POVERTY: ZIMBABWE: Trophy hunting, crocodile farming help rural poor adapt

CHIREDZI, 29 June 2011 (IRIN)

 Photo: IRIN
Crocodiles skins and meat are big money earners

The mostly dry Chiredzi district in southeastern Zimbabwe will grow drier as rainfall becomes increasingly uncertain, but trophy hunting and rearing crocodiles for their meat and skins can become major money earners to help rural households overcome poverty while adapting to climate change.
In one of several initiatives under a project backed by the UN and government, elephants, warthogs, giraffes, buffaloes and impala - a type of antelope - are kept in an area measuring about 7,000 square kilometres and sold to trophy hunters licensed by the government in cooperation with the district authorities, while the community gets free meat from the slain animals.
"The project is now well established and the beneficiaries are building a school and a clinic from the money they receive from the sale of the animals," said Leonard Unganyi, who manages the project run jointly by the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and the government-controlled Environment Management Agency (EMA). "They have also bought a truck and set up a grain-grinding mill to benefit the community."
He said the project, which helps communities cope with drought and climate change, would be replicated in other parts of the country because 90 percent of Zimbabwean farmers depend on rain-fed agriculture and are struggling to become food secure.
Using revenue from community-based trophy hunting initiatives to generate income for sustainable development activities is not unusual. In the late 1990s, Pakistan pioneered development of the Community Based Trophy Hunting Programme (CBTHP), according to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).
Pakistan runs several such projects, some in collaboration with UN and nature conservation agencies.
Finding sources of income to build the resilience of poor rural communities to erratic rainfall in Zimbabwe’s troubled economy is a tall order.
"Chiredzi district, which has always been vulnerable to drought, is one of the many areas countrywide that have been affected by climate change. Households have been severely affected by rainfall distribution, resulting in poor harvests," said UNDP-EMA's Unganyi.
Even though we have a garden, we cannot sell the vegetables because there is no one to buy
Susan Chivambu agreed. "There were hardly any rains to talk about in the last agricultural season and my family only managed to produce a few bags of maize. Very soon that will be gone and we will have to scrounge for food, just like we have done in the last three years."
Her family has been forced to sell some of their livestock every year. "Even though we have a garden, we cannot sell the vegetables because there is no one to buy," she said. Two goats she would be taking to the market for the fortnightly sale were tethered to a nearby tree.
"Adaptation to climate change is a fairly new phenomenon in Zimbabwe," said Unganyi. "There is a need for policies and strategies that empower affected local communities."
Tapping into another lucrative market, 300 households in Chilonga village in Chiredzi district have set up a cooperative crocodile farming project, now in its second year and close to becoming profitable. Each member contributes to the food and upkeep of the crocodiles.

 Photo: Contributor/IRIN
Evelyn Hanyani's cassava crop, unlike the hardy cereal sorghum, did well

The villagers have benefited from infrastructure left behind by a white commercial farmer, including ponds, incubators and boilers. William Tonono, a member of the crocodile project, told IRIN that they were rearing 880 crocodiles, some of which were ready for market.
"Even though we still have problems raising money to buy food and medicines for the crocodiles, we hope that when we sell our first batch, money problems will be a thing of the past," said Tonono. Zimbabwe’s export earnings from crocodile meat and skins are worth millions of dollars. A skin 40cm wide is valued at US$9 per centimetre, according to Padenga, a Zimbabwean company that trades in skins. UNDP-EMA will help the cooperative to market their produce.
"Our aim is to make sure that the money we realise from this project will be enough to provide our family needs, but judging by our progress, we will be able to buy cars in the near future," Tonono said.
Another initiative gives rural residents an alternative to dependence on their dwindling livestock. Families where Chivambu lives have been organized into clubs that breed fish in the nearby Masukwe Dam. They hope to harvest the first batch of fish by the end of 2011.

Cassava and hardier grains
Other families have been given the option of farming hardier crops like cassava, and small grains like sorghum and millet which thrive in dry conditions, but the results have been mixed.
Evelyn Hanyani’s cassava crop thrived and she hopes to sell some of the produce to support her family of 15, but her sorghum crop performed poorly, partly because of long dry spell in February 2011.
"We cook the cassava every morning and use it as a substitute for bread,” she said. We also grind it to prepare flour for bread, and sometimes use the ground powder in the place of maize-meal and pick the leaves to use as vegetables."
Her neighbour, Tsotsowani Makondo, 40, a mother of nine, opted to grow small grains. "Despite the drought in the area this year, I am happy with my yields. My family will not die of hunger because I harvested enough sorghum and millet to last me ‘til next year," Makondo told IRIN.
Her children are not used to eating millet and sorghum instead of Zimbabwe’s staple food, maize-meal, so she sells some of her produce to buy maize.
The Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS-NET) notes in its report on Zimbabwe in June 2011 that staple cereals are readily available nationally, but prices are higher than the same time in 2010. Predominantly rural districts like Chiredzi have not shown improved sources of income for poor households compared to a year ago.
The districts of Chiredzi, Buhera, Mangwe, Bikita, and Mutare reported the highest maize grain prices in Zimbabwe. FEWS-NET said the trend was likely to continue to 2012 because of the poor harvests in these areas. "This means access challenges for the poor households in the areas of concern will have worsened, and more households will be food insecure."
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=93099

POVERTY: MYANMAR: Government open to microcredit expansion

YANGON, 29 June 2011 (IRIN)

 Photo: UNDP Myanmar :
A microfinance loan dispursement in Myanmar

Myanmar President Thein Sein’s statement in May that a sustainable microfinance system should be established has sparked interest among aid workers and those already involved in the country’s embryonic microfinance system.
The president made the announcement at a rural development and poverty alleviation workshop where he acknowledged the country’s poor are concentrated outside the cities and in need of assistance.
“We expect [from the president’s statement] that we would be able to work more broadly in the future,” said Maung Maung, general manager of international NGO Pact which recently hosted Myanmar’s largest microfinance project. As of March, Pact had 478,404 clients in 22 townships from three zones - Delta, Dry and Shan.
More than 85 percent of rural households in Myanmar rely on loans from multiple sources to meet basic needs, according to the UN Development Programme (UNDP), which brought microcredit lending to the country in 1997.
“The need for credit in the rural economy is substantial,” Akbar Usmani, acting UNDP resident representative, told IRIN. He estimated the present demand for loans in rural Myanmar at around US$340-471 million per year.
Current microfinance activities in Myanmar are conducted on the basis of specific authorizations provided to microfinance actors. These take the form of a set of Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs) signed by the various microfinance actors with their line-ministry.
Microfinance is, therefore, not yet mainstreamed into a regulated financial sector, but is rather authorized on a case-by-case basis by the government. There is no specific microfinance regulation in Myanmar, according to a 2010 microfinance industry report published by France-based NGO ACTED and the Banking with the Poor Network in collaboration with the Foundation for Development Cooperation.
Both Maung Maung and the UNDP’s Usmani agreed that a strengthened legal framework could fortify and sustain microfinance lending in this agriculture-based country, where 70 percent of the population live in rural areas and about 26 percent below the poverty line, according to UNDP’s country-wide survey conducted in 2009 to 2010.

