The Christian Science Monitor 5 Part Series on An End To Poverty

This week of March 10 through 14, the Christian Science Monitor had a 5 part series of articles called "An End to Poverty: New Hope for the Last Billion Poor". It's by Mark Lange, a former speechwriter for President George H.W. Bush, and it gives his opinions on ways to end extreme poverty for the 1 billion of the poorest people on Earth. A link to his series is here http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0314/p09s01-coop.html.

Lange believes it's possible to eradicate poverty for these one billion people within a lifetime through practical solutions that has accountability and control on the grassroots level. He feels that the Western efforts to help the poor in the world have been ineffective in the past because the West used the Marshall Plan top-down approach as a model for its efforts. This central planning approach was effective after World War II in aiding Western countries rebuild after a destructive war, but it's less effective in aiding Third World nations as their societies and institutions are different. He faults current aid efforts as being disorganized and largely ineffective at addressing the vital needs of the poorest of the poor. Lange wrote:

Aid institions too often pursue disconnected agendas.  For every development success story, there's another about exporting plans and resources irrelevant to needs.  Excelling at raising money, uncertain about results.  Struggling to coordinate 21 US agencies and 50 operating units that deliver aid.  Subsidizing (through clenced teeth) shameless kleptocracies and grotesque dictators.  Funding fiascoes, such as $5 billion spent  since 1979 on Nigeria's Ajaokuta steel mill, which has yet to produce any steel.

Humanitarian aid budgets aren't focused on the last billion, where the average person has an income one-fifth of those in mid-tier developing countries.  Seventy percent of the last billion live in Africa, yet in 2008 only a third of all US government direct aid will go there.  (this is progress:  In 2001, it was only 8 percent).  Instead, Israel and Egypt together get 10 times US direct aid that Darfur does.  Russia gets as much as 20 sub-Sahara nations combined.  Ireland gets 167 times what the Central African Republic does.  These may be rational political transfers- but they're not life saving assistance.

Lange argues that the West needs to work more smartly and to involve the local populations in ways to assess the success or failure of the aid efforts and to have some system of accountability that the aid is addressing real needs.  The success of ending poverty will come about by how successful we are in digging wells for those who need fresh water, for giving bed nets to protect against malaria spreading flies, for building schools, and for other needs.  He believes globalization is a good thing, so long as safeguards are made by the social upheavels that globalization brings to to the poor and protections are given against environmental degradation.  One of the things he feels would help prevent the exploitation of cheap labor would be an international minimum wage.    He feels the greater danger is not globalization, but isolation, where poor countries do not get economically developed and thus fall farther behind from growing economies in the rest of the world.