by Pablo Leal
On September 19, 2006, the global civil society coalition, Social Watch, launched its annual Report “Impossible Architecture” in the city-state of Singapore . This report was launched in the same location and at the same time that the World Bank-IMF held their Board of Governors annual meeting. However, the conclusions of the Social Watch report were dramatically different from those being reached within the WB-IMF conference halls.
by Kate Allen
While I support all the Millennium Development Goals, I have mixed feelings about Make Poverty History. I think perhaps the campaign that lends itself a little too easily to wristband-wearing “slacktivism” needs the voice of another movement – Make Affluence History. Forgive my cynicism, but Make Affluence History wristbands (if they existed) would be a little harder to use to accessorise our designer outfits, reminding us as the campaign does that we can never tackle poverty without first tackling our own greed.
By 12:13 pm on New Year’s Day, while many Canadians were still nursing a hangover, Canada“s 100 highest paid CEOs had already pocketed what will take minimum wage workers the rest of 2007 to earn.
by Vandana Shiva
The cover story of the Time Magazine of March 14, 2005 was dedicated to the theme, “How to End Poverty”. It was based on an essay by Jeffrey Sachs “The End of Poverty”, from his book with the same title. The photos accompanying the essay are homeless children, scavengers in garbage dumps, heroin addicts. These are images of disposable people, people whose lives, resources, livelihoods have been snatched from them by a brutal, unjust, excluding process which generates poverty for the majority and prosperity for a few.
Garbage is the waste of a throwaway society – ecological societies have never had garbage. Homeless children are the consequences of impoverishment of communities and families who have lost their resources and livelihoods. These are images of the perversion and externalities of a non-sustainable, unjust, inequitable economic growth model.
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