Showing posts tagged poverty

Poverty In Canada: Still a Huge Problem

Poverty rates in Canada, especially among children and the working-age population, are among the worst of 17 leading developed countries, according to the Conference Board’s annual ranking on Society indicators. With more than 12 per cent of the working-age population living in poverty, Canada’s D grade places it 15th out of 17 countries – ahead of only Japan and the United States. More than one in seven children lives in poverty here – that’s a C grade and 13th place.

100 People Pushed into Poverty Every Minute

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[Aid agencies] have to give unconditional debt relief. This is the fault of ordinary citizens who support vociferous lobbies without bothering to get informed. No aspect of domestic policy is run this badly. The aid agencies are not run by fools; they are run by intelligent people severely constrained by what public opinion permits.

Paul Collier. The Bottom Billion, p.184

Why is there so much food and still so much hunger? NY Times Special Report

The answers are complex and involve everything from American farm politics and African corruption to war, poverty, climate change and drought, which is now the single most common cause of food shortages on the planet.

Biodiversity Key to Reducign Poverty

Global Poverty Expected to Surge

The global recession is expected to push 89 million more people into extreme poverty by the end of 2010, the World Bank said Wednesday as it called on the leaders of the 20 largest economies to engage in “responsible globalization.”

Although economic data show that the worst recession of the post-World War II era might have ended in the United States, and global trade has begun to pick up, low-income countries are still reeling from the effects of a financial crisis created by their wealthier counterparts.

Millennium Challenge Corporation Grants Senegal $540 million to Reduce Poverty

By Fid Thompson
Dakar
16 September 2009

The U.S. government’s Millennium Challenge Corporation and the government of Senegal  Wednesday signed a five-year $540 million grant to reduce poverty in the West African nation.

The grant will focus on road rehabilitation and food security initiatives in two of the poorest regions of Senegal.

“The funding itself will be invested in the rehabilitation of two roads, one in the Casamance region and one in the Senegal River Valley.  Additional funds will be invested in rehabilitating and expanding existing infrastructure for irrigation and water resources management,” said Madolyn Phillips, Director of the Corporation’s Senegal country program.

Launched in 2004, the Millennium Challenge Corporation is an independent agency of the U.S. government. It has a specific mission to invest in poverty reduction through economic-development projects in some of the poorest countries in the world.

To be eligible for an MCC grant, governments must meet three main criteria - ruling justly, investing in people, and promoting economic freedom.

Phillips says the Millennium Challenge Corporation takes a new approach to international aid.

“One of the things that is unique about MCC is that we work in very close partnership with our eligible countries and one of the guiding principles for the MCC is that there be a high degree of country ownership of our programs. Through a consultative process, through economic analyses and through various other mechanisms for project identification it was the government of Senegal that targeted these regions and these projects for investment by MCC for a number of reasons,” said Phillips.

Senegal’s government identified the troubled Casamance region in the south and the northern rice-growing region of St. Louis for MCC investment.

The grant will improve infrastructure in both regions and will develop 10,500 hectares of land in the fertile Senegal River Valley. Senegal imports 70 percent of its rice. With better irrigation and drainage, the government aims to bring the country one step closer to food security.

2.6 Million More Americans are Living in Poverty

A new comprehensive economic survey shows that the recession has plunged 2.6 million more Americans into poverty, wiped out the household income gains of an entire decade and pushed the number of people without health insurance up to 46.3 million.

Church Leaders, Climate Experts to Urge World Leaders to Focus on Poor

Two networks of faith-based humanitarian and development groups will be sending a delegation to this month’s high-level U.N. event on climate change to ask world leaders to give the highest political priority to a new climate deal.

Alongside representatives from CIDSE and Caritas Internationalis, church leaders and climate experts from the developed and developing world will personally urge world leaders to think about the world’s poorest people as they believe “bold action is needed to protect them from the devastating impacts of climate change.”

“Wealthy countries have an unequivocal moral duty to reduce their own emissions and help developing countries who are already suffering the consequences of our profligate use of fossil fuels for economic gain,” commented delegation head Keith O’Brien, a cardinal from the United Kingdom.

On Sept. 22, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will host an all-day high-level event on climate change for heads of state and government, one day before the opening of the general debate of the 64th session of the U.N. General Assembly.

According to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, 2009 is a crucial year in the international effort to address climate change.

