Christian Aid has just launched a new report 'Poverty Over'.
The report sets out briefly Christian Aid's understanding of poverty, and the broad strokes of a strategy that can contribute to the eradication, rather than just the reduction, of poverty. Fundamentally, the report argues that poverty is political and so the solutions must also be political. The financial crisis presents a window of opportunity in which civil society and social movements can try to leverage real political change that could have long-lasting benefits for millions or even billions of people.
The goal must be nothing less than the complete eradication of poverty
Lip service has often been paid to the need to tackle poverty. Despite the wealth of good intentions, the result is that poverty, with all its attendant hardships and humiliation, remains firmly entrenched.
The economic crisis has called into question old ways of thinking and old economic models have been exposed as fundamentally unsuited to promoting human development. The crisis thus provides an opportunity to make fundamental changes - the kind of opportunity that has not been seen for generations.
At the 2009 G20 in London, UK prime minister Gordon Brown let the attack on economic policies, known collectively as the Washington Consensus, that poorer countries have for decades been strong-armed into adopting. Far from a recipe for success, the formula, which includes deregulation, privatisation, wholesale liberalisation of trade and financial markets, and lower corporate taxes, can now be seen to have precipitated the global economic crisis.
The comfortable myth that growth will eventually benefit all, even if inequality rises at the same time, has been shattered. And k as we now know, the growth itself was unsustainable.
A global movement hungry for change is needed to create the political will essential for real progress
It is not just the economic meltdown that provides an opportunity for change, A climate crisis looms, with some of the poorest nations on earth already feeling its impact through droughts, flooding and other extreme weather events.
The climbing levels of inequality in income and consumption, within and between so many countries, mark a social crisis, as huge and widening gaps between rich and poor weaken social relations and undermine democratic politics.
Historically, crisis have prompted massive social change. The fear, chaos and upheaval that accompany them can have a galvanising effect. Change can bring with it the opportunity to shape what is to come, giving birth to hope and sense of purpose.
The determine manner in which governments have recently pumped many billions into shoring up their economies shows clearly that when the scale of emergency is understood, politicians can find the will to act. There are many who, in the fact of the world's lack of progress on poverty, will scorn the idea that its eradication is possible. They would regard the idea that poverty could be ended within a reasonable time-frame as preposterous.
But the main obstacle to the eradication of poverty is political. A global movement hungry for change is needed to create the political will essential for real progress. Come with us. The opportunity for change may never be more real. We must seize the moment to end poverty once and for all.