In this talk Noam Chomsky emphasises that Trump’s election and his climate change denial threaten the very existence of the planet and the human species; and he also reminds us that despite America’s increasing political isolationism, U.S. Corporations still reign supreme.
Chomsky starts by saying that he was in Spain when he heard the results of the U.S. election, and the various commotion and commentary which surrounded it, but in fact the first very real negative consequence of Trump’s victory happened on the very same day and yet went largely unnoticed by the world’s media.
At the very same time as the U.S. presidential election results were being announced and analysed, COP 22 was taking place in Morocco, which was the first meeting of the signatories to the Paris Climate Change agreement (COP21) at which most countries agreed in principle to take concrete action to reduce dependence on fossil fuels and try to slow down global warming.
The Paris Climate Change Agreement – Ruined by the Election of Donald Trump?
Because the specifics of the actions to be taken had been left vague after the Paris meeting, the point of COP 22 in Morocco was to start to add in the specific details of the agreement, however, following Trump’s election, and his commitment to scrapping current environmental regulation and monitoring in the U.S., COP 22 ended with no further progress having been made.
In fact, the agenda of the global climate change framework has now changed to one of ‘how can we combat global warming without the U.S. on board’, and nations have now started to look to authoritarian, anti-democratic China for leadership if any progress is to be made in this area.
Chomsky is very clear that environmental catastrophe is now one of the biggest threats facing the survival of the species (the other is nuclear war), and he focuses on Asia to highlight the coming global problems.
In the next few years, 10s of millions of people will be fleeing from Bangladesh because of the severe level of global warming resulting in sea levels rising, which would be a real refugee crisis, unlike the present one which he casts as a ‘moral crisis’ of the European Union.
(According to one climate change scientists, these climate change migrants should have the right to move to the United States and other rich countries that are causing global warming.)
Again in Asia, a second environmental crisis looms in India and Pakistan, in the form of potential conflict over scarce water resources – two states with nuclear weapons, which potentially trigger a survival crisis for the human species.
Chomsky’s next point is that U.S. isolation in the world is increasing in remarkable ways: the U.S. had been heavily involved in South and Latin America in the decades following World War Two, but the IMF has been completely kicked out of some countries in this region and has no military basis in the region at all; elsewhere in the world the TTIP has all but collapsed and other trading blocks are growing in scope, mainly centring around China, which are drawing in some of America’s historical allies such as Peru and New Zealand; finally with Brexit America has lost it’s main ally in Europe, the U.K., which could reduce its influence in Nato.
By looking at national wealth, it seems that U.S. influence is in decline, as its share has shrunk from 50% in 1945 to 25% today,
However, these measurements fail to take into account the crucial factor of the ownership of the world economy – which is virtually never discussed – CORPORATE ownership of wealth.
U.S. Companies still own 50% of the world’s wealth
If we look at Corporate wealth, U.S. Companies are well in the lead in terms of ownership of the the global economy, and they are own over 50% of the world’s wealth in nearly every sector of the global economy – manufacturing, finance, services etc… of course although this wealth is held in the U.S. and supported by public money, it is not shared by all the citizens of the U.S.
If you look at the military dimension, the U.S. is of course still supreme.
Chomsky finishes by reminding us that the threats we now face are matters of human survival and they cannot be ignored, they need to be faced directly and soon if the human experiment is not to be a disastrous failure!
How to use this in the Global Development Module?
Basically it fits into the ‘how important are nation states’ aspect of the course.
Firstly, Chomsky seems to be suggesting that the United States still has enormous influence in the world – in that its lack of action on climate change means that it is able to disrupt the ability of other nation states to take coordinated action on climate change (whether this actually happens remains to be seen).
Secondly, it seems that other countries are becoming more powerful than the United States, and the U.S. is losing its political influence in certain ways.
However, if we look at the real ‘power indicators’ – wealth and military expenditure – the U.S. is still by far the dominant superpower.
Smoking is on the increase in several low income and middle income countries according to this World Health Organisation data, published in the World Bank’s recent review of 2016
According to the World Health Organisation up to 80% of the world’s tobacco users now live in low and middle income countries, with younger people especially taking up smoking in increasing numbers.
Why is Smoking Increasing in Poorer Countries?
In Short, it seems that since governments in developed countries have made it more difficult for tobacco companies to kill people in rich countries, they’ve now moved on to trying to kill people in poor countries instead.
The latest evidence shows that tobacco industry marketing remains a significant global problem, particularly for people in the poorest countries who are the most exposed to it. Our study examined tobacco marketing in 16 countries.
In communities in low-income countries, 81 times more tobacco adverts were observed than in high-income countries.
People in lower-income countries were 46 times more likely to hear radio adverts, 11 times more likely to see poster adverts and nine times more likely to see television adverts than those living in high-income countries.
Access to tobacco was also higher in poorer countries. In low-income countries, we observed two and a half times more stores selling tobacco in the communities in the low-income and lower-middle-income countries than in the high-income countries. Worryingly, 64% of stores visited sold single cigarettes compared with just 2.8% in high-income countries.
This high level of marketing in poorer countries is consistent with the tobacco industry’s targeting of these countries. They are key to the industry’s future. In the west, the tobacco industry’s profits continue to increase despite the decline in smoking rates , but it is unclear how long this pricing power will hold out in the face of growing regulations.
How to Reduce Smoking in the Developing World?
The World Health Organisation notes that there are several things that effectively reduce the use of tobacco consumption:
Banning positive advertising for cigarettes, although there are only total bans in 29 countries worldwide.
Promoting negative advertising – those horrible picture adds about how smoking causes disease apparently work
Taxation – a 10% increase in the price reduces smoking by 5% in low income countries.
NB – A further challenge here is tackling Organised Crime – and their role in smuggling tax-free cigarettes, which can subvert national taxation policies.
This is a useful little data-case-study for lots of reasons
It’s a good example of the negative role TNCs play in development
It’s a good example of a critique of neoliberalism – it seems that regulation by the government – of advertising and through taxes for example – can really help reduce smoking.
This kind of reminds me of ‘Runaway World’ – we know what works to reduce smoking, but what with both TNCs and Organised crime having so much to gain financially from cigarettes, it seems unlikely that governments are going to get a handle on this problem any time soon!
Finally this is also a slap in the face to ethnocentrism – You (I did until today!) were probably under the impression that smoking’s on the decline – well it may be in the UK – but looked at globally it’s not.
Below are a few resources focusing on the causes and consequences of the ongoing (hopefully soon to be recent) civil war in Syria. (‘War and Conflict’ in relation to development is part of the A Level Sociology Global Development topic).
The causes of the civil war in Syria
This Guardian video does a reasonable job of explaining some of the causes of the Syrian Civil War in five minutes. NB it has its critics – see below!
The trigger event which caused the Civil War in Syria was when 1000s of people took the street in January 2011 to demand political reforms (e.g. elections) inspired by ‘The Arab Spring ‘ – a wave of violent and non-violent protests which had swept across many North African and Middle Eastern Countries in December – January 2012.
The protesters were protesting about the brutal rule of dictator president Assad who had ruled Syria in the interests of a relatively small elite since the year 2000, when he took over from his father, who had ruled the country since the 1970s, having modernised it while brutally repressing any dissent.
Assad’s response to the protests was to violently repress the initially non-violent protests by shooting over a hundred demonstrators. Over the coming months some of these armed themselves and formed small groups of rebels – the ensuing conflict between Assad’s security forces and the rebels resulted in 60 000 deaths in the first 18 months of the conflict.
The root of the conflict can be further traced back to the after math of World War I when France and Britain established the boarders of the Middle Eastern Countries, lumping many different ethnic groups and religions into Syria. The ethnic/ religious breakdown of Syria’s population is approximately 12% Alawites (President Assad’s ethnic group),8% Christians, 3% Shiites, and 74% Sunnis.
NB – The video has an equal amount of likes and dislikes – with many of the commentators pointing to the fact that the video misses out the role of the USA in causing conflict all across the middle east – commentators argue that the US has a long history of arming rebel groups in the Middle East as part of its foreign policy to deliberately destabilise the region.
Who is Fighting Who and Why?
This second video by VOX starts off by pointing out that the war in Syria is a mess, with four main groups involved:
The Assad/ government forces, backed by Russia and Iran,
The Rebels, backed by the Saudis, Turkey and the USA,
The Kurds, also backed by the USA
ISIS, which established a ‘Caliphate’ in an area which spread across the Syria-Iraq border.
This video focuses more on how the conflict has develop and points to the important fact that Syria has now become a ‘Proxy War’ in which other nation states are effectively fighting each other by funding different factions within the conflict, but without being directly involved themselves.
By 2013 money and troops were being funneled to the rebels by Sunni Muslims (e.g. the Saudis) While Iran (Shia Muslims) funneled money and troops to Assad.