Guessing game
Still, no one knows what form the rules and regulations will take, and agencies are wondering how the government will amend current restrictions on lending from financial institutions. A law passed in 1990 forbade both state and privately-owned banks from providing uncollateralized credit.
This means all bank credit has to be backed by either real estate or by a fixed deposit account, which always worries agencies that rely on donor funds to run their projects.
“How can we borrow money from the [local] banks, when we have nothing to collateralize?” said Nyunt Hlaing, executive committee member of Myanmar Business Executives Association, which is one of the local groups engaging in the microfinance sector. “This is a big challenge in expanding and sustaining the projects for the long-run.”
In the absence of access to institutional credit from the private and public banks, the rural poor rely on relatives, friends, moneylenders and pawn shops for small loans which charge interest rates as high as 60-200 percent a year.
UNDP introduced microfinance to Myanmar in 1997 using the Grameen model of group-based lending in which typically a small group takes on the responsibility of repaying the debt. The initiative was originally implemented through several sub-organizations, but in 2006, Pact took over all of UNDP's microfinance programmes.
Several other government-sponsored groups, semi-governmental organizations and local and international NGOs have microfinance projects thanks to individual MoUs with the government.
There are institutional microfinancing lenders in 46 of the country's 330 townships, and according to UNDP, only 10 percent of Myanmar’s demand has been met.
Experts and economists believe that poverty could be effectively reduced if modern rules and regulations are implemented for the microfinancing sector.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=93093

POVERTY: South Africa: Poverty and social unrest in South Africa

Poverty and social unrest in South Africa. Although the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Human Development Index ranks South Africa as a middle-income country, the way in which income is distributed across the population is highly skewed. Some 39 per cent of the population, estimated at more than 49 million people, lives on less than R 388 a month. One consequence of poverty and high levels of unemployment is social unrest. A large proportion of South Africa’s poor population live in the eastern half of the country, which is also the area with the largest share of black population.
http://maps.grida.no/go/graphic/poverty-and-social-unrest-in-south-africa

POVERTY: Nepal: Climate Change: Community-based adaptation in action

26 April 2011 (IRIN)

 Photo: Peter Murimi/IRIN
Sujit Kumar Mondal and his wife Rupashi Mondal of Gopalgonj district in southern Bangladesh working in their floating garden

Nepal has become one of the first countries to consider scaling up community-based adaptation (CBA) to climate change and making it part of national development policy.
Nepal is vulnerable to rising global temperatures and has already been dealing with the impact of erratic rainfall, frequent droughts and floods, which have been affecting food security. In response the country decided to experiment with a bottom-up approach using Local Adaptation Plans of Action, or LAPAs, in 10 districts across the country in 2010.
In a joint paper on local adaptation plans, Bimal Raj Regmi, a researcher, and Gyanendra Karki, a government official, said the idea of drawing up LAPAs came out of the National Adaptation Programmes of Action (NAPA) process.
They noted that Nepal, as one of the last of the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) to develop its NAPA, was able to incorporate elements omitted from the adaptation plans of other countries.
These include better links to climate change planning processes and mainstreaming national adaptation goals down to the local level, so that the NAPA process moved beyond regional and national consultation to include the input of vulnerable communities in the LAPAs.
The LAPAs are developed by people from various sectors in a village or district who identify local climate risks, vulnerability and needs, and focus on increasing resilience based on the geographical location and assessments made by the community using their knowledge of the local environment.
"This is particularly critical because if communities are unable to distinguish climate change risks from other risks they face, then efforts to develop adaptive capacity might become unfocused or ineffective," said Regmi and Karki.
Nepal's approach and pilot programme were cited at the recent fifth International Conference on Community Based Adaptation to Climate Change in Bangladesh, which discussed scaling up CBA.

Two ways to scale-up
Saleemul Huq, a senior fellow of the International Institute for Environment and Development, a UK-based policy think-tank, which organized the conference, said there were two ways to scale-up: vertical - up the policy chain from the community level to higher levels of decision-making as in the case of Nepal; and horizontal - by replicating projects or initiatives thousands or even hundreds of thousands of times.
Communities have been adapting to climate variability for centuries, sometimes using home-grown and sustainable methods. These measures are known as "autonomous adaptation".
In flood-prone southern Bangladesh, communities grow food on floating islands made of paddy straw and water hyacinth in the waterlogged fields.
On the edge of the Sahara, people bury staple grains in storage pits in the ground to eat in times of drought, while in other areas traditionally nomadic pastoralists are adopting a partially sedentary lifestyle as the spreading desert wipes out grassland.
NGOs have developed a number of CBA initiatives, all still in the pilot phase, but Huq noted that "quite a few NGOs like Oxfam have begun to scale up their pilots".
The UN Development Programme (UNDP) has launched pilot CBA projects in Namibia, Zimbabwe and Ethiopia.
Huq, who is part of the academic team working on the Fifth Assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said inputs from the conference would inform the adaptation chapters of the assessment to be published in 2014.
African countries focused on bottom-up approaches and scaling up community-led responses to adaptation at the recent AfricaAdapt symposium held in Ethiopia.
"With up to 40 million pastoralists across the African region, each pastoralist has to be an innovator to some degree to adapt to climate variability," Fatema Rajabali, the climate editor of Eldis, an online knowledge service provided by the Sussex-based Institute of Development Studies, reported.
At the symposium, Yohannes GebreMichael of the Addis Ababa University "asserted that local innovation needs to be recognized, as it provides an entry point for communities with a bottom-up approach to support climate change adaptation, starting with local capacities and ideas".
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=92585

POVERTY: Nigeria: Breaking the poverty cycle through entrepreneurial revolution

April 18, 2011
Nigeria is a country of absurd economic realities. The 12th largest crude oil producer in the world and the second largest economy in Africa earn an estimated $2.2 million a day in oil revenue. Yet, its GDP per capita, at just over $1,400, is among the lowest for the continent and 54% of its 148 million people live on less than $1 per day.
The figures are especially shocking because of the abundance of natural resources primarily oil and natural gas, and massive agricultural potential based on its climate and significant rural population.
Human development data for Nigeria has remained persistently bleak despite a considerable upturn in the country’s economic fortunes since 2000.
The UNDP ranked the country 80th in a poverty survey of 108 developing nations that focussed on severe deprivation . The agency gave Nigeria a Human Poverty Index of 37.3, placing it below more impoverished African neighbours with far smaller economies like Rwanda and Malawi. Significantly, the study looked not just at income destitution, but also at secondary aspects including education, access to health care, standard of living and life_expectancy. More than 67 million Nigerians are docketed as poor according to standard definitions, while 35% of the total population live in extreme poverty.
These recent trends are especially worrying because they parallel a significant but contradictory improvement in Nigeria’s macro_economic performance. Before the current global financial crisis set in, Abuja had been successful in wielding substantial positive change in its overall balance sheets through a process of re_prioritisation and economic reform since 1999. A slew of measures, including privatisation of several steel, petrochemical, mining and port entities helped develop the non_oil sector, bring down inflation and boost international currency reserves. Nigeria also successfully negotiated with the London and Paris clubs to do away with a large part of its foreign debt.
However, World Bank research confirms that even during periods of relative prosperity, poverty levels remained unabated in the broadest sense, and actually worsened during successive positive growth periods.
Between 1972 and 1980, for instance, the Nigerian per capita income shot up from $1,300 to $2,900 based on rapidly escalating oil prices.
A subsequent decline in global oil revenues dragged down per capita income, consumption and expenditure to critical levels. However, Nigeria neglected investment in human development projects and continued to pump borrowed finances into capital_intensive enterprises. The fallout was that the dramatic rise in national fortunes bypassed the majority of Nigerians, as evident from the negligible rise in per capita consumption figures for the same period.
The differential effect on poverty levels in rural and urban areas for the coinciding period is equally startling. Because of a simultaneous worsening of income distribution, rural poverty declined slightly while the number of urban poor gained. However, the worst_off were also the worst losers, as the population living in extreme poverty across Nigeria swelled up from 10 million to 14 million. The obvious explanation behind this is that policy makers sorely failed to share the increase in wealth equitably.
Till 1985, a variety of local factors (political turmoil and social unrest) and foreign influences (falling oil prices and mismanagement of state assets) was responsible for increasing poverty and a widening disparity between rural and urban incomes. Even by 1995, per capita income and consumption remained lower than at the beginning of the oil boom in the ’70s.
It was only towards the end of the 20th century that Nigeria began to press forward a concerted though gradual effort at reform and regulation, made possible by relative political stability and the establishment of a democratically elected government.
The advent of more inclusive policies truly began with the adoption of a proactive manifesto that sought to wean away Nigeria’s exclusive dependence on non_renewable resources and promote micro and macro level entrepreneurship as the only viable means to durable economic prosperity.
This change of stance pertinently describes the entrepreneurial spirit in general: the insistence on unique and creatively challenging business models for rapidly sustainable wealth creation. Entrepreneurship is the core ideal of all developed nations that have successfully capitalized on their human and natural resources to drive economic progress.
Since the Thatcher_Regan era of the 1980s, most developed and developing nations the world over have wholeheartedly embraced entrepreneurship as the key to economic and market superiority.
http://www.vanguardngr.com/2011/04/breaking-the-nigerian-poverty-cycle-through-entrepreneurial-revolution-part-1/

