Ian Boyne/ColumnistThe world's 500 richest individuals have a combined income greater than that of the poorest 416 million in the world. Despite the advance of globalization, 2.5 billion people still live on just US$2 a day 40 per cent of the world--accounting for a mere five per cent of global income. The richest 10 per cent account for 54 per cent of the world's income.
The $7 billion needed annually over the next decade to provide 2.6 billion people access to clean water is less than what the Europeans spend on perfume, and less than what Americans spend on elective surgery. That $7 billion would save 4,000 lives each day. Sub-Saharan Africa, which is home to 689 million people, accounts for a smaller share of world exports than Belgium, with a population of 10 million.
For every $1 that the developed countries spend on aid, they allocate $10 to military expenditure. Current spending on HIV/AIDS, a disease that claims three million lives a year, represents three days worth of military spending. While the developed countries spend $1 billion a year in aid to agriculture in the developing countries, they spend $1 billion a day to subsidise their own agriculture.
It is this kind of jolting, chilling data which make the annual Human Development Report, the most comprehensive compendium of development thinking and issues, the much-anticipated document it is every year since it was launched in 1990. Published by the United Nations Development Programme(UNDP), the Human Development Report, which ranks countries according to broad human development indexes, rather than the narrow macroeconomic criteria generally highlighted in traditional economic literature. To say the Human Development Report, especially this one, is a goldmine of information and data is to be frustrated by the limits of language. In this 372 page Human Development Report : 'International Cooperation at a Crossroads: Aid, Trade and Security in an Unequal World', the experts, drawn from around the world, confront with scholarly precision, and depth and balance the neo-liberal defenders of capitalist globalisation. The bibliography is awash with evidence of wide reading. No one who is au fait with the development literature and with political and international economics can fail to be impressed with the authors' mastery of the issues and their total familiarity with the strongest arguments of the pro-globalisers.
DEVELOPING COUNTRIES
LEFT BEHIND
The authors of this Human Development Report have heard the arguments of the Washington Consensus and post-Washington Consensus theorists and they have carefully examined the views of the theologians of liberalisation and they have come away unimpressed.
"The era of globalisation has been marked by dramatic advances in technology, trade and investment--and an impressive increase in prosperity. Gains in human development have been less impressive. Large parts of the developing world are being left behind".
I was reading this report at the same time that another eagerly-anticipated annual volume was being released, the World Investment Report 2005. This year the 332-page report is titled 'Transnational Corporations and the Internationalisation of R&D'. The report tells us that global foreign direct investment (FDI) flows surged to US$648 billion last year, with developing countries chalking up an impressive 40 per cent increase, pulling in $233 billion.
The stock of FDI last year was estimated at a staggering US$9 trillion. Some 70,000 transnational corporations and 690,000 affiliates were responsible for this level of global investments. The 2005 World Investment Report tells of the outsourcing of high-technology services by transnational firms but makes the point that this internationalization of production is very much concentrated in a few countries.
While global R&D expenditures have grown rapidly over the last decade, reaching $677 billion in 2002, the top 10 countries, led by the United States, account for four-fifths of the world total. Only two developing countries--China and the Republic of Korea--are among the top ten. But, says the World Investment Report, "R and D activities in selected Asian economies such as China, India, the Republic of Korea and Taiwan province of China are becoming increasingly important within the global R&D networks of TNCs".
GLOBALISATION,
BUT NO GROWTH
But while developing countries will, no doubt, be preparing themselves to take a larger share of global R&D expenditures as they liberalise and globalise, the Human Development Report paints a sobering picture, backed up by hard evidence and case stories, of the failures of globalization and liberalisation to translate growth into poverty reduction and human development. Our policymakers and politicians here continue to speak naively about the supremacy of economic growth as though that is the be-all. The pity is that they are too busy politicking, going to cocktail parties and turning up at the fêtes and 'dos' covered by Chester Francis-Jackson to have any time to do serious reading.
See them on the social pages frolicking and having a good time and you know why they are out of touch with global realities and development challenges. Not enough attention is being paid to the fact that even if Jamaica were to achieve five per cent economic growth rate and were to pull in the acceptable levels of foreign direct investments that would not necessarily translate into improvement in the standards of living for the mass of the people.
If they had the time, I would recommend that they read two publications just out (but, dauntingly, they run nearly 400 pages!): Labour Markets in Asia: Promoting Full, Productive and Decent Employment and Progress of the World's Women 2005: Women Work and Poverty which again graphically illustrate the limits of globalization and liberalisation to strengthen human welfare and to promote equitable development.
FOCUS ON POVERTY REDUCTION
As Juan Somavia, Director-General of the International Labour Organisation says in a statement to the IMF recently, "the global labour force will grow by over 400 million by 2015 and even a reasonably heady pace of employment creation of 40 million per year would reduce the global unemployment by just over one per cent in ten years. Official unemployment has grown by 26 per cent in the last 10 years. And global unemployment is only the tip of the iceberg: the number of those who work but work in poverty is eight times as high".
The world must get over its fetish with economic growth per see. More attention has to be focused on poverty reduction and human development. The Human Development Report has done a marvellous job since 1990 to mount an intellectual assault on the conservative hegemony which the Bretton Woods institutions have held over economic practice in the developing world.
In this Human Development Report, the experts show that developing countries are off-target for the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals by 2015. " The MDG target for reducing child mortality will be missed by 4.4 million avoidable deaths in 2015--a figure equivalent to three times the number of children under five in London, New York and Tokyo. Over the next 10 years the gap between the target and the current trend adds more than 41 million children who will die before their fifth birthday from the most readily curable of all diseases--poverty," says the Human Development Report. The Report adds that the MDG target of universal primary education will be missed on current trends, with 47 million children out of school in 2015.
The Human Development Report mentions the Asian Tsunami which shocked the world last December, wiping out 300,000 lives. "The tsunami was a highly visible, unpredictable and largely unpreventable tragedy," notes the HDR. But it goes on poignantly: "Every hour more than 1,200 children die away from the glare of media attention. This is equivalent to three tsunamis a month, every month hitting the world's most vulnerable citizens--its children".
It then concludes the point: "Unlike the tsunami, that pathology is preventable. With today's technology, financial resources and accumulated knowledge the world has the capacity to overcome extreme deprivation, yet as an international community we allow poverty to destroy lives on a scale that dwarfs the impact of the tsunami".
Ian Boyne is a veteran journalist. You can send your comments to ianboyne1@yahoo.com or infocus@gleanerjm.com.
