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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Bildung
- Serie: Global Futures
- Sprache: Englisch
In the past decade, the developed world has spent almost US$ 2 trillion on foreign aid for poorer countries. Yet 1.2 billion people still live in extreme poverty and around 2.9 billion cannot meet their basic human needs. But should rich nations continue to help the poor? In this short book, leading global poverty analyst David Hulme explains why helping the world's neediest communities is both the right thing to do and the wise thing to do D if rich nations want to take care of their own citizens' future welfare. The real question is how best to provide this help. The way forward, Hulme argues, is not conventional foreign aid but trade, finance and environmental policy reform. But this must happen alongside a change in international social norms so that we all recognise the collective benefits of a poverty-free world.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Acknowledgements
1 Why Worry About the Distant Poor?
Why things have to change
Helping the poor: a scorecard
Doing the right thing – for the wrong reasons
Who are the poor?
The state of humanity: glass half full and glass half empty
Goodbye ‘aid industry’ … hello ‘global partnership for development’
Notes
2 The Limits of Foreign Aid
Aid: quantity or quality?
Does aid work?
New kids on the block: China, the BRICs … Bill & Melinda
It’s the politics, stupid
From aid projects to the big picture
Notes
3 What Can Be Done?
The elusive quest for growth1
Finance: does telling Mali to behave like Denmark work?
Trade policy: from free trade to fair trade
Migration: ‘the most powerful tool for reducing global poverty’
The big picture
Notes
4 Climate Change and Inequality
Climate change: this changes everything
Apocalypse soon?
Inequality – the rich keep getting richer
Escaping dystopia
Notes
5 From Broken Promises to Global Partnership
What needs to be done?
Making change happen
Moving faster towards ‘one world’
Notes
Further Reading
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
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‘David Hulme’s is a passionate and personal yet professional plea for attacking poverty rather than trying to stop bodies washing ashore in the Mediterranean. We can still argue about definitions of poverty and the value of charity, but it is no longer possible in our interconnected planet to deny the self-interests of the wealthy West in addressing pandemics, narco-trafficking, climate deterioration and terrorism. Read why things have to change.’
Thomas G. Weiss, The CUNY Graduate Center
‘This excellent short book provides a succinct overview of current debates on foreign aid, and argues that it is not aid itself which should be at issue, but its form and content. Marshalling a wide literature, it proposes a pivot towards new horizons such as trade and the environment. The argument is developed in a form which will be accessible to a broad range of readers, including civil society and policy makers.’
Ravi Kanbur, Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, Cornell University
‘We live in “one world”: this book provides a powerful and accessible exposition of what this means for ethics, policies and politics.’
Frances Stewart, University of Oxford
‘This is a timely and magisterial overview, wide-ranging and judicious, an invaluable update on where we are and where we should go in international development.’
Robert Chambers, Institute of Development Studies
‘In an age where nations are highly integrated yet increasingly unequal, there is no more important issue than ensuring that everyone “lives well”. But how to achieve this? As Hulme carefully argues, old paradigms focused on conditional aid to political allies but indifference to domestic politics must give way to a focus on how relations between and within nations – rich, rising and failing alike – are structured. Everyday citizens and development professionals around the world need to grapple with these issues, and in Hulme they have both a passionate and an instructive guide.’
Michael Woolcock, World Bank and Harvard University
‘A timely book on global poverty that is not about poverty but about why we should ALL care for it. The globalized economy of the 21st century needs a normative basis for global partnerships for sustainable development.’
Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, The New School, New York
Global Futures Series
Mohammed Ayoob, Will the Middle East Implode?
Christopher Coker, Can War be Eliminated?
Howard Davies, Can Financial Markets be Controlled?
Jonathan Fenby, Will China Dominate the 21st Century?
Andrew Gamble, Can the Welfare State Survive?
Joseph S. Nye Jr., Is the American Century Over?
Jan Zielonka, Is the EU Doomed?