POVERTY: India: How to Keep Poverty Low

Devinder Sharma.: March 21, 2011 .
In a significant move, the Supreme Court in India has questioned the very basis of counting the poor in the country. Realising that the poverty line is a gross underestimation, the Supreme Court has done what economists had failed to see all these years.
By deliberately keeping the poverty line low, economists and planners had actually betrayed the poor. These faulty poverty estimates became the foundation of the entire development strategies and programmes. No wonder, 64 years after independence, poverty continues to be robustly sustainable, and is in reality increasing in a geometric proportion.
On top of it, there are so many estimates floating around that I have lost count. Most of these estimates are actually drawn on the same faulty assessment criteria, and therefore have failed to make any appreciable impact on mitigating poverty and inequality. Whether we like it or not, poverty has proved to be robustly sustainable.
Now take a look. The Planning Commission had worked out poverty at 27.5 per cent in 2004-05. An expert group set up by the Planning Commission again in 2009 to review the methodology for poverty estimates for the same year (2004-05) upped it to 37.2 per cent, which means a mere statistical readjustment added another 100 million people to the count. And if we go by the international poverty norms of people living on less than $ 1.25 per day than over 456 million Indians live in poverty. But if we go by the Arjun Sengupta commiteee report, which I am discussing later, even this estimate may turn out to be too short.
The National Advisory Council simply pegs poverty at 50 per cent. As if this is not enough, we now have the new Multi-dimensional Poverty Index (MPI) developed by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) which pegs poverty in India at 55 per cent. It has added another ten indicators, including child mortality, school enrolment, drinking water, and sanitation.
Before you get lost, let me decipher the criteria that are used to first gauge the prevailing level of food insecurity and hunger. Previously poverty estimates were done using the calorie norms provided by the Indian Council for Medical Research. Accordingly, 2400 kcal in rural areas and 2100 kcal in urban areas formed the basis of the poverty estimates. This was the basis of earlier Planning Commission poverty estimates. I don't know why the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) uses lower per capita calories consumption cut-off of 1770 kcal.
By keeping the food consumption norms low, the FAO probably succeeds in hiding its own inefficiencies in reducing global hunger. That is why I have always found the Millennium Development Goals action plan to achieve the eight-point poverty goals to be built on a shaky foundation. Current estimate of global poverty by the FAO for instance at 925 million is in itself an underestimation. A realistic poverty estimate for India alone would be around what the FAO projects. According to Arjun Sengupta committee report, 836 million people in India are unable to spend more than 50 US cents a day, and I am sure no one would disagree that these people are not living in poverty.
In India, what the Supreme Court finds astonishing is that as per the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) 2004-05 report those spending less than Rs 12 (1 US $ = Rs 45.18) a day in rural areas and those spending less than Rs 17 a day in the urban areas were categorised as poor. This is what has baffled the Supreme Court. After all, how can the planners be so blind to the ground realities? How can they presume that someone can survive in such a paltry amount? Where in the world can they meet their minimum calories requirement by spending a mere Rs 17 a day?
Later, a panel headed by Suresh Tendulkar, formerly chairman of Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council, reworked the formula by adding certain items like food, sanitation and education to the poverty criteria. It, however, used lower calorie consumption norms of 1999 kcal for rural areas and 1776 for urban areas. By lowering food expenditure and adding some new items to the daily expenditure list for the poor, it based its calculations on estimates of Rs 15 for the rural areas and Rs 19 for the urban centres.
This too is a grossly unrealistic estimate. You cannot bring up even a pet dog in the same amount.
It makes me wonder as to why economists fail to realise that the indicators adopted for measuring poverty are inadequate, and do not reflect the prevailing realities. Nor do economists stand up and challenge the flawed head count of the poor. I don't know why they feel that by hiding the number of poor they are doing a service to the nation. That is why the Supreme Court had to step in.
What makes all these poverty estimates look unrealistic is the 2007 Arjun Sengupta committee report that I talked about ealrier (officially the report of the National Commission on Enterprise in Unorganised Sector), which had estimated that 77 per cent of the population or 836 million people were unable to spend more than Rs 20 (less than 50 US cents) a day. This is more or less a correct reflection of the extent of prevailing poverty, and therefore needs to be accepted as the new poverty line. If India were to accept this as poverty line, the UN estimates of global poverty too would come under the scanner.
The recommendation of the Tendulkar committee, which estimates 37.2 per cent of the population living below the poverty line, is actually a reflection of acute hunger that prevails. Knowing that Rs 19 a day cannot feed a human being in urban centres, the Tendulkar committee estimate should constitute the food insecurity or the hunger line. It means 37.2 per cent of the population is seriously food insecure and needs emergency food aid programmes to meet the challenges of hunger.
In other words, India's existing poverty line is actually a euphemism for severe food insecurity. I only hope the Supreme Court directs the government to draw two estimates -- a poverty line at 77 per cent of the population as suggested by the Arjun Sengupta Committee, and a food insecurity line at 37.2 per cent, which comprise people faced with absolute hunger and living in abject poverty.
Well, will all these estimates make a difference to the poor? Mercifully, they don't even know which estimate they fit into. What they know for sure is that poverty is their destiny. Rest all is statistical jugglery.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/devinder-sharma/how-to-keep-poverty-low_b_838329.html

POVERTY: Ghana: Government commends Social Investment Fund on efforts to reduce poverty

