Global Poverty

Looking for Defrosting Apathy?

noreply@blogger.com (Liz) — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 15:35:00 +0000

We've changed our name to Awareness to Action and moved to awareness2action.org! Please visit us there for up to date information on all of our plans and projects.

You may have also noticed, the Poverty Discussion Blog has been on an unplanned hiatus while we've been getting our new site together. In the future, we won't be adding as much too it as we had in the past, so please check out our new blog that discusses all kinds of global issues, including poverty, at awareness2action.org!

See you there,
Liz

Social Justice and Public Transportation

noreply@blogger.com (Liz) — Mon, 19 May 2008 20:43:00 +0000

Jacob Ohlhausen has been doing work this month on a social justice issue he has noticed in Santa Clara County, California. He isn’t receiving any course credit or financial gain for this project, so I was curious to talk to him about what made him spend time and energy on it. I interviewed Jake on Skype early in May to learn about his project and to see what I could learn about global citizenship and poverty.

He began our interview by explaining “I’m working on a bus paper, which is trying to show that the county of Santa Clara cares more about affluent residents and their needs than lower income residents, and this is shown in the direction they’re going with public transportation developments. Basically, the VTA is trying to create one system for the rich with the light rail, and one system for the poor with the bus and trying to keep them separate. It looks like most of their funds and energy are being directed towards the affluent riders and the light rail. Most of their future construction and plans are concerned with the light rail.

“Rich people use the light rail to commute to work. Some of them park and ride, but primarily the light rail is a power alley through San Jose, from Mountain View to San Jose and Campbell. So its connecting the sort of higher income cities to down town San Jose.”

I asked Jake why poor people didn’t benefit from the light rail. He continued, “I’m not saying they don’t benefit, I’m saying it is a hassle for them to get to the light rail. They’re cutting bus routes. They aren’t really putting any money into the bus. The light rail stops aren’t in convenient places for lower income people. They’re all on Tasman, where the Silicon Valley businesses are, or in down town Mountain View – these are affluent neighborhoods.”

After our carpool broke up when I left the United States, Jake began to take public transportation more frequently. He said he started because “I would be waiting forever for the bus. I was paying a lot of money for the bus. And I just realized how inefficient the bus was. So I decided to start interviewing my fellow riders and keeping travel logs to see if I could notice any trends... to see if what I was seeing was really happening of if I was imagining it. It was really to satisfy my own curiosity.

“The next step had a lot to do with Defrosting Apathy. It provided me with a forum where I could post something. What’s the point of writing something that no one is going to read? I just started collecting the raw data, you know. I was having all these observations while waiting for light rail and busses and doing transfers and things, so I decided to start doing interviews to see if what I was seeing was really happening or if I was imagining it. It was really only to satisfy my own curiosity. I’d notice, well, there’s a lot of Hispanics on the bus today, and only a couple of Asians. I noticed the same thing yesterday. I wonder if there’s a trend. Maybe I should write down the stats every day and see if I notice correlations.

“You were the one who was like ‘well, if you have all this data, you should put it together in a report and then you should put it on Defrost.’”

I think Jake likes to be modest; his mom said he’s always felt bad about class differences, but he said, “it wasn’t like a spark, it wasn’t like bam! I’m going to do something today to go make the world better. Unfortunately, I wish it was, but it wasn’t. You suggested it, when I was collecting the data, I didn’t have a goal in sight other than to make pie charts or graphs. I just thought people were getting a raw deal and it wasn’t right.”

We also talked about Jake’s progress so far and his next steps. He says, “I’ve informed a lot of people I interviewed. I made them aware, and I’ve given them VTA’s website to contact and complain if they want. I don’t know if they’ve done that. I’ve been in contact with a director at the VTA, made him aware of my concerns and the focus of my paper. He’s proved to be interested in my results and helpful in providing me with information. I was pleasantly surprised to find that my concerns – that they are aware of the same concerns I have. The problem is, I don’t really think they care. I feel that a lot of the data I collected they’ve already collected. A lot of our information was very similar, but I feel like they don’t really want to put their resources into making the bus more effective. They want to increase the light rail in size and in areas that they can also develop into communities for higher income residents.”

Jake continued, “this matters because its classism. Its trying to keep the division between rich and poor and keeping them separate from each other. I don’t think it was intentional that it happened this way, but now that they’re aware that this is happening, they’re just allowing the gap to grow larger.”

I asked Jake how VTA could solve this problem. He said, “They could put more resources into the bus. They can just put more financial resources into the bus instead of the pittance they’re putting into it.”

He continued, “this also matters because its not just lower income people. I think its because I lived in New York with the subway system. I want to try to create an overall better system for Santa Clara and San Jose because I think its hopelessly inadequate.”

He also adds, “they’re trying to encourage park and ride. The more you use park and ride, the less you need the bus. Its like they’re trying to make public transportation for people who own cars. And I believe we need to take the car out of the equation. Its ridiculous to… public transportation should be primarily for people who don’t have cars or for people who don’t want to use their car all the time.”

Doing global citizenship in your community? Email me (liz.fleshman@defrostingapathy.org) - we'd love to hear all about it!

(Full disclosure: Jake's my guy. 6/12/2008.)

News

noreply@blogger.com (Liz) — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 23:50:00 +0000

Defrosting Apathy and the Global Poverty Blog are growing at an amazing rate. There are several extremely fantastic things happening that I hope you'll be involved in.

Inspired by Millennium Development Goal #8, "develop global partnerships for development," Defrosting Apathy has forged new partnerships with the student leaders of Silliman University in Dumeguete and the Knowledge for Development Centers (KDCs). KDCs are partnerships between the World Bank and leading private and state universities in the Philippines. As students, we have the power to affect global change. Together, we can create an even bigger impact than we could alone. My hope is to create an international team of students with diverse skills and perspectives. We will discuss one thing we'd like to change, and then design and implement a plan to create that change.

I hope you'll join us! Share your ideas for a better world at defrostapathy.proboards89.com.

I'm really excited about this project. I think once we get rolling, we're really going to be able to do something powerful. I'm sure it will be difficult at first, and we'll have a lot of disagreements - I hope we have a lot of disagreements, but I think we'll all be able to learn important skills and lessons.

That brings me to the Philipinnes. The report from my trip will be available online very soon. I'm waiting for final comments from one last person before it becomes a public document. This has inspired and required an update to the site, but I think its better if you're surprised.

We will also be welcoming two new friends to Defrosting Apathy. Matt Peng, an econ student at San Jose State University, will be translating economics for us. His first article might be about "why economic development?" but Matt has complete creative freedom so maybe he'll change his mind. Joseph Johnen, also a student in San Jose (sorry, I forgot what school), is great at computer stuff. He'll be helping me photoshop all of my awesome Philippines pictures - like with cropping at sharpening and whatever else he thinks should happen.

If you would like to work on Defrosting Apathy, please email me - if you have your own idea that would be cool, or you could do something on my list of things to get around to, which would also be nice, as I am living a double life.

(Edited March 27, 2008 for crazy formatting issues. Mac and Google hate each other now, and its so inconvenient.)