In late 2013, the USA stepped into the war when Obama signed a secret deal for the CIA to train and equip the rebels.
In February 2014 ISIS emerges – which focuses on fighting the rebels and the Kurds, not Assad, and the US now has an ongoing dilemma which confuses matters and possibly prevents the US from taking effective action – who is it’s real enemy – ISIS or Assad?
Up until this time, Assad was losing ground to both the rebels and ISIS until September 2015 when Russia stepped in by bombing US backed rebels, and to date (December 2016) it seems like Assad is likely to defeat the rebel forces.
NB – As with the previous video, this also has its critics, so as with all sources, be skeptical of the validity!
Causes of the Civil War in Syria – A Summary
To my mind, for the purposes of A level Sociology you can simplify the causes of this conflict thus:
Nasty bad men (dictators) in the middle east don’t allow people to vote and oppress anyone who opposes them.
People in many middle eastern countries want the right to vote and basically governments who don’t abuse their human rights.
They use social media to organise and publicise protests – which spread all over the middle east and quickly to Syria
The nasty dictator, Assad, wants to cling onto power so he kills hundreds of the protesters
Other nations have a role to play in perpetuating the crisis – Russia and Iran by funding Assad and the USA by funding the rebels.
NB – Don’t fall into the trap of seeing the USA as backing the ‘good guys’ and supporting democracy versus the bad Russians and crazy Muslims who want to keep the evil dictator Assad in place because that’s in their economic/ ideological interests – the USA has a history of backing ‘evil dictators’ itself, when they support US interests at least.
You could further trace all of these problems back to the ethnic and religious divide/ tensions in Syria, which in turn was at least partially created by the French and British when they invented the country by drawing up artificial boarders after World War I.
This material is relevant to the topic of ‘State Crime’ and ‘War and Conflict’ as an aspect of development. The point of it is to illustrate that the United States is pretty much the biggest military aggressor in recent world history, and thus a good candidate for the country which commits the worst state-crimes.
The United States military is responsible for thousands of civilian deaths in The Middle East, South West Asia, and North Africa, as Part of the United States Government’s Ongoing War on Terror. Civilians are protected under International Humanitarian Law, which means that every single civilian death is potentially an example of a State Crime committed by the USA.
Civilian Deaths and the United States’ ‘War on Terror’
The United States uses cutting edge military hardware to kill what it believes to be terrorists. Most of the killing the U.S. army and air force do these days is remote, typically involving missiles released from drones many miles away from their targets, with the drones themselves being piloted by people even further away.
Increasingly, the weapons of choice, used throughout the Middle East, are Predator and Reaper drones, but the US Air force also still operates F16s, Apache attack helicopters and AC-130 gunships, in Afghanistan for example.
The Reaper Drone
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism tracks drone strikes in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia and estimates the total number of civilians killed by drone strikes and other covert operations in the above four countries to be approximately 700-1400. The latest data is available here.
Whether you go with the lower or higher estimate of deaths, the percentage of civilians killed in the War on Terror is somewhere in the region of 20-25% of the total (what the US would call ‘collateral damage’).
The U.S. claims that a combination of painstakingly gathered intelligence and precision-targeted missiles have enabled it to make sure that the people it’s targeting are actually enemy combatants and to minimise the number of civilian casualties, but nonetheless thousands of civilians have also been taken out by the United States in this process over the last decade and a half.
The United Nations has questioned the legality of drone strikes in countries such as Pakistan, with which the United States isn’t actually at war, and has further criticised the U.S. government for not releasing its own data on the numbers of casualties due its drone war – hence the need to rely on investigative journalism.
So it seems that at least 20-25% of these drone attacks are state-crimes in the sense that this is the proportion which take out innocent civilians; then there’s the possibility that the entire drone-campaign itself is illegal, given that the United States isn’t technically at war with most of the countries it’s operating its drones in.
The Destruction of the Kunduz Trauma Centre
On 3 October 2015, a United States Air Force AC-130U gunship attacked the Kunduz Trauma Centre operated by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), in the city of Kunduz, in northern Afghanistan. At least 42 people were killed and over 30 were injured. This appears to be a pretty unambiguous example of a war crime committed by the U.S. military.
The Kunduz Medical Centre after its destruction by the U.S. Military in 2015
The video below (5.20 – 7.00 minutes) will give you an idea of the capability of an AC-130 Gunship, basically a very large plane which houses various different types of guns and missile and bomb launchers along with LOTS AND LOTS of ammunition. (NB these gunships cost somewhere between $130-190 million, depending on the model, at 2001 prices).
Médecins Sans Frontières condemned the incident, saying that the airstrike was a breach of international humanitarian law and a war crime. Cockpit recordings showed that the AC-130 crew questioned the strike’s legality.
On 7 October 2015, President Barack Obama issued a rare apology and announced the United States would be making condolence payments to the families of those killed in the airstrike.
Background to the Attack
On 28 September 2015, Taliban militants seized the city of Kunduz, driving government forces out of the city. After the reinforcements arrived, the Afghan army, backed by U.S. airstrikes, began an offensive operation to regain control of the city; after several days of fighting, Afghan forces claimed to have retaken the city. However, fighting continued, and on 3 October, a US-led airstrike struck and badly damaged Kunduz Trauma Centre operated by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), killing doctors, staff members and patients.
Médecins Sans Frontières reported that on the night of 3 October, the organization’s Kunduz hospital was struck by “a series of aerial bombing raids” and that the building was “partially destroyed”. It further said the hospital had been “repeatedly & precisely hit” and that the attack had continued for 30 minutes after MSF staff contacted U.S. and Afghan officials during the strike.
MSF had informed all warring parties of the location of its hospital complex. MSF personnel had contacted U.S. military officials as recently as 29 September to reconfirm the precise location of the hospital. Two days prior to the attack Carter Malkasian, adviser to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, emailed MSF asking if the facility had Taliban militants “holed up” inside.
Legality
Attacks on medical facilities are forbidden under international humanitarian law unless the facilities “are being used, outside their humanitarian function, to commit acts harmful to the enemy”. Even if enemy combatants are inappropriately using the facility for shelter, the rule of proportionality usually forbids such attacks because of the high potential for civilian casualties. Human Rights Watch said the laws of war require the attacking force to issue a warning, and wait a reasonable time for a response, before attacking a medical unit being misused by combatants
At the time of the airstrikes, MSF was treating women and children and wounded combatants from both sides of the conflict. MSF estimates that of the 105 patients at the time of the attack, between 3 and 4 of the patients were wounded government combatants, while approximately 20 patients were wounded Taliban. MSF general director Christopher Stokes said, “Some public reports are circulating that the attack on our hospital could be justified because we were treating Taliban. Wounded combatants are patients under international law, and must be free from attack and treated without discrimination. Medical staff should never be punished or attacked for providing treatment to wounded combatants.”
It’s difficult to put a positive spin on this, but I guess you could say it’s better than when the United States unnecessarily nuked Hiroshima in 1945 where the civilian to combatant ratio must have been significantly higher – so while the US clearly isn’t respecting International Humanitarian Law by any stretch of anyone’s imagination, at least they’re doing better than in the past.
Postscript: International Humanitarian Law
What enables us to determine that the above acts by the United States military and government are in fact state-crimes is the existence of International Humanitarian Law.
According to Amnesty International ‘International law prohibits arbitrary killing and limits the lawful use of intentional lethal force to exceptional situations. In armed conflict, only combatants and people directly participating in hostilities may be directly targeted. Outside armed conflict, intentional lethal force is lawful only when strictly unavoidable to protect against an imminent threat to life. In some circumstances arbitrary killing can amount to a war crime or extrajudicial executions, which are crimes under international law’
International humanitarian law is a set of rules which seek, for humanitarian reasons, to limit the effects of armed conflict. A major part of international humanitarian law is contained in the four Geneva Conventions (1864 -1949).
The basic principles of International Humanitarian Law include:
Those who are not taking part in hostilities (e.g. civilians) shall be protected in all circumstances. Parties to a conflict shall at all times distinguish between combatants and non-combatants. Attacks shall be directed against legitimate military targets.
The wounded and the sick shall be cared for and protected by the party to the conflict which has them in its power. The emblem of the “Red Cross,” or of the “Red Crescent,” shall be required to be respected as the sign of protection.
Captured persons must be protected against acts of violence and reprisals. No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.
Parties to a conflict do not have an unlimited choice of methods and means of warfare. Humanitarian law has banned the use of many weapons, including exploding bullets, chemical and biological weapons, blinding laser weapons and anti-personnel mines.
Once conflict has ended, anyone breaching any of the rules laid down by International Humanitarian Law can be tried through an international tribunal. However, it’s unlikely that any U.S. personnel will ever see justice for their part in killing innocent civilians.