February 16, 2011
Government has commended Social Investment Fund (SIF) for its immense contribution to capacity building and logistical support to Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies to promote poverty reduction in the country.
Mr Samuel Ofosu-Ampofo, Minister of Local Government and Rural Development who made the commendation said government viewed SIF as a strategic institution playing key roles towards achieving poverty reduction.
This was contained in a speech read on his behalf at a Mid-Term Validation Workshop on Urban Poverty Reduction Project (UPRP) in Accra on Wednesday.
The workshop served as a platform to validate the findings of African Development Bank mission and discuss issues of project implementation to ascertain pragmatic measures to be undertaken for speedy execution of the project.
UPRP is a project initiated and executed by SIF as contribution to Ghana's efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals that call for a reduction by half of the proportion of poor living on less than dollar a day through urban poverty reduction strategies.
The project includes capacity building for pro-poor urban development and management, social capital and investment support, urban small-scale enterprise development, project management and coordination.
It is targeted to cover 12 Metropolitan, Municipal, Districts and secondary towns including Accra, Kumasi, Sekondi-Takoradi, Koforidua, Ho, Tema, Agogo, Akim Oda, Agona Swedru, Apam, Kasoa and Wenchi.
Mr Ofosu-Ampofo said the project was one of government's several poverty reduction strategies to accelerate economic growth and improve living standards in the country.
He said poverty reduction efforts should be aimed at making the poor more productive through wealth creation to help them produce enough to meet their needs.
The Sector Minister pointed out that the implementation of government's developments projects could only be successful when the assemblies were strengthened to undertake their duties.
He urged the participants to bring their expertise and experience on the project to bear on the issues discussed.
Dr Quartey Papafio, Chairman of SIF said more than 1,200 infrastructure projects including 500 classroom blocks, teachers' quarters and health infrastructure had been provided nationwide and about 1,545,477 people had benefited from these projects.
He said about GH¢5,700,000 in micro loans and GH¢622,000 in medium term loans had been disbursed to reduce poverty in the country.
Mr Joseph Acheampong, Acting Executive Director of SIF said the project had achieved a lot in terms of output and attained completion rates.
He said the average rate of project output deliverables was 62.93 per cent and total disbursement to date was 47 per cent.
SIF was established in 2006 as a joint venture by the Government, United Nations Development Programme and African Development Bank as part of government's effort to reduce poverty by providing direct assistance to the poor on demand-driven basis.

http://www.ghananewsagency.org/s_social/r_25514/

POVERTY: NAMIBIA: When we have food, we are rich

 Photo: Jaspreet Kindra/IRIN
Evard Haukongo with a millet plant in the test patch where he used conservation agriculture techniques

JOHANNESBURG, 7 February 2011 (IRIN) -
In the deep north of Southern Africa’s driest country, Namibia, about 10km from the Angolan border, live an elderly farming couple and their 10 adopted children, who watch the sky every day for rain. If the heavens do not open in another three weeks, they will not have enough food this year.
Pearl millet, the staple grain in northern Namibia and known as mahangu in the local language, is a drought-tolerant grain grown in semi-arid and arid areas.
But Evard Haukongo, 67, wants just the right amount of rain. In the past four years, he and other farmers in the Omsati region have struggled with floods. In the years before 2007, dry spells claimed their precious millet and many of their livestock.
“Farming is very hard now, it is a tough job - they say the climate is changing,” he said, wiping the sweat off his forehead as he pulled weeds from the sandy soil of his five-hectare smallholding.
It is early in the morning but you can almost bake a loaf of bread in the heat. The tender green millet plants, only 60cm high, growing out of the dry ground do not really stand a chance.
“Me and my wife are the last of the farmers in our family - this will die with us,” he said. Their own five children have all grown up and “found their own ways”, as his wife, Mirjam, put it, and settled in towns.
“Maybe if they [the adopted children] want to farm they will divide our land into 10 pieces and grow vegetables,” he said, laughing.
He looked on fondly as five of his adopted children set off for school. Despite not being related by blood, the children are close and share everything - from wild berries picked after school to every slice of bread.
Evard and Mirjam converse in English because they trained as teachers.
The goal was to return to their village to farm their land, and teach in the neighbouring school.
“We are farmers by birth - it is what we are - but we also loved to teach. We were teachers for some hours every morning [for two decades] and then farmers for the rest of the day,” said Mirjam, digging her spade into the ground. “If we did not plant we did not eat.”
The money they earned as teachers was not enough to feed and clothe their five children. Now, retired and living on a monthly pension of about US$137, they barely have enough to cover the needs of 10 children.
All the children - from the eldest, who is 20 years old, to the youngest, just three years old - spend most of their day tending the millet plants. “When we have mahangu we feel we are rich, even if we do not have money,” Evard said.
The subsistence farmers gave a home to the 10 children, passed on by dying or poor parents who were either friends or distant relatives.
They also opened their home to me for a day and a night.



 Photo: Jaspreet Kindra/IRIN
Children in the Haukongo household share their food

“Maybe it was HIV [that claimed some of the parents], I am not sure, but there are many children in our village [Ohendjeno]. Every house has many children - you do not leave them like that [orphaned].”
Namibia has an HIV prevalence rate of about 13 percent among adults aged 15 to 49 years, according to 2009 figures from UNAIDS.
The children either want to be nurses, teachers or doctors. Rachel, their eldest daughter, who works part-time as a shop assistant, loves farming. “When you see the mahangu on the field it is very beautiful,”
she said.
Things might be looking up for small-scale farmers. The Namibian government, with the help of a pilot climate change adaptation project run by the UN Development Programme (UNDP), is providing improved millet seeds that fruit earlier, and teaching water conservation farming techniques. Evard’s family is among 3,200 households who have been targeted.
He has tested the techniques on a small patch of his land, where the millet started fruiting within a month. “You can see the difference - the millet was planted in the furrows, so the roots have better access to the moisture and can survive in the heat.”
He was also given fertilizer, which he used to enrich the barren soil in the test patch. “I have no money to buy fertilizer for all the plants - but any little help is good,” he commented
Andreas Shimbolweni, manager of the UNDP project said the government provided subsidized fertilizer and seeds, but "The rains are extremely variable in this part of the world and the climate change trends predict they will continue to become even more variable."
Weather is king, said Kaunapawa Shapenga, the government’s agricultural extension officer for the region, on a visit to the Haukongo smallholding. “We never know what to expect - we have tried so many things… but we are giving out [seeds for] faster maturing varieties of millet, so at least the farmer does manage to grow something.”
Farmers have also experimented with cultivating rice in the some of the flood plains, or oshanas, found in the midst of the arid land, which remain flush with water for most of the year. “You cannot grow anything else in these plains but rice,” Shapenga said.
However, many of these farmers faced opposition from communities because the oshanas were communal land used for grazing, so “very few continue to grow rice.”
Evard and Mirjam said a solution would have to be found, if not for them then for their children, and perhaps rice was an option. “We will need to barricade the oshanas, protect them from animals, convince communities,” Shapenga suggested.
“But we cannot live without mahangu,” Mirjam said. Later that night, after a dinner of mahangu and a chicken killed in this reporter's honour, Evard pointed to a group of stars, the position of which tells them when to plant. “The stars are midway in the sky, which means half the rainy season is over and we just have two more months.”
Everyone looks up at the night sky in silence. The next morning an excited Evard wakes me up at the crack of dawn. “I saw a dark line in the sky above Angola, which means the rains will be here soon - maybe another three weeks." He took a deep breath. "Maybe we will be okay.”
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=91843

POVERTY: PAKISTAN: Shelter first or safety first?

  Photo: Nazeer Ahmed/IRIN:  New shelters are just as vulnerable to disaster as those that fell to the floods.