Some Water Issues

noreply@blogger.com (Liz) — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 06:16:00 +0000

I will be going to the Philippines Tuesday as a short-term consultant with the World Bank! It will be my job to document some of what the World Bank is doing and how it impacts people on a local level, giving the issues a human voice and perspective. It should be very interesting, and I'm creating a new section of Defrosting Apathy to share it with you. In the meantime, I've been getting a lot of travel advice. The thing everyone seems to say is not to drink the water.

I even attended a meeting for travelers (my Austria trip looms as well), in which a local health official laughingly made reference to "Montezuma's Revenge." I've since had a change to discuss it with the hosts of the meeting, who agreed that "ha ha ha, we can't drink their water because they're poor" was inappropriate.

At first "why not?" seemed like a stupid question. Further, is there a "Washington's Revenge?" - Do people in other parts of the world have trouble drinking my water? I also wondered, do locals drink the water? Do they suffer as a result, or have they built up an immunity to the bugs that live in it? Does it hold back the Global South? Can something be done, like creating more infrastructure?

Up to Date Patient Information: General Travel Advice says travelers can get infectious diarrhea (traveler's diarrhea), hepatitas A, and trichnellosis. They also say don't drink, make ice cubes with, or brush the teeth with local water. Drink boiled tap water. Don't eat unpeeled fruit or raw vegetables. I knew most of this -Thomas Mann's character Aschenbach died as a result of eating the strawberries that represented the lure of the Global South.

The Center for Disease Control discusses the science behind traveler's diarrhea, and the implication is that the traveler should be wary, but not the local. They also include an unsurprising map:

Focusing on travel diarrhea implies that its a travel issue, that in fact locals are able to adapt to non-potable water. However, UN Millennium Development Goal #7, ensure environmental sustainability, includes a stated goal to reduce by half the number of people living without sustainable access to clean drinking water.

The World Health Organization notes some interesting H2O statistics in a fact file:

- 4 in 10 people globally live without access to clean drinking water. This is "getting worse because of population growth, urbanization and an increase in domestic and industrial use."

-By 2025, 2 billion people will live with a water shortage.

- The WHO recommends a level of 500 cubic metres of water per person per year, for healthy and hygienic living.

- Water scarcity means people rely on unsafe sources of drinking water.

- "Poor water quality can increase the risk of diarrhoeal diseases including cholera, thyphoid fever, salmonellosis, other gastrointestinal viruses, and dysentery. Water scarcity may also lead to diseases such as trachnoma, plague and typhus. Trachnoma, for example, is strongly related to a lack of water for regular face washing."

- "Water scarcity encourages people to store water in their homes. This can increase the risk of household water contamination and provide breeding grounds for mosquitoes - which are vectors for dengue, dengue haemorrhagic fever, and malaria and other diseases."

- Good water management reduces breeding sites for disease vectors, reducing disease.

So to answer some of my earlier questions, no, I can't drink the water there. People who come to the US don't face issues with our water, despite what the government of San Jose is having difficulty realizing. Locals really shouldn't drink the water there either, but they have to. There is no immunity, it does hold back the Global South, and something can be done. However, there is not enough water to go around, so it will become increasingly difficult to keep what we do have clean.

The answers raise an important new question: how do you live and care for your family without clean drinking water?

Visited the Dump Today

noreply@blogger.com (Liz) — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 22:39:00 +0000

My friends were taking stuff to the dump today, and I decided to tag along. I had piled up some stuff thinking I'd use it again some day, but after months and years I realized it was time to clear it out. I felt guilty at first because it seemed wasteful and I hate the idea of sending things to a landfill, but then I realized that wasn't a good reason to turn my house into a landfill either. Next time, I'll try to buy stuff that will last longer - for example, we tossed out a mop without a removable mop head. A smarter purchase would have let us reuse most of it.

Anyway, it was a great chance to see what happens to stuff when we're done with it. Apparently, photography isn't allowed at the public dump, so I have blurred out a lot of identifiable information about which dump it is and so on.

Here are my three favorites:

If you want to see more of my illicit dump photography, check out my album.

At the Dump

The Relationship Between the Core and Periphery

noreply@blogger.com (Liz) — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 14:58:00 +0000

I was talking to Drs. Reckmeyer and Fried the other night about the gap between the core and periphery countries. One of the things Reck always says is that we need to close the gap between the two groups for humanitarian and security reasons. Dr. Fried pointed out that in any arrangement, the core needs the periphery to be more inventive, while the periphery needs the core to hold on to traditional approaches, so that there can be realistic give and take between change and stability.

So, I was reading the internet like my grandfather must have read his morning newspaper when I came across this essay about how to improve Manila by Patricia Faustino.

I thought this was a really great thing. The World Bank had an essay contest about improving a city. Local people responded with great ideas. These ideas are on the internet for me, and presumably for the agents in the Philippines with the power to make a difference, to think about. Maybe knowing the international community is listening to these ideas will further affect them.

But more than that, I think Faustino's essay connects to what we were talking about the other night. And what Hash wrote about here in response to an article saying Africans don't need or deserve computers. His response to the rest of his community was, "Try this on for size: as an African, you are more of an expert on what your part of Africa needs than any self-prescribed expert from the west." Bill Thompson even wrote a thoughtful response, agreeing with Hash about the need for Africans to speak for Africa.

Its not just that peripheral solutions are better for peripheral problems because its a convenient way of avoiding personal responsibility. Certainly, I don't have the tools or the experience to know what a child in southeast Asia or sub-Saharan Africa needs or wants. But its not like we're all so different that if it came down to it, I couldn't come up with some ideas, however culturally inappropriate.

Really, they're better because they demonstrate who is responsible for the community. If a western construction crew showed up and built everything before Faustino had a chance to imagine it, it would be very unsatisfying. Winning a World Bank essay contest is far more fulfilling to the individual and community. Had the construction crew simply showed up, no one would have bought into the idea of public space, which would have then perhaps been destroyed. And, it would have pissed off well-intentioned donors in the west. Faustino's point about how important it is for citizens of Manila to imagine a better world is really well put.

Moreover, the core needs these frontier ideas in and of themselves. Not for humanitarian reasons or to empower the voiceless, but for the genuine betterment of everyone. These problems challenge core communities to put their best efforts towards something other than stagnation and decadence.

Nobel Lecture - Doris Lessing

noreply@blogger.com (Liz) — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 20:01:00 +0000

Doris Lessing's Nobel Lecture was beautiful and important. There is really nothing to add.

A New Kind of Toilets Help Malawi

noreply@blogger.com (Liz) — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 05:31:00 +0000

These are pretty cool. They're toilets deisgned to convert human waste into compost. They're designed for hygenic practice, environmental soundness and resource preservation. Further, the authors note the technology is appropriate in Malawi because people will occasionally plant trees on former pit latrines. It is gaining popularity in Malawi and in Madagascar, although the authors are careful to note that their product does not suit everybody. But I think these will come in handy - maybe they'll think about building them at schools, since we always hear about how schools need toilets so girls can attend without getting sick.

Beyond the Headless Heart: Accepting Complexity

noreply@blogger.com (Liz) — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 19:10:00 +0000

I'm reading The Bottom Billion by Paul Collier. I wanted to share the following bit for two reasons. First, I'm excited that more smart people are on board with the whole complex, systemic issue thing. Its all well and good for me to parrot that; in fact its really important since I hope that through discussion and understanding we can put pressure on politicians to get to working on these issues the right way. But like we need to understand that it's complicated, we also need to know what to do about it. And that's really where professors from Oxford and the like can do their part.

