The United Nations last week called for urgent action to raise the living standards of the world’s poor after disclosing that a billion people have been left out of the consumption boom of the past two decades.
In its annual Human Development Report, the UN said gross inequalities between rich and poor countries were getting worse, with 20% of the global population accounting for 86% of consumption.
With consumption increasing sixfold in the past 20 years and doubling in the past 10, people in Europe and North America now spend $37-billion a year on pet food, perfumes and cosmetics.
This figure would provide basic education, water and sanitation, basic health and nutrition for all those deprived and still leave $9-billion over, according to the report.
However, the UN is not joining the calls of some “small is beautiful” lobby groups to cut consumption, but rather to look for changes in patterns of consumption, according to the report’s main author, Dr Richard Jolly.
“Abundance of consumption is no crime, but it is scandalous that the poor are unable to consume enough to meet even their basic needs,” said James Gustave Speth, the UN development programme administrator.
Jolly called the inequalities “grotesque” and said the “gargantuan excesses” in consumption would have to be changed.
According to the UN, the 225 richest people in the world have a combined wealth of more than $1-trillion – equal to the annual income of the poorest 47% of the earth’s population, some 2,5-billion people. The three richest people on the planet – Microsoft’s Bill Gates, the Walton family of Wal-Mart stores and legendary investor Warren Buffett – have assets that exceed the combined gross domestic product of the 48Eleast developed countries.
“It is estimated the additional cost of achieving and maintaining universal access to basic education for all, basic health care for all, reproductive health care for all women, adequate food for all and safe water and sanitation for all is roughly $40-billion a year,” the UN said. “This is less than 4% of the combined wealth of the 225 richest people.”
The report shows the inequalities of current consumption opportunities have excluded more than a billion people. One goal of the UN report is to raise their consumption levels. Among the 4,4-billion people in developing countries, almost three-fifths lack basic sanitation, one- third have no safe drinking water, one- quarter have inadequate housing and one- fifth are undernourished.
Transport for most of the world’s poor is by foot. There are five cars per 1 000 people in East and South Asia, 11 per 1 000 in sub-Saharan Africa, and 450 per 1 000 in the industrialised countries.
These skewed patterns of consumption of fossil fuels place the people of the poorest countries in double jeopardy. Burning of fossil fuels has quintupled since 1950, and it is the wealthiest one- fifth of the world who consume more than 50% of them.
The poorest one-fifth of the world are responsible for just 3% of carbon dioxide levels, but the stressing of the environment from carbon dioxide emissions means the poorest people, who live in low- lying regions such as Bangladesh and parts of Egypt, risk losing their homes as sea levels rise because of global warming.
A child born in New York or London will consume, pollute and waste more in their lifetime than 50Echildren born in a developing country. But it is the poorer children who are likely to die from air and water pollution, the report said.
Air pollution causes 2,7-million deaths a year, with 80% of the victims in rural poor areas of developing countries. In Latin America and parts of Asia, millions of children are at risk of losing four or more IQ points because of lead emissions. In these areas the growing economic crisis is already showing up in health and education cuts which will accelerate the downward consumption trend already hitting these countries.
“The message of `limits to growth’ of the 1970s has changed – the emphasis is not on the world running out of non-renewable resources, but on the threat to the renewable resources: air, soil, forests, fish, biodiversity and water,” said Jolly.
The consumption of fresh water has almost doubled since 1960, the marine catch has increased four-fold, with a quarter of fish stocks depleted and another 44% being fished at their biological limit.
Developing countries now face a strategic choice: they could repeat the industrialisation and growth processes of the past 50 years, or they could leapfrog to growth patterns that are pro-environment and pro-poor.