Response to Poverty and Hunger
Mr. Serageldin correctly identifies an important roll for the
scientific community in the continued alleviation of poverty and hunger.
One of the arguments that he used to emphasize the importance of that role
may be counterproductive.
The alleviation of hunger has been an important priority for the
Northern Hemisphere since President Harry Truman made it his fourth point in January
1949: “improvement and growth of under developed areas.” Important
lessons have been learned from the successes and failures of the last 50
years. In order to successfully grow out of poverty, a community must be
committed internally. The poor community can not wait for third parties
to solve their problems. Serageldin uses South Korea as an example. To a
very important degree the republic of South Korea succeeded because the
people, business and communities of South Korea were willing to plan for
success. Their preparation enabled them to put outside help and
investment to productive use.
The requirements for growth from poverty are (1):
• “Opportunity: Expanding economic opportunity for poor people by
stimulating economic growth, making markets work better for poor people,
and working for their inclusion, particularly by building up their assets,
such as land and education.
• Empowerment: Strengthening the ability of poor people to shape decisions
that affect their lives and removing discrimination based on gender, race,
ethnicity, and social status.
• Security: Reducing poor people's vulnerability to sickness, economic
shocks, crop failure, unemployment, natural disasters, and violence, and
helping them cope when such misfortunes occur.”
It is not only important that these goals be pursued by donor countries,
international agencies, NGO's, civil society, but also that they be
pursued by local communities, businesses, families and individuals.
Serageldin asks us to treat the condition of hunger as equivalent to
the condition of slavery and find it “monsterous and unconscionable” and
abolish it. These terms imply that there is a group of outside agents
(“we”) responsible for action, and I fear that by inference that there is
the assumption that the individuals in poor communities are not
responsible for establishment of conditions for progress. Setting up a
system of transfer of goods supervised by a benevolent group of
enlightened bureaucrats is not the answer regardless of the good
intensions of that group. The dignity of the poor should be respected, to
the extent of expecting that they will make progress and planning to help
those who start in the right direction to achieve improvements in
opportunity, empowerment and security.
The widening gap between the wealthy and poor of the world is simply
evidence that some people are making progress and some have not yet
started. Because growth from poverty requires simultaneous progress in
the three areas above, this growth is an extremely difficult task. It is
not “inconceivable” that many communities have not yet succeeded. It is
unfortunate that 800 million people live and suffer in those communities,
but we should not trivialize the lack of success of those people by saying
that it is “inconceivable” that they should not have succeeded before. We
should not trivialize the success of the man on the street in Korea,
Singapore or Thailand by saying that progress was easy and anyone can do
it.
Larger flows of resources into the Southern Hemisphere can and should contribute to
growth in situations where communities are saving, planning, becoming more
democratic and becoming better stewards of their members’ security.
However there is good reason to avoid thinking of the citizens of the
Southern Hemisphere as victims to be cared for, fed and managed. Moral outrage at
poverty in the Southern Hemisphere is inappropriate if we regard the people of the Southern Hemisphere
as captains of their own fate. They have to be captains of their own fate
if there is to be a dramatic reduction in poverty.
Does this make a difference in the role of the scientific community
in the growth process? Instead of imploring the scientific community to
“abolish hunger and reduce poverty,” the scientific community should
support those who are making progress themselves or helping others to make
progress. That point becomes:
• The scientific community should support individuals, communities,
businesses, and government entities that increase the opportunity,
empowerment and security of the poor.
We expect that science will contribute to innovations that improve
opportunity by increasing productivity, security by improving health and
empowerment by improving communication, but the scientific community must
also support progress in opportunity, empowerment and security when there
is no technical innovation.
I hope that action by the Northern Hemisphere will succeed in ending hunger and
poverty, but there is both no assurance of one hundred percent success
(abolition), and no excuse for failing to continue with the effort in the
face of any particular failure. I agree that food assistance is an
important component of the minimum level of security that allows progress.
I am sure that I do not wish for less assistance to the Southern Hemisphere than Mr.
Serageldin, but if assistance is going to allow growth out of poverty, it
must be directed to those who are prepared to use it constructively and
not those who are laying the seeds of failure for the next generation
through waste, through support of dictatorship of the right or left , or
through unnecessary risk.
(1) World Development Report 2000/2001: Attacking Poverty Published
August 2000 by Oxford University Press, World Bank ISBN: 0-19-521129-4
SKU: 61129
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