The passage (and book) also contradicts one of Dr. Reckmeyer's big points. He asserts that by assisting the developing core, like China and India first, we'll all be in a better position to assist everyone else. Collier points out (slightly earlier in the book) that the global market is becoming too hostile for that to be a good idea. So, we have some spark for a discussion.

So here goes:

Beyond the Headless Heart: Accepting Complexity

The problem of the bottom billion is serious, but fixable. it is much less daunting than the dramatic problems that were overcome in the twentieth century; disease, fascism, and communism. But like most serious problems, it is complicated. Change is going to have to come from within the societies of the bottom billion, but our own policies could make these efforts more likely to succeed, and so more likely to be undertaken.

We will need a range of policy instruments to encourage the countries of the bottom billion to take steps toward change. To date we have used these instruments badly, so there is a considerable scope for improvement. The main challenge is not that these policy tools span various government agencies, which are not always inclined to cooperate. Traditionally, the development as been assigned to aid agencies, which are low in almost every government's pecking order. The U.S. Department of Defense is not going to take advice from that country's Agency for International Development. The British Department of Trade and Industry is not going to listen to the Department for International Development. To make a development policy coherent will require what is termed a "whole-of-government" approach. To get this degree of coordination requires heads of government to focus on the problem. And because success depends on more than just what the United States or any other nation does on its own, it will require joint action across major governments.

The only forum where heads of the major governments routinely meet is the G8. Addressing the problem of the bottom billion is an ideal topic for the G8, but it means using the full range of available policies and so going beyond the Gleneagles agenda of 2005, which was a pledge to double aid programs. Africa is already back on the G8 meeting in Germany. "Africa+" should rightly stay on the G8 agenda until the bottom billion are decisively freed from the development traps. This book sends out an agenda for the G8 that would be effective (pp. 12-13).

Defrosting Apathy

noreply@blogger.com (Liz) — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 01:08:00 +0000

Yesterday, I presented my new website Defrosting Apathy in class. I've been creating it tangentially with this blog to discuss systems theory concepts in the context of global action. I'm really happy with how its turned out so far, although my webmaster and I still plan to add more content at the end, some visual enhancements and a few technological upgrades that will support the site in the future. I've also decided to publish a quarterly newsletter, so eventually the site should have an email sign up doodad. (In the meantime, if you'd like to receive my awesome newsletter, you can email me at liz.fleshman at defrostingapathy.org).

How cool is that? I have an email addy @defrostingapathy.org!

African Artists Community Development Project - Buying crafts from African Artists to fund local African Children's Aid Organizations.

noreply@blogger.com (Liz) — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 05:15:00 +0000

I am back from my Thanksgiving trip - its always been my favorite holiday! We visited my boyfriend's mother at her home on Martha's Vineyard, sort of around the corner where the Pilgrims learned how to survive from the Native Americans.

While we were there, Marsha Winsyrg, a friend of Ruth's, was showing a short documentary she and her daughter created for their organization AACDP - African Artists Community Development Project. They buy crafts from (women!) artists in Zambia, sell their crafts in the US, and then donate the money they make to an orphanage and a center for disabled children.

At the end of the film, Marsha said, more eloquently, that she thought her role in the US was to:
1) act as facilitators between all parties
2) to support AIDs R&D in the US
3)

I don't remember #3... Suffice it to say, she had a great sense of what was the right role for her and her organization, which allows them to support local ideas and projects. Further their solutions touch other global problems - transportation, AIDs, education, etc. - but they keep their solution realistically sized so that they don't create a systemic mess.

Ship Breaking

noreply@blogger.com (Liz) — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 08:12:00 +0000

Dr. Hopkins made a reference to single-hulled ships ditched in Bangladesh, which are being broken down by people with no other options. He showed pictures from a photographer, Edward Burtynsky. Here is a link to his website.

Greenpeace has been active in this area as well. Here is an article that asserts "the current practice of sending EU+ toxic old ships to developing countries is a carefully disguised form of the hazardous waste trade...It is clear that the EU+ has not only an enormous responsibility but an opportunity to bring the shipping industry into line with the norms of international guidelines on the transboundary trade in toxic waste. The EU+ cannot, on either legal or moral grounds, protect its beaches and environment from oil spills by exporting the threat to Asia and Turkey. There is an urgent need for shipbreaking facilities that can deal with the inherent legacy of toxics."

I also found this article, which calls for exporting greener, less toxic ways of scrapping to places like Bangladesh, India and Turkey because the steel claimed from these ships is important to local economies.

We really need to think these kinds of ideas all the way through.

(April 8, 2008, updated links).

Review of Some Sources

noreply@blogger.com (Liz) — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 04:05:00 +0000

Nicole, a classmate, sent me an email about Poverty Week at SJSU. There was some info about the Gulf Coast Civic Works Project, born at SJSU by sociology majors and Dr. Scott Myers-Lipton, and a link to Poverty.com. I'll write all about the GCCW later, when another classmate, Julia, finishes her big project and has time to tell me about her thoughts and experiences.

I hate to be a Scrooge, but I thought it was sensationalistic. They have a map and a list of people who have died recently from the effects of poverty, and then a note that says, "The world hunger map display above is representational only and does not show the names and faces of real people. The photographs are computer composites of multiple individuals." Further, the information they provided was not very in depth. They call for fulfilling the promises of the MDGs, and give you a link to click on to write a letter. I can be pretty sensitive. There's a lot of sadness out there already, and a lot of sad looking pictures. I don't need to be prodded to action by fake dead children. It is further dispicable to refer to these "people who died today" in the text of the website.

I'm all for the MDGs, but that site uses technical flashiness and appeals to emotion without considering the whole problem. That disturbs me. The point we share is important for the reasons why the US should do more, and why the US isn't doing what they promised. Global issues need to be examined carefully and thoughtfully. Our emotions should bring us to the table, but our minds and reason should inspire our solutions. Otherwise, we'll make a bigger mess than what we already have.

Then, I followed a link to their "sister site" Free Rice , which is kind of fun. You play a vocabulary game, advertisers' links appear, and you earn ten grains of rice for the UN's World Food Programme. I totally cheated and looked up words I didn't know at dictionary.com before I answered so I would win as much rice as possible. I also really like the idea of a job created for the individual who has to count out ten grains of rice at a time.

I was suspicious of this scheme at first. Anyone who wants to teach me vocabulary or encourage me to floss clearly has an alternative motive. So, I checked out www.wfp.org/english . It made me very happy. Here are two links I thought were intersting: the first explains their methodolgy, which demonstrates thinking! Remember, you can't just hand people food; it puts farmers and other food producers out of business, creating a poverty trap and the ongoing nature of such projects irritates those able to give. You'll see that they commit to buying food locally and the right time when possible, and they work through the logistics to get it to the right people and families, so that those who need it get it.

The second lists their operational priorities, which are action-oriented in specific ways in specific places. I learned earlier that one of the issues with poverty is that people often try to solve it with a panacea. Peter Stephens and Jefferey Sachs have shown us that no one thing will work in every place. An organization really committed to making something like this happen will think about it from the cultural and geographic perspectives of the people and places involved.

I'm very happy to where that email took me. Its fantastic to see an organization thinking things through and encouraging others to do so, and I wish the website where I began my search would take notice.

