Eradication of poverty and sustainable development in developing countries: an oxymoron?

Résumé du document

The Millennium Development Goals have quantified targets for addressing poverty in its several dimensions (United Nations, 2005). Adopted in 2000, it is stated to be followed by "all the world's governments as a blueprint for building a better world in the 21st century" (Kofi Annan, 2005). The first Millennium Development Goal is to reduce by half the population living in extreme poverty and hunger before 2015. The World Bank (WB), the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are satisfied by the current results, pointing out that consequently to the free-market policies. The number of people living on less than 1$ a day is decreasing. Questions that are raised in this context are: what is poverty and how can it be measured? Knowing that 1% of the world's richest people receive as much income as the poorest 57% (Weissman, 2003), the WB's definition of poverty that is only based on a certain level of income, seems problematic. Therefore, to understand the complexity of the concept of poverty, it is important to consider not only its economical or financial dimensions, but also to take into account indicators such as access to health and education, the existence of social security, and a safe environment.

Extraits

[...] Post-development theorists insist on the need to focus on the local level to address sustainable development in developing countries. Moreover, in contrast to the original principles and expectations of the IMF and the WB, the result demonstrates that putting the stress on the market has increased competition, which has for consequence a higher and unreasonable use of natural resources and also a growing level of environmental destruction. David Reed's (1996) case studies of Structural Adjustments Programmes' consequences in African and Latin-American and Asian nations (Cameroon, Mali, Zambia, Venezuela ) show that on the one hand economic and social benefits have been unequally redistributed and that on the other hand, economic development has been realised at the expenses of natural resources and the environment. [...]

[...] Thus “human development is in danger of being unsustainable unless there is redistribution; and sustainable development is in danger of being anti-human unless it is accompanied by redistribution” (Sutcliffe, 1995). To conclude, the last decade has demonstrated a global interest towards environmental concerns through unprecedented political, economical and social measures linking together people and places throughout the world, consequently giving sense to the terms common future” first used in 1987 in the framework of the Brundtland Commission. However, there are also obvious evidences of different conceptions and misunderstandings, especially in the context of a north/south divide, in the ways to address both issues of poverty and environmental degradations. [...]

[...] In that perspective, economic growth can only be reached in the framework of liberal policies of free-market trades, enabling developing countries to be part of the international market. In the framework of North/South cooperation, the role of industrialized countries is to facilitate the transfer of knowledge, capital, and technologies towards developing countries. Once a certain level of economic growth is achieved and the level of income per capita is increasing, neo-liberal theories argue that the issue of environmental degradations as a post-materialist concern- can be addressed. [...]

[...] Therefore, to address both issues of sustainable development and eradication of poverty supposes a better cooperation between industrialized and developing countries. However as we shall see in the third part, the burden of the ‘north/south imbalance' (Wise, 2001) makes the setting of the cooperation difficult. The imbalance between North and South countries, finds its origins in the historical context of colonialism. Currently in a postcolonial north/south divide, the imbalance is expressed in the growing global inequalities both between and within the nations. [...]

[...] This essay especially explores and discusses the possibilities of combining sustainable development policies and achieving the objectives related to the eradication of poverty in developing countries. If it is often agreed that for poor countries to develop, environmental concerns have to been sacrificed, I will however argue that, as the causes of poverty and environmental degradations are interrelated, the objective is to ‘address poverty alleviation policy strategies within a sustainable development framework' (International Institute for Sustainable Development, IISD). In the framework of UN and other international organizations (IMF, WTO, SD is still mainly defined within the mainstream paradigm of development, which gives primacy to the rules of the market in both resources' allocations and development policies. [...]