It’s official. There are now more overweight people in the world than undernourished. According to the World Health Organisation, in 2008, more than 1.4 billion adults, 20 and older, were overweight. I am one of them. Ok, I prefer to think of it as pleasantly plump, but however I describe it, I find it disturbing that… Continue Reading
Tag Archives: poverty
Myths About Poverty. Myth #2 – ‘The poor are always with you.’ Jesus said there’s not much we can do to end poverty
Do you think it possible that we could see a world where extreme poverty is the rare exception and sufficiency for all the rule? Many people say no. They imagine the world today is much the same as the world of fifty years ago – a wealthy, industrialised group of countries with growing prosperity and… Continue Reading
Myths About Poverty. Myth #1 – People are Poor Because They’re Lazy
Over the years I have heard many myths about poverty spoken as if they were truth. One of of the most common is that people are poor because they’re lazy. A few years back the World Bank conducted a study of the experiences of people in developing countries who had escaped extreme poverty.It found two… Continue Reading
Pirates in Pinstripes: How Multinationals Are Ripping off the World’s Poor
Multinationals can be a force for good in the developing world, but can also be a force that harms. This infographic shows why.… Continue Reading
“Blessed are the hungry. Woe to you who are rich” The Key to Understanding Poverty & Wealth in the Bible
For many years I puzzled over the bible’s teaching on poverty and wealth. Why were Jesus and the prophets so down on wealthy people? Why was poverty so commonly framed as a justice issue? Why the singling out of widows and orphans? It all came together when I learned the significance of land. The biblical… Continue Reading
The End of Poverty in Ethiopia
When I think of Ethiopia I think of the terrible famines and emaciated human beings of the 1980s. The Ethiopia of 2012 is still desperately poor but making great strides in improving the well-being of its people. Since the turn of the millennium per capita economic growth has averaged just on 6%, double that of… Continue Reading
The End of Poverty In Bangladesh
By any measure Bangladesh is one of the poorest nations on earth. Sixty four million Bangladeshi’s live on less than $1.25 a day; forty three percent of children are under-nourished; five percent of children die before their fifth birthday; almost half the population lack access to decent sanitation. The human stories behind these statistics are… Continue Reading
The Best Kept Secret of the 21st Century
I recently discovered one of the best kept secrets of the 21st century: There is no longer a “third world”. We are accustomed to dividing the world into rich and poor, with the poor nations, the “third world”, ruled by corrupt dictators, going nowhere and trapped in poverty. This may have been the case in… Continue Reading
A world without extreme poverty is not far away
Can we contemplate a world where extreme poverty is ended? I believe we can and that it is quite possible for such a world to emerge in my grandchildren’s lifetimes. The key is to look beyond poverty as it exists now to see the larger trends over time. And it is these trends that are encouraging… Continue Reading
There’s a Whole Lot More to Our Environmental Challenges Than Climate Change
Listening to the public environmental discourse at the moment I hear a lot about climate change and little else. The reality is that climate change is but one of many serious environmental challenges confronting the world today. My attention was drawn to this by a 2009 paper “A Safe Operating Space for Humanity”. A collaborative… Continue Reading