The Fight Against Global Poverty.

[green-man-2010.livejournal.com]

I want to you to take a look at these maps. They show the state of the world and show that in spite of what we see in the media , the fight against endemic world poverty is being won.

The images are big, so behind an LJ cut to save your bandwidth.

First , lets understand IMR - it stands for Infant Mortality Rate.
If you were to look at Britain since the year 2000, you would find that for every 1,000 live births, less than 10 children died before their 1st birthday. Britain has an IMR of under 10.

Now in some countries, the IMR is 50, or even higher. This means that at least 1 child in 20 will die before it's a year old. Worse still, in some countries, the IMR iis 100 or over - in some cases IMrs top 200 - I child in 5 dying before it's first birthday.

Now, this IMR thing is not some random event. it is closely linked to what we call 'endemic poverty'. In the UK, it may be possible to see some homeless people sleeping rough on the streets of London. There are isolated incidents of people falling into poverty. However, for the bigger percentage of the population, things are different. most people have houses. Most, if not all children have shoes, go to school, and eat enough to stay alive.

In other countries, however, most children do not simply lack shoes, they lack homes wiith running water, proper sanitation, the means to go to school- and whole villages are like this. this is what we mean by 'endemic poverrty' poverty being widespread - it's the norm and out of control. In such countries, diseases like malaria are also wide spread, endemic and are delibitating the efforts people make to rise up out of poverty.

So- now we know this, let's take a look at the maps.
the world in 1960 - you can click the image for more detail, but basically, purple = high IMR and green = below 50.

look at how widespread endemic poverty is.
note that Europe and North America are relatively prosperous, but namy areas suffer IMRs well over 50.

1980

more green areas showing up - but still lots of places where work needs doing.
some counties are a darker shade of green - places like this have very low IMRs.

2000

The world seems to be winning the war against endemic poverty.
Any country that goes below 50 tends to stay there - only North Korea, with a communist Military dictatorship seems to have fallen back to being above IMR 50.
most places that have democratic, stable governments are making vast strides. I hope in my lifetime to see the whole world go below IMR 50.

If we change the way that international trade is conducted, if we back the initiatives of the World Health Organiisation, if we can persuade our own politicians to sponsor world health programmes instead of more expensive weapon systems, if we support democratic movements like those in burma and elsewhere against tyrannical regimes, if we educate ourselves on what's happening and how we can get involved - then that is perfectly possible.

Comments

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

1. The Green Revolution.

2. The lack of conflict.

3. Advancements in medical and environmental technology.

[sgiffy.livejournal.com]

The green revolution is an interesting one. One of the greater tragedies of the 20th century was misguided environmentalists convincing many countries in Africa to fight against it.

[confliction.livejournal.com]

Misguided?

Short term gain has resulted in an increasing loss of arable land globally.

Monoculture techniques are literally raping the planet, and now we're going to see a GM/GE 'revolution'.

Joy :|

[sgiffy.livejournal.com]

I have no problem with GM and the fact remains that I have plenty of food to eat while places that did not advance don't.

[confliction.livejournal.com]

So the idea of a vastly reducing area within which to grow crops does not bother you?

And in relation to 'GM' crops - the idea that a company can own the copyright to any genetic material doesn't make you cringe?

Or that they can create 'activator' genes, that produce either unfruiting or unseeding plants unless 'treated' with an additional activator chemical that can only be bought from Monsanto et al?

Or terminator seeds?

Or cross-pollination? Or genetic contamination?

Or people making mistakes with the genetics and harming thousands if not millions of people?

Or reducing the genetic diversity of our crops making them vulnerable to disease and therefore making us vulnerable to famine?

What is the benefit? That we create plants that rape the soil for twice as many minerals and create deserts twice as fast? Soon they'll be selling trademarked mineral fertilizer. Or soil, even. Where is all of this energy and resource going to come from?

What ever happened to the idea that we have enough food in the world, it's just not distributed fairly? And much of it is wasted.

[sgiffy.livejournal.com]

You are pointing out things that I am all in favor of regulating. However the technology itself will allow us to grow the food we need with a minimum of environmental degradation.

We do grow enough food but that is thanks to pesticides and destructive fertilizers.

Our choice is literally, keep doing the same and damage our environment, pursue responsible GM and feed ourselves with less environmental destruction, or accept that a few billion people need to die.

[torpidai.livejournal.com]

I have no problem with GM and the fact remains that I have plenty of food to eat while places that did not advance don't.

I don't see GM as an advancement, Though it may well be sold as such, and GM can quickly manupulate a plant to it's final hybrid quicker (If for that matter it was naturaly possible in the first place), don't you think that certain genetic mutations happen naturaly and for a reason? (Gd Dammit I'm starting to sound religious)

[sgiffy.livejournal.com]

To paraphrase Dr. Xavier evolution is a slow process often taking millions of years. I would not say reason as mutation are random. They are then selected for survival. However what we need plants to do may not be what they naturally would be selected to do.

