Fwd: FW: Two myths that keep the world poor

March 7, 2006

> Two myths that keep the world poor

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> <DIV><FONT face= " Times New

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> size=3>Editor's Note: <SPAN

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> Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';

> mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language:

> EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA " >This

> essay by Vandana Shiva encourages us to think about

> what poverty is and where it

> comes from. Development agendas often advocate

> economic development to reduce

> poverty. But poor people aren’t left behind as this

> prescription for poverty

> would suggest, says Shiva. Rather, they are robbed,

> especially of natural

> resources. People aren’t necessarily poor if they

> live on one dollar a day,

> especially if they produce their own food and have

> access to potable water.

> Preserving natural resources and people’s access to

> the “wealth of the commons”

> contributes immensely to quality of life. The

> perspective presented here

> suggests that the end of poverty may best be

> perceived in terms, not of giving

> more to “poor” peoples but rather, to take

> less.

> </DIV>

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> <DIV><FONT face= " Times New

> Roman " size=3>Two

> myths that keep the world poor <A

>

href= " http://www.odemagazine.com/article.php?aID=4192 " >http://www.odemagazine.co\

m/article.php?aID=4192</A> Vandana

>

> Shiva This article appeared in Ode issue:

> 28 Global poverty is a hot

> topic right now. But anyone serious about ending

> it needs to understand the

> true causes, argues Indian environmentalist

> Vandana Shiva. From rock

> singer Bob Geldof to UK politician Gordon Brown, the

> world suddenly seems to

> be full of high-profile people with their own plans

> to end poverty. Jeffrey

> Sachs, however, is not a simply a do-gooder but one

> of the world¹s leading

> economists, head of the Earth Institute and in

> charge of a UN panel set up to

> promote rapid development. So when he launched his

> book The End of Poverty,

> people everywhere took notice. Time magazine even

> made it into a cover

> story.</DIV><FONT face=Arial

> size=2><FONT face= " Times New Roman "

> size=3>

> <DIV> But, there is a problem with Sachs¹

> how-to-end poverty prescriptions.

> He simply doesn¹t understand where poverty comes

> from. He seems to view it

> as the original sin. ³A few generations ago,

> almost everybody was poor,²

> he writes, then adding: ³The Industrial

> Revolution led to new riches, but

> much of the world was left far behind.²</DIV>

> <DIV> This is a totally false history of poverty.

> The poor are not those who

> have been ³left behind²; they are the ones who

> have been robbed. The

> wealth accumulated by Europe and North America

> are largely based on riches

> taken from Asia, Africa and Latin America.

> Without the destruction of India¹s

> rich textile industry, without the takeover of

> the spice trade, without

> the genocide of the native American tribes,

> without African slavery,

> the Industrial Revolution would not have resulted

> in new riches for Europe

> or North America. It was this violent takeover of

> Third World resources

> and markets that created wealth in the North and

> poverty in the

> South. Two of the great economic myths of

> our time allow people to

> deny this intimate link, and spread

> misconceptions about what poverty

> is. First, the destruction of nature and of

> people¹s ability to look

> after themselves are blamed not on industrial

> growth and economic

> colonialism, but on poor people themselves.

> Poverty, it is stated, causes

> environmental destruction. The disease is then

> offered as a cure: further

> economic growth is supposed to solve the very

> problems of poverty and

> ecological decline that it gave rise to in the

> first place. This is the

> message at the heart of Sachs¹ analysis. </DIV>

> <DIV> The second myth is an assumption that if

> you consume what you produce,

> you do not really produce, at least not

> economically speaking. If I grow my

> own food, and do not sell it, then it doesn¹t

> contribute to GDP, and

> therefore does not contribute towards

> ³growth². People are

> perceived as ³poor² if they eat food they have grown

> rather than commercially

> distributed junk foods sold by global agri-business.

> They are seen as poor if

> they live in self-built housing made from

> ecologically well-adapted materials

> like bamboo and mud rather than in cinder block

> or cement houses. They are

> seen as poor if they wear garments manufactured

> from handmade natural fibres

> rather than synthetics.</DIV>

> <DIV> Yet sustenance living, which the wealthy

> West perceives as poverty,

> does not necessarily mean a low quality of life.

> On the contrary, by their

> very nature economies based on sustenance ensure

> a high quality of

> life<WHEN measured in terms of access to good

> food and water, opportunities

> for sustainable livelihoods, robust social and

> cultural identity, and a sense

> of meaning in people¹s lives . Because these poor

> don¹t share in the

> perceived benefits of economic growth, however,

> they are portrayed as those

> ³left behind². </DIV>

> <DIV> This false distinction between the factors

> that create affluence and

> those that create poverty is at the core of

> Sachs¹ analysis. And because of

> this, his prescriptions will aggravate and deepen

> poverty instead of ending

> it. Modern concepts of economic development,

> which Sachs sees as the

> ³cure² for poverty, have been in place for only a

> tiny portion of human

> history. For centuries, the principles of

> sustenance allowed societies all

> over the planet to survive and even thrive.

