5 Big Stories You May Have Missed on Haiti Relief Efforts

Below are five big stories you may have missed about the international recovery efforts in Haiti. They include U.S. nation-building efforts, a message from Fidel Castro, a moment of Pan-African unity and what grassroots organizations in Haiti are doing to help on the ground. If you have any other important updates feel free to comment.

1. A Ten Point Progressive Action Plan on How to Empower Haitians. http://thewip.net/talk/2010/01/haiti_a_tenpoint_progressive_a.html

2. Senegal’s President Offers Land to Homeless Haitian’s in West Africa
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hMcQ3akHeBvtnGynUahV7XeCWomw

3. Fidel Castro on Cuba’s efforts in Haiti thus far
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/castro160110.html

4. Hillary Clinton gears up for long-term U.S. nation-building efforts in Haiti
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/miami-dade/breaking-news/story/1429707.html

5. Slow aid efforts are met with desperation and violence
http://www.theage.com.au/world/stalling-relief-effort-sparks-violence-20100117-meaj.html

A Pro-Poor Approach to Reducing Carbon Emissions

This post is one in a series of debates between myself and Alexander Hurst of the Hurst Critique. http://www.hurstcritique.com/ In this first post I explain that while carbon emission cuts in the long-term are necessary, developing countries should be prioritizing poverty eradication and sustainable economic growth with their public investment dollars.

Environmentalists and political commentators in the US recently went into a tizzy when India’s Environment Minister, Jairam Ramesh, told the United States’ Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, that he refused to submit to pressure from the U.S. to lower carbon emissions.The United States is among a host of other rich countries that want to see a coordinated strategy to cut global greenhouse gasses that are contributing to the un-natural warming of our planet. India, like China believes that any significant reduction would impede their attempts at high-speed economic growth---a necessary aspect of poverty eradication.

Of course there is indisputable evidence that global warming is a threat to all countries rich or poor, but scientists agree that the impact of climate change will not be shared equally among actors. Poorer developing countries will bare the larger brunt of a warming process that was almost exclusively generated by pollution in richer nations over the last 200 years. It is unrealistic for industrialized countries to expect poor nations to commit to excessively broad carbon emissions reduction proposals. In this part of the world it is poverty eradication, not an impending environmental catastrophe that is the spending priority for governments.

Global Poverty is the Planets Greatest Catastrophe

The future catastrophic effects of global warming have gotten prime time coverage in the western press, and rightly so. Even though there remain a few skeptics on the lunatic fringes, the majority of political actors in the US, Europe, Japan and Australia accept the consensus of scientists that an epic environmental crisis lies ahead.

There is however, a tinge of euro-centrism among many environmental advocates and politicians that is troubling. There is virtually no political action or debate about the silent killers of poverty, hunger, and disease that kill millions of people right now, (not some uknown date in the distant future). The massive amount of death taking place in the poorest regions of the planet are lucky to gain any public audience in the dominant media.

• 25,000 children die every day around the world.
• 10.6 million died in 2003 before they reached the age of 5 (same as children population in France, Germany, Greece and Italy)
• 2.2 million children die each year because they are not immunized
• 1.4 million die each year from lack of access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation
• Each year, more than 8 million people around the world die because they are too poor to stay alive.
• Every year there are 350–500 million cases of malaria, with 1 million fatalities: Africa accounts for 90 percent of malarial deaths and African children account for over 80 percent of malaria victims worldwide.
• Some 1.1 billion people in developing countries have inadequate access to water, and 2.6 billion lack basic sanitation. (source)
  

These are just a few statics that underscore the catastrophic effects of global poverty around the world. What these numbers do not highlight however is that it was the rapid economic growth of the United States and Europe over the last two centuries that contributed to massive improvements of social services and living standards. For example the life expectancy of a US male at the beginning of the 20th century was 48 years old. By the end of the century, that number had increased to 74.

