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The End of Poverty

By Onnesha Roychoudhuri, MotherJones.com. Posted May 18, 2005.


Jeffrey Sachs explains his plan to end the worst of human deprivation and misery and why it will work.
Sachs
Jeffrey Sachs

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In February of this year, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan remarked: "We will not defeat terrorism unless we also tackle the causes of conflict and misgovernment in developing countries. And we will not defeat poverty so long as trade and investment in any major part of the world are inhibited by fear of violence or instability." The point was that a broader global security strategy needed to go hand in hand with a poverty reduction strategy. To that end, the UN set about drawing up its Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Adopted by all member countries in 2000, the MDGs aim to achieve everything from eradicating extreme poverty to ensuring universal primary education and basic health care access, all by the year 2015.

In order to figure out how to reach these goals, Annan organized a panel of over 250 development experts to lay out practical strategies for promoting rapid development. Headed by economist Jeffrey Sachs, the panel published their final report in January of 2005. The report calls for both an increase in aid from Western countries and a reallocation of funding priorities in the developing countries themselves. The report also calls for more aid to be given on a local level. By bypassing governments, the UN hopes to spark more immediate and effective development. For instance, in one test case conducted in Kenya, UN funding went straight to the village of Sauri, where the schools were able to provide much-needed food for their students, and hence jumped in ranking from 68th to 7th in the district.

Shortly after the release of the UN report came the publication of Sachs' book, "The End of Poverty," in which he laid out his own strategies for eradicating poverty by 2025. Sachs, who gained renown for advising Latin American and Asian governments on economic reform, has gained popularity as "can-do" economist amidst a cacophony of naysayers on development. But his optimistic attitude has also attracted quite a bit of skepticism. Why is it that decades of development economics haven't achieved the elimination of poverty? What makes Sachs' proposals so special? Is eradicating poverty a feasible goal to achieve in our lifetime? Sachs recently sat down with Mother Jones to discuss these issues.

Mother Jones: What makes your plan to end poverty so different from the development efforts that were tried in the 1950s and '60s? Why hasn't five decades worth of development work been very successful thus far?

Jeffrey Sachs: I think so far there's been a lack of appropriate effort, which includes many things. For development to work, rich countries need to help poor countries make certain practical investments that are often really very basic. Once you get your head around development issues and realize how solvable many of them are, there are tremendous things that can be done. But for decades we just haven't tried to do many of these basic things. For instance, one issue that has been tragically neglected for decades now is malaria. That's a disease that kills up to 3 million people every year. It's a disease that could be controlled quite dramatically and easily if we just put in the effort. It's truly hard for me to understand why we aren't.

What do you say to critics who argue that it's a waste to put more money into a development system that hasn't used that money very effectively thus far?

Well, we have to be smart about whatever we're doing. But I'm quite convinced that, broadly speaking, economic development works. The main arguments of the Millennium Project Report, and the main argument of my book is that there are certain places on the planet that, because of various circumstances—geographical isolation, burden of disease, climate, or soil—these countries just can't quite get started. So it's a matter of helping them get started, whether to grow more food or to fight malaria or to handle recurring droughts. Then, once they're on the first rung of the ladder of development, they'll start climbing just like the rest of the world.

So do you believe that past efforts, to get these less-developed countries on the "first rung," haven't been pragmatic enough?

Part of it is that many of these countries are invisible places, neglected by us politically, neglected by our business firms, by international markets, and by trade. We tend to focus on these countries only when they're in such extraordinary crises that they get shown on CNN because they're in a deep drought or a massive war, which is something that impoverished countries are much more prone to falling to. There haven't been too many stories in our press about Senegal, Ghana, Tanzania, Malawi, or Ethiopia, other than when the disasters hit. And yet these are places that are in very deep trouble all of the time, but with largely solvable problems. And those are the kinds of the places that I'm talking about as being stuck in extreme poverty.


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Onnesha Roychoudhuri is an editorial fellow at Mother Jones.

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View:
Sack Sachs
Posted by: Geni on May 18, 2005 4:17 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Jeffrey Sach's advice destroyed the economies of Russia and Eastern Europe, causing untold suffering. At that point, any economist in touch with reality would have resigned his post and slunk away to take up some profession that he had a better knack for - perhaps making pottery or playing a musical instrument.

Sachs has never repudiated his philosophy from those days, but now presents himself as a born-again friend of the poor. Perhaps he hopes to undo some of the damage he has done. Perhaps he plans to do more. I'm all in favour of a massive worldwide effort to help the poor. But I don't think it is likely to work unless we can get Sachs and his cronies *out* of it!

Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank and an economist with a sterling track record, would be a far more credible spokesperson to head such an enterprise.

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World Bank and IMF attitude toward developing countries
Posted by: Pepper on May 18, 2005 4:26 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I saw the WB and IMF arrive in Iraq the day of the declaration that the war was over. The bankers were in before the emergency services were there or even the oil companies. That is how critical it was to get ahold of Iraq's wealth.

