The World Bank estimates released in August 2008 show that about 1.4 billion people in the developing world (one in four) were living on less than $1.25 a day in 2005, down from 1.9 billion (one in two) in 1981. About half of the world’s population lives on less than $2 a day. 40,000 people die every hour from easily preventable diseases.
The film “Black Gold” [to be shown on campus on April 22 @ 4pm] is a poignant view of some of the mechanisms that sustain global poverty. It describes the impoverished coffee farmers in Ethiopia, whose poverty results from the impersonal markets: the New York and London commodity exchanges. hundreds of millions of peasants. These markets determine the fate of hundreds of millions of peasants.
The current global development regime of “neo-liberalism” is based on the promotion of such free markets, free trade and free movement of capital. It is a regime comprised of the most powerful multinational institutions: the IMF, World Bank and WTO. (“The Unholy Trinity”). These institutions, linked with the enormous power of financial capital (where trillions of dollars move daily around the world in and out of “emerging markets”), have effective control over global development.
Structural adjustment programs (“conditionality loans”) that have been imposed on more than 150 countries permit the enforcement of free market regimes that promote privatization, reduce social spending, and open up markets to the exports from the industrialized west. Countries of the Global South argue that the world economy is set up to benefit the rich countries of the Global North to the disadvantage of the poor countries. Black Gold reveals this conflict very clearly. Studies have shown that women, although they produce much of the world’s wealth as first providers, suffer the most from these structural adjustment programs. The majority of the world’s poor are women and children.
Industrial development, which has been the main theme of economic development since 1950 has reproduced patterns of “uneven development” similar to those that characterized the early period of colonialism. It has favored the rich industrialized countries, urban elites, and a rich class of multi-billionaires that dominate the landscape of impoverished countries. Export-led industrialization favors the development of a small class of underpaid workers.
The anti-globalization movement challenges this model by offering alternative demands: for fair trade (see the article by Kendra White), sustainable rural development, the creation of regimes that respect indigenous cultures, protect women from violence, and safeguard the environment. We need to focus on alternative measures of development not based on how much MORE stuff is generated every year (GDP), but rather on human and gender development, poverty rates, infant mortality rates, and his quality of life.
The UN Millennium Goals are an ambitious attempt to address critical needs of “severe poverty” and gender equality. As well-meaning as the goals might be (as in the quote below from the World Bank), without fundamental structural changes in the world economy and of the power structure within countries themselves, these goals are unlikely to achieve an end to global poverty. The quote below from the World Bank is an example of a well-intended approach, but does not offer the tools for radical transformation, indeed some argue that the impact of these institutions such as the World Bank is to reinforce a free market regime that may even undermine these goals.
“ Poverty is a call to action — for the poor and the wealthy alike — a call to change the world so that many more may have enough to eat, adequate shelter, access to education and health, protection from violence, and a voice in what happens in their communities.” (World Bank.)
The discourse of development is dominated by patriarchal and capitalist values. There are powerful voices in the anti-globalization movement that call for human, non-patriarchal patterns of development that are based on cooperative and sustainable patterns of development. These can only come for the voices of the Multitude: the majority of the world’s population who are the poor and oppressed.
Suggested reading: Richard Peet, Unholy Trinity. The IMF, World Bank, and WTO (Zed Books, 2009); Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation
on a World Scale (Zed Books 1986); Vadhana
Shiva and Maria Mies, EcoFeminism (Zed Books, 1993); Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri, Multitude.
