United Nations estimated that if developed countries dedicated as little as 0.7% of their Gross National Income to effective foreign aid every year, the number of people living in poverty would be halved by 2015. This amount is, of course, a tiny proportion of the national income; yet most developed countries give less than half this sum in aid. And even then, much of this aid comes with strings attached that are often not in a developing country’s best interests.
To tackle the problem of poverty head-on, developed nations will need to find better ways of working with the developing world, ways which improve living standards in developing countries and give them brighter hopes for their future. Whether this happens or not will depend on whether governments of wealthier countries, and we as citizens of those countries, are prepared to do what is in our power, to take a stand and put an end to poverty.