PeshawarPESHAWAR, 12 January 2011 (IRIN) - In his village in Charsadda District in Pakistan’s northwestern province of Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa, Mowaz Khan, 40, has settled in to the house he completed a few weeks ago.
With night-time temperatures falling to five degrees Celsius or less he is glad to have shelter, but he concedes his house has been hastily built and may not survive another disaster. “This house is built with lower quality materials compared to the one washed away by the [July 2010] flood. I did not have much money, but desperately needed shelter for my family,” he told IRIN.
This means Mowaz’s house, like many others built by flood victims, is vulnerable to any future disaster - including the next round of monsoon rains, expected in July and August this year.
Ahmed Kamal, a spokesman for the National Disaster Management Authority, told IRIN disaster preparedness is “very important”. He said that after the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan-administered Kashmir and northern parts of the country, houses built by the Earthquake Relief and Rehabilitation Authority were “based on a policy of `build back better’ so they could better withstand disaster.”
He said the government’s Planning Commission was responsible for post-flood reconstruction. “The reconstruction phase has not begun yet but it is expected the same policy of building back better will be followed when it gets under way,” he said.
Kamal said people who had built homes themselves to meet shelter needs had “probably not built according to any format” but used the same methods and materials they had employed in the past.
This seems to be the case across the flood-zone where most victims in Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa and Punjab provinces built or repaired houses, or are in the process of doing so. Rebuilding activity is also under way in many areas of Sindh - the province worst hit by floods.

Disaster-resistant shelters
“We need to rebuild so we can get on with our lives,” said Malook Muhammad, from Thatta District. He said he “did not understand” what a disaster-resistant shelter was.
Some efforts have been made to put up shelters that can better withstand floods or other natural disasters.
Mehreen Saeed, communications analyst at the UN Development Programme (UNDP) told IRIN: “Overall UNDP with local partners plans to improve living [conditions] for 5,000 households through provision of disaster-resistant and energy-efficient shelters.” About 500 shelters have been set up in Gilgit-Baltistan Territory, where temperatures have fallen to below freezing, and there are plans to extend the initiative to Thatta District in Sindh.
“After the 2005 earthquake, people from many organizations came to talk about building safer homes, from light-weight materials, to people in disaster-hit areas. But basically, people just built as they had always done. We have many disasters: landslides, flash floods, heavy rains, quakes, etc. Safer housing could save lives,” said Anees Ullah, 40, an engineer.
He told IRIN that “after a disaster the need for shelter is paramount in people’s minds. They do not wait for authorities to help them build safer houses.”
“It is all in the hands of God. He gives and takes life. Safer housing cannot determine who lives or dies,” said Saleem Jan from Swat District. “Besides, we had to build quickly or face the risk of freezing. There was no time after the flood to wait for plans from the government.”
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=91608

MALARIA: Can Southern Sudan Vote for Independence from Malaria?

Bill Brieger : 31 Dec 2010
The UNDP is also responsible for the Global Fund Round 7 Malaria Grant in Northern Sudan. It may be doing a better job with its malaria assignment. The most recent grant progress report rated them well with a ‘B1′, but raised the concern that, “The cash absorption rate during this reporting period is only 56% of the budget. This is attributed to delays in procurements.”
The North has a mix of malaria transmission situations, while the South is squarely in the endemic zone (as seen in map to right). When the South votes soon for Independence, what will be their own chances of becoming independent from malaria?
The Round 7 Malaria Grant in the South is managed by PSI. The Grant started 2 years ago and currently also rates a ‘B1′. At the most recent grant progress report dated October 2010, the following were achieved:
86% of ITNs had been distributed
10 BCC media campaigns had been implemented and over 6000 community organization staff had been trained, exceeding targets
Only 17% of targeted children had been treated with ACTs in the community
Health facilities exceeded expectations in terms of maintaining ACT stocks
The progress report concludes that, “Strengthening the capacity of the health system to deliver health services including malaria interventions have fallen behind set targets, due to late SR selection and contracting, and the PR focusing on the LLIN mass distribution campaign. Nevertheless, results seem to be gaining on set targets.”
Southern Sudan is not without malaria partners. For example, PSI has been working Southern Sudan since “January 2005, distributing Serena long-lasting insecticide-treated nets (LLIN) through the commercial sector … (and providing) support to the Ministry of Health (MOH), Government of Southern Sudan, and county health departments to prevent and treat malaria.” The IRC has trained “villagers to recognize and treat young children for malaria, diarrhea and pneumonia has helped to reduce child deaths by 81 percent in one area of Southern Sudan.”
USAID is also working to help tackle the malaria problem in Southern Sudan. The area has been one of three ‘non-focus’ countries - that is not formally under the US President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI). Two of these countries, Nigeria and Democratic Republic of the Congo, have been added to the formal PMI roster. One wonders whether the fate of malaria control in Southern Sudan rests on the election outcomes.
The BBC quotes a Southern Sudanese nurse who compares the upcoming referendum, “.. as a mother giving birth to twins - once the labour pains are over, the two children can grow up as friends .” We know that malaria during ‘pregnancy’ and during ‘infancy and young childhood’ are threats to survival. We hope that all donors will continue to work for the survival of these Sudanese ‘children’ and bring about a true independence from malaria.
http://www.malariafreefuture.org/blog/?p=1142

POVERTY: NEPAL: Discrimination continues against Dalits

  Photo: Naresh Newar/IRIN:  Dalits are still regarded as “untouchables”

KATHMANDU, 24 December 2010 (IRIN) - Dalit communities, the lowest of the 100 caste groups in Nepal, continue to be marginalized, despite the fact that caste-based discrimination was abolished in 1963, activists say.
"Untouchability and discrimination were legitimized by the state over a century ago," said Bhakta Biswakarma, national head of the advocacy group, Nepal National Dalit Social Welfare Organization (NNDSWO).
"Today we see the state doing little to change the situation. Discrimination against the Dalit as the untouchable caste is still practised so rigidly - especially in the remote areas."
The 1854 Civil Code, introduced by the Rana regime, explicitly declared the Dalits untouchable, the lowest status within the Hindu social hierarchical structure.
This imposed strict regulations on where the Dalit were allowed to live (they could not enter temples or use the same tap water as higher castes), forbad them from education and from participating in community festivals.
Those who defied the law of untouchability were punished; the state imposed the practice of discrimination on society, said Suman Poudel, an official with the Dalit NGO Federation (DNF).
Little has changed for the estimated 23 Dalit communities in the country's hill and Terai regions, despite the propagation of legal rights.

Impoverished and neglected
Dalit communities have the lowest human development rankings in the country: 49.2 percent live below the poverty line compared with a national average of 31 percent, according to the World Bank.
The UN Development Programme (UNDP) says discriminatory labour practices persist in the Terai, where the majority of Dalit live. During annual harvest seasons (March-May and September-November), high-caste landlords reportedly continue to use debt bondage to secure unpaid labour from Dalit labourers.
In the Terai, many Dalits are landless and live on less than US$1 a day, Poudel said, while UNDP assessments reveal that their annual per capita income is less than half that of higher castes ($764 to $1,848) across the rest of the country.
With a literacy rate of less than 33.5 percent above grade six (against 67.5 percent among higher-caste Brahmins), and high rates of school dropout, improving the social condition of Dalit communities is a challenge.

