is a closed moderated mailinglist for net criticism,
# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
# more info: majordomo@desk.nl and "info nettime-l" in the msg body
# URL: http://www.desk.nl/~nettime/ contact: nettime-owner@desk.nl
Topic 19 of 42 [cultures]: global poverty
Response 2 of 16: Riette Walton (riette) * Mon, Nov 16, 1998 (05:30) * 1 lines
Makes me wonder what the hell I'm doing here. What is the use to live to pay one's damned bills??? We should be there, helping.
Topic 19 of 42 [cultures]: global poverty
Response 3 of 16: Paul Terry Walhus (terry) * Mon, Nov 16, 1998 (08:51) * 2 lines
It's an overwhelming situation and one that most well off industrialized
people of only peripherally aware of.
Topic 19 of 42 [cultures]: global poverty
Response 4 of 16: Riette Walton (riette) * Tue, Nov 17, 1998 (02:33) * 1 lines
They should create a programme were all children of the western well-off world have to do 2 years of obligatory service in developing countries, helping people, before embarking upon their comfortable, protected grown-up lives.
Topic 19 of 42 [cultures]: global poverty
Response 5 of 16: wer (KitchenManager) * Wed, Dec 16, 1998 (10:07) * 4 lines
Except that in doing so, we would infect the rest of the world even
more heavily with our egocentric, industrialized, and money-lusting
thoughts while we were there...
doesn't mean that something shouldn't be done, either...
Topic 19 of 42 [cultures]: global poverty
Response 6 of 16: Leplep le Plep (jgross) * Thu, Dec 31, 1998 (00:49) * 95 lines
http://iisd1.iisd.ca/pcdf/meadows/living_on_sun.htm
Living on Sun, Water, Wind, Grass,
and Community
(Donella Meadows --- March 12, 1998)
Nearly everyone who has been to the solar village Gaviotas, east of the Andes in
Colombia, calls it a utopia. But it isn't, says Paolo Lugari, its founder. That word
means in Greek "no place." Gaviotas has existed, however improbably, for more
than 30 years now. Lugari says it's a "topia" -- simply a place.
When he first saw it, looking down from a small plane in 1965, it surely looked like
no place. There were two crumbling warehouses abandoned by a road crew at the
end of a failed attempt to cut a highway across the huge, wild, wet savanna called
the llanos. No one lived on the llanos except a few scattered ranchers and the
Guahibo Indians, who fished and hunted in mosquitoey forest strips along the rivers.
The soil was so toxic that nothing but tough grass could grow.
If people can live here, they can live anywhere, Lugari thought. He set out to show
that they could.
His secret weapons were the professors and students of the universities of Bogota.
Lugari dropped into the office of a mechanical engineer named Jorge Zapp and
asked, "Can you build a turbine efficient enough to generate electricity from a
stream with just a one-meter drop?" He went to Sven Zethelius, a soil chemist and
asked, "What can we grow in that soil?" He posted notices inviting doctoral theses
on how to press oil from palm nuts, how to raise hundred-pound wild capybaras for
meat, how to make fiberboard out of llano grass.
Most of these experiments didn't work, but once the engineers got out to Gaviotas,
a 16-hour tire-destroying jeep drive from Bogota, they began having other ideas.
Necessity surrounded them, and they produced a stream of invention.
They found that 14 parts of that terrible soil combined with one part cement
hardened into a stony substance they could use for dams and buildings. They made
water pipes by lining ditches with soil-cement, laying down long polyethylene tubes
filled with water, pouring more soil-cement on top, letting the whole business
harden, then draining the water and pulling out the plastic. Trucks could drive over
those pipes without crushing them.
They attached water pumps to see-saws; kids provided the pumping power. They
designed ultra-light windmills to catch the mild but steady llanos wind without being
blown over by the occasional llanos gale. They invented solar water-heaters so
cheap and effective that Gaviotas started a business back in Bogota, installing them
everywhere from the president's house to a 30,000-resident slum housing project.
Often engulfed in mountain clouds, Bogota is no ideal place for solar power, but the
Gaviotans developed a collector so efficient it could catch scattered sun energy
even on cloudy days.