*edited title December 30, 2007.

From my Environmental Studies Class

noreply@blogger.com (Liz) — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 08:26:00 +0000

Some Interesting Ideas:

- The UN classifies the world's countries either as economically developed or economically developing. This is based primarily on their degree of industrialization and per capita GDP. Living standards and their improvement are described by economic growth. That seems pretty content neutral, except if we remember that the environment is limited by the pace by which we consume non-renewable resources and renewable resources past the point of their ability to renew themselves. Economic growth is presently not constrained as it should be by the environment.

- Bruce talked about how the global market economy is not governed by nation-states and democratic governments. It can be influenced by governments with things like interest rates, etc. Dr. Fried discusses the changing role of government as well, from the perspective of hyperglobalists (nation-state is hollow and a zombie), skeptics (globalization reinforces and enhances state's powers), and transformationalists (globalization transforms states' powers and the outcome is uncertain).

Global Citizenship

noreply@blogger.com (Liz) — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 08:09:00 +0000

I attended another global talk for International Week by Dr. Jochen Fried, the distinguished faculty member at SJSU from Salzburg Global Seminar (where I have an internship this spring!!!), about global citizenship. Dr. Fried talked about what globalization means and our notions of citizenship and then pulled the two ideas together to discuss global citizenship. I'm just going to highlight a few things that popped out at me.

- Global citizenship is annoying because its an oxymoron. Citizenship means belonging to a political unit, but global is all-inclusive and there is no legal sense. Nationalistic citizenship appeals to common sense. But globalization teaches us that territory and space are relative and global warming, computer viruses, AIDs, etc. have no passports.
- We have to admit that we are inextricably bound to one another. Systemic challenges cannot be dealt with by a single nation state.
- The big, scary global issues require multidimensional and multilevel politics, management by citizens with different perspectives (global citizens)
- People cannot be categorized by one system of divisions, but are members of a variety of groups, and can have many identities at once. (Fried attributes this to Amartya Sen).

The Role of Education in Building a Sustainable World

noreply@blogger.com (Liz) — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 07:56:00 +0000

I have been intesenly busy lately, so here's a quick series of posts for good measure.

This week, my school had its annual International Week. I attended two global talks: the first a talk by Dr. Charles Hopkins, of UNESCO, on the role of education in building a sustainable world. His main point was that individual educators should think in terms of what they can do in their discipline to teach to the greater good. It all tied into the problems of over-specialization, and reconnecting the disciplines to grow the common pool of understanding. He talked about the problem of single-hulled ships, which were "phased out" after several oil spills in favor of double-hulled ships. He showed us pictures of men dragging these abandoned ships up onto land and taking them apart with their bare hands for pennies a day. He also talked about Language Arts teachers in Bermuda who, in order to address problems of violence, began reading books about violence in class to bring up the issue safely.

I think we can extrapolate these ideas outside of education, although they're certainly important there. We should have a "take a big, scary global issue to work day" and all think about how we use water, what we design, what plans we implement, what we throw away, etc.

Discovery of a Continent

noreply@blogger.com (Liz) — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 07:42:00 +0000

We're selling a cook book at work called "Discovery of a Continent: Foods, Flavors, and Inspirations from Africa" by Marcus Samuelsson. It makes my mouth water. I've flip through it at every non-academic opportunity. I can't wait to find time to cook something from it.

I bring it up because it reminds me that Africa is a real place with real people, which I think is important to note in a blog about poverty. Maybe its just easier when you talk about poverty (and other complex and depressing global issues) to talk about numbers and proportions of population than about unique individuals and cultures. On the other hand, I find myself trying to explain to people why we should care about poverty with the numbers, but it really doesen't communicate necessity, passion, purpose, heart, etc. I don't think the numbers account for the rich cultural history that's not able to contribute to global well-being. So, how about this:

Let's fight poverty so we can have berbere, roti and bobotie in restaurants instead of being forced to approximate in our own kitchens. And if that works out, maybe we can recognize that Africa (and other poverty afflicted regions) is part of the global team, and that we need Africa's (and other poverty afflicted region's) cultures to be healthy and safe, so they can better contribute to the collective dialogue about the complex and depressing global issues.

World Development Report

noreply@blogger.com (Liz) — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 06:41:00 +0000

Peter sent me a copy of the World Bank's report: World Development Report 2000/2001: Attacking Poverty. Its awesome. I'm even more baffled about the protests against the World Bank now than I was before. I have read a mere thirty pages, and already there are so many things worth sharing. Here are two:

1) The report discusses many many ways of calculating poverty. It discusses the ways in which some methods are useful and where they have their limits. In light of my first post of this blog, I am relieved to see that these issues are being considered at this level.

2) Peter was also kind enough to send me to the World Bank's Voices of the Poor project, a survey in which they did just that. The Report references this project to understand "poverty's multiple dimensions." They include income poverty, deprivation in the dimensions of health and education, vulnerability, and voicelessness and powerlessness.

San Jose State Professor part of IPCC!

noreply@blogger.com (Liz) — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 07:56:00 +0000

A professor at my school won the Nobel Peace Prize, along with the other participants of IPCC. Although, according to the article, like other scientists, "he refuses to take credit for even a tiny sliver of the prize," I still think it deserves mention. Go Dr. Hamill!!

Coming soon; what does the environment have to do with poverty?

Industrial Ecology Topical Summary

noreply@blogger.com (Liz) — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 08:28:00 +0000

I wrote the following for my environmental studies class. When I get it back, I'll post the in-class essay I wrote connecting industrial ecology to poverty.

Topical Summary Assignment
Industrial Ecology

INFORMATIONAL ABSTRACT
The discipline of Industrial Ecology has created a systemic, interdisciplinary, solutions-based look at the environmental crisis facing our planet. A review of available literature highlights an overwhelming number of solutions to a problem that seems insurmountable. These solutions can be broken down into two categories: the first is a new way to think about things, while the second is a collection of ideas to help designers, policy-makers, and manufacturers develop and evaluate ideas within the industrial ecology lens. Although the issues facing our planet are overwhelming, industrial ecologists manage to create practical solutions to global problems at local levels. (#101)

