Economist Jeffrey Sachs has taken on a tough task – convincing Americans that lifting 1 billion people out of extreme poverty is in their interest.
– I would go door to door to talk to all 294 million Americans if I had to, Sachs said last week in a visit to San Francisco to give a speech and tout his new book, “The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time.”
Sachs says the 1,1 billion people who currently live in extreme poverty – defined as living on 1 dollar a day or less – would escape their misery by 2025 if only the U.S. government could be convinced that crime and terrorism feed on poverty and that the best route to national security would be to cut off this nourishment.
– A dangerous world could be made less dangerous, he noted.
Sachs was the lead author of a landmark three-year UN study on global poverty, released in January. He calls the report a blueprint for saving millions of lives and stabilizing impoverished nations that are ripe for political unrest and terrorism.
The plan includes “down-to-earth” development projects such as providing school meals to improve nutrition, bed nets to prevent malaria, fertilizer and irrigation tools to increase crop yields and wells for safe drinking water.
As a prime example, he points to Sauri, a remote village in western Kenya that is one of two test cases for the UN program to cut poverty in half by 2015.
The villages 5.000 residents, who are beset by many of the conditions that go hand-in-hand with extreme poverty – AIDS, hunger and malaria – will receive 350.000 dollar annually for the next five years for wells, fertilizer, school meals and a generator to make furniture for sale.
After a year of aid, Sachs said, the villagers are expecting bumper crops of beans and corn, and school attendance among older children has risen by 100 percent. – We see it as a focal point for broader regional development, he said.
Many such projects, Sachs says, could be easily financed if Washington fulfilled its promise to increase foreign aid.
In 2000, the United States and 189 other nations signed on to UN objectives known as the “Millennium Development Goals” to halve extreme poverty, end hunger, reduce child and maternal mortality and reverse the spread of such diseases as malaria and AIDS by 2015.
To meet these goals, the United States and other industrialized nations agreed to increase development aid to 0,7 percent of their gross national incomes by 2015. To date, only Sweden, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands and Luxembourg have complied. Seven others – France, Spain, Belgium, Ireland, Finland, Germany and Britain – have set timetables.
The scandal about African poverty, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said on World Poverty Day on April 24, is not just that thousands of people die needlessly every day. – The scandal is that they die when, with the right political will and effort, we can prevent their deaths, he said.
The US, with the worlds largest economy at 12 trillion US dollar, has yet to announce a timetable and is dead last among major donor nations at 0,15 percent of gross national income. – If they (US politicians and policy-makers) think they are saving money, it is a huge mistake, said Sachs.
To be sure, the Bush administration created the Millennium Challenge Account development program to give poor countries cash incentives for undertaking political and economic reforms. But to date, it has given just 110 million dollar in grants, the average cost of a Hollywood film.
To avoid adding to the budget deficit, Sachs suggests financing foreign assistance largely through a new 5 percent tax on incomes above 200.000 dollar and redirecting some defense funds to development.
He points out that aid to the sole region where poverty is rising – Africa – is just 2 billion dollar a year, out of 16 billion in total US foreign assistance, or 0,5 percent of the Pentagons annual budget of 419 billion US dollar.
Redirecting military aid to encourage growth and stability would make America safer, he argues. “Sending counterinsurgency military trainers to the poorest places in the world (to prevent terrorism) makes no sense at all.”
To be sure, Sachs has his critics.
Economist William Easterly of New York University has dubbed him the “leader of the utopian camp” and contends Sachs is peddling “a simplistic sales pitch for foreign aid.” Easterly says rich nations have given poor countries 2,3 trillion US dollar in todays dollars over the past 50 years, with little to show for it.
– Sachs plan rests heavily on coordinating tons of agencies, which have bureaucratic agendas, and working with dysfunctional regimes. Corruption and authoritarian governments are a big reason why poor countries are poor, he said.
– As for Sauri, I am glad when poor people anywhere are made better off, Easterly added, “but it is not a solution for a large number of people. It is a showcase project. When leading experts all gather together to solve problems of one village, of course there will be a difference.”
In response, Sachs calls Easterly a “cheerleader for cannot-do economics.”
Sachs, who heads Columbia Universitys Earth Institute, a program of experts who focus on sustainable development and the needs of the poor, has been an economic adviser to many nations, including Russia, China, Poland, Bolivia and India, and he travels to 40 or so countries annually.
This year, Time magazine named him one of the world’s 100 most influential people.
– There are two overwhelming barriers in this country: People think there are no solutions other than what we are doing, and that we are doing enough. They are shocked when I tell them the facts, Sachs said.
At the same time, he acknowledges several encouraging signs.
Last month, Republican Senator Sam Brownback from Kansas introduced legislation to combat global malaria, which kills 2 to 3 million people annually, most of them children.
The proposed bill would pay for medicines, insecticide-spraying programs and bed nets. – To the worlds shame, the treatable and preventable infection of malaria has been largely ignored, Brownback said adding: – For too long, the world community has done little more than talk about the problem.
In March, Republican member of the House of Representatives. Spencer Bachus, from Alabama, co-sponsored a bill calling for debt relief amounting to tens of billions of dollars for more than four dozen of the poorest nations, many in sub-Saharan Africa.
– We in America are fond of saying “I had a bad day”. We should realize that even on our worst days, we are blessed with so much more – more food, more shelter, more clothes, more security – than our poor brothers and sisters on their best days, Bachus told the House Committee on Banking and Financial Services.
– We can do so much for 700 million of the poorest – at such a small cost to each of us, added he.
And faith-based groups, which have been in contact with Sachs, are pressuring the White House to help the poor both at home and abroad.
In January, 76 evangelical Christian leaders petitioned President Bush to make antipoverty efforts a priority of his second term, while another group of 200 leaders called Evangelicals for Social Action implored him in a letter to meet the UN millennium development goals.
Sachs, meanwhile, says one good speech from Bush would go a long way.
– George Bush has given a lot of speeches on freedom. Where is his poverty speech? One speech could change how Americans look at it, he noted.
FACTS:
Extreme poverty by the numbers
– Nearly 11 million children die annually before their fifth birthday from such diseases as diarrhea and pneumonia (lungebetændelse).
– 2 million to 3 million die annually from malaria.
– 500.000 women die each year giving birth.
– 50.000 die daily from poverty, 30.000 are children.
– 1,2 billion people have no access to safe drinking water.
– 800 million go hungry daily.
– 245 million children have to work.
– If UN millennium goals are achieved by 2015, more than 500 million people will escape extreme poverty, and more than 300 million will escape hunger.
Source: United Nations and The Push Journal