Finally, just a quick reminder of the point of this post – it’s not just Islamic Fundamentalists killing in the name of ideology, America does it too, and by the objective (ish) standards of International Humanitarian Law, many of these killings are state crimes.
In this blog post I summarise Dambisa Moyo’s views on the problems with Aid as a strategy for development – she is talking about Official Development Aid rather than Emergency relief aid.
I’m mainly drawing from her writing at the end of chapter 3 and the whole of chapter 4 – and I offer up a few criticisms all the way through – before you read this through – please note my main criticism of Moyo’s work –
The main criticism I have of Moyo is that she uses statistics that show correlations between a high level of aid receipts and poor economic growth and then attempts to imply causality (aid causing poor growth) by using emotive, highly selective, anecdotal and even hypothetical (she invents a country – Dongo) ‘evidence’ to back up her case.
I say ‘imply causality’ because she never actually uses the word ‘cause’ – but the reader is left with the impression that this is what she is driving at. The end result for the less well informed reader is that they are stuck with a number of ‘easy to understand memorable case studies’ which imply that aid causes poverty – even though Moyo never actually says as much.
Anyway, here is my interpretation of the criticisms Moyo makes about the role of aid in development and a few criticisms that some people might make of Moyo’s work.
Criticism 1 – Aid does not bring about economic growth
At the end of chapter 3 – Aid is not working, Moyo starts to outline her basic criticism of Aid – This basic criticism being that aid has not effectively promote economic growth in Africa – Over 1 trillion dollars has been pumped into Africa over the past 60 years and there is little to show for it. In fact, according to Moyo, aid is malignant, it is the problem!
Moyo explains this through the following hypothetical example
‘There’s a mosquito net maker in Africa. He manufactures around 500 nets a week. He employs 10 people, who each have to support upwards of 15 relatives. However hard they work, they cannot make enough nets to combat the malaria-carrying mosquito.
Enter vociferous Hollywood movie star who rallies the masses, and goads Western governments to collect and send 100, 000 mosquito nets to the affected region, at a cost of $1 million, the nets arrive, the nets are distributed and a good deed is done.
With the market flooded with foreign nets, however, our mosquito net maker is promptly out of business. His ten workers can no longer support their dependents.
Now think of what happens 5 years down the line when the mosquito nets are torn and beyond repair, we have now mosquito nets, and no local industry to build any more. The long term effect of the ‘aid injection’ has been to decimate the local economy and make the local population dependent on foreign aid from abroad.’
Backing this up with some stats, Moyo goes on to point out that ‘even the most cursory look at the data suggests that as aid has increased over time, Africa’s growth has decreased with an accompanying higher incidence of poverty. Over the past thirty years, the most aid-dependent countries have exhibited growth rates averaging minus 0.2 % per annum.
Moyo also argues that a direct consequence of aid-driven interventions has been a dramatic descent into poverty – citing Zambia as an example, and the fact that when aid flows were at their peak between 1970 and 1998 – poverty in Africa rose to a staggering 66%.
The problem Moyo has here is that she fails to present sufficient evidence to make her case – it’s well known that the later part of the period above was a time of global economic slowdown compared to the previous 20 years, which itself could play a major role in Africa’s poverty, as could be the case with the debt crisis. One could also simply cite Botswana and Ghana as case studies of aid-recipient countries that have grown to counter her one example of Zambia.
Criticism 2 – Aid Encourages Corruption, which in turn retards growth
Unlike the previous section, Moyo does use a reasonable amount of statistical (drawn mainly from Transparency International) and case study evidence in this section…
According to Moyo – If the world has one image of African statesmen, it is one of rank corruption on a stupendous scale. One of the best examples of this is Mobutu, who is estimated to have looted Zaire to the tune of $5 billion. He is also famous for leasing Concorde to fly his daughter to her wedding in the Ivory Coast shortly after negotiating a lucrative aid deal with Ronald Reagan in the 1980s.
Having provided a couple more examples of ‘classic African Dictators’, Moyo then cites that classic statement made in n 2004 by the British envoy to Kenya, Sir Edward Clay, who complained about rampant corruption in the country, commenting that Kenya’s corrupt ministers were ‘eating like gluttons’ and vomiting on the shoes of foreign donors. In February 2005 (prodded to make a public apology), he apologised, saying he was sorry for the ‘moderation’ of his language, for underestimating the scale of the looting and for failing to speak out earlier.
Moyo further argues that at least 25% of World Bank Aid is misused. One of the worst examples is in Uganda in the 1990s – where it is estimated that only 20% of government spending on education actually made it to local primary schools.
According to Moyo, while it is not the only cause ‘aid is one of the greatest aides to corruption’ – arguing (Actually it might be more accurate to say ‘asserting’ given the lack of evidence in this section of her book) that ‘with aid’s help, corruption fosters corruption, nations quickly descend into a vicious cycle of aid’.
However, Moyo now drifts from the data and starts implying causality by asserting that growth cannot occur in an environment where corruption is rife, citing the following (un-evidenced) reasons (among others).
Corruption leads to worse development projects – corrupt government officials award contracts to those who collude in corruption rather than the best people for the job. This results in lower-quality infrastructure projects.
Foreign companies will not invest in countries where corrupt officials might siphon off investment money for themselves rather than actually investing that money in the country’s future.
Aid is corrosive in that it encourages exceptionally talented people to become unprincipled – putting their efforts into attracting and siphoning off aid rather than focusing on being good politicians or entrepreneurs.
Criticism 3 – Aid Corrupts Civil Society
Dambisa Moyo: Spreader of Neoliberal Hegemony?
OFFERING NO CONCRETE EXAMPLES OR EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT HER POINT, in this section Moyo asserts that Africa needs a middle class which trusts each other in order for development to occur. The problems is that in an aid environment, governments are more interested in lining their own pockets rather than encouraging entrepreneurs, meaning that the middle class cannot expand until it reaches that ‘critical mass’ which leads to sustained growth.
Criticism 4 – Aid undermines social capital
ONCE AGAIN OFFERING NO CONCRETE EXAMPLES OR EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT HER POINT, here Moyo argues that… In an aid dependent environment, there is no need for you to trust your neighbour and no need for your neighbour to trust you… Foreign aid weakens social capital by thwarting accountability mechanisms, encouraging rent-seeking behaviour, siphoning off scarce talent from employment positions and removing pressures to reform inefficient policies and institutions.
On the above two points it is also worth noting that these criticisms are really just fusions of the previous two criticisms of aid – that it prevents economic growth and breeds corruption.
Criticism 5 – Aid and Civil War
Moyo points out that there are three fundamental truths about conflicts today: they are mostly born out of competition for control of resources; they are predominantly a feature of poorer economies; and they are increasingly internal conflicts.
She then goes on to say that ‘this is why foreign aid foments conflict. The prospect of seizing power and gaining access to unlimited aid wealth is irresistible’. Unlike in the previous two sections, here she offers up one example to support her argument (Sierra Leone) before reminding us that aid also causes conflict more indirectly by reducing the prospects for economic growth.
The Economic Limitations of Aid
Having outlined five downsides of aid, Moyo then outlines its economic limitations – suggesting that there are four – once again lacking examples
Aid reduces savings and investment – assertion, no examples
Aid can be inflationary – assertion no examples
Aid chokes off the export sector (Dutch Disease) – cites unreferenced IMF studies
Aid causes bottlenecks due to low absorption capacity – Uses Uganda as an example
Aid and Aid Dependency
The end result of all the above is that aid leads to Aid Dependency – to the extent that aid makes up 13% of the average African country’s GDP. According to Moyo, this throws up the following problems
It makes Africans lazy
It leads to low tax revenues (no need to tax the citizenry if money is flooding in from outside!)
Citing Boone (1996) – it leads to bloated inefficient public sectors.
Finally, it leads to Western donors being able to call the shots.
In the final section of the chapter, Moyo pays homage to Peter Bauer, and briefly mentions that both William Easterly and Paul Collier disagree with the ‘one size fits all’ aid approach to development – before introducing the next sections of the book which are devoted to explaining why Africa should adopt free market (encouraging FDI/ Issuing bonds etc.) rather than aid driven solutions to underdevelopment.
Criticisms of Moyo
Really, I’d just like to go back to what I said at the beginning and say that…
The main criticism I have of Moyo is that she uses statistics that show correlations between a high level of aid receipts and poor economic growth and then attempts to imply causality (aid causing poor growth) by using emotive, highly selective, anecdotal and even hypothetical (she invents a country – Dongo) ‘evidence’ to back up her assertions.
I say ‘imply causality’ because she never actually uses the word ‘cause’ – but the reader is left with the impression that this is what she is driving at. The end result for the less well informed reader is that they are stuck with a number of ‘easy to understand memorable case studies’ that imply aid causes poverty – even though Moyo never actually says as much – possibly because she might think that, really, there is insufficient evidence to make the case which she alludes to.