The technical and architectural triumph of Gaviotas is its hospital, cooled by the
wind, heated by the sun. The sun also provides hot water, boiled sterilized water,
and the heat for six pressure cookers in the kitchen, plus enough electricity for the
lights. By the time the hospital was built, Gaviotas had several hundred inhabitants,
including the only doctors, nurses, and teachers for hundreds of miles around.
People came there for medical care and sent their children there to school.
There were fish in the river, and cattle could eat the grass. Zethelius had discovered
enough decent soil on the riverbanks to plant mangoes and cassava and cashews,
but not enough to provide fresh vegetables for a growing population. So the
Gaviotans learned to grow lettuce and tomatoes and cucumbers in containers of
nutritionless rice hulls, washed with manure tea.
They kept searching for some plant that could survive the llanos soil and finally
found it. A Caribbean pine from Venezuela thrived, they discovered, as long as they
dipped the roots of its seedlings in a fungus, a mycorrhyza, which was missing from
their soil but importable from the pines' native territory. Without knowing quite why,
they planted hundreds of acres of pines.
As the pines grew into forests, the Gaviotans found a use for them. They tapped
their oozing gum, which could be distilled (with solar energy) into turpentine and a
valuable resin used in paints, glues, cosmetics, perfume, and medicines. There was
a huge market. Gaviotas had a new industry.
The pines dropped needles and built up soil. They cooled the ground, slowed the
wind, raised the humidity. Suddenly new kinds of plants sprang up beneath them --
hundreds of kinds of plants. The rainforest, not far to the south, had once grown
here, and now, through seeds carried by birds or roots creeping up from the
river-edges, it was returning.
The Gaviotans imagine themselves planting pines in expanding circles out into the
llanos, harvesting gum for 100 years, leaving rainforest behind. Meanwhile their
technologies for pumps and collectors and windmills, all simple, affordable, and
purposely unpatented, are spreading throughout the world.
"This is what the world needs," said Aurelio Peccei, aged founder of the Club of
Rome, who visited Gaviotas ten days before he died. I agree, not only because of
Gaviotas's technical ingenuity, but because of its attitude. Gaviotans live in peace
surrounded by narcotics dealers and guerillas. They live without guns, without
pesticides, willing to serve and teach all comers. They count their wealth in sun,
water, and community. They believe that solutions can come from anyone,
anywhere, even from, most especially from, the Third World.
(Gaviotas: A Village to Reinvent the World, by Alan Weisman, has just been
published by Chelsea Green Publishing, White River Junction VT.)
Topic 19 of 42 [cultures]: global poverty
Response 7 of 16: Maggie (sociolingo) * Sat, Aug 26, 2000 (06:47) * 10 lines
Nothing in here for a LONG time .....
Here's a few thoughts to stimulate more...
Poverty is a relative concept. We define it by the standards of the culture we ourselves are part of.
Is there a commonality which we can define as poverty?? Whose concept is this? In Britain there is a 'poverty line' an income level below which someone is considered 'poor', but that level of poverty is relative. I'm not denying that poverty exists in my society. I know it does. I was brought up in relative povetty by an aunt who did not have a state pension (she was too old for the welfare state!), had gas lights, no indoor sanitation, never bought any new clothes, everything was patched until it fell apart. Is that really 'better' than my adopted family in an African village who would be considered 'poor' and by by our standards, yet actually they were better fed and dressed than my aunt, and considered me 'poor' because I did not have a field to feed my family from. Yet, my aunt would consider today's 'poor' in Britain as incredibly rich with their household appliances, TVs and income spent on leisure and presents. I ma not here talking about the homeless poor, but about people who live around me in soc
al housing who I know well.
Maybe I'll get flamed down, but at least we'll get some dialoigue going .....
Topic 19 of 42 [cultures]: global poverty
Response 8 of 16: Maggie (sociolingo) * Sat, Aug 26, 2000 (06:50) * 3 lines
Income is relative to what it will buy in the local economy. There is a huge difference in many developing countries over the price of locally produced goods and imported goods. To buy food from the local market rather than the expatriat supermarket is very feasible on local incomes. That's how I survive on a small housekeeping budget in Africa. We all make decisions on what we will spend our available income on.