Even given that it was done through destructive fossil fuels, Sustainable economic growth and poverty reduction in richer nations saved millions of lives over the last century. This same trend is taking place in emerging countries today. Public resources should be used to continue this progress and sustain it by reducing dependence on fossil fuels responsibly and in phases. More on this later on.

Global Poverty Worsens the Impact of Climate Change

Keep in mind that scientists agree that even if we were to act today to curb carbon emissions, the damage we have done so far is already irreversible. Developing countries are suffering the effects of climate change including increasing cases of drought, water scarcity, desertification and flooding right now. Poverty leaves millions of people vulnerable to these changes and they are more likely to see their livelihoods threatened by the effects. The political, and social turmoil caused by these environmental shocks could destabilize entire countries or significant regions. Global warming has increased the costs of being poor like never before and now for countries like India, lifting people out of poverty is vital to protecting them from its impacts. The spending priorities in developing countries must work toward containing the human suffering caused by climate change using public resources to reduce poverty and protect poor families particularly in rural areas.

Research and Development Takes Time

Today, there are thousands of new technologies being developed which would replace the carbon emitters we rely on. However, these replacements are far from being capable of supplanting current energy technologies. Countries like India and China are making key investments in alternative sources of energy that will allow them to continue reducing poverty over the long-term including solar, hydro, nuclear, and wind. But like in the United States this process will take time and money, both of which put poor developing countries at a disadvantage. Developing countries face a host of financial constraints that mean that they must use the public resources that they do have wisely. While research and development is essential, a responsible strategy to sustain poverty reduction and growth while phasing out carbon emitters is more viable. This was one of the major concerns of the Indian government in consultations with the US.

A Pro-Poor Strategy to Fight Global Warming

There are good intentions why the US would like to see developing countries commit to a broad declaration in support of carbon reductions over a period of decades. If developing countries follow the same path as the western world and Japan, we would need several additional planet earths to contain all of the waste. However, there are a series of challenges facing poor countries today that absolutely cannot be put off---these include the effects of western generated climate changes. The most important question in my opinion is where the governments in developing countries can get the highest-value return for their public investment dollars? The US would be wise to assist developing countries in reaching those spending priorities to free up resources in places like India, China or South Africa to phase out dirty energy altogether. As cleaner technologies and capabilities emerge, poorer countries are likely to make the switch---Brazil and China have already become leaders in the field of alternative energy. What we do know for sure, is that millions of people will die in the years to come if we do nothing to reverse the scourge of global poverty in the world. But don't count on the dominant media or the politicians to admit it.

Why is Globalized Agriculture Leaving 1 Billion People Hungry?

All of us have probably seen movies lampooning the ditzy beauty pageant contestant and her selfless desire to see the "end of world hunger". All jokes aside, the steady march of global hunger is actually gaining strength, while our every attempt to fight back is encumbered by either a lack of coordination, fresh ideas, or both. The number of people in the world designated as hungry has reached a mind-blowing 1 billion. There are 100 million more people who are identified as hungry than last year, consuming fewer than 1,800 calories a day. Not surprisingly, sub-Saharan Africa has the highest rate of hunger in the world.

There are no easy answers to solving hunger in the world, but at least one thing should be obvious---what we have done up until now hasn't worked.As I explained in an earlier post on the 2008 global food crisis, people around the world aren't hungry because there isn't enough food, or even simply because of bad economic policy (although this is an important factor). The very design of globalized agriculture has unfortunately contributed to a lop-sided model that has enriched a few at the expense of many of the world's poorest.

The Impact of the Economic Crisis

Despite the good intentions of policymakers, activists and aid agencies, the economic crisis has only worsened the hunger problem, moving poor nations further away from the aim of food security. The near future looks even bleaker in light of an expectation that international food prices will be exceptionally high well into the next decade. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization, released a report which predicts crop prices will be 10 to 20 percent higher during the next decade than during the previous 10 years. The current economic crisis has reduced access to food by the poor. FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf had this to say about the fall-out of the recession on the world's most vulnerable,

"A dangerous mix of the global economic slowdown combined with stubbornly high food prices in many countries has pushed some 100 million more people than last year into chronic hunger and poverty...The silent hunger crisis — affecting one sixth of all of humanity — poses a serious risk for world peace and security. We urgently need to forge a broad consensus on the total and rapid eradication of hunger in the world and to take the necessary actions."

