Bex explores the causes of poverty.
Living the prosperous lifestyles that many of us do in Britain, we take a lot of things for granted. We have the chance to continue our education at university without any serious problems. We assume that when we turn the tap on water will flow out, and that when we turn a light on light will be given off. We undervalue our ability to read and write, and often spend money carelessly, without a second thought.
Only 1% of the world’s people are lucky enough to have university education. 17% don’t have access to clean, treated water. 31% do not have electricity. 50% of people live in poverty.
Poverty is a situation where a human being is deprived of basic needs (clean water, food, sanitation, health, shelter and education), often as a result of lack of money. This often leads to starvation and the spread of disease.
There are many theories about the cause of hunger that are incorrect. One theory is that there is not enough food in the world to feed everyone. In actuality, there is more than enough and the problem is not the amount but the distribution of the food. Europe destroys 1,500,000 tonnes of food each year in order to keep up demand and therefore prices so that the economy isn’t affected. Yet, despite this excess of food, each night 750,000,000 people go hungry.
Another belief for cause of the starvation that many face is that the world is over-populated. The world’s population is increasing, but places like Africa have a lower population density than Western Europe (18 people per square mile compared to our 98). In Africa, land is infertile and people do not have money to buy the technology needed to improve it. This means that Western Europe can feed almost its entire people even though there are so many in just a small area, while millions die from under-nourishment in Africa. Therefore, poverty can often depend on where a person is situated rather than the world population.
Some people believe that natural disasters result in starvation. While earthquakes and floods may destroy the livelihoods of many, and droughts have a direct impact on crops and food consumption within an area, these natural disasters are not restricted to Developing Countries. The United States of America was affected by a drought in 1998 and nobody died because they store grain and have the means and technology to transport it, and the money to help the affected farmers. However, the same drought in a Developing Country would have killed thousands as they do not have the same provisions or amount of money as The United States of America so people are forced to eat their own seed corn and then have nothing left to plant, resulting in no harvest for many years after the drought.
The main causes of poverty relate to economics. Many developing countries owe a large amount of money to other countries. In the past, prosperous countries have lent money to developing countries, but they expect it to be paid back with interest. Developing countries do not have enough money to pay these debts and just slide further into debt.
Climate change pushes poor people further into poverty as they do not have the resources to fight it and are vulnerable to severe flooding and natural disasters. By the year 2050, it is thought that as many as 30,000,000 people may be hungry as a result of climate change.
Regardless of religion or race, helping others is something we should all strive towards doing. Surely everyone has a responsibility towards one another and this is something everyone should act upon in order to pull people out of poverty and make the world a better place? Join the campaign to make poverty history, give whatever you can to charities that support the poor, and do your bit to stop climate change. Governments need to do more to prevent this situation escalating and help people out of poverty. Call on your government to cancel the debt and take climate change more seriously.
