POVERTY: FOOD: Prices and perceptions

LONDON, 25 May 2011 (IRIN)

 Photo: Siegfried Modola/IRIN

 Banu Bibi's shopping basket is becoming emptier. When she goes shopping in Dhaka, Bangladesh, she spends more than a year ago, but that money buys less. In 2010, for 134 taka (US$1.80), she could afford lentils and laundry soap, and the family's favourite fish. This year she has to spend 185 taka ($2.50) just for the basics: more rice to make up for the lack of other food, and cheaper vegetables.
Banu Bibi lives in one of eight communities picked by a research team from the Institute of Development Studies in the UK to track the effects of rising food and fuel prices. For three years, with the help of partner organizations in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Zambia and Kenya, they have been talking to people in selected rural and urban communities about how rising prices affect their lives.
Banu Bibi's experience is fairly typical. Her family is not starving; they still have food, but it is not the food they like and is not as nutritious as it could be. They certainly ate more and ate better before the food price shock and financial crisis of 2008. And across the world, homemakers are having to work harder, spending more time shopping or looking for food, and planning more carefully to stretch their budgets to feed their families.
A woman in Lango Baya, Kenya, spoke for many when she told the researchers: "You go to a shop to buy something with the same amount as you paid the previous day, only to be told that prices have risen."
Although food and fuel prices did fall after the initial spike in 2008, they never went back to their previous levels, and this year they have jumped again. Only one of the four countries studied has experienced some respite this year - Zambia, where the price of maize, the staple food, has not increased.

Local locus
While the two previous studies concentrated on the mechanisms people used to cope with the rising prices, this time the researchers decided to ask some more political questions - why did people think prices were so high? Who was to blame? And what should be done about it?
"It was an interesting time, with the Arab Spring and unrest around the world, and we wanted to ask how people felt about the food and fuel price rises," the research team leader, Naomi Hossain, told an audience at the University of Sussex, recently.
Her presentation coincided with the publication of a report into the global causes of rising prices by the British charity, Christian Aid. It analyzed recent movements on commodity markets, and concluded that much-vilified hedge funds were not the real culprits, instead singling out pension funds. They have very large pots of money, and have been pulling out of volatile stocks and shares and investing in funds linked to a basket of commodity prices, forcing fund managers to protect their positions by buying commodity futures on such a scale that they move the market.
But although commodity price rises are now an international phenomenon, extensively reported in the media, the people Hossain and her colleagues spoke to only looked for causes within their own country, citing hoarding and speculation, changing climate and environmental problems in their own area, and - overwhelmingly - their governments' failure to care about the poor.
One interviewee in Bangladesh told them, "I don't believe in this global market story at all. It is just an excuse for the government not to do anything."
Hossain describes "a real failure of global civil society to get people to see how their livelihoods are connected to the global economy. I am not surprised people prefer local causes. It gives people a sense of agency; if it's a global problem, then what can they do?"

Moral focus
But she has a certain sympathy for governments. There are more social protection schemes in place, for instance, than at the time of the first survey, despite governments having their budgets squeezed, but even so they get little credit.
Those who believe the government should "do something", suggest banning exports, controlling prices, punishing hoarders and subsidizing basic foodstuffs. The researchers found a sense that it was the moral duty of a government to provide for its people, sometimes linked to notions of democracy. A woman in Kenya told them, "In the new constitution, we have the right to be provided [with] food by the government."
The moral sense also extended to the business community. A rural doctor in Bangladesh said, "The businessmen should get some moral teaching. If they were afraid of Allah and conducted business honestly, the situation would improve."
All in all, says Hossain, "There is a popular consensus about what is legitimate, about social norms and obligations. People set moral limits to the freedom of the markets."
High food prices are not bad news for everyone. Another IDS research fellow, Xavier Cirera, pointed out that the rises followed a long period of low food prices, which had been very hard on farmers. "We always have to ask the question, what is the real price of food? And how can governments ensure better safety nets for the poor while ensuring that traders pass the benefits of price increases back to the producers? The evidence is that farmers are getting some benefit and are responding. But they are not realizing the full benefit of higher prices."
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=92803

POVERTY: Christian Aid's manifesto for change tackles eight issues of poverty

guardian.co.uk, 23 April 2011


A chance to make a difference
Christian Aid's manifesto for change tackles eight issues of poverty that could change the lives of billions around the world. But governments must act now to shift the balance of power and help the poor

 Farmer Loyce Nkala stands among her drought-devastated maize crop in Filabusi, south-west Zimbabwe. Photograph: Howard Burditt/Reuters/Corbis

