Hope and Poverty

Hope and Poverty

A new commodity: second hand clothes

Prices paid for second-hand clothes in the UK have tripled in the past five years, sparking a battle between charities, criminals, companies and local councils for the nation’s cast-offs.

It is an intersting development to new and 'emerging markets', especially when considering many developed nations export much of our recyling to LEDCs as they are more efficient at recycling.


As the FT states:

'The price rag dealers pay for used clothes has climbed from about £220 a tonne in 2007 to about £650 a tonne today, according to trade publication letsrecycle.com. Demand has mushroomed since the European Union expanded eastward in the mid-2000s, creating accessible markets for winter clothing that rag dealers cannot sell in Africa. Sterling’s tumble has accelerated the trend. Charities say donations are falling in the face of new high street competition. “Clothing has always been seen as something charitable,” said Maria Chenoweth-Casey, chief executive of charity TRAID, which runs second-hand clothes shops. “Vintage clothing is dying . . . It’s sad to see it shipped out of the country without even being looked at.” Criminals are also drawn to the high prices. In 2008, when Ms Chenoweth-Casey noticed the “yield” of her charity’s textile banks dropping, she hid a tracker inside a bank and followed the signal to an industrial estate in Havering in North London. The stolen clothes were in a trailer bound for east Europe.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/44784f66-8ae8-11e1-912d-00144feab49a.html#axzz1t41bUClx

Millenium Development Goals for 2015: Going no where fast or on track?

The MDGs formed at the start of the Millennium when aspirations were high that the world could unite against the global problems of poverty (the bottom billion), climate change and move towards a much more pro active post-industrial sustainable attitude towards the use of our shared environment.

Yet in 2012, with the mantra of sustainability to some extent part of political rhetoric but a global recession stifling the good deeds of many a different player, are the MDGs now just too idealistic or were they always going to be given the attitudes of the emerging superpowers like China and the other BRICs?

This video provides a useful overview and the questions are for you answer and discuss.

Q: Which in your opinion is the most important and why?
Q: What do you think are some of the barriers to achieving the MDGs? Think of current examples to back up your opinion.

Q: Do you think the MDGs will be achieved by 2015 - why?

The US Fair Trade Kerfuffle

A Bit of Context on the Fair Trade Kerfuffle

Alternative Development Indicators: Mobile Phones

Once again an overlap with Economics - the two disciplines do go hand in hand (Econ obviously emerging out of Economic Geography into it's own distinctive discipline...) - as my A-level students were convinced that they had looked at mobile phone use, subscription and ownership as a key alternative development indicator (Mr Chong!), which would make sense as many of the world's poorest and vulnerable people do own pay as you go phones; especially in light of the micro credit schemes in India and the ability to transfer information/money via the web combined with old handsets flooding into Sub-Saharan Africa and SE Asia. So thanks to Simon A for the following posts - enjoy exploring - the International Human Development Indicators website (http://hdr.undp.org/en/) is brilliant, especially the Data Explorer section (reminiscent of Hans Rosling's lectures on Ted.com - click here and here).

Ok so here is the interesting stuff...enjoy:

Now time for a simple and quite up-to-date list of total number of mobile phones in use - can you guess which country is top?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_mobile_phones_in_use
This one per capita:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/med_tel_mob_cel_percap-telephones-mobile-cellular-per-capita

An in-depth study on mobile phones and development (a clear link to the Technological Fix) for A2 Edexcel is available here: http://www.ejisdc.org/ojs2/index.php/ejisdc/article/viewFile/529/265

Other Links:
http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/10/18/international-aid-and-mobile-cash-transfers/

Blood in the Mobile

We love our cell phones and the selection between different models has never been bigger. But the production of phones has a dark, bloody side.

The main part of minerals used to produce cell phones are coming from the mines in the Eastern DR Congo. The Western World is buying these so-called conflict minerals and thereby finances a civil war that, according to human rights organisations, has been the bloodiest conflict since World War II: During the last 15 years the conflict has cost the lives of more than 5 million people and 300.000 women have been raped. The war will continue as long as armed groups can finance their warfare by selling minerals.

If you ask the phone companies where their suppliers get minerals from, none of them can guarantee that they aren’t buying conflict minerals from the Congo.

The Documentary Blood in the Mobile shows the connection between our phones and the civil war in the Congo. Director Frank Poulsen travels to DR Congo to see the illegal mine industry with his own eyes. He gets access to Congo’s largest tin-mine, which is being controlled by different armed groups, and where children work for days in narrow mine tunnels to dig out the minerals that end up in our phones.

After visiting the mine Frank Poulsen struggles to get to talk to Nokia, the Worlds largest phone company. Frank Poulsen wants them to guarantee that they are not buying conflict minerals and thereby is financing the war in the Congo. Nokia cannot give him that guarantee.

Blood in Mobile is a film about our responsibility for the conflict in the Congo and about corporate social responsibility.