Weak implementation
And while caste discrimination was officially abolished in 1963, experts say the government has been weak in enforcing the ban.
"There are a plethora of policies and laws that have been drafted to protect the Dalit," said Oxfam's Robert Sila, a social inclusion and civil society expert. "But there is no seriousness on the government side when it comes to implementing these policies."
One of the pillars of the government's poverty reduction strategy for a long time has been social inclusion, but there is little evidence of that, Sila says.
However, Sudha Neupane, under-secretary for the gender equality and social section of Nepal's Ministry of Local Development, says the government is focusing heavily on combating discrimination.
"The government is very sensitive to the issue of discrimination against the Dalit," Neupane said.
A starting point would be addressing the controversy over population size. Government statistics show that the Dalit make up nearly 13 percent of the 29 million population, although the Dalit put that figure at more than 20 percent.
"A government cannot effectively address the needs of a population if it doesn't have their exact numbers. It should do a fresh census to determine the real numbers," said Sila.
Nepal's last national census was done in 2001 and a new one is expected in 2011.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=91437

POVERTY: HCM City (Saigon) poverty rate exceeds Ha Noi

Dec 16, 2010

HA NOI — There are far more poor people in HCM City than in Ha Noi when a multi-dimensional poverty approach is adopted, despite higher average incomes in the southern city.
The 2009 Urban Poverty Survey, which was launched in Ha Noi yesterday, showed a higher poverty rate in HCM City in seven out of eight measures of poverty, including social welfare, education, health, housing, housing area and quality, participation in social activities and security.
However, if the traditional way to measure poverty, based on income is adopted, the poverty rate in (prior to expansion) Ha Noi in 2009 was higher than in HCM City on all benchmarks.
The capital had 1.27 per cent of its population living under the 2006 national income poverty line (about US$1 per day), compared to 0.31 per cent in the southern city.
The figure increased to 1.34 per cent and 4.57 per cent for international standards of $1.25 and $2 per day in Ha Noi, much higher than 0.29 per cent and 2.08 per cent in HCM City.
Although a small part of the population in the two biggest cities were living below the poverty line, more than one-third of the population in both places had no access to social security networks and were living in low quality, cramped dwellings, the survey found.
A higher proportion of people in HCM City were living in overcrowded living conditions - defined as less than 7 square metres per person - than in Ha Noi (31 per cent versus 26 per cent).
While 9.8 per cent of Ha Noi's population did not go to junior-secondary school, almost 27 per cent of HCM City population were in this category. Similarly, more than one in every five people in Ha Noi had a university degree while the rate was only one in 10 in HCM City.
More than seven in every 10 people living in Ha Noi had some forms of health insurance, a sharp difference with nearly six in 10 in HCM City.
There were significant differences between the two cities in terms of employment, the survey found.
University degree-holding workers in Ha Noi almost doubled those in HCM City; and compared to the southern city, twice as high the proportion of workers in the capital had permanent work contracts, which meant more work-related benefits.
The multi-dimensional poverty indices also revealed inequalities between rural and urban areas, and unregistered or temporary migrants compared to permanent residents in both cities.
For instance, a majority of migrants (62 per cent) were living in cramped space, a sharp contrast with the registered resident population of both cities (17 per cent).
"The results clearly show that while Ha Noi and HCM City have enjoyed tremendous economic growth, this has not benefited everyone living in the two cities," said UNDP country director Setsuko Yamazaki.
So the research clearly pointed to the fact that both cities were facing challenges in ensuring sustainable and equal economic and social development, she said.
The survey, conducted in October and November last year with the participation of more than 8,200 people, was the only source of information on poverty and living conditions among migrants in Viet Nam's two biggest cities, said Ha Noi People's Committee deputy chairman Hoang Manh Hien.
"This is the first time a project has adopted a multi-dimensional study of poverty in Ha Noi and HCM City," he said.
UNDP expert Nguyen Bui Linh said the income/expenditure approach to assess poverty had major limitations as income was not the only determining factor in assessing standards of living.
The Urban Poverty Survey was conducted by the General Statistics Office and the two municipal People's Committees with the support of the UNDP. — VNS
http://www.dztimes.net/post/social/hcm-city-s-poverty-rate-exceeds-ha-noi-despite-higher-incomes.aspx

POVERTY: UN agencies working in unison would do better in Cancun:

CANCUN, 9 December 2010 (IRIN) -
Competition between UN agencies for limited funds, sometimes involving donors, hampered the UN in responding cohesively as “one organization” to help countries develop climate change programmes, said a senior official.
In a session on the sidelines of the UN climate change talks in Cancun, Mexico, on how the UN system has been taking action to help countries adapt to the adverse effects of climate change and manage climate-related risks, Stanlake Samkange, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) country director in Uganda, spoke candidly about his experience in the East African country.
“It is a matter of urgency that the proposal for a UN Multi-donor Fund for climate change programmes [by UN agencies] be approved so most of these problems will be resolved,” he told IRIN. The modalities for the global UN fund were still being worked out at the UN headquarters in New York.
Uganda is the only country besides Ethiopia where the UN runs a programme with the government to address the impact of climate change, said Samkange, who is also joint coordinator of the initiative.
He said “temptation” on the part of some UN agencies to raise funds on their own, and efforts by some donors to “try to separate us” because of their own agendas, created problems initially for the agencies.
Samkange said his agency had been offered funds for a climate change adaptation programme on condition that it was run exclusively by WFP, but he turned it down as elements of the project fell within the mandate of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). “We took a position that we would not get distracted by any money thrown our way.”
Anote Tong, President of Kiribati, who chaired the session, remarked that sometimes even countries had been caught between competing UN agencies.
As part of Uganda’s climate change programme, WFP is shifting focus to food security, Samkange said. The agency has been running a food aid programme for the past 40 years in Karamoja - a semi-arid region in northeastern Uganda that has faced at least 14 droughts in 25 years. “Our emergency programme in Karamoja will come to an end this year [2010] and we will spend our funds on development projects,” Samkange said.
Other problems
Representatives from other leading UN agencies - including the UN Development Programme (UNDP), the UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the UN Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat), and the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction - told the session that efforts were being made to work in a concerted manner.
WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud said it was important to build a sound information bank to assist any programme aimed at addressing the impacts of climate change.
By 2030 most people in all developing countries will live in urban areas, according to UN Population Fund (UNFPA) projections. UN-Habitat estimated that the slum population in Sub-Saharan countries had doubled between 1990 and 2005, when it reached 200 million
Auxmite Gebre-Egziabher of UN-Habitat noted that policy-makers often neglected urban settlements, particularly slums, although these areas were among the most vulnerable to climate-related risks.
Most of the urban poor end up living on the fringes of cities and towns along the coast, on river banks or beside river beds exposed to flooding and storms. The floods in Pakistan, which displaced several million urban poor living along the Indus River and its tributaries, were a vivid reminder.
Gebre-Egziabher suggested that “We need to conduct city-wide vulnerability assessments to enhance the resilience of slum settlements.”
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?Reportid=91330