KEY ISSUES AND FACTS
1. The world’s population will grow to 9 billion by 2050. Schmidheiny notes that much of this growth will take place in the least developed countries (LDCs), further reinforcing the cycle of extreme poverty.
2. “The last few decades have witnessed an accelerating consumption of natural resources – consumption that is often inefficient and ill planned. Resources that biologists call renewable are not being given time to renew. The bottom line is that the human species is living more off the planet’s capital and less of its interest. This is bad business” (Schmidheiny 2).
3. “As ecosystems are degraded, the biological diversity and genetic resources they contain are lost. Many environmental trends are reversible; this loss is permanent” (Schmidheiny 2).
4. “This overuse and misuse of resources is accomplished by the pollution of atmosphere, water, and soil – often with substances that persist for long periods. With a growing number of sources and forms of pollution, this process also appears ot be accelerating. The most complex and potentially serious of these threats is a change in climate and in the stability of air circulation systems.”
5. “Both population growth and the wasteful consumption of resources play a role in accelerating the degradation of many parts of the environment” (Schmidheiny 2).
6. The current system operates under six faulty assumptions:
a. “increasing indiscriminate growth of financial transactions will produce benefits and prosperity for all.”
b. “Natural resources are believed to be unlimited, and they can be exploited unconditionally; the environment is also unlimited in its capacity to withstand human activity in all its forms.”
c. “Capital-intensive manufacturing is universally more efficient and productive than labor-intensive repair and reconditioning services.”
d. “Earning a living is inevitably a demanding activity. All that is needed to satisfy workers is an adequate financial reward; the nature of the work required is of no great importance.”
e. “People have an unlimited hunger for possessions. So long as they conform to fashion they are an acceptable mark of social status and the principal means for personal satisfaction.”
f. “So long as growth and/or a good return can be obtained on savings, people are in general not concerned who invests them nor what purpose they are intended to serve” (Bennis 312-313).
7. “’Away’ does not exist” (McDonough 12).
8. It is not apparent to politicians and business people that it is in their and their constiuents’ best interests to act. Schmidheiny notes, “It is a hard thing to demand of political leaders, especially those who rely on the votes of the living to achieve and remain in high office, that they ask those alive today to bear costs for the sake of those not yet born, and not yet voting. It is equally hard to ask anyone in business, providing goods and services to the living, to change their ways for the sake of those not yet born, and not yet acting in the marketplace” (11).

KEY TERMS AND PHRASES
1. Business Ecology – “a systemic, comprehensive rethinking of business… emulating natural systems design, it presents mindware for the new millennium – values based, close-looped models for organizational management, which integrate profitability, stakeholder relations, life-cycle thinking, and environmental performance” (Abe 2).
2. Cradle to Cradle (c2c) – a design concept, which teaches designers and manufacturers to think of the end of the product, and to design it with reuse or remanufacturing in mind (McDonough).
3. Ecology – “the branch of biology which deals with the mutual relations between organisms and their environment. Ecology implies more the webs of natural forces and organisms, their competition and cooperation, and how they live off one another” (Ausubel).
4. Industrial Ecology (IE) – “an interdisciplinary framework for designing and operating industrial systems as living systems interdependent with natural systems. It seeks to balance environmental and economic performance within emerging understanding of local and global ecological constraints. Some of its developers have called it ‘the science of sustainability.’ IE supports coordination of design over the life cycle of products and processes. It enables creation of short-term innovations with awareness of their long-term impacts. It helps design local solutions that contribute to global solutions” (Indigo Development Homepage). Jesse Ausubel further describes IE, “Industrial ecology asks whether Nature can teach industry ways to go much further both in minimizing harmful waste and in maximizing the economical use of waste and also of products at the ends of their lives as inputs to other processes and industries.”
5. Industrial Systems – “includes service, agricultural, manufacturing, military, public operations, such as infrastructure for landfills, water and sewage systems, and transportation systems” (Indigo Development Homepage).
6. Sustainable Development – “a complex idea, which from a business point of view, can be described as something that: uses renewable resources in preference to nonrenewable; uses technologies that are environmentally harmonious, ecologically stable and skill enhancing; designs complete systems in order to minimize waste; reduces as much as possible the consumption of scarce resources by designing long-life products that are easily repairable and can be recycled; and maximizes the use of all the services that are not energy- or material-intensive, but which contribute to the quality of life” (Bennis 329).

SOLUTIONS
1. Much of the literature calls for ethically appropriate work, for the good of the individual, community and world at large. Abe, et al recommend beginning with “values-based organizations.” They note, “business ecology, as a values based organic model for organizations, creates an inner core of community, continuity, and resiliency. This social DNA which defines [the] organization’s identity also selectively filters value-creating flows and relationships that sustain it within its environment” (190). McDonough and Braungart also recognize the importance of values-based organizations, and refer constantly to ecologically sound building designed improving employees’ well-being. The need for this kind of work is also supported by Bennis, who disdains the idea, “Earning a living is inevitably a demanding activity. All that is needed to satisfy workers is an adequate financial reward; the nature of the work required is of no great importance.”
2. The literature also calls for closed loop strategies. Ausubel discusses zero emission strategies. There are “chances and ways to move from leaky to looped systems, and plausible scenarios for the transition from leaks to loops, especially for energy.” Abe, et al note that “leading companies are already applying systemic, close-loop thinking to create enduring success and competitive advantage” (193). Indigo Development is one such company; helping communities create eco-industrial parks, designed to eliminate the concept of waste.
3. Many are also calling for the development and use of “a new language for success” (Abe 198). This would enable business people and their stakeholders to communicate about concepts affecting their business and the world outside of the numbers on their bottom line. It would also support communication between scientists, politicians, business people and the public about what should be encouraged and what should not be.
4. Ausubel and McDonough examine the idea of a “functionality economy.” Ausubel suggests, “Conceiving industries anew as satisfying wants (e.g.. floor coverings) rather than selling goods (e.g., carpets).” McDonough’s homepage includes a space for c2c Certified products that can be shipped back to the manufacturer when the user is finished with them. This concept closes a loop and eliminates the concept of waste.
5. Abe, et al encourage organizations to learn from “the organizing elegance of natural systems, the success secrets that have accumulated over 3.5 billion years of evolution.” (211).
6. Abe further recommends “putting the community back in business” (212). He describes communities as “the heart of a healthy, life-sustaining business or organization, and it’s the essence of our spiritual well-being.”
7. Supporting the community might also lead to supporting locally grown and manufactured products, which would further the goal of dematerialization. Dematerialization would allow the “delivering of equal or more services with less stuff” (Ausubel).
8. Material substitution provides “opportunities for changes in material properties to reduce environmental burdens and the time scales for improved or new materials to occupy markets (Ausubel).
9. Ausubel also recommends decarbonization, an “evolution of the energy system for more service while burning less carbon, through more low-carbon fuel (natural gas) or non-carbon fuel (hydrogen) and through more efficient generation, distribution and use.
10. “Instead of fine-tuning the existing destructive framework, why don’t people and industries set out to create the following: buildings that like trees, produce more energy than they consume and purify their own waste water; factories that produce effluents that are drinking water; products that, when their useful life is over, do not become useless waste but can be tossed onto the ground to decompose and become food for plants and animals and nutrients for soil; or, alternately, that can return to industrial cycles to supply high-quality raw materials for new products; billions, even trillions, of dollars’ worth of materials accrued for human and natural purposes each year; transportation that improves the quality of life while delivering goods and services; a world of abundance, not one of limits, pollution and waste” (McDonough 90-91).

CONCLUSIONS, ANALYSIS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS
At first glance, the planet seems in dire straits. The global party has an expected attendance of 9 billion by 2050. Most of those people will be born in LDCs; these people, like their parents, will be looking to the MDCs, and perhaps wishing different lives for themselves. More and more people will want to live the good life, and that will require environmental resources that we might not have. It also means more people will throw more things away, but as McDonough and Braungart teach, there is no such thing as away. As things stand now, we are using up non-renewable resources, and using renewable resources faster than they can be renewed. The environment is degrading. As a result, the current way of thinking about the economy no longer makes sense.

Industrial Ecology (IE) is a discipline that teaches business people, product designers, manufacturers and consumers that there is a way to promote economic growth, while preserving the environment. Ideas in this discipline fall into two groups. The first requires achieving one goal: we need to reframe the way we look at the material goods we interact with everyday. We need to eliminate the concept of “away” to eliminate waste. We need to reconsider the concept of ownership, which is not as important as function. We need a new way of talking about success. We need to return to our communities, and we need to create values-based, ethics-driven organizations. Achieving this goal will be a breakthrough for humanity; the way we work together and perceive one another will be revolutionized with its achievement.