One has to reflect on why Moyo is so selective – I think it unlikely that an Oxford and Harvard Graduate has failed to read widely enough for this to be innocent – Especially when the author has 8 years at Goldman Sachs under her belt….so could it be that this is simply an overt attempt to promote a neoliberal anti aid agenda?
Naomi Klein is one of the leading thinkers in the anti-capitalist movement and this book is one of the most important historical narratives of this century.
Taken from the web site –
‘At the most chaotic juncture in Iraq’s civil war, a new law is unveiled that would allow Shell and BP to claim the country’s vast oil reserves…. Immediately following September 11, the Bush Administration quietly out-sources the running of the “War on Terror” to Halliburton and Blackwater…. After a tsunami wipes out the coasts of Southeast Asia, the pristine beaches are auctioned off to tourist resorts…. New Orleans’s residents, scattered from Hurricane Katrina, discover that their public housing, hospitals and schools will never be reopened…. These events are examples of “the shock doctrine”: using the public’s disorientation following massive collective shocks – wars, terrorist attacks, or natural disasters — to achieve control by imposing economic shock therapy.’
My summary –
The Shock Doctrine is the story of how “free market” policies have come to dominate the world. Klein systematically explores how neo-liberal economic policies have been pushed through following ‘shocks’ – typically either natural disasters or wars ore oppressive state apparatuses.
Klein argues that these policies work against the interests of the majority because they transfer wealth and power from the people to the global corporate elite, thus why elites need to implement these policies of in times of shock following disaster.
The book traces the origins of the ‘shock doctrine’ back fifty years, to the University of Chicago under Milton Friedman and follows the application of these ideas through contemporary history, showing in detail how the neo-liberal agenda has been pushed through in several countries following shocks
Some of the events Klein covers include –
Pinochet’s coup in Chile in 1973,
The Falklands War in 1982,
The Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989,
the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991,
the Asian Financial crisis in 1997
The war in Iraq 2003
Hurricane Katrina 2006
All of the above are cases where the Corporate Elite, often in conjunction with the US government and oppressive regimes in some of the countries above have sought to profit out of times of disaster. Most of feel sympathy for people at such times – neo-liberalists see opportunity.
Once again, for me, the most important argument Klein makes is that Neo-Liberalists require situations of Shock to push through their policies of privatisation, deregulation and cut backs to public spending because the majority of people would not accept such policies because they mean a transfer of wealth and power to corporate elites.
Towards the end of the book, Klein talks about an extremely worrying trend in the USA – which is the privatisation of war and security – both of which are used in times of disaster – and we now have a situation where Capitalism benefits from disaster.
All in all this is an excellent book highlighting the links between advanced capitalism and growing human misery – as Klein says, you should read it and make yourself shock resistant.
NB – SOME MIGHT ARGUE THIS IS NOW GOING ON IN THE UNITED KINGDOM – WE ARE GOING THROUGH AN ‘ECONOMIC CRSIS’ (IN SHOCK) AND SO MILLIONNAIRE TORIES ARE NOW CUTTING PUBLIC SPENDING AND OUTSOURCING MORE AND MORE OF OUR PUBLIC SERVICES TO THE PRIVATE SECTOR!
See also –
http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine – the web site is an excellent resource that provides more contemporary examples of how neo-liberalism shafts the majority.
Neo- liberalism is an economic and political ideology that believes state control over the economy is undesirable and seeks to transfer control of the economy from the state to the private sector. It gained popularity amongst politicians and influential economists following the economic crisis of the late 1970s. It involves three main policies –
Deregulation – Nation States placing less restraint on private industry. In practise this means fewer laws that restrict companies making a profit – making it easier for companies to fire workers, pay them less, and allowing them to pollute.
Privatisation – where possible public services such as transport and education should be handed over to private interests for them to run for a profit.
Cut backs in public spending – taxes should be low and so investment in public services would be cut back.
It would be useful for students of Global Development to develop a critical understanding of this book because Sachs has been one the most influential economic advisers to both Nation States and global financial institutions such as the IMF over the last three decades. Jeffrey Sachs is well known popularly because of his links with Bono and his championing of the role of Western Aid and Philanthropy in helping to solve development problems.
Sachs is critical of ‘grand theories of development’- such as ’70s Dependency Theory and the Neoliberal approach of the World Bank/ IMF in the 80s and 90s – but he is still optimistic that if we can engage in what he calls ‘clinical economics’ and uncover the country specific barriers there are to development in individual countries, we can develop effective strategies to end poverty- both the extreme poverty faced by the world’s billion poorest, and also the moderate poverty faced by another 1.6 billion.
While development strategies need to be specific to each country, Sachs sees international co-operation crucial to ending extreme poverty and so Western Official Development Aid, good governance on the part of developing nation states, Transnational Corporations, and The United Nations all have a crucial role to play in bringing about development. Technological innovation, and Trade (including changing the rules of trade so they don’t unfairly benefit developed nations) are seen as key universal strategies to be adopted to bring about development.
Sachs is also a champion of the United Nation’s 8 Millennium Development Goals – not as ends in themselves but because lack of development in each of the 8 areas other than economic well being can be a barrier to economic development, which in Sach’s mind is correlated with all other development goals, and economic growth, measured by rising GDP per capita, to be achieved through the integration of countries into the global economy through trade remains the ultimate goal of development according to Sachs.
Students can use Sachs to all the popular theories of development from the preceding six decades – Modernisation Theory, Dependency Theory and Neo-liberalism. Below is a summary of selected chapters of Sach’s The End of Poverty, with some criticisms.
Chapter 1: A Global Family Portrait
Sachs outlines elements of life in four countries – Malawi, Bangladesh, India and China which broadly correspond to four ‘stages’ of development –
Malawi – caught in ‘the perfect storm’ is portrayed as a Malaria and AIDS infested rural backwater, largely cut off from international trade – represents the four billion people trapped in extreme poverty – living on less than $1 a day
Bangladesh – ‘on the ladder of development is ‘ integrated into the international economy but at the bottom end of it, and characterized by ‘sweatshop’ labour but also increasing amounts of micro-financed businesses which offer hope for more independent economic development – represents the poor – or the 1.5 billion people living on between $1-$2/ day
India – at the centre of an export services revolution – is provided as an example of a country that is increasingly populated with people on ‘middle incomes’ – with increasing numbers of city dwellers working for Transnational Companies and related home-grown business earning $250 -$400 a month – although India is a country of extremes – with many in rural areas living on $1-2 a day
China – is characterized by rising affluence – again like India there are millions who live in poverty, but parts of China are increasingly coming to resemble the West. Sachs in fact tells of how he first saw cell phones with cameras in Beijing, not America.
Who are the poor?
Poverty is not uniformly distributed across the globe – i.e. there are rich and poor people in every country, although most of the poor live in three regions – South and East Asia and Sub Saharan Africa. Where extreme poverty was concerned Sachs notes that the figures were as follows – (NB these are 2001 figures!) – (Updates to follow)
South Asia – 400 million (30% of the population)
East Asia – 250 million (15% of the population)
Sub Saharan Africa – 300 million (40% of the population )
Sachs also notes that there is hope – because the numbers of those in extreme poverty in East and South Asia have fallen by 2/5ths and 1/3rd respectively since 1981, although numbers grew slightly in Africa.He then goes on to state what should be the four development goals of our age –
To meet the MDGs by 2015
To end extreme poverty by 2025
To ensure that by 2025 all the worlds poor have an opportunity to climb the ladder of economic development
To accomplish this with modest financial help from the rich countries.
Chapter 2 – The Spread of Economic Prosperity
According to the economic historian Angus Maddison, 1820 was the year when ‘The Great Transformation’ began. 1820 was the year when the Modern World Economy ‘took off’. The previous 800 years had seen no significant increase in world population growth or income, but from 1820, population and economic growth began to grow rapidly. Referring to this rapid period of post 1820s growth, Sachs notes that –
All regions on earth experience economic growth
Some regions grew much more rapidly than others.
To illustrate this, in 1820, the income of the average European was only 90% that of the average African and the average life expectancy was very similar, around 40 years of age. Focusing on GDP/capita, the UK was only four times richer than Africa, by 1998 this had rise to 20 times greater (factoring in PPP). We can roughly break down this inequality as follows –
1/6th of the world’s population lives in extreme poverty
2/3rds experience middle income lifestyles
1/6th experience high income
Why did some countries grow so rapidly from the 1820s?
Sachs now looks at the United Kingdom as the country that, from 1820, developed more rapidly than any other and asks – why? – He points to the following features –
British Society was relatively open- there was scope for social mobility and hierarchies were less rigid than in most of the rest of Europe
Britain guaranteed certain individual freedoms (individualism) – it had a tradition of free speech and protection of private property
3. (and critically) It was one of the leading centres of scientific revolution. In particular, Newton laid the groundings for the industrial revolution. NB Sach’s argues that technological innovation is the critical element in bringing about development
Geographical advantages – It was an Island close to Europe with inland navigable waterways
Britain faced less risk of invasion compared with its neighbours in Europe
Britain had coal – the energy source that fueled the great industrial revolution.
