Carlos from the Global Clinton Initiative 2007 in New York
For many, globalization heralds the free movement of people, capital and ideas. But the benefits of globalization have yet to reach billions of people for whom economic mobility remains an aspiration rather than a reality. At a time of unprecedented wealth in many countries, three billion people survive on less than two dollars per day. In short, globalization is anything but global.
Making globalization work for the world’s poor is imperative. Our economies depend on the capacity of robust markets to interact and yield benefits for both producers and consumers.
Reversing the tide of poverty requires action on multiple fronts: governance, education, and health among them. Two essential tools will be trade and technology. Trade offers the possibility of increasing producers’ incomes and building real assets that can sustain economic growth. Technology offers the possibility of universal access to the knowledge that can spawn innovation.
But even with these powerful instruments at our disposal, the gap between rich and poor is increasing. Rising inequality is also evident in the patterns of global trade. While foreign investment has expanded dramatically across the developed world, the world’s least developed countries see less than 3% of north-south investment. Agricultural commodity prices have fallen steadily over the last decade, and the vast majority of the world’s poorest people depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. The net result is that most farmers are simply unable to produce enough for their basic needs: 17% of those living in the developing world are undernourished. In Africa that figure rises to 33%.
Meanwhile, as the world’s rich countries move swiftly to build on the extraordinary potential of new information technology, much of the developing world remains disconnected and effectively disenfranchised. Though it represents 23% of the world’s total population, Southeast Asia has only 1% of the world’s Internet users. There are more phone lines in Manhattan than in all of Africa. Even in the United States, only 60% of the population has Internet access.
Daunting as these challenges may be, people around the world are taking strides toward rendering trade and technology better tools in the global fight against poverty. But enormous questions remain: How, in an increasingly complex and uncertain global trade environment, can trade benefit the world’s poorest producers? How, absent either the necessary infrastructure or the capital required to make costly investments, can technology work for the poor? And finally, how – given finite resources for development assistance – can we hope to finance meaningful change?
The poverty working group at the Clinton Global Initiative seeks answers to these questions and concrete steps that people can take. Alleviating global poverty is not simply a matter of enlightened self-interest; it is, indeed, one of the greatest moral challenges of our time, and a necessary act of human solidarity.
