Poverty #9

Mexican president says poverty now first priority

In this article Mark Stevenson talks about poverty in Mexico that this will be the first priority of the Mexican president, Felipe Calderon. In the second half of his term he will be reducing poverty, after the war against drug cartels took center stage in the first three years of his administration. With the offensive bogged down amid drug-related violence in some Mexican cities, poverty increased. Next to poverty Calderon will also continue with his greatest commitment to public, job creation.
Figures published in July by the government showed that extreme poverty in Mexico — defined as people who cannot buy enough food — rose from 13.8 million in 2006 to 19.5 million in 2008, in a country of almost 107 million inhabitants. To change poverty Calderon needs to have a lot of patient. There is not only one strategy that will solve poverty, there are many factors that need to be taken in consideration so the setting of the goal to solve poverty is the start of a long and probably also expensive journey.

The Times: Poverty

Copenhagen will fail – and quite right too
Even if the science was reliable (which it isn’t), we should not force the world’s poorest countries to cut carbon emissions
The article, written by Nigel Lawson is about the fact that we should not force developing countries to cut back their carbon emission. The discussion over this topic took place in Copenhagen at the United Nations climate change conference.
The conference included the reason why we use carbon-based energy. It is simply that it is far and away the cheapest source of energy, and is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future.

Switching to much more expensive energy may be acceptable for us in the developed world. But in the developing world, there are still tens of millions of people suffering from acute poverty, and from the consequences of such poverty, in the shape of preventable disease, malnutrition and premature death. It is important in times where we start to cut back carbon emissions that all factors are being taken care of. Though the attempt for the poor countries to also cut back their carbon emission is contradicting because the developing countries do not have to knowledge how to do so and the people need to be educated how to cut back their personal carbon emissions. Those countries have the highest carbon emission at the moment in compare to the developed countries so this is the point. It is important for carbon emissions to reduce though for countries like India this is not possible at the moment so a decision has to be made and a plan how to raise awareness in there poor countries.

1st half of chapter 1: The White Man's Burden

- 2 tragedies of the world's poor
○ Three dollars for a net--> prevents malaria--> death of thousands of children each year
○ West spent 2.3$ trillion on foreign aid over the last five decades, though still not managed to get malaria medicine to prevent half of the deaths of children
- The book is about "second tragedy"
- "the right plan is to have no plan"

Planner's Failure, Searcher's success
- advocates of traditional approach: planners
- Agents for change in alternative approach: searchers
- Planner think he already knows the answer, thinks of poverty as a technical engineering problem that his answer will solve
- Searcher admits he doesn’t know the answer from the beginning , he believes that poverty is a complicated tangle of political, social, historical, institutional and technological factors. A searcher hopes to find the answer to individual problems only by trial and error experimentation.
- Lack of local information

Big Problems and big plans
- Our dream Is a world free of poverty- president james wolfensohn of the world bank
- Different ideas of how to get rid of poverty in past which did not work--> learn from mistake

The backward question that cripples foreign aid
- What can foreign aid do for poor people?

Getting bed nets to the poor
- Bed nets to sure poverty? Is that of any help?
- If that is of good use..then why didn’t the planners do it yet? Problem: How to get it to the poor…
- If they get the nets, use it for different stuff: fishing etc

Philosophy of social Change:
- The plan to end world poverty shows all the pretensions of utopian social engineering

Feedback and accountability
- Two key elements that make searchers work and whose absence is fatal to plans are feedback and accountability
- At a higher level accountability is necessary to motivate is necessary to motivate a whole organizations of government to use searchers. In contrast, planners flourish where there is little accountability.

Diary entry: Astrov

Dear Diary,
Today was definitely not may day. You would believe what happened. I finally confessed to Ylena about my feeling to her. She is a splendid women and I want to spend the rest of my life with her. I want to move into a little cozy house in the woods, where there is only me and her, nothing else. We will finally be able to life a normal live without her husband, the professor, who I detest. I can relax and will not be as overworked as I am now. Away from all the worries of the world. I do not need more than nature and Ylena to be happy. Sadly I did not get a response from Ylena. She did not react to my confess. People came in the room so we were not able to end the conversation but also afterwards the tried to avoid me so I have a bad feeling about the whole thing.
Additionally to this I found out today that Sofia is in love with me. It is a messed up situation, the girl who is on love with me is the daughter of the man whose wife I am in love with.
Help, me I do not know what to do in this situation. How do I let Sofia know I am not interested in her but in her stepmom without her getting upset?
I am desperate and cannot think of anything else anymore.
The only thing I have at the moment is alcohol. Help me out of here….

I need a drink...