David Hulme
Should Rich Nations Help the Poor?
polity
Copyright © David Hulme 2016
The right of David Hulme to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2016 by Polity Press
Polity Press65 Bridge StreetCambridge CB2 1UR, UK
Polity Press350 Main StreetMalden, MA 02148, USA
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-8609-7
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Names: Hulme, David, author.Title: Should rich nations help the poor?/David Hulme.Description: Cambridge, UK; Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references.Identifiers: LCCN 2015047855 (print) | LCCN 2016004750 (ebook) | ISBN 9780745686059 (hardback) | ISBN 9780745686066 (pbk.) | ISBN 9780745686080 (Mobi) | ISBN 9780745686097 (Epub)Subjects: LCSH: Economic assistance--Moral and ethical aspects--Developing countries. | Economic development--Moral and ethical aspects--Developing countries. | Developed countries--Foreign economic relations--Developing countries. | Developing countries--Foreign economic relations--Developed countries.Classification: LCC HC60. H866155 2016 (print) | LCC HC60 (ebook) | DDC 338.9109172/4--dc23LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015047855
The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.
Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.
For further information on Polity, visit our website: politybooks.com
Acknowledgements
My academic colleagues and students at the University of Manchester’s Global Development Institute (GDI; previously known as the Institute for Development Policy and Management and Brooks World Poverty Institute) have provided the intellectual base and academic stimulation behind this essay. My particular thanks to colleagues who read full drafts of the manuscript and provided invaluable advice: Tony Bebbington, Dan Brockington, Chris Jordan and Sophie King. Also thanks to colleagues who provided specialist guidance on the analysis: Nicola Banks, Armando Barrientos, Admos Chimhowu, Sam Hickey, Heiner Janus, Uma Kothari, Fabiola Mieres, James Scott, Kunal Sen, Rorden Wilkinson and Pablo Yanguas-gil. Comments and advice from doctoral students at GDI’s ‘Work-in-Progress’ seminars were very help-ful. My personal assistant at the GDI, Denise Redston, did a million jobs (as usual) that permitted the volume to be completed – many thanks, again.
I am indebted to Louise Knight at Polity Press, who had the original idea for the book, provided excellent guidance and thoughtful comments throughout, and whose energy motivated me from its inception to its completion. Louise’s colleagues at Polity, Nekane Tanaka Galdos and Pascal Porcheron, supported me through submission and production. Justin Dyer helped edit the text into a form much more readable than the original.
Last, but not least, sincere thanks to the countless people – from heads of UN agencies to NGO fieldworkers in Tanzania to poor women in the villages of Bangladesh – who have helped me understand, over the years, what it means to live in ‘one world’.
1Why Worry About the Distant Poor?
Rich nations, and their citizens, are increasingly experiencing the consequences of living in a very unequal world. Much of this is to their advantage: cheap garden furniture from China, fashionable, low-cost clothing from Bangladesh and affordable petrol. But there is also a downside. Holidaymakers from Northern Europe are keeping away from some Mediterranean beaches as it spoils your fun when the bodies of refugees wash up. There are deep tensions in mainland Europe about the growing flows of migrants and refugees. These stretch from the west, where Britain and France have been at loggerheads about migrant camps around Calais, to the east, where EU and non-EU countries are erecting new iron curtains. Meanwhile, the last time I travelled from Mexico to the US, the queue to pass through the Tijuana border control snaked back more than a mile. Having so much poverty and inequality in an affluent world means that rich nations and their citizens have no choice but to think through how they relate to the distant poor.
Extreme poverty has reduced greatly in recent years, but poverty is a long way from eradication. Almost 3 billion people are deprived of at least one basic human need: lack of access to food, drinking water, shelter, basic health services, not to mention education – and dignity. Some 800 million people went to sleep hungry last night, and one billion experienced the indignity of having to defecate in the open. Even more shocking, 19,000 children will die today of easily preventable causes: one unnecessary child death every five seconds all day every day.