More and more, the urban poor in the developing world are completely dependent on food that they not only can't produce, but that is produced farther away and by fewer and fewer sources. The end result is that poor families are left vulnerable to wild price fluctuations in the global market. When jobs are lost and incomes dried up there is virtually little recourse for protection. Under the status-quo, many governments are unlikely to initiate any kind of price controls on key food sources to offer some security when prices do sky-rocket.




Is Uneven Development to Blame?

There is a strong argument vocalized in the global South that the world's productive and financial resources for farming are concentrated in the hands of too few agricultural oligopolies in North America, Europe, and in Australia. In this view, the economic crisis did not create the world's hunger problem, but only exposed inherent structural weaknesses in the architecture of globalized agriculture.

The Third World Forum in Dakar, Senegal explains the uneven nature of global food production in the world lucidly in an article called, "The new agrarian question : What alternatives for the Third World peasant societies?"

"Capitalist agriculture governed by the principle of return on capital, which is localised almost exclusively in North America, in Europe, in the South cone of Latin America and in Australia, employs only a few tens of millions of farmers who are no longer “peasants”. But their productivity, which depends on mechanisation (of which they have monopoly worldwide) and the area of land possessed by each farmer, ranges between 10.000 and 20.000 quintals of equivalent cereals per worker annually..........

The ratio of productivity of the most advanced segment of the world agriculture to the poorest, which was around 10 to 1 before 1940 is now approaching 2000 to 1 ! That means that productivity has progressed much more unequally in the area of agricultural-food production than in any other area. Simultaneously this evolution has led to the reducing of relative prices of food products (in relation to other industrial and service products) to one fifth of what they were fifty years ago."

The majority rural farmers in the global South simply can't compete with the highly capital-intensive techniques of subsidized farmers in rich countries without support. In the developing world, peasant farmers are rarely supported with the appropriate technologies and processes to fight crop disease, and climate change among other external factors. Ultimately, these families are priced out of the local market for agricultural foods, which can be produced cheaper in America or Europe and with higher-yield varieties due to genetic modification. Furthermore, colonialism and later structural adjustment policies from the International Monetary Fund and World Bank coordinated the whole sale abandonment of large scale domestic agricultural production for a "competitive advantage" in the extraction of cheap natural resources or labor.

Finding Alternative Solutions to the Hunger Problem

The natural response to the global hunger crisis by most is simply more investment coupled with liberalization. The assumption being that increased spending on productive capacity, and an expansion of market access will help small-holder farmers increase productivity and income. However, this status quo approach does not address the fundamental structural deficit that developing nations have inherited. US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton wrote an article in the Huffington Post laying out the Obama Administration's plan to fight hunger. Her policy prescriptions were more of the same market responses to the problem that has characterized at least the last 30 years i.e. "increase agricultural productivity", "stimulate the private sector", and "increase trade".

There are important organizations in the US investigating alternative responses to the growing problem of world hunger which go beyond free- market mechanisms alone. The Institute for Food and Development Policy is a think-tank in Oakland, California which, "believe(s) a world free of hunger is possible if farmers and communities take back control of the food systems presently dominated by transnational agri-foods industries." The IFDP sees the solution to global hunger as a three-pronged approach including building local agri-food systems, forging food sovereignty for farmers, and democratizing the development process.

A host of think-tanks like the Institute for Food and Development Policy, the Third World Forum and mass social movements in the global South are rightly asking for a re-organization of globalized agriculture to meet the needs of the world's poor. However, the dominant policy discourse on hunger in the US hasn't yet acknowledged the uneven structure of globalized agriculture and the need for serious transformation within the system. It seems highly unlikely that the battle against world hunger can be won without conscious policy changes in the US, Europe and other rich nations. There are 1 billion people and counting waiting for that to happen.