GM allows us to construct them in ways that most benefit us.

I see no reason to worship nature any more than the various gods we have come up with.

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

Ok, stop eating food. These techniques have literally saved over a billion... a BILLION people from starvation. It's allowed the average food footprint per person to drop drastically.

Short term? As if making people suffer today and for the next 50 years with no increase in food production ever so some Malthus worshiper can smugly sit back and proclaim to be right is twisted.

So if you don't like it, then stop eating and we can reallocate your footprint to someone who doesn't want to starve.

[confliction.livejournal.com]

As if it works like that. How has it saved over a billion people from starvation? With more food we saw an astronmical increase in world population. So the equation doesn't really work, does it?

If we produce EVEN more food... under the current system, people will be more inclined to breed MORE.

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

'How has it saved over a billion people from starvation?

Easy. If someone is hungry because they had no food and then the next day because of the GR they're fed, they're saved.

'With more food we saw an astronmical increase in world population. So the equation doesn't really work, does it?'

No, it does, because even with a tripling of the world's population we've still seen a decline in famine. So the argument works perfectly.

'If we produce EVEN more food... under the current system, people will be more inclined to breed MORE.'

And as I said, there's a movement called the VHE movement. Join it. Otherwise support genocide. Your options are a few as long as you see people "breeding" (because westerners "raise families" while foreigners "breed") as a problem that must be solved.

[green-man-2010.livejournal.com]

Voluntary Human Extiction movement?

Er, I don't think we need to go extinct. Just produce enough kids to live within the available resources. we could probably lose a few billion by having negative population growth for a few decades till we get down to a level where we have enough people to do all the jobs like drive the busses and keep the HEP stations open, but this is all we need. a world population of say 4 bilion people could make things last for centuries. Maybe even till it's time to vacate the planet for generation starships.

[confliction.livejournal.com]

Wow. If only it really worked like that. Most poor farmers couldn't afford the high yield seed or chemicals or machinery that was required to 'revolutionize' their farming methods. Those that could persuade a bank to lend them money, by signing their land off as an asset, were literally no better, ON AVERAGE, than if they had not. But now some banks and corporations own more land than they otherwise did, and more farmers are poorer or still servicing debts to this day.

People didn't just 'not revolutionize' because they were stupid or something. THEY COULDN'T AFFORD TO. That's the whole fucking problem.

Ok, i'll hoist you up by your own petard. You claim the green revolution saved a billion lives. Also, if the population back then was three times lower than it is now, there were roughly 2 billion people alive. There are over a billion starving today. So both halves of your 2 billion were starving? But only one half were 'saved'? Nonsense.

What we need to do is compare three graphs. One for rates of famine globally over time. One for related population data. And the final one will be the increase in global FOOD AID over the same periods of time.

I think everyone 'breeds'. Thanks for bringing an unnecessary distinction into this discussion. I see neither option as being either viable or 'the only alternative'.

[green-man-2010.livejournal.com]

#People didn't just 'not revolutionize' because they were stupid or something. THEY COULDN'T AFFORD TO. That's the whole fucking problem.#

True - thank you for pointing out that it isn't just simply a case of saying " do it our way.
Alongside the technical advances like agriculture, we also need to adress local issues - like anti malarial campaigns, empoering women, oral rehydration , cleaner water and a whole host of things.
just to say 'we got there because of GR' is oversimplifying things. Britain had more than just an agrarian revolution to put it where it was in 1960.

We also need to realise that the GR in itself will not solve everything like women's empowerment, clean water and sanitation issues, energy gap, and so forth.

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

'Most poor farmers couldn't afford the high yield seed or chemicals or machinery that was required to 'revolutionize' their farming methods.'

So they're using the methods you desire. They must be well fed and happy then, right?

'People didn't just 'not revolutionize' because they were stupid or something. THEY COULDN'T AFFORD TO. That's the whole fucking problem.'

You argued against the revolution. The Revolution has raised food production well above population growth. The problem we now have is getting food to starving people.

http://contexts.org/articles/winter-2010/the-scarcity-fallacy/

'So both halves of your 2 billion were starving? But only one half were 'saved'? Nonsense.'

As time increased the population increased. The trend up till the rollback of the Green Revolution was a decreasing number of hungry people. It's easy to pick apart off the cuff numbers but WE'd have over a billion less people in the world who would have starved to death and there would still be over a billion starving today if not for the revolution.

[green-man-2010.livejournal.com]

Listen - when are you going to get it that food isn't everything?
Your gren Revolution gives people food. Great1
But what about clean drinking water? all the food in the world is not gonna save you if you are dying of dysentry.