The Combination of new industrial technologies, coal power and market forces created the industrial revolution – and this meant that economies could grow beyond long-accustomed bounds without hitting the biological constraints of food and timber production. The industrial revolution in turn lead to economic growth and these two things changed the way people lived in Britain in every fundamental sense. They lead to what Sachs calls the Great Transformation – in which British society and culture were transformed, laying the foundations for yet more growth and prosperity[1]
Sachs also mentions that Colonialism was key to Britain, and Europe’s development – which involved the use of military force to press-gang Asia and Africa to the service of Western Development – Although Sach’s argues that its not as simple as the West’s development coming at the expense of India and Africa, in the long run, the West’s expansion into these regions helped bring about some, albeit extremely limited, economic growth. Colonialism and exploitation of the developing world did occur, but these are not sufficient reasons to explain why certain countries, and indeed most of Sub Saharan Africa failed to develop – which is the topic Sachs turns to in chapter 3.
Chapter 3 – Why some countries fail to achieve economic growth
In this chapter Sachs suggests eight things that can prevent a country developing
The Poverty Trap – Poverty itself as a cause of economic stagnation – The key problem for the poorest countries is that poverty itself can be a trap. When poverty is very extreme, the poor do not have the ability – by themselves – to get out of the mess. This is because, when people are utterly destitute, all energy goes into survival and there is no capacity to save anything for the future.
Physical geography – Being landlocked or ‘hemmed in’ by mountainous terrain can prevent access to trade networks that bring about development – this is the case with Bolivia (mountains) and Ethiopia (landlocked and poor transport networks). Also Sub-Saharan Africa has an ideal climate that allows malarial mosquitoes to breed, which has decimated much of the population in recent decades.
Fiscal trap – the government may lack the resources to pay for the infrastructure, on which economic growth depends – such as health care, roads, ports, education. There are three reasons for this – firstly, the population may be too poor to tax, secondly it may be inept or corrupt and finally it may be debt burdened.
Governance failures – governments have a crucial role to play in development – not only through developing infrastructure but also through resolving conflicts and ensuring peace and stability. At the extremes, poor governance can result in failed states which can often lead to economic deterioration.
Cultural Barriers – The two main ones are patriarchal countries which deny women equal rights with men – not only does this bar half the population from the opportunity of being economically active, keeping women in a child-rearing role is linked to higher fertility rates, and greater poverty, and also religious and ethnic differences can lead to tensions and even genocide.
Trade Barriers – Some countries economies are crippled by unfair trade rules, for example The Four West African countries whose primary export is cotton are held back economically because of the USA’s subsidies to its own domestic cotton farmers.
Lack of Innovation – The ‘innovation cycle’ (aka endogenous growth) is one of the main factors responsible for the West’s and now Asia’s rapid economic growth – New products being produced and consumed lead to more innovations as people develop more products related to them – (E.G. Now we have Smart Phones – people innovate and develop new applications) – Where people are so poor they have nothing, there is no scope for innovation!
The demographic trap – Poverty leads to higher fertility rates (families choosing to have more children) Economic growth leads to fewer children. Women in the poorest countries have on average 4-6 children – simply put it is harder to feed so many children, and impossible to send all of them to school – resulting in a cycle of poor health, low education and yet more poverty.
Why some poor countries grew and others declined
To cut a medium length section short – the most important factor Sachs points to not covered above is food productivity – quite simply, the reason why Asia has grown more rapidly than Sub Saharan Africa in the last 30 years is that they have experience a ‘green revolution’ – they are capable of producing twice as much food per hectare because of better irrigation and selection of more modern species of crop. He also mentions the fact that ‘natural shocks’ have prevented some countries from developing. He then gives a few examples of different countries that have experienced a selection of the problems above in the years since WW2.
The greatest challenge: overcoming the poverty trap
The end of chapter 3 (P73) is where Sachs outlines his classic statement of development – to quote
“The main object of economic development is for the poorest countries is to help these countries gain a foothold on the ladder: The rich countries do not have to invest enough in the poorest countries to make them rich: they need to invest enough so that these countries can get their foot on the ladder. After that, the tremendous dynamism of self-sustaining economic growth can take hold.”
Chapter 4 – Clinical Economics
Sachs has developed a new sub-discipline called clinical economics. Each failed conomy is unique and its ailments must be carefully diagnosed before a prescription suited to the condition can be written. Sachs includes helpful checklists to diagnose the causes of economic decline and formulate a cure for the malady. We need to look at the following aspects of a country, and its relationship to the wider world in order to assess what assistance is needed to enable it to progress further up the ladder of development:
The Nature and distribution of poverty and its ultimate causes/ potential risk factors – including commodity price fluctuations and ‘climate shocks’
Government policies and capacity to invest in infrastructure
Physical Geography – including transport conditions, agronomy, population density and the disease landscape
Governance Patterns and failures – civil rights, corruption
Cultural Barriers – Gender and ethnic divisions
Geopolitics – Cross boarder threats (wars/ refugees) and also trade relations.
So, at the end of the day, by 2005, this was the bottom line of development theory – it maybe flippant to say this about one man’s life work – but it don’t sound like rocket science to me! Of course I am aware of the fact that doing the analysis and implantation is an extremely time consuming task.
If I get time I may post the rest of the summary laters! (No promises)
Criticisms of the End of Poverty
Firstly a few of my own –
He puts too much emphasis on economic growth as a goal in itself – It is quite clear that economic growth does not yield uniform increases in quality of life across all countries – take Saudia Arabia, and possibly Nigeria as examples of countries you probably don’t want to live – but they have either a high GDP or a rapidly growing economy.
I have a problem with idea of economic growth being ‘self sustaining’ – although you might say I’m saying this with the hindsight of the 2008 financial crash, this is actually coming from basic Marxist economics – a system cannot keep on growing at the rate of 2-3%, let alone at 7-8% for ever – because the bigger you get, the harder the harder it is to maintain economic growth rates. (8% of $500 billion output is much more than 8% of $50 billion!)
He hardly mentions sustainable development, or the idea of “limits to growth’’
‘Clinical Economics’ maybe just sounds like an excuse to employ thousands of more ‘development experts’ to diagnose developing countries specific problems.
He is not critical enough of Corporations and their role in pulling the strings of Western Governments – who create trade policies that benefit Western Corporations rather than developing countries
Even though he is critical of the IMF and neoliberalisation – he still argues that ‘Trade’ is ultimately the solution to developing world problems
Related to the above point – this is still a Eurocentric theory – it is up to us to help them
Sachs also fails to acknowledge the work of developing world economists who came up with many of the ideas he seems to present as his own in The End of Poverty.
This post by John Vidal is also pretty scathing – among his point he argues that ‘Sachs seems to be suffering a dose of advanced consultivitis – symptoms include a swollen ego and a fervent belief that you can change the world. In a work littered with tales of meetings with presidents and global dignitaries, he plays the moral economist who goes from country to country handing out pills and mopping the fevered brows of administrations in economic crisis’.
He puts too much faith in the power of economic growth to solve all social problems – citing the example Saudi Arabia as a country that has a high GDP per capita but still a massive birth rate (and thus an eventual tendency to overpopulation
Another problem of econmic growth is that labour is mobile – so if you invest in education as part of a growth strategy, once people are educated – they tend to leave for more developed countries where they are better paid (known as the ‘brain drain’)
Even though he suggests (eventually) that aid can be an effective means of lifting a country out of poverty – he fails to give any examples of where aid has actually been effective at helping a poor country ‘take off’ successfully.
[1] – The list of changes that Industrialisation and economic growth lead to is eerily evocative of Modernisation Theory from the 1940s… Sachs notes 5 aspects of the ‘Great Transformation’
First and foremost Urbanisation
A revolution in social mobility
Changing gender roles
New family structures (lower birth rates)
An increasingly complex Division of labour with people getting more skilled
This is a Superb documentary which demonstrates the downsides of the industrialisation of the food system in the USA.
It is relevant to the following areas of Global Development within A level Sociology.
Illustrating the downsides of Industrialisation
Illustrating unfair trade rules (corn is subsidised in America)
Illustrating the downsides of forced neoliberalisation
Illustrating the incredible power of Transnational Corporations in America and the negative consequences of them controlling the food chain ‘from seed to supermarket’.
There is also one example (the local farmer guy) of People Centred Development
Illustrating the limitations of western models of development
Scene One – Food Inc.
The Film starts by outlining the unrealities of the modern American supermarket, where there are no seasons and the meat has no bones. Then a bold statement – there is a deliberate veil drawn over the realities of the food production chain, which is basically a factory system, an industrialised system. The rest of the documentary is devoted to outlining the downsides of this system.