Further Links:

• http://bloodinthemobile.org/
• http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2011/oct/10/blood-in-the-mobile-congo
• http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2011/10/11/blood-in-the-mobile-what-conflict-minerals-again/
• http://www.enoughproject.org/conflict-minerals

Tar sands, Obama, geoengineering and population growth

Bill McKibben on tar sands, Obama, geoengineering and population growth

The US environmentalist explains why he is now in a 'fight' with the oil industry over climate change

An interesting interview hosted by the Guardian newspaper

Please post you thoughts and comments below.

Bolivia's Isiboro national park highway controversy

Illegal logging, coca farming and unchecked exploitation of natural gas reserves - for the indigenous people of the Tipnis this could be the way of life, a far cry for the current tropical rural idyll, if the new Amazon highway is built by the Bolivian government. The proposed 300km (190-mile) $211million road, known as the Isiboro national park highway, financed by Brazil, would link Brazil to Pacific ports in Chile and Peru.But it will also pass through an Amazon nature reserve that is home to about 50,000 people from three different indigenous groups.

Bolivia is a very poor and impoverished country. A country defined by it's geography; located in the heart of the Andes and landlocked, it encapsulates one of Collier's poverty traps: 'Being landlocked with bad neigbours'. Despite macroeconomic stability for the past 15year, Bolivia's economy has grown at only about 4% a year in the 1990s, and has been much lower over the last two years. At this rate, it will take over 40 years for the per capita gross domestic product to double. With a population growth rate of 2.3%, the economy needs to grow significantly faster and distribute benefits more broadly in order to alleviate poverty. Therefore, in order to develop, one could argue that Bolivia needs to develop it's infrastructure in order to improve the transportation of goods and services to and from its' neighbours. The government argue that, like the Trans-Amazon highway (a highway which aims to run from Peru to Brazil), the "road is essential for development and would encourage trade by linking remote communities to market towns" (BBC News). It would also enhance links with one of the emerging superpowers, Brazil.

However, since August hundreds of people, many of them indigenous from the Tipinis region, have been protesting and marching towards the administrative capital of La Paz. The protests are not only concerned about the project's potential negative impacts on the area's biodiversity, but also because the government have seemingly ignored the constitutional rights of the people by not consulting them. The latter point has been the main criticism directed to the President Morales, who was elected based upon his commitment to defend local people and 'Mother Earth'.

It is not surprising to learn therefore that after violent clashes on Sunday 28th September between police and about 1,000 protesters marching towards La Paz combined with the resignation of the Bolivian Interior Minister Sacha Llorenti (after being heavily criticised over a police crackdown on a protest march),  Morales has suspended the the Isiboro national park highway until a referendum has been conducted - Bolivia it seems has had it's own mini-Spring and the the message for the moment is that people power can make a difference.

This story raises a number of points that should interest both geographers and economists as well as those with a wider interest in the environment. Questions for contemplation could include:

1. Should the 'Business as Usual' approach of economic concerns over environmental heritage always be applied, even when it concerns the most fragile and biodiverse ecosystems?

2. To what extent should local indigenous people be involved in the process of national development? Are their views an obstacle to development or a useful tool?

3. Is it fair that Bolivia bears the brunt of the costs for a Brazilian project? And how will Bolivia benefit, if the road goes ahead?

4. What lessons can be learned from the TransAmazon Highway?

Furrther links:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-15138784
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/10/bolivian-road-protest-evo-morales

Book Review: The End of Poverty (Jeffrey Sachs)

Book: The End of Poverty - How can we make it happen in our lifetime

Author: Jeffrey Sachs (2005)

Links: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1034734,00.html

Other review of this book: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1034738,00.html

Jeffrey Sachs, the economic polymath, attempts in this tome of a book to outline how we can end poverty in our lifetime.  His diverse background, both as an academic and advisor, lends itself well for him to comment on the issue of poverty and in the 18 chapter book he provides a detailed analysis of the core issues – yet from the onset I think it is important to note that I felt a little disappointed with the end result or the ‘action plan’ so to speak – especially when considering in his opening page Sach’s states that “This book is about ending poverty in our time” (page 1).

His vision of the ‘economic possibilities of our time’ (p.25) is thus:

• to meet the Millennium Development Goals by 2015
•  to end poverty by 2025
•   to ensure well before 2025 that all of world’s poor countries can make reliable progress up the ladder of economic development
•  to accomplish all of this with modest financial help from the rich countries, more than is now provided, but within the bounds of what they have long promised.

Sach’s starts of by touching upon examples of success in Third World countries such as microcredit in Bangladesh and India’s export valorisation through the diffusion of technology. He defines poverty into 3 categories: extreme, moderate and relative. The former category is the primary objective to eradicate. The following chapter then assess the history of modern economic growth through Kuznet and Keynes as well as a bit of Rostow’s Modernisation theory. It looks at the post World War II landscape and how the world was divided into: First (The West), Second (Socialist) and the Third (Poor). Sach’s also is not shy in analysing whys some countries fail to thrive and akin to Collier’s book on ‘The Bottom Billion’ (see other book review or http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_collier_shares_4_ways_to_help_the_bottom_billion.html). He goes onto to list 8 reasons, including: The Poverty trap (poverty itself causes economic stagnation); Physical Geography; Fiscal Trap (government lacking the financial capital to invest in public services); Governance failures; Cultural Barriers (barriers to women or ethnic minorities); Geopolitics (trade barriers & sanctions); and interestingly a lack of innovation (the huge difference between rich and poor & their tendency to innovate); and finally the Demographic trap (where impoverished families choose to have lots of children). As Sach’s states “Economic development works. It can be successful. It tends to build on itself. But it must get started” (page 73).

