Close to collapse

"Crunch Time," The Evening Paper
Issue of 22 May 1996

It seems, and sadly so, that crunch time comes creeping up on us when we least want it. Section editors who also happen to be columnists know this only too well. Delinquency is an option preferable to mediocrity.

The other very real reason for my delinquency is a lack of success stories to relate. I was still plowing through the reams of copy that landed like confetti on newsdesks all over the world after the Habitat II conference in Turkey, only to get crowded out of vital space by political issues and election results.

Besides, no international conference is all substantive negotiation and productive discussion. Politics always manages to rear its ugly head into the most urgent of human conferences. Habitat II was no exception.

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But as crunch times go, why the apocalyptic feeling that the human race and all human activity are sadly plunging into ultimate destruction? Could 2000 and a new millennium, if there will be one, have anything to do with it? Or is it a death wish of the most horrific proportions?

Listen. A very recent World Bank report on poverty, which came out only last Sunday, says that more than one-fifth of the world's population lives on less than $1 a day.

The report admits that the overall incidence of poverty is declining but adds that the number of people living on less than $1 a day increased from 1.23 billion in 1987 to 1.31 billion in 1993.

"About 90 percent of the world's poor in the developing world are located in South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, Indochina, Mongolia, Central America, Brazil, and the hinterland provinces of China," the report says.

Of these regions, two--South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa--get special focus in the World Bank report. And while we may manage, on a good day, to shrug our shoulders about Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia is not too far away.

"Today, South Asia is home to a quarter of the world's population, but it accounts for 39 percent of the world's poor," the bank says, even as it traces the high poverty rate in the region to high population growth and slow recovery from fiscal and balance-of-payments difficulties. That's neither here nor there for advocates of one cause or another and for critics of the WB-IMF twin monsters.

So, let's stick to the disquieting statistics. The percentage of the population living on less than $1 a day in South Asia declined slightly from 45.4 percent to 43.1 percent, but the overall number of poor people increased by 34.8 million between 1987 and 1993.

Out of every 12 children born, at least one is expected to die before reaching the age of one. One-third of the world's maternal deaths occur in South Asia.

For Sub-Saharan African nations, the task would appear almost insuperable: These nations must register growth rates of 6.5 percent merely to reduce poverty. The Philippines, from '80s experience, knows how difficult it is to even reach a positive 2.

Nor can we easily equate reduction of poverty with a 6-percent growth rate: No developed or developing country, says the World Bank report, entitled "Poverty Reduction and the World Bank--Progress and Challenges in the 1990s," has totally eradicated poverty.

While the bank has set goals for its lending programs that it hopes will boost the human capital of the poor and provide them with safety cushions, "more needs to be understood about the political and social economy of change and its effects on poverty reduction efforts."

That's a definite thumbs-down from the bank for its own efforts at reducing poverty in the world today.

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Now, if we think the world is suddenly going to grow lush and bountiful simply because the human race is about to collapse from poverty and hunger, then we need to undergo a very serious rethink.

Another international document says at least 150 million of the world's people will be victims of drought and overexploitation of the once-green earth. The document, distributed at a four-day United Nations conference in Lisbon, bluntly states: "The population of the planet is expected to double in the next 50 years. The trend for the overexploitation of renewable resources could accelerate at a pace without precedent in the history of humanity."

The problem is that while the prospect of lush land turning to desert is enough to bring a global cabal of experts very near crunch time, other cabals of experts all over the world prefer to preach only in terms of high-priced, high-rise investments.

What about investing in the land, in farms and plantations, in once again nurturing the earth, the seas, the forests? It is not just being environmentally aware, it is also showing business acumen and historical foresight.

-- NBT