They then proceeded to strip all the gold out of the Bank of IRaq (19 billion dollars in gold) change the currancy from gold backed to reserve notes, reprinted the money, lent the Iraqi's money for restructuring and redevelopment and then for the first time in their history instituted a taxing system to repay the debt to the IMF and WB at a flat tax rate of 15%.
Then the powers that be began a stronger control by selling the Iraqi farmers seeds and then preventing them from saving those seeds for future harvest as they have always done. Now when you control someones water, air and food and natural resources, you control their lives and have a subservient work force. They will be allowed to keep just enough money to survive and nothing else. That is why the taxes.

Then I watched the developed countries (Britian and US) privatize all of Iraq's resources and industries thus stealing their wealth. Then you wonder why these two organizations have the attitude they have? They don't want a "developed" country, they just want it fixed to the point where people are healthy enough to work at $6 bucks an hour globally and live only through their productive years and then disappear from the planet. Then you have no burden with old people, sick children or handicapped adults.

Mark my words, we are moving in that direction in this country.

They also want them "dependant" on their masters and not self sufficient. You can not control a population if theyare self sufficient. There is no hope in a world where money and power decision makers are psychopathic.

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Won't work
Posted by: paschn@comcast.net on May 18, 2005 5:04 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Although you're to be commended for your great ideas, they won't work. Just as it is impossible to convince many people that there are inherently evil people, ( i.e. the Bush family, Cheney's, their wives), there are also inherently rapacious people, ( Bush family, Cheney's, their wives). You'd go thru all the effort to set it up,...and the pigs as mentioned above will make sure there's others of their own ilk there to milk it,... bleed it,...dry it up before it could do any real good.

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» RE: Won't work Posted by: 42Years
» RE: Won't work Posted by: annie
Chavez
Posted by: osisbs on May 18, 2005 6:26 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
This is what Chavez is doing in Venzuela with the oil money; building basic tools of a society. Twentyfirst Century mankind is still using accounting that was developed by Bob Cratchit and Scrooge (i.e. bottom-line). When clean air and water, and an educated and well-behaved population begin to show up on the balance sheet then we'll know that we're headed in the right direction. Basically, we slaughtered the Buffalo, Carrier Pigeon, and Whooping Crane for the bottom line and we're working on the Cod, the Rainforest, and the Aquifers. The slaughter/rape-based economy is unsustainable.

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» RE: Chavez Posted by: osisbs
Vandana Shiva on Sachs' flawed worldview
Posted by: bbugs on May 18, 2005 8:57 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Anyone reading this article shold also read Vandana Shiva's criticism of Sachs' view of poverty and its causes.

"Ending poverty requires knowing how poverty is created. However, Jeffrey Sachs views poverty as the original sin. As he declares:

'A few generations ago, almost everybody was poor. The Industrial Revolution led to new riches, but much of the world was left far behind.'

This is totally false history of poverty, and cannot be the basis of making poverty history. Jeffrey Sachs has got it wrong. The poor are not those who were left behind, they are the ones who were pushed out and excluded from access to their own wealth and resources."

http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2005-05/11shiva.cfm

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Z Magazine article
Posted by: Geni on May 18, 2005 6:54 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Vandana Shiva has written a fine critique of cultural perception of poverty. However, s/he loses credibility with the sweeping assertion that (unidentified) "ecological societies have never had garbage." To the contrary, kitchen middens (a/k/a garbage heaps) were a standard feature of prehistoric villages, and some modern tribal people still have them. One anthropologist described typical middens in the Andaman Islands:

http://www.andaman.org/book/chapter14/

"Heaps of fresh, rotting organic refuse in the hot climate... have been called fly factories in full mass production, and very smelly factories at that." A tribe would move camp when the midden finally made the site unlivable, only to return a few decades later. After a few centuries, a kitchen midden could "provide a convenient raised platform for a small village" in a spot that had previously been swampland or shallow water.

True, I've read of places in the Himalayas where supplies and topsoil are so scarce that people waste nothing. All organic waste is carefully composted, and every piece of fabric is used and reused, ending its cycle as a scrubbing rag and then as landfill. But these societies were designed that way out of harsh necessity. Tossing table scraps out the front door (or even onto the floor, as used to be done in medieval palaces) is probably closer to our natural state. We could get away with it because there weren't enough of us to do that much damage. Today we're faced with the task of educating people to a new level of responsibility, not just reverting back to a happy state of lost innocence after we get rid of our oppressors.

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» RE: Z Magazine article Posted by: Mycos
annie
Posted by: annie on May 20, 2005 12:42 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
World poverty and the exploitation of our poorest people has to stop - whatever the arguments are for how we do it. One way anyone and everyone can make a difference is to join the MAKE POVERTY HISTORY campaign to lobby for Trade Justice, to Drop the Developing World's Debt and ensure More and Better Aid. Join the campaign today! Visit www.makepovertyhistory.org and find out what you can do to help.

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