Sachs argues that the traditional top-down discourse of Western knowledge needs to change as he questions whether the rich world Ph.D. trained economists think correctly about the problems of the countries in which they operate. Sach’s then touches upon the importance of local geography and context and uses his experiences to suggest how Development economics should behave like Clinical medicine – the field and new discourse of Clinical Economics: by asking the right and most appropriate questions the outcome will be development strategies that are far more effective because the right questions are being asked in the first place.

I would like at this point to refer top another book review which I think sums up the heart of the book quite nicely (David Westlake @ Wordpress):

“As Sachs builds his argument for how and why the end of poverty can be attained, he outlines six major areas of capital that the extreme poor lack (human, business, infrastructure, natural, public institutional and knowledge) and carefully delineates which support should come from the public sector and which from the private (p. 251).  Sachs explains that governments should finance schools, clinics and roads to avoid private monopolies and because of the positive spillover into other parts of society; they should, however, generally not provide the capital for private businesses as ‘entrepreneurs do a much better job of running businesses than governments.’

Sachs makes a strong effort to build an evidence base of examples that bolster his theory.  The eradication of smallpox, the campaign against malaria and the mobile phone revolution in Bangladesh are cited as ‘dramatic examples that prove the naysayers wrong’ – particularly those who would say that projects successful on a small-scale will not be possible when played out at a national level. 

In one of the most interesting chapters in the book, Sachs attempts to dispel the myths that greatly hinder the aims of the economic development community (p.309):

Africa needs around $30 billion per year in aid in order to escape from poverty.  But if we actually gave that aid, where would it go? Right down the drain if the past is any guide.  Sad to say. Africa’s education levels are so low that even programs that work elsewhere would fail in Africa.  Africa is corrupt and riddled with authoritarianism.  It lacks modern values and the institutions of a free market economy needed to achieve success.  In fact, Africa’s morals are so broken down that it is no surprise AIDS has run out of control.  And here is the bleakest truth: Suppose that our aid saved Africa’s children.  What then?  There would be a population explosion, and a lot more hungry adults.  We would have solved nothing.

            If your head was nodding yes … The paragraph above repeats conventional rich-world wisdom about Africa, and to a lesser extent, other poor regions.  While common, these assertions are incorrect.

Contrary to the ‘money down the drain’ myth, Sachs contends that relative to the population and the need, there has been very little aid to Africa, and thus it is no surprise that no impact has been seen.  The deep pessimism about Africans’ ability to utilise aid must be addressed; the focus on corruption and governance is exaggerated; judgements on cultural values are usually based on prejudice rather than measurable evidence.  These are strong statements made against deep-seated ideas, and it is unsurprising that Sach’s claims are not universally accepted.”

In his final chapters Sach’s outlines the action plan or the global compact to end poverty by firstly offering a tailored MDG poverty reduction strategy for every country:

1. A differential diagnosis (based on Clinical Economics)
2. An Investment Plan
3. A Financial Plan
4. A Donor Plan
5. A Public Management Plan.

However, he states that above domestic strategies, global concerns and imbalances must be addressed as well, namely (page 280):

-          The Debt Crisis

-          Global Trade Policy

-          Science for Development (asking the right & appropriate questions for those that need help)

-          Environmental Stewardship

“Extreme poverty is a trap that can be released through targeted investment if the needed investments ate tested and proved and the investment program can be implemented, centred on the MDGs – he argues then that a 5% income tax surcharge on incomes above $200,000 directed towards the US contribution to end global poverty, if applied in 2004, would have yielded $40 billion” (page 307). The problem that I find with this argument though is that once again it depends on the US – a country and a nation so far unwilling to give, especially in an era of economic hardship and upheaval – even more so when it’s status as the hegemonic superpower is under threat from the BRICs and terrorism.

Therefore disappointingly  Sach’s great master plan falls back on the rhetoric we have already heard  - a dependence on current nations to provide 0.7% of their GDP, increase aid and and reduce or wipe out any poor country debt. As a quote from the guardian’s John Vidal states:

“What he believes could change the world in 20 years, and eradicate all extreme poverty at a cost that everyone could bear, is simple: far more aid, far more debt forgiveness, far better trade terms and far more access to good technology. Sounds familiar? All this is now economic orthodoxy - what everyone from the anti-globalisers, to the very poor of Brazil, charities such as Oxfam and Christian Aid, and even politicians from Gordon Brown to the Tory party have been arguing for some time.” http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2005/apr/23/highereducation.news2

Whether this action plan can be realised at a time of global recession and uncertainly is questionable…yet we can only be but optimistic and act because we promised.