POVERTY: The Poverty-Environment Initiative

The Poverty-Environment Initiative (PEI) of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is a global UN-led programme that supports country-led efforts to mainstream poverty-environment linkages into national development planning. The PEI provides financial and technical assistance to government partners to set up institutional and capacity strengthening programmes and carry out activities to address the particular poverty-environment context. For more information, please visit: www.unpei.org. The provision of knowledge resources and services and its promotion is one of the main roles of the Poverty-Environment Initiative and its Annual Progress Report offers valuable lessons learnt and information for development practitioners interested in poverty and environment mainstreaming efforts.
The Annual Progress Report 2009 provides a comprehensive overview of PEI’s activities and achievements to date at the country level. The report highlights continuous lesson learning at country level, delivering on transformative targets, supporting the evolution of the PEI programmatic approach, living with climate change adaptation and measuring the longer-term impact of PEI. Comprehensive country fact sheets for on-going country programmes and the ones under preparation are included as annexes for easy information.The main part of the report presents the various achievements at country level, thereby reviewing:(1) Increased awareness and understanding of poverty-environment issues and capacities for mainstreaming;(2) Generation of country-specific evidence on the contribution of the environment to pro-poor economic growth and human well-being;(3) Environmental sustainability included as priority objective or outcomes in national planning processes;(4) Inclusion of poverty-environment indicators into policy documents and monitoring systems;(5) Increased budget allocation for poverty-environment measures; and(6) Improved integration of poverty-environment linkages into joint UN programming processes at country level.
The report is available at: http://www.unpei.org/PDF/PEI-annualprogress-report2009.pdf
http://desertification.wordpress.com/2010/08/10/undp-unep-poverty-environment-initiative-iisd/

POVERTY: Remeasuring Poverty

July 26th, 2010
Talking about the number of people living on or below a “dollar a day” is a simple, effective way of telling the story of progress (or the lack of it) in reducing global poverty. But focusing on income alone has obvious limitations as a measure of extreme poverty. These have been highlighted by the launch this month of a new index of “multidimensional poverty”, which takes into account specific deprivations such as inadequate education, sanitation and electricity as well as low income. There are ten different measures in all, and someone deficient in 70% of these is clearly worse off than someone lacking in 40%.
As well as providing greater detail about the different forms of extreme poverty in different parts of the world, the new measure, devised by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative and the United Nations Development Programme, shows that there are many more people living in extreme poverty than is suggested by the dollar a day measure (or, strictly speaking, $1.25 a day): 1.7 billion, rather than 1.3 billion.
The index will be incorporated into the UNDP’s annual Human Development Report, the 20th edition of which will be published in October, and should improve its already invaluable Human Development Index.
To see the difference the new measure makes, consider two African countries, Tanzania and Ethiopia. Using the income measure of poverty alone, Ethiopia looks much the less impoverished of the two – 39% of its population living in extreme poverty compared to 89% of Tanzanians. Use the multidimensional poverty measure, however, and the picture is reversed: around 65% of Tanzanians are in extreme poverty, compared with 90% of Ethiopians. Niger has the highest percentage of people in extreme multidimensional poverty, at 93%.
Despite these examples, and Africa’s generally impoverished image in the media, it accounts for ‘only’ 28% of the people in the world living in extreme multidimensional poverty. Over 51% live in South Asia. Despite India’s consistently strong economic growth, the 421m people living in extreme multidimensional poverty in eight of its states exceed the total number living similarly impoverished lives in the 26 poorest African countries combined.
These new numbers should add to the sense of urgency not only among India’s growing army of billionaires, at least some of whom are exploring how to be effective philanthrocapitalists, but also at the various international meetings scheduled for September to consider how to make greater progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals by 2015. The more subtle measurement of the details of poverty in different places should be of great help to philanthrocapitalists and others as they try better to target their efforts on the areas of greatest need.
http://www.philanthrocapitalism.net/2010/07/remeasuring-poverty/

POVERTY: Understanding the multidimensionality of poverty

July 21, 2010,
With much of the world’s attention focused on reducing the incidence of poverty, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), in collaboration with academics of Oxford University, recently launched a new index to measure poverty levels that will show a multidimensional picture of people living in hardship, and could help target development resources more effectively.
The new measure, the Multidimensional Poverty Index, or MPI, was developed and applied by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) with UNDP support. To be featured in the forthcoming 20th Anniversary edition of the UNDP Human Development Report, the MPI will replace the Human Poverty Index, which had been included in these reports since 1997.
This year’s Human Development Report will employ the MPI that assesses a range of critical factors or “deprivations” on the household level, from education to health outcomes to assets and services. Taken together, these factors provide a fuller portrait of acute poverty than simple income measures.
In explaining the MPI, the new measure is likened to a high-resolution lens which reveals a vivid spectrum of challenges facing the poorest households. The MPI provides a fuller measure of poverty than the traditional dollar-a-day formulas. It is expected to be a valuable addition to the family of instruments that are used to examine broader aspects of well-being.
The UNDP and OPHI researchers analyzed data from 104 countries with a combined population of 5.2 billion or 78 percent of the world’s total. About 1.7 billion people in the countries covered – a third of their entire population – live in multidimensional poverty, according to the MPI. This exceeds the 1.3 billion people, in those same countries, estimated to live on $1.25 a day or less, the more commonly accepted measure of “extreme poverty.” Half of the world’s poor as measured by the MPI live in South Asia (51 percent or 844 million people) and one quarter in Africa (28 percent or 458 million). Even in countries with strong economic growth in recent years, the MPI analysis reveals the persistence of acute poverty.
The Multidimensional Poverty Index definitely provides a fuller account of a prolonged global problem, allowing global and national leaders a better handle of the woe that needs to be attended to.
http://www.mb.com.ph/articles/268117/understanding-multidimensionality-poverty

POVERTY: MDG progress

New York, 17 June 2010—The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) launched, today, an extensive assessment of what must be done to advance sustainable development and reduce global poverty.
The report, titled What Will It Take To Achieve The Millennium Development Goals? An International Assessment, identifies a concrete action agenda to inform the outcome of the World leaders' MDG Summit in New York, this September.“For the many people living in poverty, the Millennium Development Goals are not abstract and aspirational targets; they offer a means to a better life, and overall a more just and peaceful world,” said UNDP Administrator Helen Clark at the launch. “Our hope is that this evidence of tried and tested policies, and this agenda for accelerating the pace of success, informs a positive outcome at the world leaders summit on the MDGs in September", Helen Clark added. Drawing on evidence of what has worked in 50 countries, UNDP's reportprovides an eight-point MDG action agenda to accelerate and sustain development progress over the next five years. The eight points focus on supporting nationally-owned and participatory development; pro-poor, job-rich inclusive growth including the private sector; government investments in social services like health and education; expanding opportunities for women and girls; access to low carbon energy; domestic resource mobilization; and delivery on Official Development Assistance commitments.From the abolition of primary school fees leading to a surge in enrolment in Ethiopia to innovative health servicing options in Afghanistan reducing under-five child mortality, the report brings forward concrete examples that have worked and can be replicated,even in the poorest countries, to make real progress across the Goals.Rapid improvements in both education and health, the report illustrates, have occurred in countries where there were adequate public expenditures and strong new partnerships.Evidence found in the Assessment also suggests that reductions in poverty and hunger occur when economic growth is job-rich and boosts agricultural production. Ghana's nationwide fertilizer subsidy programme, for instance, increased food production by 40 percent and reduced hunger by nine percent between 2003 and 2005.Other examples include a national rural employment initiative in India which has benefited some 46 million households. The programme guarantees a minimum of 100 days of work for landless labourers and marginal farmers, with almost half being women. Such robust social protection and employment programmes, the report affirms, reduce poverty and reverse inequality.Albania was praised for adopting a ninth MDG, reforming public administration, legislation and policies to promote accountability and enhance development results. Country-led development and effective government, argues the report, are at the root of achieving the MDGs.The Assessment also denotes the linkages between many of the Goals. For example, improving opportunities for women and girls and expanding access to energy, both, have a multiplier effect on MDG progress. The provision of generators in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Mali and Senegal, has helped to free up an average of two to four hours per day for women, which they have been able to spend on education, improving their health and generating additional sources of revenue.This Assessment finds that well-targeted and predictable aid is a critical catalyst for meeting the MDGs and has produced significant results in Burkina Faso, Mozambique, Rwanda, Uganda and Vietnam by making more resources available for service delivery. Evidence, however, also suggests that countries need to expand their own domestic resource mobilization and to adjust their budgets to ensure maximum return on their investment.The report, which will be shared with Member States as they prepare the outcome document for the September MDG Summit, also singles out the failure to conclude the World Trade Organization's Doha Development Round of trade negotiations as the most significant gap in formulating a global partnership for development. In addition, market access for developing countries is little improved and domestic agricultural subsidies by rich countries continue to overshadow policy coherence needed to accelerate MDG progress.To work in tandem with this report, UNDP is also piloting an MDG acceleration toolkit. It is a framework designed to help governments, the UN at the country level and other development partners identify where the real bottlenecks to progress lie and, in tackling them, which policies can have the most impact on achieving the MDGs.
http://accra-mail.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=17788:undp-puts-forward-eight-point-action-agenda-to-reduce-poverty-and-achieve-sustainable-development&catid=66:world&Itemid=215