Scene Two – Fast Food for All
It’s suggested that the move towards an industrial food system started with McDonalds – when the McDonald brothers got rid of their waitresses and invented the drive through to cut costs, it caught on massively and McDonald’s and other fast food outlets expanded, and so did the mass demand for standardised food products.
McDonalds is now the largest purchaser of Beef in America and one of the largest purchasers of potatoes, tomatoes and even apples, and of course corn-syrup (and hence corn). It was the demand for large volumes of standardised food goods that led to a concentration of food production into massive farms and factories.
Such is the concentration that only four companies now control 80% of the beef packing market, with similar concentrations in other food sectors, so even if you don’t eat in a fast food restaurant you’re probably eating products produced by the same system, by the same food companies. One company name to look out for in particular is Tyson!
Tyson, which is the largest food production company in the world has redesigned the chicken – so it grows in half the time it used to, and has larger breasts. It has also redesigned the chicken farmer and the whole process of chicken farming.
The video now takes the inevitable trip to the battery farm – where hideous abuses take place, most all IMO for the chicken farmers who are kept in debt by Tyson because Tyson keeps demanding they upgrade to new systems. Keeping chickens in abusive conditions is very actually very expensive!
Scene Three – A Cornucopia of Choices
Starts with an interview with the most excellent Michael Pollen – ‘The idea that you need to write a book about where our food comes from shows you the scale of the problem’.
There are only a few companies involved and only a few food products involved, and much of our industrial food turns out to be clever rearrangements of corn… Ketchup, Peanut butter, Coke, and even batteries contain corn derivatives.
So important is corn that even though yields have increased from 20 to 200 bushels of wheat an acre, 30% of the US land base is planted to corn – which is subsidised which in turn leads to over production. Subsidies are in place because the big food TNCs (Tyson and Cargill) want cheap corn, and they have the ears of the government (no pun intended).
There is a transport network which transports corn to CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Farming Operations) where thousands of cattle are kept standing in their own manure until they are slaughtered.
The fact that cattle are now fed corn rather than grass has created the conditions in their stomachs for e.coli to breed, this comes out in manure, and because cattle in CAFOs all live close together shit is transferred between them and it spreads and gets in the food chain and to the consumer
Scene Four – Unintended Consequences
Which ends up with children dying.
In the movie we are persistently shown how food is farmed along factory lines – we go to the inevitable battery chicken factory and processing plants, massive corn fields and CAFO’s – or Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations – where thousands of cattle are farmed together, literally standing in their own shit all day, before being slaughtered.
NB this is very different to how food is marketed to Americans – It is marketed in a very misleading way with images of small scale farmers out in the open air with their free range animals. (NB if you’ve never thought of the concept of ‘industrialisation’ as being applicable to food production as well as to the manufacturing of goods then this shows how good a job the food industry has done with its marketing!).
The reason given for this industrialisation/ rationalisation of the food system is the profit motive – It’s cheaper to mass produce things, which is something demanded by the handful of companies who control the entire food chain in the US and require standardised food products for mass distribution.
Costs are further kept low because the American government subsidises corm production so that it can be sold for less than the cost of producing it. Corn is the main constituent of animal feed today, so cheap corn = cheap meat.
This industrialisation of agriculture has several downsides:
EXPLOITATION and ABUSE of animals – we see several images of animals being kept in atrocious conditions and dying.
Exploitation of workers – battery farm owners are paid very little, and the often illegal migrant workers who pack chickens even less.
The spread of diseases and health problems linked to animals being kept in appalling conditions. Includes children dying of E.coli, and the companies responsible being allowed to carry on producing.
Environmental damage – when cattle and pigs are kept in mass enclosures excrement becomes a pollutant rather than a fertiliser (which would be the case if they were kept in open fields with enough room to graze. Also because corn rather than grass has become the main feed for factory ‘farmed’ animals we have a situation where corn is shipped to meat growing houses, then the meat shipped to consumers, with all the attendant petrol costs, which you wouldn’t have with local food production systems.
Scene Five – The Dollar Menu
Starts off with a low income family shopping at Burger King – they in fact buy lots of junk food over healthy fresh vegetables because the former is cheaper. The biggest predictor of obesity is income level –
The industry claims a ‘crisis of individual responsibility’ for obesity – but the problem is that we are biologically hard-wired to seek out three tastes – salt, sugar and fat, which are very rare in nature, but are everywhere in modern society thanks to the industrial food industry, so this claim is clearly disingenuous.
The father of poor family has diabetes (his pills cost something in the region of $200 month) and 1 out of 3 people born after the year 2000 in the US will develop early onset diabetes.
Scene Six – In The Grass
Featuring Joel Salatin from Polyface Farms – basically a farm where their livestock eat actual grass and they slaughter them by hand– and have much conditions than your average meet factory – the livestock also manure the fields automatically – basically a sensible, truly efficient farm.
As a contrast, we now take a trip to Smithfield Hog Processing Plant, the largest in the world in North Carolina, where over 30K hogs go through every day, where they treat their workers like their hogs – the workers are drawn from the poorest people and work in a conveyor belt system, sometimes getting covered in feces and blood and developing infections to the extent that finger nails separate from hands.
They effectively use up workers – few of the local population work at the plant, workers are now bused in from 100 miles away, and they also employ illegal immigrants from Mexico (ie people desperate for the money) – who have come to America because of NAFTA which led to cheap US corn flooding into Mexico, putting 1.5 million Mexican corn farmers out of business, who now work illegally for giant meat multinationals under appalling conditions. US meat companies actually actively recruited these workers from Mexico, with adverts and buses laid on.
Of course the government response is to crack down on the illegal immigrants rather than the meat companies.
Scene Seven – Hidden Costs
You wouldn’t want to buy the cheapest car – so why do we apply the same principle to food?
In any case, once you add up the environmental, social and health costs of industrial food, it ends up being far more expensive than locally grown, ethical, organic food.
Back to Joel Salatan who says that although some people make a round trip of 500 miles to get to him, he has no desire to upscale and argues that he can’t do so without compromising the integrity of his business.
This is then contrasted to Stonyfield yoghurts, who are the third biggest yoghurt brand in the states, run on ethical principles.
Like many other ethical companies, these are now owned by a massive international corporation and deal with companies like Walmart – who are stocking more ethical products for economic reasons. The argument for this is simply the impact.
Scene Eight – From Seed to the Supermarket
Back at the turn of the century, the average farmer could feed 6-8 people, now it’s 120 people. The change to farming has been profound – I mean, who sees a farmer anymore.
We now take the inevitable trip to Monstanto Land – who developed both Round Up (a pesticide) and then the Round Up Ready Soya Bean.
In 1996 – 2% of Soya beans grown in the US for Monsanto’s
By 2008 – this had risen to 90%.
Since the 1980s its now legal to patent life, there are now prohibitions on saving seed – when the concept first came about farmers were appalled now it’s just accepted and Monsanto effectively control 90% of Soya production in the US.
Monsanto as a team of private investigators (sometimes ex-military) who visit farmers who save their own seed.
We now take a trip to a farmer who didn’t switch to Monsanto’s GM seed, but his fields are contaminated by Monsanto’s seed because of cross-contamination.
We’re also shown the case study of Monstanto suing a certain ‘seed cleaner’ (used by the 10% of farmers who aren’t GM and save their own seed) who is already in debt to the tune of $25 000 and he hasn’t even been in a court room, and friends of 50 years no longer talk to him for fear of coming under Monstano’s wrath.
The end result is that Monsanto effectively own the Soya Been and they control it from seed to the Supermarket – you have to be in bed with Monstano to be a soya farmer
Scene Nine – The Veil
Covers the revolving door between the Justice Department, the development of seed-patenting law and Monsanto’s Corporate executives – its seems that for the past 25 years the US government has been dominated by people who work for food multinationals.
This is a case of centralised power being used against workers, farmers and ultimately consumers.
This has resulted in legislation which prevents the labelling of GMO products and also criticism of the food industry.
There is now an outline of the legal protections the meat industry has – The most famous case being when Oprah said Mad Cow Disease had meant she didn’t want to eat another Burger – the industry sued her for lose of profit and the case spent 6 years in court and a million dollars in fees – sometimes the industry will sue just to send out a message even if it knows it can’t win.
Scene Ten – Shocks to the System
Basically the food system is precarious – fewer food substances, fewer companies and heavy dependence on petroleum.
The cracks are definitely showing, and every time the public get a glimpse of the truth, they tend to turn their backs on this industry.
The battle against the tobacco industry is the perfect model that illustrates the possibility of breaking monopolistic controls over a system by a few powerful corporations.
Credits
You can vote to change this system three times a day.
Buy from ethical companies who treat workers and animals humanely.
