Responding To Global Poverty

This book explores whether affluent people in the developed world have stringent responsibilities to help fight poverty abroad.

Over the past two decades, the percentage of the world’s population living on less than a dollar a day has been cut in half. How much of that improvement is because of—or in spite of—globalization? While anti-globalization activists mount loud critiques and the media report breathlessly on globalization’s perils and promises, economists have largely remained silent, in part because of an entrenched institutional divide between those who study poverty and those who study trade and finance. Globalization and Poverty bridges that gap, bringing together experts on both international trade and poverty to provide a detailed view of the effects of globalization on the poor in developing nations, answering such questions as: Do lower import tariffs improve the lives of the poor? Has increased financial integration led to more or less poverty? How have the poor fared during various currency crises? Does food aid hurt or help the poor? Poverty, the contributors show here, has been used as a popular and convenient catchphrase by parties on both sides of the globalization debate to further their respective arguments. Globalization and Poverty provides the more nuanced understanding necessary to move that debate beyond the slogans.

Climate change threatens all people, but its adverse effects will be felt most acutely by the world's poor. Absent urgent action, new threats to food security, public health, and other societal needs may reverse hard-fought human development gains. Climate Change and Global Poverty makes concrete recommendations to integrate international development and climate protection strategies. It demonstrates that effective climate solutions must empower global development, while poverty alleviation itself must become a central strategy for both mitigating emissions and reducing global vulnerability to adverse climate impacts.

Christian authors have argued either for a free market solution to global poverty or for a radical reform of global capitalism but the theological underpinnings of such conclusions are noticeable by their absence.Justin Thacker offers a new way forward. He suggests deeply theological answers to questions around the effect of capitalism on global poverty.

On 28-30 September 2009, the Asian Development Bank, the governments of the People's Republic of China and Viet Nam, and the ASEAN Secretariat jointly organized a high-level Asia-wide conference in Ha Noi on the social and environmental impact of the global economic crisis on Asia and the Pacific, especially on the poor and vulnerable. The conference also served as the 3rd China-ASEAN Forum on Social Development and Poverty Reduction and as the 4th ASEAN+3 High-Level Seminar on Poverty Reduction. It was supported by various development partners. This book features selected papers from the Ha Noi conference. It is designed with the needs of policy makers in mind, utilizing field, country, and thematic background studies to cover a large number of countries and cases.

Extreme poverty exhausts institutions, depletes resources, weakens leadership, and ultimately contributes to rising insecurity and conflict. Just as poverty begets insecurity, however, the reverse is also true. As the destabilizing effects of conflict settle in, civil institutions are undermined and poverty proliferates. Breaking this nexus between poverty and conflict is one of the biggest challenges of the twenty-first century. The authors of this compelling book—some of the most experienced practitioners from around the world—investigate the complex and dynamic relationship between poverty and insecurity, exploring possible agents for change. They bring the latest lessons and intellectual framework to bear in an examination of African leadership, the private sector, and American foreign aid as vehicles for improving economic conditions and security. Contributors include Colin Kahl (University of Minnesota),Vinca LaFleur (Vinca LaFleur Communications), Edward Miguel (University of California, Berkeley), Jane Nelson (Harvard University and Brookings), Anthony Nyong (University of Jos and the International Development Research Centre, Nairobi), Susan Rice (Brookings), Robert Rotberg (Harvard University and the World Peace Foundation), Marc Sommers (Tufts University), Hendrik Urdal (International Peace Research Institute), and Jennifer Windsor (Freedom House).