POVERTY: India: even worse than Africa

Eight Indian states account for more poor people than in the 26 poorest African countries combined, a new measure of global poverty has found.
The Indian states, including Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal, have 421 million "poor" people, the study found.
This is more than the 410 million poor in the poorest African countries, it said.
The Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) measures a range of "deprivations" at household levels.
Developed by Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) with UN support, it will feature in the upcoming UNDP Human Development Report.
The measure assess a number of "deprivations" in households - from education to health to assets and services.
"The MPI is like a high resolution lens which reveals a vivid spectrum of challenges facing the poorest households," said OPHI director Dr Sabina Alkire.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10609407

POVERTY: UN identifies strategies to accelerate development and poverty reduction

UNDP Administrator Helen Clark17 June 2010 – Development models that focus attention on the poor while expanding job opportunities, increased government spending on social services and aid flows from affluent nations are all successful strategies for alleviating global poverty, the United Nations says.
Access to low carbon energy and mobilizing domestic capital by, for example, improving tax collection, are the other factors the UN Development Programme (UNDP) identifies in a new report as crucial factors for the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
The MDGs are eight internationally-agreed targets which aim to reduce poverty, hunger, maternal and child deaths, disease, inadequate shelter, gender inequality and environmental degradation by 2015.
“For those living in poverty, the MDGs have never been abstract or aspirational targets,” said UNDP Administrator Helen Clark, when she launched the report entitled What Will It Take To Achieve The Millennium Development Goals? An International Assessment at UN Headquarters in New York.
“They [MDGs] have offered a pathway to a better life – a life with access to adequate food and income; to basic education and health services; to clean water and sanitation; and to empowerment for women. Put simply, advancing the MDGs is an important milestone in our quest for a more just and peaceful world,” Miss Clark added.
The report draws examples of development models that have worked from 50 countries across the world.
The abolition of primary school fees in Ethiopia and Kenya, for example, led to a surge in the number of children enrolled in school, while innovative health servicing options in Afghanistan resulted in a reduction of mortality rates among children under the age of five, according to the UNDP report.
Adequate expenditures by governments have led to improvements in both education and health, the report said, adding that evidence from assessments suggested that reductions in poverty and hunger occurred when economic growth is “job-rich.” That also resulted in improved agricultural production.
Ghana’s nationwide fertilizer subsidy programme, for instance, increased food production by 40 per cent and reduced hunger by nine per cent between 2003 and 2005.
Other examples include a national rural employment initiative in India which benefited 46 million households. The programme guarantees a minimum of 100 days of work for landless labourers and marginal farmers, with almost half being women.
“Such robust social protection and employment programmes reduce poverty and reverse inequality,” the report stresses.
It praises Albania for adopting a “ninth MDG” by reforming public administration, legislation and policies to promote accountability and strengthen results, an indication that country-led development and effective government are at the root of achieving the MDGs.
The UNDP assessment also highlights linkages between many of the MDGs. For example, improving opportunities for women and girls and expanding access to energy have a multiplier effect on MDG progress. The report notes that providing generators in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Mali and Senegal, has helped to free up an average of two to four hours per day for women, which they have been able to spend on education, improving their health and generating additional sources of revenue.
The report finds that “well-targeted and predictable aid” is a critical catalyst for meeting the MDGs and has produced significant results in Burkina Faso, Mozambique, Rwanda, Uganda and Viet Nam by making more resources available for service delivery. Countries also need to expand their own domestic resource mobilization and to adjust their budgets to ensure maximum return on their investment.
“Of course, the global recession, the food and fuel crises, and the challenges of climate change and of natural disasters generally have complicated the road to 2015,” said Miss Clark. “But they do not make the MDGs unobtainable if we collectively determine that we want to achieve them,” she added.
The report, which will be shared with UN Member States as they prepare the outcome document for the September MDG Summit, also singles out the failure to conclude the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Doha Development Round of trade negotiations as the most significant gap in formulating a global partnership for development.
Market access for products from developing countries remain limited and domestic agricultural subsidies by rich nations continue to overshadow policy coherence needed to accelerate MDG progress, UNDP notes.
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=35058&Cr=mdgs&Cr1=

POVERTY: LESOTHO: Hard times delay MDGs

JOHANNESBURG, 25 June 2010 (IRIN) - Life is mostly hard in the mountainous kingdom of Lesotho, but the chronic droughts that seem signal the unfolding impact of climate change are projected to become more severe, and could squeeze cultivable land from an already slim 10 percent to a mere three percent in 25 years. "While other factors contribute to droughts and the shrinking of cultivable land, climate change exacerbates the situation," said a new UN Development Programme (UNDP) assessment of countries' progress towards achieving the eight UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which range from halving extreme poverty to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and providing universal primary education by 2015. Erratic weather, lack of access to agriculture inputs, soil erosion and high HIV/AIDS prevalence have all contributed to shrinking cereal production. In 1980 Lesotho produced grain enough to meet 80 percent of its requirement; by 2004 it could barely cover 30 percent of its needs, and output has been steadily dropping, according to the UN World Food Programme. The UNDP report noted that adapting to climate change, which will affect food production, was urgently required to ensure all the MDGs are met, but this would take more money. The extra costs will arise from rapid interventions, like beefing up social protection and improving the capacity of any particular programme aimed at achieving the UN goals to adapt to capricious weather patterns. The report cited studies that tried putting a cost on making the MDGs "climate resilient" globally. "Estimates set the cost of 'climate resilient' MDGs to be about a third higher than the conventional cost of meeting the MDGs - around US$100 billion a year for the next decade." The report also looked at how and to what extent the 2006-08 food price crisis, the global recession, and rapid urbanization had affected the ability of countries to achieve the MDGs. There is more bad news for Lesotho. In 2009 the global recession took out more than a million jobs in neighbouring South Africa, especially in the mining sector, a traditional source of work and income. Unemployment in Lesotho shot up from a high 23 percent in 2008 to 29.4 percent in 2009. The report noted that "Progress towards the MDGs is expected to improve, as growth is recovering in many countries, but achievement of the MDG goals will be delayed." Read the report at: http://content.undp.org/go/cms-service/stream/asset/?asset_id=2620072