The economic crisis that has hit countries both rich and poor presents the world with a unique opportunity. As governments search for ways to recover from the worst financial slump since the Great Depression of the 1930s, Christian Aid believes there is now a real chance to confront, and even finally overcome, the scandal of poverty.
To bring about the scale of effort required to end poverty, Christian Aid believes that world leaders and the public need to face up to the urgency of the task. The global financial crisis has pushed more people into poverty. But long before this, it was clear that poverty could never be over without unprecedented change.
Over the past six weeks Christian Aid has spelled out its groundbreaking vision, Poverty Over, through a series of articles in Weekend magazine and additional material on guardian.co.uk/poverty-over. The international development charity is demanding urgent action on eight global issues, and looking at some of the changes required to shift the balance of power in favour of the poorest. If dealt with, these eight issues – climate change, conflict, corruption, disasters, food and agriculture, health, inequality and tax – could make a fundamental and lasting difference to billions of people around the world. Christian Aid wants more people to understand these issues and, crucially, to act on them.
The economic crisis provides an opportunity to make these changes. Old truths, old ways of thinking and old economic models have been exposed as fundamentally unsuited to promoting human development.
Ending poverty will require economies and markets to function in ways that protect the environment, and enable women and men to make a dignified, secure and sustainable living. Governments must put the needs of people living in poverty at the heart of decision making, ensuring their security and their access to justice.
It is imperative that people in developing countries are able to benefit from taxation as a sustainable resource for their own development. "Tax provides the revenues that allow states to be independent of donors, and in turn to provide their citizens with basic services, as well as investing for the future," says David McNair from Christian Aid's economic justice programme. "Fair political representation and better governance – less corruption – is systematically associated with a functioning tax system.
"Tax has been neglected for too long in development discussions, but must now be moved to the top of the agenda if we are serious about a future of independent, effective and politically responsible states. A lack of transparency in the global financial system facilitates both tax dodging and illicit capital flight [illegal movement of money overseas] at the expense of poor countries."
It is not just the economic situation that provides an opportunity for change. We are at risk of a climate crisis, caused largely by carbon emissions from richer nations. The countries most vulnerable to the effects of climate change are in the developing world. Zimbabwe is just one example of the disastrous impact of climate change on poor people and their livelihoods.
"Severe droughts in Zimbabwe are directly linked to climate change and the situation can only get worse until this is addressed," says Alison Doig, Christian Aid's senior adviser on climate change. "Rainy seasons are starting up to 33 days later than expected, and rainy periods are more erratic. Failure to act now on climate change will not only delay the eradication of poverty, it will make poverty dramatically worse, and could make it permanent."
Christian Aid believes that wealthy countries must urgently agree legally binding targets to reduce emissions. They must also help poor countries develop cleanly and adapt to the changing climate.
Last year David Cameron, the prime minister, promised his government would be the greenest ever. Yet UK-listed companies, which are responsible for 12-15% of global carbon emissions, are still not required by the government to report emissions to an agreed standard. But it's not only governments that need to act – Doig cites the World Bank as not following through on its original target.
"The World Bank was set up to end poverty," she says. "Yet it is lending poor countries money for fossil-fuel power plants that benefit big businesses, accelerate climate change – and do little for poor communities."
As an organisation driven by a passion for justice, Christian Aid believes we must seize this opportunity. Change in the world can be achieved by campaigning and other advocacy work. A global compact to end poverty is possible, and the necessary thinking is within reach – if we build an active, committed movement for social and political change.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/poverty-over/christian-aid-a-chance-to-make-a-difference

POVERTY: Religious leaders see modest progress in anti-poverty goals

CHRIS HERLINGER Associated Press
 September 24, 2010
NEW YORK (RNS) Prominent religious, humanitarian and ethical leaders gave mixed grades this week to progress on meeting the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals (MDG), the global yardsticks on fighting poverty.
The ambitious goals, established in 2000 with a target date of 2015, include eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, reducing child mortality and improving maternal health.
World leaders meeting at the United Nations this week for a three-day (Sept. 20-22) summit acknowledged that several of the global aims — including those around maternal health and child mortality — are not likely to be met by 2015, one reason U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced a $40 billion global health initiative aimed at mothers and children.
"More could have happened, more could be done," the Rev. David Beckmann, a Lutheran minister who serves as president of the Washington-based advocacy group Bread for the World, said Wednesday (Sept. 22) at a forum assessing progress on the MDGs and the overall global fight against poverty.
Beckmann, a 2010 World Food Prize laureate, called the progress made against poverty "the great exodus of our time," and "an extraordinary liberation," making him "profoundly hopeful, because hundreds of millions of people have escaped from extreme poverty in the last 20 years."
"When I look at what's happened, and I believe in God, this is God moving in our history," Beckmann said at a forum sponsored by Yale Divinity School at the Church Center for the United Nations. "This is our loving God answering the prayers of hundreds of millions of people."
Others assessing progress on global poverty saw some progress, but were far more measured in their evaluations. Yale professor Thomas Pogge was downright pessimistic, saying that while there are some success stories, the world's poor continue to face "enormous headwinds."
"The remarkable thing is that things are getting worse despite all these successes," Pogge said. "There are much larger forces at work against the poor than all these wonderful good forces in favor of the poor."
He noted that global hunger numbers remain high, with the United Nations reporting last year that the number of people in the world classified as "chronically malnourished" had surpassed 1 billion.
"Look at how many people are hungry, and you'll get a good sense of what's happening from the ground with regard to poverty," Pogge said.
Research also shows, he said, that one-third of all human deaths — some 18 million annually — are directly related to poverty, such as diseases "that cause little or no damage among more affluent populations."
A study issued in conjunction with the U.N. meeting by the British-based Christian Aid humanitarian agency also cast a critical eye on progress in the fight against poverty.
While praising the MDGs for having "raised the profile" of the need to eradicate poverty, the report also faulted the global effort for not recognizing that poverty "is not simply a lack of income, or ... housing, food, access to fresh water or consumer goods," but also "a lack of opportunity, a lack of power over one's own life and prospects, a lack of human dignity."
The report added that the goal of "empowering those in poverty was translated, somehow, into telling poor countries what their priorities should be," and that rich nations that were asked to meet their financial obligations to the poor were "largely exempted ... from accountability for their critical part in determining the global structures and systems that fuel poverty."
http://www.newsok.com/religious-leaders-see-modest-progress-in-anti-poverty-goals/article/feed/193936#ixzz12i2UKX8T