The other set of ideas stems from this philosophical ideal. IE thinkers propose specific ideas for improving the situation. We can use less and use what we do use more effectively. We can create better products with less energy. We can close loops, with better design, recycling, reusing and repair, in order to eliminate the concept of ‘away’ and reduce, if not eliminate, waste. We can use things until we are done with them, send them back to the company for reuse, and use something else. We can use energy more efficiently, and recapture what is lost in the release of heat to be reused in another way. These principles simply require thinking the design and manufacture of products through before their creation.

Although the situation seems overwhelming, IE provides a practical, hopeful philosophy in support of a better future. In Business Ecology: Giving Your Organization the Natural Edge, Joseph M. Abe and coauthors write, “Life is the real bottom line and those organizations able to grasp the implications of sustainable development, embrace its values, and transform themselves into sustainable enterprises will have a clear, competitive advantage in the next economy” (Abe 189).

REFERENCES
Abe, Joseph, et al.
1998 Business Ecology: Giving Your Organization the Natural Edge. Boston:
Butterworth-Heinemann.

Ausubel, Jesse H.
1998 Industrial Ecology: A Coming of Age Story. The Rockefeller University. Electronic document, accessed on October 13, 2007. http://phe.rockefeller.edu/RFF_IE/.

Bennis, Warren, et al.
1996 Beyond Leadership: Balancing Economics, Ethics and Ecology. Cambridge: Blackwell
Publishers, Ltd.

Indigo Development
2007 Homepage. Electronic document, accessed on October 13, 2007.
http://www.indigodev.com

McDonough, William and Michael Braungart
2002 Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things. New York: North Point Press.

Schmidheiny, Stephan
1992 Changing Course. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Give One, Get One

noreply@blogger.com (Liz) — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 23:32:00 +0000

The October 1st issue of Newsweek rocked an article about the fate of the $100 laptop. They're finding difficulty with funding in the last stages of production, so they've opened the program up a little bit. In November, you can buy two for $399: you get one and a kid somewhere else gets one. Check out xogiving.org. They're so cool.

I looked at the specs, and they have a preview of how the interface interacts with the user. When I had heard of these things before, I hadn't realized it was not just an inexpensive, shock resistant computer, but a breakthrough in technology and the way we view computers. Instead of a filing system, the computer journals what the user does with it, so the student and teacher can track progress, etc. Its open source code too, so if the kid wants to modify the thing, they can. It also all looks very collaborative, which is important in this day and age.

This is such a neat solution. It puts the tools to solve problems into the hands of children they affect. I look forward to seeing how it plays out.

ONE Campaign

noreply@blogger.com (Liz) — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 19:20:00 +0000

This Wednesday, the ONE Campaign is holding rallys across the world, attempting to break a world record. There is an event in San Francisco. I might attend. I might even purchase a t-shirt.

I'm interested in their campaign because it is consciously a meta issue. They're campaigning to end poverty in our generation by working to make it an issue in the 2008 U.S. elections. They even have contests between university campuses to see which campus is the most committed to ending poverty.

I find three things fantastic about this organization:
1) it is committed to doing what it can from the activists' perspectives.
2) it doesn't provide western solutions to non-western problems.
3) it uses the forces of globalization to manage the effects of globalization.

The ONE Campaign should be super cool. If they succeed in putting global poverty on the list of issues instead of abortion or gay marriage issues, it might be an interesting election.

Poverty Topical Summary

noreply@blogger.com (Liz) — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 18:49:00 +0000

I wrote this paper for my Enivronmental Studies class. Much of it is thanks to Peter Stephens, friend of the blog, who agreed to let me call our chat an interview and who reviewed a draft of the paper as well. Sadly, the time frame and scope of the paper didn't leave me much room to look deeply into the particular solutions I discussed, so I hope to use it as a launching pad for further study and discussion.

INFORMATIONAL ABSTRACT
Extreme poverty is a global crises which is often both a cause and effect of other global issues. A review of available literature and a discussion with Peter Stephens, advisor for the World Bank in East Asia, illuminates several key issues and provides five clear solutions that will help impoverished people take the first step onto the ladder of economic development. These solutions include achieving the Millennium Development Goals, providing debt relief to highly impoverished countries, encouraging the use of Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers by local communities, researching environmentally sound design, and creating a better quality of life for women.

KEY ISSUES AND FACTS
1. According to the World Bank, 1.1 billion people survived on less than $1 a day in 2001. The validity of this statistic is often questioned, for example by Sanjay Reddy and Thomas Pogge in their article “How Not to Count the Poor.” Reddy and Pogge argue that this failed statistic may have led the Bank “to understate the extent of global income poverty and to infer without adequate justification that global income poverty has steeply declined in the recent period.” Jeffrey Sachs, in The End of Poverty; The Economic Possibilities of Our Time compares this method of counting the poor with an approach which examines “the proportion of a region’s population in extreme poverty” (21). These approaches are often debated, but Sachs goes on to say that “the general picture remains true in either case: extreme poverty is concentrated in East Asia, South Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa” (24).
2. Poverty is “rising in Africa in absolute numbers and as a share of the population, while it is falling in both absolute numbers and as a proportion of the population in the Asian regions” (Sachs 24 and Stephens).
3. In “The Poverty-Environment Nexus in Africa,” the authors note that “as the process of development inevitably involves the use of natural resources in economic activities, it has become increasingly clear in recent years that for any poverty reducing growth strategy to be sustainable, it must address environmental concerns and ensure efficient and sustainable utilization of generally limited natural resources.”
4. Debt relief is another major issue associated with poverty. “Excessive debt was hindering poor countries’ development. Since these countries spent all their funds repaying their debts, it was impossible for them to allocate money for health and education. In other words, these countries couldn’t earn their way out of debt and needed help to start again” (YouThink!)
5. Policy makers debate the idea that impoverished countries are safe-havens for terrorism. On the one hand, the “President of the UN General Assembly, Han Seung-Soo, called the world's poorest countries ‘the breeding ground for violence and despair” (Poverty).
On the other hand, in The Terrorism to Come, the Hoover Institution points out that, “these roots [of terrorism] are believed to be poverty, unemployment, backwardness, and inequality. It is not too difficult to examine whether there is such a correlation between poverty and terrorism, and all the investigations have shown that this is not the case. The experts have maintained for a long time that poverty does not cause terrorism and prosperity does not cure it. In the world’s 50 poorest countries there is little or no terrorism.” In Global Crises, Global Solutions, a contributor proves that terrorism, AIDS and heroine manufacture all thrive in lawless or impoverished places (129).
6. Lack of education contributes to the poverty cycle. Zou Hanru notes in his article “Education can break vicious poverty cycle,” that “Official explanations are difficult to find but it is common knowledge that the illiterate are more likely to remain poor, and the poor are more likely to be illiterate (or uneducated and unskilled). It is a vicious cycle. The poor cannot afford education, and the illiterate cannot hope to earn enough to overcome poverty… For the poorest group of children, poverty is both a cause and a result of inaccessibility to education. Poor children are less likely to be enrolled in schools or to complete the basic level of education. For, even if schooling is free (a goal of the Chinese Government), uniforms, stationery and transport are not. And these may still be well beyond the means of a poor family.”
7. Access to drinking water is another key issue. “If the current situation can't be improved, at least 17 African countries will suffer from a severe water shortage by 2010. The water shortage could also lead to clashes between some countries in the region, the report warned. Africa has abundant water resources amounting to 5.4 trillion cubic meters, but only 4 percent of them have been developed and utilized because of the lack of funds and facilities” (One-Third).
8. Extreme poverty contributes to the spread of communicable diseases. The World Health Organization notes that, “Although environmental factors such as drought or floods or insect invasion play a role, food shortages generally occur due a complex combination of factors. Conflict and civil strife, economic and social change resulting in or aggravating poverty or leading to collapse of basic infrastructure and systems, poor governance, inequalities, as well as inappropriate land management and farming methods can contribute to both short and long term food shortages” (World Health Organization).
9. Effects of poverty are often causes, further perpetuating the cycle. “The argument for a "poverty trap" is that Africa's current poverty leads to very low national savings which, given population growth, generate low or even negative growth in real incomes per head. In this situation… no plausible action by African countries alone can start the sustained rapid growth on which Asia's success has been built” (How To Help).
10. In absolute terms, everyone’s lives have gotten better in the last 100 years. As the rich have gotten richer, the poor have become slightly better off as well. This proves that economic development is not a zero-sum game, but rather something we can all participate in (Reckmeyer).