Choose foods that are organic and grown locally and in season, shop in Farmers Markets
Tell the government to enforce food safety standards….
‘You can change the world with every bit’.
See the Food Inc documentary for more information…
A brief summary of part of Arundhati Roy’s ‘Capitalism: A Ghost Story’ – In which she explores some of the consequences of privatisation (part of neoliberalisation) in India.
‘Trickle down hasn’t worked in India, but gush up certainly has’
The era of the privatisation of everything has made the Indian economy one of the fasted growing in the world and most of this wealth has gushed up to India’s Corporate Elite.
In India today, a nation of 1.2 billion people, one hundred people own assets equivalent to 25% of the GDP, while a 300 million strong middle class live among the ghosts of the 250 00 debt-ridden farmers who have killed themselves and the 800 million who have been impoverished and dispossessed and live on less than twenty Indian rupees a day.
The most egregious expression of this inequality is Antilla, a building on Altamount Road in Mumbai which belongs to India’s richest man Mukesh Ambanni. It is the most expensive dwelling ever built: it has 27 floors, including 6 for parking, 3 helipads, 600 servants and a 27 story vertical wall of grass. Ambanni is worth $20 billion dollars and his company, Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) has a market capitalisation of $47 billion.
Ambanni’s RIL Corporation is one of a handful which run India, some of the others being Tata and Vedanta, the later of which are truly global in scope – Tata, for example, runs more than one hundred companies in 80 countries.
The consequence of this concentration of wealth, is an increase in corruption, or as Roy puts it – ‘As gush up continues, so more money flows through the institutions of government’. As an example, in 2011, a corrupt minister of communications and information undervalued 2G phone licences by $40 billion dollars, to the benefit of the telecommunications companies which now profit from them, effectively costing Indian taxpayers $40 billion of revenue.
How the Elite in India Benefit from Neoliberal Policies
The way this typically works is that a corrupt government official signs a ‘Memorandum of Understanding’ (MoU) with a Corporation which privatises a chunk of publicly owned land, giving that corporation the right to use that land to establish a business – this either takes the form of mining the raw materials from under the land, or establishing a range of other projects such as Agribusinesses, Special Economic Zones, Dams, and even Formula One racing circuits.
Taxes are typically kept very low in these deals – often sow low in that local people see little of the financial benefit of the new business.
Chhattisgarh
This is especially true were mining is concerned. In 2005, for example, the state governments of Chhattisgarh, Orissa, and Jharkhand signed hundreds of memorandums of understanding with private corporations, turning over trillions of dollars of bauxite, iron ore and other minerals for a pittance – royalties (effectively taxes) ranged from 0.5% to 7%, with the companies allowed to keep up to 99% of the revenue gained from these resources. (Allowing people like Ambanni to build their 27 story houses, rather than the money being used for food for the majority of the Indian population.)
In a third strand of Neoliberal policy, companies are subjected to very little regulation. It seems that they are allowed to develop their projects without protecting the environment or paying any compensation to people who are negatively affected by these projects, as indicated in the case study below:
Tata Steel in Chhattisgarh, North East India
Only days after the Chhattisgarh government signed an MoU with Tata Steel, a vigilante militia was established (known as the Salwa Judum). Organised by the state government and funded by Tata Steel the Salwa Judum initiated a ground clearance operation to eradicate the local forest peoples so Tata could set up its steel plant.
The Salwa Judum
The Salwa Judum burned, raped and murdered its way through 600 local villages forcing 50 000 people into police camps and displacing a further 350 000. To keep these displaced persons in check, the government then deployed 200 000 paramilitary troops to the region to make sure that it remained a stable climate for investment and economic growth.
An Adivasi (local tribal group) protest
According to Roy the government has labelled these people ‘Maoist Rebels’, but in reality they are just displaced peoples.
What is the state of global education? What are the barriers to providing universal education for all, and how important is education as a strategy for international development and economic growth? Can western models of education work for developing countries, or are more people-centred approaches more appropriate and/ or desirable?
Enrollment in primary education in developing countries has reached 91 per cent but 57 million children remain out of school
More than half of children that have not enrolled in school live in sub-Saharan Africa
An estimated 50 per cent of out-of-school children of primary school age live in conflict-affected areas
103 million youth worldwide lack basic literacy skills, and more than 60 per cent of them are women
Some of the specific targets for 2030 include:
Ensure that all girls and boys complete free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education leading to relevant and effective learning outcomes
Ensure that all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development, care and pre-primary education so that they are ready for primary education
Ensure equal access for all women and men to affordable and quality technical, vocational and tertiary education, including university
Eliminate gender disparities in education and ensure equal access to all levels of education and vocational training for the vulnerable, including persons with disabilities, indigenous peoples and children in vulnerable situations
617 million youth worldwide lack basic mathematics and literacy skills.
750 million adults – two thirds of them women – remained illiterate in 2016. Half of the global illiterate population lives in South Asia, and a quarter live in sub-Saharan Africa.
Coronavirus has had a disproportionately negative affect on students in developing countries – as a much higher proportion lack computers to allow home education.
Education in Developing and Developed Countries: A Comparison
Looking at the global picture is one thing, but looking at statistics country by country provides a much better idea of the differences between developed and developing countries in terms of education.There are a number of indicators used to measure progress in education and just some of these include:
The primary enrollment ratio.
The mean number of years children spend in school.
Attendance figures (at primary and secondary school and in tertiary education).
Literacy rates (which can be for youth or adults).
National Test Results (e.g. GCSE results)
Performance in international tests for international comparisons – such as the PISA tests.
The percentage of GDP spent on education
(The main sources for data on education come from the United Nations, UNICEF, and The World Bank.)
A selected breakdown of some of these statistics shows the enormous differences in education between countries:
In the UK, The government spends nearly £90 billion a year on education, employing over 400 000 teachers (all of whom have to be qualified)and over 800 000 people in total in the education system. Education is compulsory from the ages of 4 to 18, meaning every single child must complete a minimum of 14 years of education, and the majority of students will then go on to another 2-3 years of training in apprenticeships or universities. In the primary and secondary sectors, billions of pounds are spent every year building and maintaining schools and schools are generally well equipped will a range of educational resources, with free school meals provided for the poorest students.
Since the 1988 education act, all schools are regularly monitored by OFSTED and thus every school head and every single teacher is ultimately held to account for their results, and the system is very much focused on getting students qualifications – GCSEs and A levels, of which there is a huge diversity. At the end of secondary school, around 70% of students have 5 good GCSEs, but even those who do not achieve this bench mark have a range of educational and training options available to them.
It might sound obvious to say it, but there is also a generalised expectation that both students (and staff) will attend school – attendance is monitored regularly and parents can be fined and even sent to jail if their children truant persistently.
In addition to getting students GCSEs, schools are also required to a whole host of other things – such as teach PSHE lessons, prepare students for their future careers,foster an appreciation for multiculturalism,monitor ‘at risk students’ and liaise with social services as appropriate. Schools are also supposed to differentiate lessons to take account of each individual students’ learning needs.
Of course there are various criticisms of the UK education system, but after 16 years of schooling the vast majority of students come out the other end with significantly enhanced knowledge and skills. Finally, it is worth noting that girls do significantly better than boys in every level of the education system.
Things are very different in many poorer countries around the world – For a start the funding difference is enormous, more than a hundred times less per pupil in the poorest countries; many school buildings are in a terrible state of repair, and many schools lack basic educational resources such as text books. Attendance is also a lot worse, especially in secondary school, and in some regions of India 25% of teaching staff simply don’t show up to work (while reporting very high levels of job satisfaction). A third significant difference is that there is no OFSTED in developing countries, and so schools aren’t monitored- teachers and schools aren’t held accountable for student progress, which is reflected in the fact that a huge proportion of students come out of the education system with no qualifications.
How Can Education Promote Development?
There is no doubt that education can promote development…
Firstly, education can combat poverty and improve economic prosperity. For every year at school education increases income by 10% and increases the GDP growth rate by 2.5%.Teaching children to read and write means they are able to apply for a wider range of jobs – and potentially earn more money, rather than being limited to subsistence agriculture.
Secondly education can be used to improve health.School can be used to pass on advice about how to prevent diseases and thus improve health and they can also be places where free food and vaccinations can be administered centrally (as is the case in the UK) – improving the health of a population.
Thirdly, education can combat gender inequality.This is illustrated in the case study of Kakenya Ntaiya, who, at the age of 11 agreed with her father that she would undergo FGM if he allowed her to continue on to secondary school, which she did, eventually winning a scholarship to study in the United States. There she learnt about women’s rights and returned to her village in Kenya and set up a girls only school where currently 100 girls are protected from having to undergo FGM themselves.
