Eradicating Poverty and Stabilizing Population

1. Eradicating Poverty and Stabilizing Population By: Douglas Gagne, Peter Gibson, Amanda Ledford

2. The Necessary Steps • Education • Health • Stabilizing Population • Rescuing Failed States • Total Agenda and Budget

3. The Benefits of Education • Reduces fertility rates • Enhances agricultural yields • Institutional means to educate children about AIDS

4. Remaining Challenges to Universal Education • Teachers being decimated by AIDS. • Scholarships for teacher training within country borders. • Accessing remote portions of the population. • Girls Advisory Committees

5. Case Example: “Education For All” • World Bank-sponsored plan that grants financial aid to support any plan with the following criteria: • Sensible plan to reach universal education. • Commit a meaningful share of its own resources. • Practice transparent budgeting and accounting.

6. The Price Tag of Universal Education • $10 Billion for children • $4 Billion for adults • $6 Billion for school lunch program • TOTAL: $20 Billion Est. Lifetime Cost of Nimitz-Class Carrier ~$22Bil.

7. But Costs are even higher… • Losses in productivity due to hunger • Farmers with even a basic education have higher crop yields • Lost opportunity to raise AIDS awareness

8. Health: • Degenerative vs. infectious diseases: • Sanitation in developing countries • Oral Rehydration Therapy • Inoculations • HIV/AIDS • Smoking

9. Ensuring Safe and Reliable Water • Problem: Waste treatment is expensive and wastes valuable water supplies. • Solution: Dry Compost Toilets

10. Taught mothers in Bangladesh how to prepare a simple oral rehydration solution from a measured amount of salt and sugar to water that treats diarrhea. • Succeeded in dramatically reducing child/infant deaths in that country • UNICEF picked up the idea in their program from worldwide diarrheal disease treatment which helped reduce children deaths from diarrhea from 4.6 million in 1980 to 1.6 million in 2006 A nongovernmental group that began in Bangladesh in 1972, and is focused on helping poor women

11. Childhood Immunization Programs • Funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, assists in protecting poor children from infectious diseases like measles • Just a few pennies per child can make a huge difference in the future and health of any country who cannot afford vaccinations

12. AIDS • An estimated 25 million people have died from HIV/AIDs so far • 2/3 of infected people live in sub-Saharan Africa • Education about prevention is the key to curbing the epidemic • - first goal is to reduce number of new infections • -focus is mainly on groups most likely to spread the disease

13. Dealing with HIV in the developing world and Eastern Europe would require 17.9 billion condoms a year but only 3.2 billion are being distributed. By adding the costs of condom distribution; promoting use, along with the production of condoms, the total price would equate to less than 3 billion a year, easily meeting the needs of this concerning issue.

14. Disease Eradication Success Stories • The WHO (World Health Organization) led efforts which successfully eliminated smallpox through a worldwide immunization program • This initiative pattern was used again by a WHO-led coalition to wipe out polio • Polio cases dropped from about 350,000 a year in 1988 to less than 700 in 2003 • Campaign led by Jimmy Carter has nearly eradicated the guinea worm disease

15. Reducing Cigarette Smoking • Led by WHO Tobacco Free Initiative • Treaty that calls for limiting smoking in public areas, increasing taxes on cigarettes, and stronger health warnings on the packages

16. Basic Health Care • A study done by WHO in 2001 found that by providing developing countries with basic health care services in village-level clinics, the world as a whole would gain huge economic benefits • Estimated average of $33 Billion a yr through 2015

17. Population Groups • 2 Groups with projected shrinking populations • Declining fertility (33 countries) • Increasing Mortality (Lesotho and Swaziland) • Group with fertility near replacement level • 2.5 Billion people (29 countries) • Group with population growth • A large group of countries

18. Fertility Level Projections for 2050 • High- 10.5 bill. • Medium- 9.2 bill. • Low- reach 1.5 children per couple (peak at a little over 8 billion in 2042 and then decline) Must strive for the low projection if we want to eradicate hunger, poverty, and illiteracy

19. Rescuing Failing States

20. Failing States: Our Responsibility? • Rescuing failing states is important because at some point, this trend could translate into a failing civilization • Example of states in the process of being rescued: Liberia and Colombia • Liberia: improvements in 2005 with the election of Harvard grad Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf • Colombia: Improvements made as gov’t gained legitimacy and strong coffee prices • U.S. efforts with weak states are mixed

21. Current Ideology • U.S.: ‘We need a Department of Global Security’ (DGS) • Something that would fashion a coherent policy toward each weak and failing state • Threats coming less from military power, more from undermining states (rapid population growth, poverty, deteriorating environmental support systems, etc.) • The DGS would incorporate AID and all the various assistance programs currently in other departments, thereby assuming responsibility for U.S. development assistance • Funded by the Department of Defense

22. DGS purpose: • Stabilize population, restore environmental support systems, eradicate poverty, provide universal primary school education • Drug trafficking, foreign policies, and private investment to failing states • Peace Corps rejuvenated through DGS

23. Poverty Eradication Agenda and Budget Two ways to achieve this goal: 1. Farm Subsidy Reduction: • The reform of farm subsidies in aid-giving industrial countries is essential. • U.S. farm subsidies depress prices of exports from developing countries. In other words, U.S. tax payers are subsidizing an increase in world hunger. 2. Debt Relief: an essential component to eradicating poverty • IE: When sub-Saharan Africa was spending 4x as much on debt servicing as on health care, debt forgiveness was key to increasing living standards

24. Conclusion: • Biggest investments: Education and Health • Education: Universal primary education and eradication of adult illiteracy • Health Care: Interventions to control diseases, starting with childhood vaccinations

25. Discussion Questions: • Is Universal Education a realistic goal? Have we even achieved this goal in the United States? • Adult illiteracy predominately afflicts women, is providing literacy training sufficient? • Why or Why not? • In the midst of America’s national debt, should we be bailing out other failing states? • We spent 680 billion dollars in 2010 on our military budget, would this money be better spent on eradicating poverty and stabilizing population?

26. Works Cited • http://www.brac.net/ • http://my.opera.com/drlaunch/blog/technology-against-poverty • http://saudigirlslife.com/ • http://www.flickr.com/photos/gatesfoundation/sets/72157625906549426/detail/ • http://childimmunizationusa.wordpress.com/2010/11/30/thank-goodness-for-this-vaccination/ • http://www.aimmission.org/three-key-areas/ • http://www.brac.net/ • http://www.mapsorama.com/world-map-of-people-living-with-hivaids/ • http://www.worldmapper.org/display.php?selected=227 • http://www.gatesfoundation.org/polio/Pages/2010-year-in-review.aspx#image=0 • http://www.fark.com/comments/6020603/Giant-condom-placed-on-statue-as-tribute-to-inventor-riles-officials-too-bad-they-cant-take-some-good-natured-ribbing • http://blog.asiantown.net/tags.aspx?t=condoms • http://www.tobaccoatlas.org/consumption.html • http://www.economist.com/node/14743589 • http://www.fundforpeace.org/global/?q=cr-10-99-fs • http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a6/Percent_poverty_world_map.png