KEY TERMS AND PHRASES
1. Debt Relief - a “comprehensive approach to reduce the external debt of the world’s poorest, most heavily indebted countries” (YouThink!).
2. Extreme Poverty - living on less than $1 a day. In 2001, an estimated 1.1 billion people live in extreme poverty. In other words, “poverty is hunger. Poverty is lack of shelter. Poverty is being sick and not being able to see a doctor. Poverty is not having access to school and not knowing how to read. Poverty is not having a job, is fear for the future, living one day at a time. Poverty is losing a child to illness brought about by unclean water. Poverty is powerlessness, lack of representation and freedom” (Understanding Poverty).
3. International Monetary Fund (IMF) – “is charged with promoting international monetary cooperation and exchange rate stability. It offers ecnomic policy advice, technical assistance, and, perhaps most importantly, emergency loans for countries in financial trouble… [and often] a lender of last resort.” (Adams 62).
4. Moderate Poverty - living on less than $2 a day. In 2001 an estimated 2.7 billion people lived in moderate poverty (Understanding Poverty).
5. Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) – completed at a national level, these ideas are created to improve people’s lives. The ideas are designed and implemented at the local level. (Stephens). “Critics argue that the criteria used to judge PRSPs by the World Bank and IMF are actually used to impose neo-liberal policies along the lines of the Washington Consensus, and that these policies tend to increase poverty rather than decreasing it” (Poverty Reduction). Countries who participate become eligible for debt relief.
6. Poverty trap or poverty cycle – often the effects of poverty are the causes, which further propel the next generation into poverty. For example, if a child cannot attend school, she will not have the education necessary to secure adequate employment as an adult, and will not be able to educate her children. Further, neither she nor her children will be able to save money and other resources for future generations.
7. Structural Adjustments - “conditions for getting new loans from the IMF or World Bank, or for obtaining lower interest rates on existing loans. Conditionalities are implemented to ensure that the money lent will be spent in accordance with the overall goals of the loan” (Structural Adjustment). Peter Stephens of the World Bank describes structural adjustments differently, focusing on how structural adjustments are simply adjustments that need to be made in a country to improve its economy and competitiveness. He highlights Singapore as an example; Singapore changed their economic strategy intentionally after the bust of the dotcom boom in order to embrace the new reality of a world increasingly influenced by trade within Asia, especially with China.
8. UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) - The eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) – which range from halving extreme poverty to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and providing universal primary education, all by the target date of 2015 – form a blueprint agreed to by all the world’s countries and all the world’s leading development institutions. They have galvanized unprecedented efforts to meet the needs of the world’s poorest. They are to “eradicate extreme poverty and hunger,” “achieve universal primary education,” “promote gender equality and empower women,” “reduce child mortality,” “improve maternal health,” “combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases,” “ensure environmental sustainability,” and “develop a global partnership for development.” (Millenium).
9. World Bank – the World Bank was created after WWII, along with the IMF, “in order to bring some semblance of order and stability ot the global economy, while encouraging international trade” (Adams 62).
10. World Trade Organization – an organization which replaced the “loosely structured treaty known as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade” and is made up of 149 member states. The WTO can “attack many kinds of protectionist measures that infringe upon free trade, whether it is in the form of government subsidies, health rules that serve only as import barriers, or trade preferences. It can also impose a variety of penalties and trade sanctions” (Adams 63).

SOLUTIONS
1. Achievement of the Millennium Development Goals would mean “eradicating extreme poverty and hunger,” “achieving universal primary education,” “promoting gender equality and empower women,” “reducing child mortality,” “improving maternal health,” “combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases,” “ensuring environmental sustainability,” and “developing a global partnership for development.” These goals alone address many of the solutions to extreme poverty .
2. Debt relief may be another effective solution. The IMF notes that, “maintaining a sustainable debt position while seeking the additional financing needed to make progress toward the MDGs remains a serious challenge, even after debt relief under the HIPC Initiative. The IMF and World Bank are looking for solutions, with poverty reduction as the central focus.” They also note that “the HIPC Initiative, even supplemented by the [Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative] MDRI, is not a panacea. Even if all of the external debts of these countries were forgiven, most would still depend on significant levels of concessional external assistance, since their receipts of such assistance have been much larger than their debt-service payments for many years” (IMF).
3. PRSPs are another often considered solution to global poverty. Stephens works with people in local communities to help them develop these projects and to arrange resources. People who live in such communities are responsible for fulfilling their own ideas for improvement and are able to hold one another accountable against corruption. Further, these programs create stakeholders in rural areas who know that their ideas and their desired way of life can be achieved.
4. Designers like William McDonough work to create objects that can be reused without being downgraded. Solutions like these will reduce the negative impacts of ‘waste’ on the environment; these technologies will support further improvements in developing countries, and may create jobs all over the planet.
5. The UN MDGs indicate that one of the best ways to improve conditions in a place is to improve the quality of life and education for women. Stephens discusses that previously, men in local communities dealing with the Bank made poor decisions. Once the Bank required half of all ideas come from separate meetings with women, more useful, effective projects came to the table.

CONCLUSIONS, ANALYSIS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Understanding this issue and possible solutions is extremely important: poverty is no longer an acceptable and describes the worst possible human experience. Issues surrounding this problem are complex and interconnected, and must be carefully considered to limit unintended consequences. Unfortunately, many people view the issue from their own perspective and are unable to consider alternatives. I will examine the merits and weaknesses of five possible solutions; achievement of the MDGs, debt relief, PRSPs, C2C, and improved quality of life for women. After, I will recommend a course of action.

The World Bank notes that, “poverty is hunger. Poverty is lack of shelter. Poverty is being sick and not being able to see a doctor. Poverty is not having access to school and not knowing how to read. Poverty is not having a job, is fear for the future, living one day at a time. Poverty is losing a child to illness brought about by unclean water. Poverty is powerlessness, lack of representation and freedom.” We can also see that poverty is hopelessness about your own future and future generations.