Sanitation? you got that sorted? how about malaria control? you are going to need that in the tropics, i think you will find.

And then,if there is food in the shops, can you afford it?
how are you going to land a decent job if you can't read and write because you never went to school? getting off of the shanty town is big problem for many Brazilians - not famine , just the problems of endemic poverty.

Agricultural advance is just one part of the answer.
And yeah, as has been said, more food to feed more people will not solve the problem unless family planning becomes available to stem population growth.

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

One. problem. at. a. time.

[green-man-2010.livejournal.com]

You are the one who touted the gren revolution, liike ~that # was one reason we got an advance in that decade.

This was simply one factor in play.Save the Children Fund, Oxfam, Christian Aid and a dozen other NGOs were also haed at work in all those decades - I was in most of the campaigns from 1985 onwards. things like GOBI made as much difference as the GR, maybe more.

GR's big failing in may places was that it required massive investment in tractors, oil, and stuff the locals could not afford. we fought in several places against several things at once.we fought disease, we fought against illiteracy, we fought against deforestation and el ninos. All at once. And we in the West were not 'on the front line' - the people in the shanty towns and rural villages did the lions share of the work. We merely supported them in their struggle by sending in the cash and the volunteers with the expertise they needed.

[geezer-also.livejournal.com]

I may be wrong, but I read that Malaria was becoming less and less until DDT was banned, and then started a comeback. I'm sure it came from a conservative source, so it's probably not to be trusted. I am starting to learn how to use google, so I could look it up if I decide I really need to know.

What I see as the problem with your solutions are it's the areas with the most need who don't do family planning. Most European countries have less than a static birth rate. So do we use force to insure population control in 3rd world countries?

[confliction.livejournal.com]

Who said i was not for 'revolutionizing'? I'm just not for poisoning ourselves, or monoculture, or, indeed, 'agribusiness'. Basically, i see the whole project as a failure and something we should and will have to be reversing.

A suitable replacement will be permaculture methods utilized in a cultural fashion so different from what we're used to that i'd call THAT the revolution.

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

'I'm just not for poisoning ourselves, or monoculture, or, indeed, 'agribusiness'.'

And that's how you characterize the Green Revolution. You want people to do these things but that's how they do it.

'Basically, i see the whole project as a failure and something we should and will have to be reversing.'

We've more than doubled our per person grain production even with a growing population. That's not bad. That's good.

'A suitable replacement will be permaculture methods utilized in a cultural fashion so different from what we're used to that i'd call THAT the revolution.'

So we'll have less food and use more land for it. Yea....you really don't care about arable land use.

[green-man-2010.livejournal.com]

In actual fact , if we introduce women to the idea that they can use contraceptives, and limit the size of their families as a result - like we did in bBritain in about 1950 - they often did.

of course, alongside the family planning goes putting the kids in schools, better health care so more kids survive, etc.
once kids are seen as economic liabilities instead of cheap labour, parents have fewer of them. populations go down take a look at the UK, most of europe in fact ...

[green-man-2010.livejournal.com]

congratulations, you have pointed out a few reasons why these things happened.
however, you forgot to explain why advances also occured in the intervening dacades , the ones I have but ommited to show.

taking your data , and mine , we get the idea that poverty is slowly being eliminated. Now, what I'm saying is - if we focussed on the things that make it happen - industrial developement, bettr education , immunisation , etc, we can get there faster.

You also omit to say why the UKk was already Green before the survey started, but never mind. Perhaps you can tell us what the next step will be or ought to be...

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

'... industrial developement[sic]'

But it doesn't. You're just tacking it on there.

If someone is living in a hut in the middle of a rain forest whilst living on a subsistence diet and dying at the old age of 40 we're happy but if they're living in a shack next to a factory whilst living on a subsistence diet and dying at the old age of 50 we're outraged.

Hell, you want to know how many lives are saved with industrial advances like electrical power, plumbing, and transportation? We can deify agrarian subsistence living all we want but it'd only drag down poverty and lifestyle.

[green-man-2010.livejournal.com]

You misunderstand.
my point is that britain began to improve after we invented seed drills, started using the Norfolk 4 course rotation plan , and improved agriculture considerably.

And yet, whenyou consider the work that was done through vaccines, antiseptics, food storage and distribution - this could not be managed on an industrial scale without industry.

as a Green , I would say that a key plank in the platform is to have industrial production of lifes neccessities, but done using renewable energy and sustainable resources.

the plan is not to have someone living in a shack next to a factory, but to have people living in decent homes in villages. Also for them to be reliant on sustainable industries, instead of logging/slash and burn agriculture/ anything else that degrades the environment and leaves the place unfit for habitation and force the population on to move elsewhere and repeat the cycle.
land management is the next question , and yes ,i will come to that in a future OP.