In December, national government delegations who agreed to shape an ambitious international response to climate change in 2007 will be meeting for the end-of-the-year summit in Copenhagen to finalize the details of a new climate change agreement that will replace the current one, which runs until 2012.

Under the current Kyoto Protocol, 37 industrial countries are required to cut emissions a total 5 percent from 1990 by 2012.

According to some scientists, industrialized nations must cut emissions by 25 to 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2020 to prevent climate disasters, such as coastal flooding from rising sea levels, severe weather events, and variations in rainfall and temperatures that will affect agriculture and wipe out species of plants and animals.

The World Wildlife Fund for Nature calculated that the current declarations from wealthy countries amount to a total emissions cut of just 10 percent by 2020.

Though not all people believe that climate change is a strictly man-made phenomenon, those who do have been urging world leaders to take decisive action to secure an ambitious and fair climate deal this year in Copenhagen.

Delegates who CIDSE and Caritas will be sending to the high-level U.N. event on Sept. 22 include, among others, John Onaiyekan, the Catholic archbishop of Abuja, Nigeria; Theotonius Gomes, the Catholic bishop of San Marcos, Guatemala; Janet Mangera, the executive secretary of Caritas Kenya; Bernd Nilles, CIDSE’s secretary general; and Jim Hug, the president of Center of Concern.

Caritas Internationalis, the largest network of Catholic charities in the world, works through its 164 national members to combat poverty and injustice, directly helping around 24 million people each year in 200 countries and territories.

CIDSE, meanwhile, is a network of 16 member organizations in Europe and North America that share a common strategy in their efforts to eradicate poverty and establish global justice. CIDSE’s advocacy work covers global governance, resources for development, climate change, trade and food security, EU development policy and business, and human rights.

I like this article a lot because it shows that science and religion do not have to be mutually exclusive. In fact, if you’re doing religion right, you should care about everyone on the planet, not just those who beleive in the same deity as you, and science is showing that a lot of those people are in serious danger.

Money Won’t Buy Happiness, Study Finds; Poverty-reduction Programs Need To Also Look At Improving People’s Well-being

ScienceDaily (Sep. 8, 2009) — There is more to life satisfaction than money, and public policy programs aiming to tackle poverty need to move beyond simply raising people’s income to also improving their quality of life in other areas.

These findings by Professor Mariano Rojas from Mexico’s Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales are published online in Springer’s journal, Applied Research in Quality of Life.

The reduction of poverty is one of the main considerations in the design of both domestic and foreign-aid programs. To date, the focus of these programs has been to get people out of poverty by increasing their buying power and there has been an assumption that raising people’s income translates into greater well-being. Professor Rojas challenges this assumption and argues that measures of life satisfaction should also be taken into account when designing and evaluating poverty-abatement programs.

Professor Rojas used data from a yearly national survey run by the University of Costa Rica covering the years 2004-2006. In addition to questions about household income and dependency on household income, he added more subjective questions about life satisfaction in general, as well as satisfaction with health, job, family relations, friendship and self, as well as the community environment.

The majority of people rated their lives as satisfactory or more than satisfactory. Not all people who were considered ‘poor’ experienced low life satisfaction and not all people who were not considered ‘poor’ were happy with their lives. Professor Rojas observed that only 24 percent of people classified as ‘poor’ rated their life satisfaction as low. Furthermore, 18 percent of people in the ‘non-poor’ category also reported low life satisfaction. It is therefore clear that poverty alone does not define an individual’s overall well-being and it is possible for someone to come out of poverty and remain less than satisfied with his life. On the other hand, a person can be satisfied with his life even if his income is low, as long as he is moderately satisfied in other areas of life such as family, self, health, job and economic.

Professor Rojas argues that social programs need to recognize that well-being depends on satisfaction in many domains of life, and that many qualities and attributes need to be considered when designing these programs, including leisure, education, the community and consumer skills (learning to spend higher income sensibly).

Professor Rojas concludes: “This paper has shown that it is possible to jump over the income poverty line with little effect on life satisfaction. Income is not an end but a means to an end. There is a big risk of neglecting and underestimating the importance of well-being-enhancing factors when focusing only on income poverty. It is important to worry about getting people out of income poverty, but it is more beneficial to also worry about the additional skills people need to have a more satisfying life.”