Further, poverty affects everyone because issues surrounding it are interconnected. The poor are often at the mercy of the environment, which in turn is threatened by the misuse of natural resources. They are unable to receive medical attention, which creates the perfect climate for epidemics such as malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS. Perhaps, as the Hoover Institute points out, poverty does not create terrorists, but impoverished governments cannot police their borders. Yet Lomborg indicates, terrorism, heroine manufacture and disease often thrive in such places. Further, extreme poverty affects people in Africa, East Asia and Southeast Asia. People from different countries and different cultural backgrounds will have different approaches and attitudes to such problems.

The complex nature of these issues means that one solution will not be enough. The global community must adapt its practices to meet the needs of individuals and situations, instead of attempting to apply a panacea. Sadly, many people in developed nations still presume to understand what is best for others, and do not consider the consequences of their actions on individuals in impoverished circumstances. Consider, for example, the boycott of sweatshops several years ago. For many poor people, sweatshops represented a step up from prostitution or fieldwork. Protests in the west destroyed their chance to join the Industrial Revolution (Scientific American).

Four of the five solutions: accomplishing the MDGs, providing debt relief for Highly Impoverished Poor Countries (HIPCs), the use of PRSPs to allow communities to own their projects, and improving the quality of life for women. I believe that combinations of each of these solutions need to be applied as appropriate for individual countries and communities. Other solutions that were beyond the scope of this paper, such as creation of infrastructure and support of intellectual property rights, may also help alleviate effects of extreme poverty in certain situations. In order to achieve these goals, the developed governments would need to increase aid, while individuals would need to think more carefully about their impact on these issues.

The fifth solution, designing products in the West, which do not need to be down-cycled at the end of their lives, will need to happen soon for environmental and economic reasons in the developed countries themselves. They, in turn, will be able to share these ideas and processes with developing countries, and the question of whether or not there will be enough natural resources for everyone will be answered with a resounding yes.

REFERENCES
Adams, J. Michael and Angelo Carfagna
2006 Coming of Age in a Globalized World: The Next Generation. Bloomsfield: Kumarian Press, Inc.

Africa Development Bank Group
2007 The Poverty-Environment Nexus in Africa. Electronic document, accessed on September 20 2007. http://www.afdb.org/pls/portal/docs/PAGE/ADB_ADMIN_PG/DOCUMENTS/STATISTICS/GE07_ARTICLE_0.PDF
BBC News
2007 World Factbook. Electronic document, accessed on September 20 2007. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/1886617.stm

China Daily News
2007 Education can Break Vicious Poverty Cycle. Electronic document, accessed on September 20 2007. http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005 09/23/content_480262.htm .

Columbia University
2007 How Not to Count the Poor. Electronic document, accessed on September 20 2007. http://www.columbia.edu/~sr793/count.pdf

Global Issues
2007 Causes of Poverty. Electronic document, accessed on September 20 2007. http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Poverty.asp

Global Issues
2007 Poverty and the Environment. Electronic document, accessed on September 20 2007. http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Development/PovertyEnv.asp

Globalization 101
2007 Development. Electronic document, accessed on September 20 2007.
http://www.globalization101.org/issue/development/

Hoover Institution
2007 The Terrorism To Come. Electronic document, accessed on September 20 2007. http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/3437231.html

International Monetary Fund
2007 Debt Relief Under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative. Electronic document, accessed on September 20 2007. http://www.imf.org/external/

Lomborg, Bjord, ed.
2004 Global Crises, Global Solutions. New York: Cambridge University Press

McDonough, William and Michael Braungart
2002 Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux

Noticias.info
2007 One-Third of Africans Lack Drinking Water. Electronic document, accessed on September 20 2007. http://www.noticias.info/asp/aspComunicados.asp?nid=147075&src=0

Reckmeyer, William Emerging Global World. Lecture given on September 24, 2007.

Sachs, Jeffrey D.
2005 The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities of Our Time. New York: Penguin Press.

Scientific American
2007 Does Globalization Help or Hurt the World’s Poor? Electronic document, accessed on September 20 2007. http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&articleID=0004B7FD-C4E6-1421- 84E683414B7F0101

Stephens, Peter
2007 Interview by author, September 25.

United Nations
2007 Millenium Development Goals. Electronic document, accessed on September 20 2007. http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/

Washington Post
2007 The Persistently Poor. Electronic document, accessed on September 20 2007. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/07/AR2006120700427.html> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/07/AR2006120700427.html

Wikipedia
2007 Poverty Reduction Strategy. Electronic document, accessed on September 20 2007. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_Reduction_Strategy .

Wikipedia
2007 Structural Adjustment. Electronic document, accessed on September 20 2007. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_adjustment

World Bank
2007 Understanding Poverty. Electronic document, accessed on September 20 2007. http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTPOVERTY/EXTPA/0,,contentMDK:20153855~menuPK:435040~pagePK:148956~piPK:216618~theSitePK:430367,00.html

World Bank
2007 YouThink!. Electronic document, accessed on September 20 2007. http://youthink.worldbank.org

World Health Organization
2007 World Factbook. Electronic document, accessed on September 20 2007. http://www.who.int/malaria/docs/CDs_severe_food_shortages.pdf

Yale Global Online
2007 How to Help Africa Escape the Poverty Trap. Electronic document, accessed on September 20 2007. http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=5128

(edited to include hyperlinks)

Some Interesting Notes from Class

noreply@blogger.com (Liz) — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 22:00:00 +0000

We had an interesting discussion in class Monday night and I thought I'd share some important ideas. Most of these points came from the first chapter of "Coming of Age in A Globalized World." First we broke into groups. My group did not appreciate the emotion in the chapter, although other groups did. It was interesting that in a discussion of a chapter that highlighted looking at things from different view points, we all approached reading it from different view points.

About the discussion itself, the first stunning idea for me was when Dr. Fried said of the globalization that "its not their poverty, its our wealth. Its not environmental problems, its our misuse of the environment..." Dr. Fried also said "time eats space" and often the battle against globalization is the battle for protecting one's space. Both of these ideas resonated with me, although I don't have anything clever to say about them right now.

The final point that resonated with me had to do with change. We had been discussing "people who resist change." My notes don't reflect if it was Dr. Reckmeyer or Dr. Fried who said "often resisting change might mean resisting change in YOU" and that there is a "constant tension between what's worth preserving and what makes sense to change." This ties back to what Peter said the World Bank was working on: trying to put control of resources and skills into the hands of the people most affected by the results.

Does Globalization Help or Hurt the World's Poor? -- [ ECONOMICS ]: Scientific American

noreply@blogger.com (Liz) — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 21:04:00 +0000

This article in Scientific American is fantastic. It discusses problems with a black and white point of view about globalization and hits on some of the things Peter and I have been discussing. They also echoed the sentiment Dr. Powell discussed in his sweatshop presentation. Overall, its an important call for balance and good judgement about policy creation and protestation.

The article highlights indirectly how colored the discussion of globalization is by money; poverty, financial institutions, etc. It was definately out of the scope of the article, but I'd like to find more about other aspects of globalization. I also wonder if the nature of the collective discussion contributes to the polarization of views.