Natural disasters such as droughts and floods are devastating to local economies. Whereas it is possible to live on a meagre income with extended family support and subsistence levels of farming etc. Natural disasters and conflicts take away that undergirding support structure.
Topic 19 of 42 [cultures]: global poverty
Response 9 of 16: Marcia (MarciaH) * Wed, Aug 30, 2000 (02:21) * 1 lines
Other than needing the basic necessities to live, I think poverty is realtive...AND a state of mind. It is far harder on parents than kids. Kids never notice it, it seems, at least did not years ago when shoes were not endorsed by expensive athletes.
Topic 19 of 42 [cultures]: global poverty
Response 10 of 16: Maggie (sociolingo) * Mon, Sep 4, 2000 (07:09) * 2 lines
For U.S. poverty threshholds and guidelines, look here.
http://aspe.os.dhhs.gov/poverty/00poverty.htm
Topic 19 of 42 [cultures]: global poverty
Response 11 of 16: Maggie (sociolingo) * Mon, Sep 4, 2000 (07:17) * 76 lines
Poverty : challenging the myths
(http://www.oneworld.org/ni/issue310/keynote.htm)
Being poor is about not having enough money. Or is it?
Nikki van der Gaag investigates.
The people of Devonport are surrounded by a wall. Three metres high and six kilometres long, it serves to separate them from the military complex on their doorstep. But it has another, less obvious function. It marks out the boundaries of an estate known for its deprivation. Devonport, a suburb of Plymouth in south-west England, is labelled as an area with a high poverty rate, where crime, vandalism and drug-dealing abound.
My own reception in Devonport is warm and welcoming. I am picked up from the train station and driven to an apartment block overlooking the wall.
Karen and her son Chris give me a slap-up meal before taking me downstairs to meet 79-year-old Alice, who regales me with tales of being a submarine fitter during the War and puts me to bed with a cup of tea and an electric blanket. From the spare-room window I can see a yard, grim and dripping in the rain, but inside I am full, snug and warm.
This feeling stays with me for the whole of the next day as I attend a workshop that Devonport Action Against Poverty (DAP) is holding in the local community centre which has been refitted and decorated by local people.
Poverty, say the DAP members firmly: ‘is not about money, though it is about what you can do with money’. People should be respected not for what they have but for who they are. ‘We call ourselves “people experiencing poverty”, or “grassroots people” rather than poor people. We are people first. People who just happen to be poor,’ says Karen. ‘But we are rich in lots of other ways.’
Generosity, for one. I am not used to being housed and fed by complete strangers, let alone those who can little afford it.
Of course money is an issue, but so too are good housing, jobs, healthcare, education, leisure facilities, improved levels of benefit which don’t penalize people for working, better transport, and an improved environment. Then there are the things money can’t always buy: more time, good relationships, privacy (‘Poor people don’t have the luxury of privacy; their affairs are everyone’s business,’ says Karen), community spirit and, importantly, respect.
The need for respect comes high on the list of all those experiencing poverty. Moraene Roberts, another ‘grassroots person’ and a member of the UK Coalition Against Poverty, puts it plainly: ‘The very poor tell us over and over again that a human being’s greatest misfortune is not hunger or being unable to read, nor even being without work. The greatest misfortune of all is to know that you count for nothing, to the point where even your suffering is ignored. The worst blow of all is the contempt of your fellow-citizens.’1
Such intangible things are hard to measure or even define. Poverty itself is discussed, defined and measured in an infinite number of ways. The United Nations Development Programme talks about ‘human poverty’: ‘a denial of choices and opportunities for living a tolerable life’; the World Bank of ‘income poverty’ – ‘living on less than a dollar a day’. Then there is ‘absolute’ poverty – those below a defined poverty line or threshold – and ‘relative’ poverty – poor in relation to those around you. Recently, governments have begun to use the term ‘social exclusion’ as a useful tool for describing what poor people experience. This is fine, as long as it is not an excuse for failing to spend money. And it begs a number of questions: If some people, areas, or communities are ‘socially excluded’ what are they excluded from? Who then are the ‘included’? Is this simply a way of avoiding the word ‘poor’? (A word which people overseas have no problem claiming but which people in the West often reject because it comes
with such stigma attached). What Devonport and other places of ‘social exclusion’ least need is yet another label.