> Limits in nature were respected

> in these societies and guided the limits of human

> consumption. When

> society¹s relationship with nature is based on

> sustenance, nature exists as a

> form of common wealth. It is redefined as a

> ³resource² only when profit

> becomes the organising principle of society and

> sets off a financial

> imperative for the development and destruction of

> these resources for the

> market.</DIV>

> <DIV> However much we choose to forget or deny

> it, all people in all

> societies still depend on nature. Without clean

> water, fertile soils and

> genetic diversity, human survival is not

> possible. Today, economic

> development is destroying these onetime commons,

> resulting in the creation of

> a new contradiction: development deprives the

> very people it professes to

> help of their traditional land and means of

> sustenance, forcing them to

> survive in an increasingly eroded natural

> world. A system like the

> economic growth model we know today creates

> trillions of dollars of super

> profits for corporations while condemning billions

> of people to poverty.

> Poverty is not, as Sachs suggests, an initial state

> of human progress from

> which to escape. It is a final state people fall

> into when one-sided

> development destroys the ecological and social

> systems that have maintained

> the life, health and sustenance of people and the

> planet for ages. The

> reality is that people do not die for lack of

> income. They die for lack of

> access to the wealth of the commons. Here, too,

> Sachs is wrong when he says:

> ³In a world of plenty, 1 billion people are so poor

> their lives are in

> danger.² The indigenous people in the Amazon, the

> mountain communities in the

> Himalayas, peasants anywhere whose land has not been

> appropriated and whose

> water and biodiversity have not been destroyed by

> debt-creating industrial

> agriculture are ecologically rich, even though they

> earn less than a dollar a

> day.</DIV>

> <DIV> On the other hand, people are poor if they

> have to purchase their

> basic needs at high prices no matter how much

> income they make. Take the case

> of India. Because of cheap food and fibre being

> dumped by developed

> nations and lessened trade protections enacted by

> the government, farm prices

> in India are tumbling, which means that the

> country¹s peasants are losing

> $26 billion U.S. each year. Unable to survive

> under these new

> economic conditions, many peasants are now

> poverty-stricken and thousands

> commit suicide each year. Elsewhere in the world,

> drinking water is

> privatised so that corporations can now profit

> to the tune of $1

> trillion U.S. a year by selling an essential

> resource to the poor that was

> once free. And the $50 billion U.S. of ³aid²

> trickling North to South is but

> a tenth of the $500 billion being sucked in the

> other direction due to

> interest payments and other unjust mechanisms in

> the global economy imposed

> by the World Bank and the IMF.</DIV>

> <DIV> </DIV>

> <DIV> If we are serious about ending poverty, we

> have to be serious about

> ending the systems that create poverty by robbing

> the poor of their common

> wealth, livelihoods and incomes. Before we can

> make poverty history, we need

> to get the history of poverty right. It¹s not

> about how much wealthy nations

> can give, so much as how much less they can

> take. Taken and

> adapted with kind permission from The Ecologist

> (July/August 2005), a British

> monthly devoted to discussion of environmental

> issues, international politics

> and globalization. More information: The

> Ecologist, Unit 18 Chelsea Wharf, 15

> Lots Road, London, SW10 0XJ, England, <A

> href= " theecologist " ><FONT

> face= " Times New Roman "

> size=3>theecologist</A><FONT

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> href= " http://www.theecologist.org " ><FONT

> face= " Times New Roman "

>

size=3>www.theecologist.org</A> <FONT

>

> face= " Times New Roman " size=3>Dr. Vandana Shiva is a

> physicist and prominent

> Indian environmental activist. She founded

> Navdanya, a movement

> for biodiversity conservation and farmers'

> rights. She directs the Research

> Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural

> Resource Policy. Her most

> recent books are Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature

> and Knowledge and Stolen

> Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food

> Supply. WHO

> WE ARE: This e-mail service shares information to

> help more people discuss

> crucial policy issues affecting global food

> security. The service is

> managed by Amber McNair of the University of Toronto

> in partnership with the

> Centre for Urban Health Initiatives (CUHI) and Wayne

> Roberts of the Toronto Food

> Policy Council, in partnership with the Community

> Food Security Coalition, World

> Hunger Year, and International Partners for

> Sustainable Agriculture.

> Please help by sending information or names and

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