Our grandparents, and perhaps our parents, could accept such conditions. They believed that there were just not enough resources (and technology and organization) to provide for every human being. But we cannot use this excuse today – we live in an affluent world. Our agricultural systems produce enough food to feed all 7 billion of us. Low-cost medicines, basic health services and simple health practices (washing hands after using the toilet and sleeping under a mosquito net) would save millions of human lives every year. A reallocation of a mere 1% of global income to the poorest would entirely eradicate US$1.90-a-day income poverty.1
How is it that avoidable human suffering and preventable deaths occur on such a vast scale after 25 years of unprecedented global economic wealth creation? Newspaper headlines and media coverage create the impression that extreme poverty and destitution are caused by emergencies and disasters. These are both man-made and natural, ranging from violent conflict in Syria to hurricanes in the Caribbean, floods in Africa and earthquakes in Asia. But these humanitarian crises are only a part of the story. More thoughtful analyses find that the main causes are grounded in less dramatic, more mundane processes: low wages; lack of access to productivity-enhancing agricultural technologies; indebtedness to moneylenders; the profit margins and business models that corporations pursue; the investment decisions (and bonuses) that bankers take; poor-quality basic services; and the public policies that governments select and implement – or fail to implement.
From an early age I understood that there were very different ideas about how rich nations and better-off people could try to help poor people in faraway places. In the mid-1960s, from the relative comfort of a council house near Liverpool, my parents had very different responses when the BBC reported that India ‘faced famine’. My mother thought the UK government ‘should send them food’: if people were starving, then others with food should spare them some. By contrast, my father thought ‘they should all be sterilized’. The Indian government should do this, and should not be over-concerned about whether sterilization was voluntary. The UK government could assist the Indian authorities with finance and medical expertise. ‘Over-population’, not access to food, was the underlying problem.
Fifty years later, such contrasting positions are still argued out – not by my parents, but in the media. Charity fundraising advertisements on television encourage donations for poor children in poor countries. The BBC’s Children in Need programme goes beyond this focus on charity. It also reports on successful UK government aid projects that help girls complete primary and secondary schooling across Asia and avoid female genital mutilation in Africa. The message is clear: relatively small amounts of money can make a big difference at household and community levels. Less clear, but implicitly: isn’t it your moral duty (and your government’s) to help those who are poor? A contrasting position comes from the right-wing news media like Fox News in the US and the Daily Mail in the UK. These present aid programmes as inefficient and highlight that corruption in recipient countries means that aid money is ‘wasted’. Explicitly, they argue there is next to nothing that better-off outsiders can do to help poor people in poor countries beyond humanitarian work. Implicitly, they suggest that it is ‘not our job’ to provide help. Poor countries and poor people need to sort themselves out.
In this book I explore these contrasting viewpoints and ask: ‘Should rich nations help the poor?’ I argue that rich nations should help the governments and people of poor countries to achieve prosperity and human development. But the argument goes further: those of us who are ‘better-off’ would be stupid not to help the poor. Not only is this the morally right thing to do, but the pursuit of self-interest, indeed the future well-being of rich world citizens (our children and grandchildren), requires that we help poor people in faraway lands.
Migration, the focus of the opening paragraph, is not the only issue that makes global poverty and inequality topical in rich countries. The Ebola virus illustrates this vividly. In 2014, Ebola caused devastation across parts of West Africa, and health authorities across Europe, North America, China and Japan made detailed plans about how they would respond to the arrival of the disease – especially if the nightmare scenario occurred and it mutated into airborne transmission. But the rich world’s response to West Africa’s problem was tardy. This disease has been known about for decades, but research on medicines to prevent or treat it has been very limited: it only kills poor Africans, so who would pay for research? A similarly sluggish response to an emerging health problem in Africa 30 years ago permitted HIV/AIDS to become a global pandemic, killing millions in Europe, the US and other rich countries. And now we have the Zika virus.
Have we learned nothing? On a small, densely populated, highly connected planet a problem in a faraway place can soon become a problem anywhere. Unexpected population movements and health are not the only examples of our interconnectedness. Desperately poor people in Latin America opt to grow and/or transport cocaine to the US as the economic opportunities they have offer few alternatives. As a result, large parts of Central America have been destabilized and the chains of narco-violence spill over into US cities. In the Middle East, religious ideologies take root that legitimate violence and terrorism at home and abroad. The question we need to ask is not simply ‘Should rich nations help the poor?’ but ‘What are the best ways for rich nations to help the poor?’