The interesting thing about all these definitions is that they only define the poor. No-one thinks of finding labels for the rich – there are far more words for poverty than there are for wealth, as the dictionary on clearly shows. It is the poor who are the ‘problem’ – a belief hotly contested by ‘the poor’ themselves.
The other problem is gender; social exclusion doesn’t value economic roles and relationships at the household and community level, which are mainly performed by women. Yet women all over the world bear the brunt of poverty, partly because of the extra burden of responsibilities they have for the household and partly because they lack access to land, credit and employment.2
Labels and measurements are useful tools for dealing with poverty; but sometimes they can detract from what being poor really means, like having to spend all your time worrying about where the next meal is coming from. It means hunger, isolation and disempowerment. And waste, not just for those experiencing it, but for everyone. In the words of Joseph Wreskinski, founder of ATD Fourth World, an organization set up to combat poverty: ‘Behind the silence of our records and our statistics lie children mutilated in their heart and spirit, young people condemned to despair, adults driven to doubt their very humanity.’3 Poverty is relentless; it grinds you down and leaves you deprived of hope, of opportunity, of confidence in yourself.
At first glance, the statistics give cause for optimism. In the last 50 years poverty has fallen more than in the previous 500. Over the century some three to four billion of the world’s people will have experienced substantial improvements in their quality of life. Since 1960, child death-rates in developing countries have been halved and malnutrition has declined by more than a third.
However, such figures hide the fact that the absolute number of poor people is increasing as the world’s population rises. The number of people with incomes of less than a dollar a day rose by almost 100 million between 1987 and 1993. By next year more than half the people in sub-Saharan Africa will not have enough to live on, and the global economic crisis means that over one billion people will suffer a fall in their already-meagre living standards.4
And this is not just in the Majority World. In Eastern Europe and the countries of the former Soviet Union, the average incidence of income poverty increased sevenfold between 1988 and 1994.4 In the US, there are 35.5 million poor people.5 In Australia poverty levels are five per cent higher than when poverty was first measured in 1973 (and likely to increase again if the Government implements the proposed new tax on food).6 In Britain, nearly a quarter of old people and a fifth of children are poor – twice as many as in Taiwan and six times as many as in Finland. The proportion of poor people in ‘income poverty’ jumped by nearly 60 per cent under the Thatcher Government.
And yet the wealthiest fifth in Britain are among the richest in Europe. The most industrialized countries have 147 of the world’s 225 richest people (Asia has 43 and South America 22). Globally, the gap between rich and poor is increasing all the time – the three richest people in the world have assets that exceed the combined Gross Domestic Product of the 48 least-developed countries.7
And yet the cost of eradicating poverty has been estimated at a mere one per cent of global income. That’s about $80 billion.4 In 1995 the world spent $800 billion – ten times that amount – on the military alone. Poverty is not just about inequality – but it is the inequality that makes poverty so appalling.
The urgency of addressing what the UN calls the ‘scandal’ of poverty is being recognized at the highest levels. Poverty is very much on the international agenda; the papers, the statements, the targets are pouring in with the overall aim of halving the proportion of people living in extreme poverty by 2015.8
And participation is the new buzz-word. Every- one says they want to involve poor people in the debate about what should be done. It remains to be seen if theory becomes practice.
What should be done
If poverty is to be eradicated, it must be more than talk. There needs to be an almighty push towards the following goals:
providing access for those with the lowest incomes to good healthcare and education
reducing military spending and promoting peace
creating employment and economic res- ources for poor people
working towards a sustainable environment for all
reducing the gender gap
creating rural development policies which benefit the poor, such as agrarian reformcurbing corruption
cancelling debt
increasing overseas aid (see above).
But many people experiencing poverty have another, even more radical point to make. One of the most extraordinary things about listening to people in poverty in different parts of the world is that so many are concerned not just about inequality, but about the way money has become the measure of all things.