Fourthly, education can get people more engaged with politics. You need to be able to read in order to engage with newspapers and political leaflets and manifestos, which typically contain much more detailed information than you get via radio and televisions. Thus higher literacy rates could potentially make a country more democratic – democracy is positively correlated with higher levels of development
Barriers to Providing Education in Developing Countries
There are many barriers to improving education in developing countries which means that development through education is far from straightforward…
Read the section below and complete the table at the end of the section.
Firstly, poverty means that developing countries lack the money to invest in education -this results in a whole range of problems – such as very large class sizes, limited teaching resources, a poor standard of buildings, not enough teachers – let alone the resources to monitor the standards of teaching and learning.
This is well illustrated in this video of Khabukoya primary school in a remote region of Kenya, near the Ugandan border.
Kenya spends 6% of its GDP on education and has a comparatively good level of education for Sub-Saharan Africa – yet this school appears to have been forgotten about. The school has 400 students and yet only one classroom with a concrete floor and desks, with all other classrooms having mud floors, and being so small that students are practically sitting on top of each other. Funding is so limited that the school relies of volunteer labour to partition the too-few classrooms they have, a task which is being done with mud and water, and to make matters worse half of the students are infected with jiggers, a parasitic sand flea which burrows into the skin to lay its eggs, which causes infections which are often disabling and sometimes fatal.
Secondly, the high levels of absenteeism in primary and especially secondary schools is a major barrier to improving literacy. Most developing countries have enrollment ratios approaching 100%, but the actual attendance figures are much lower. Even in India, a rapidly developing country, the female secondary attendance rate is 50%, while in Ethiopia, it is down at 16%.
Thirdly, the persistence of child labour– The International Labour Organisation notes that globally, the number of children in labour stands at 168 million(down from 246 million in 2000) and 59 million of these are in Sub-Saharan Africa.Agriculture remains by far the most important sector where child labourers can be found (98 million, or 59%), but the problems are not negligible in services (54 million) and industry (12 million) – mostly in the informal economy.
Fourthly, poor levels of nutrition in the first 1000 days of a child’s life significantly reduces children’s capacity to learn effectively – malnutrition leads to stunting(being too short for one’s age) which affects more than 160 million children globally and more than 40% of under-fives in many African countries including Somalia, Uganda and Nigeria. According to the World Health Organisation children who are stunted achieve one year less of schooling than those who are not.
Fifthly, War and Conflict–The United Nations notes that 34 million, or more than half all children currently not in education, live in conflict countries, making conflict one of the biggest barriers to education. Many of these children will be internally displace refugees, but on top of this there are approximately 7 million children living as refugees in non-conflict countries (stats deduced from this Guardian article) and most of these receive a poor standard of education. In conflict countries, the vast majority of humanitarian aid money is spent on survival, with only 2% going towards education.
One of the most interesting examples of conflict preventing education (at least ‘western education especially for girls’) is the case of Boko Haram in Northern Nigeria– A terrorist organisation who gained international notoriety in 2014 when they kidnapped 200 girls from their school dormitory.
Sixthly, Patriarchal cultural values– means many girls the world over suffer most from lack of education.Pakistan and India are two countries which have significant gender inequalities in education provision – In India (one of the BRIC nations) the percentage of girls attending school lags 10% points behind that of boys, a situation which is even worse in Pakistan, the country is which Malala Yousafzai was shot by the Taliban for attending school. In this video she describes some of the fear tactics the Taliban use to prevent girls going to school – such as bombing schools which allow girls to attend and public floggings of women who allow their daughters to attend school.
Although the starkest examples of gendered educational opportunities are to be found in Asia, there is also inequality in Africa and this blog post talks about gendered barriers to education in East Africa
A seventh barrier is the lack of teachersto improve education –the link has a nice interactive diagram to show variation by country.Somewhat ironically this link takes you to an article which discusses how increasing primary education has led to problems as this has led to an increase in demand for secondary education – which many African countries are too poor to provide!
Finally, an eighth barrier is widely dispersed populations in rural areas means children may have difficulty getting to school.
Is a Western Style of Education Appropriate to Developing Countries?
Many of the education systems in developing countries are modelled on those of the west – in that they have primary, secondary and tertiary sectors, they emphasise primary academic subjects such as English, Maths, Science and History and they have external systems of exams which award qualifications to those who pass them. The idea that a Western style of education is appropriate to developing countries is supported by Functionalists/ Modernisation Theorists and generally criticised by Dependency Theorists and People Centred Development Theorists.
Functionalist thinkers (Functionalism is the foundation of Modernisation Theory) argue that Western education systems perform vital functions in advanced industrial societies. These functions include (a) taking over the function of secondary socialisation from parents (b) equipping all children for work through teaching a diverse range of academic and vocational subjects, (c ) sifting out the most able students through a series of examinations so that these can go on to get the best jobs and (d) providing a sense of belonging (solidarity) and National Identity. Functionalists thinkers such as Emile Durkheim and Talcott Parsons saw national education systems with their top-down national curriculums and examinations as being essential in advanced societies.
It follows that Modernisation Theorists in the 1950s also saw the establishment of education systems as one way in which traditional values could be broken down. If children in developing countries are in school then they can be taught to read and write (which their parents couldn’t have done in the 1950s given the near 100% illiteracy rate at the time), and the brightest can be filtered out through examinations to play a role in developing the country as leaders of government and industry.
According to modernisation theory, school curriculums should be designed with the help of western experts and curriculums and timetables modelled on those of Western education systems – with academic subjects such as English, Maths and History forming core subjects in the curriculums of many developing countries.
However, there are a number of criticisms of the Modernisation Approach to education.
Dependency theorists have pointed out that most people in developing countries do not benefit from western style education. According to DT, education was used in many colonies as a tool of control by occupying countries such as Britain, France and Belgium. The way this worked was to select one quiescent minority ethnic group and provide their children with sufficient education to govern the country on behalf of the colonial power. This divisive legacy continued after colonies gained their independence, with school systems in developing countries proving an extremely sub-standard of education to the majority while a tiny elite at the top could afford to send their children to be educated in private schools, going on to attend universities in the USA and Europe, and then returning to run the country as heads of government and industry to maintain a system which only really benefits the elite, while the majority remain in poverty.
One potential solution to the exclusion faced by the majority of children from education in the developing world comes in the form of Non Governmental Organisations such as Action Aid, who are best known for their Sponsor a Child Campaign, in which any individual in the west can pay £20/ month (or thereabouts) which can fund a child through education. One example of a homegrown version of this charity is the Parikrma Humanity Foundation which essentially ignores the daunting numbers of uneducated children and just focuses on educating one child at a time from the slums of India, to a relatively high level, so that they can escape their poverty for good.
People Centred Development theorists criticise Modernisation Theory because of the fact that Western style curriculums are not appropriate to many people in developing countries. In short, the situations many people in poor countries find themselves in mean they would benefit more from a non-academic education, and more over one that is not explicitly designed to smash apart their traditional societies. According to PCD if people from the west want to help with education in developing countries, they should find out what people in developing countries want and then work with them to meet their educational needs. One excellent example of this is the Barefoot education movement which teaches women and men, many of whom are illiterate, in North West India to become solar engineers and doctors in their own villages, drawing as far as possible on their traditional knowledge. There is one condition people must meet in order to become teachers in this school – they must not have a degree.
It might also be the case that modern technology today means that Western Education systems are simply not required in developing countries. Bill Gates (Head of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the largest Philanthropic charitable organisation in the world which controls over $30 billion of assets, and has a similar amount pledged by wealthy individuals) – who (again unsurprisingly) believes that developing online education courses will change the face of global education in the next 15 years because they can be accessed by anyone with a smartphone. One of the leaders in the development of online courses is the Khan Academy- whose strapline is ‘You can learn anything… for free.
An interesting experiment which suggests this might just work is Sugata Mitra’s ‘hole in wall experiment’ in which he simply put computers in a hole in a wall in various slums and villages around India and just left them there – children picked up how to surf the internet in a matter of days, and even learned some rudimentary English along the way. Mitra’s theory is that children can teach themselves when they work in groups, and his intention is to develop cloud based educational material which will enable children to teach themselves a whole range of subjects.
One problem with leaving education to People Centred Development Approaches or leaving it to children to educate themselves on the internet is that this will probably leave children in poorer developing countries lagging behind in terms of the skills and qualifications required to compete for the best paying jobs in the international job market. In comparison to developing countries, developed countries spend a fortune on their education systems and children spend considerably longer in education, and there is an undeniable link between the successful education systems in South East Asia and the hours invested in education by South East Asian children in countries such as China, South Korea and Singapore and the rapid growth of these economies over the past decades. The problem with this approach is that its success may well be related to the culture of the region which emphasises the importance of individual effort in order to achieve through education.
The causes of the civil war in Syria
A brief summary of part of Arundhati Roy’s ‘Capitalism: A Ghost Story’ – In which she explores some of the consequences of privatisation (part of neoliberalisation) in India.