Thousands of kilometres away from Devonport, in a small town in the middle of the forests of southern India, I am with a group of tribal people – considered by other Indians to be the poorest of the poor and the lowest of the low. I tell them I am working on this magazine and they urge me not just to focus on money, in words similar to Karen’s in Devonport:
‘It’s about what you value,’ says Bomman. ‘When everything is valued in terms of money, it is those who have the money who are looked up to. But if we use other ways of valuing people, it is the poor who are rich...’
Bomman’s words are echoed too by studies on a macro level, which show that governments which go for economic growth alone fail to address the problem of poverty.9 It is only when social development policies go hand-in-hand with what is known as ‘pro-poor’ growth that poor people begin to benefit. The emphasis has to be on equity, not just economics, and on concrete policies to accompany the noble commitments to eradication.
But people experiencing poverty are often aware that any ‘help’ – whether from governments or charities – works best when those being ‘helped’ are organized in workers’ movements, trade unions or women’s networks. To this end, poor people are making links across the globe and learning new strategies for change from each other. This gives a strength in numbers enough to challenge the most powerful of systems.
‘If the poor of the world could start supporting each other then we would have a movement strong enough to change the world,’ said Chandran, one of the tribal people from India.
‘We’ll not give up,’ said Sam in Devonport. ‘If enough people keep shouting the same things loud and long then things might start to happen.’
International institutions are saying they want to listen to people in poverty. And the latter are laying siege to the assumptions we all hold about rich and poor and shaking the foundations on which wealth, status, and the myths about poverty are built.
Who knows? In the end it might even be enough to bring down the wall. Stranger things have happened.
Topic 19 of 42 [cultures]: global poverty
Response 12 of 16: Maggie (sociolingo) * Thu, Sep 7, 2000 (16:14) * 4 lines
Try this URL. It should give food for thought....
http://www.worldbank.org/poverty/mission/up1.htm
Topic 19 of 42 [cultures]: global poverty
Response 13 of 16: Maggie (sociolingo) * Sat, Jun 30, 2001 (08:22) * 2 lines
More from the World Bank to make you think ..
http://www.worldbank.org/research/povmonitor/
Topic 19 of 42 [cultures]: global poverty
Response 14 of 16: Culcha (terry) * Sat, Jun 30, 2001 (08:40) * 1 lines
What's the exec summary of this, Maggie?
Topic 19 of 42 [cultures]: global poverty
Response 15 of 16: Maggie (sociolingo) * Sat, Jun 30, 2001 (09:52) * 4 lines
This site (http://www.worldbank.org/research/povmonitor/) makes available data collected by the World Bank on poverty. It is from these figures that most reports that give us a picture of wolrd poverty are compilied from.
The availability of distributional data for developing countries has improved over the last 10 years. For example, the 2000 issue of World Development Indicators gives distributional data for 90 low and middle income countries. Efforts at improving data quality and country coverage have been made by many countries and international agencies,including the World Bank. There is a long way to go before we can even say that the all poor countries have a good quality survey for poverty monitoring, and even further before we can be confident of data comparability across countries and over time. But there has been progress.
Drawing on the set of suitable household surveys currently available, this web site provides access to estimates of various poverty and inequality measures made by staff of the World Bank’s Research Group with considerable help from their colleagues in the bank’s regional units. Unlike past compilations of distributional data across countries, all these estimates have been based on the primary survey data (either in raw form or specially-designed tabulations from the raw data).
Topic 19 of 42 [cultures]: global poverty
Response 16 of 16: Maggie (sociolingo) * Tue, Jul 17, 2001 (15:22) * 5 lines
TANZANIA: POVERTY AND HIV/AIDS HAMPERING DEVELOPMENT
http://www.reliefweb.int/IRIN/cea/countrystories/tanzania/20010711.phtml
While the delivery of development services has been made more efficient, and the gross domestic product (GDP) of Tanzania has grown by 5 per cent in recent years, poverty-reduction measures are not yet reaching the rural poor, and HIV/AIDS poses such a threat that it could reverse all the gains recently achieved, according to the UN country team for Tanzania.
cultures conference 
Main Menu