Documentary about pollution in India, tonight TG4 @ 9:25

by bazman Wed Jul 09, 2003 14:36 barrie_creamer at hotmail dot com

In the second half of the twentieth century, worldwide consumption of goods and services grew six-fold. But according to a united nations survey, one sixth of the worlds population - a billion people- live on less than a dollar a day and cannot satisfy the most basic human needs. More than eight million die each year because of polluted water or contaminated air. Six million die from malnutrition or starvation. Two million die from diarrhoea or related diseases. AIDS has already claimed the lives of ten million Africans and is projected to kill 25 million more in the next decade. Among the 4.5 billion inhabitants of developing countries, three in five lack access to basic infrastructure. A third have no drinkable water. A quarter live in substandard accommodation. A fifth have no sanitary or medical services. In Africa, the poorest region of the world, 174 of every thousand children fail to reach the age of five. A fifth of the worlds children spend less than five years in school. The same percentage are permanently undernourished.

And the gap grows. Between 1965 and 1999, real incomes per capita in the developed countries rose by 2.4 per cent. Those in the Middle East and North Africa stayed roughly the same. In sub Saharan Africa they fell. Eighty nine countries are worse off now that they were ten years ago. Thirty-five have experienced a greater fall than during the great depression of the 1930’s. Worldwide, the top twenty percent of high income earners account for 86 percent of all private consumption, while the poorest 20 percent account for only 1.3 per cent. The richest fifth consume sixteen times more meat , seventeen times more energy and 145 times more cars than the poorest fifth. Of the worlds total population, 65 per cent have never made a telephone call; 40 percent have no access to electricity. Americans spend more on cosmetics and Europeans on ice cream, than it would cost to provide schooling and sanitation for two billion people who currently go without both.

In 1999 the United Nations Development Programme estimated that the worlds three richest individuals had more assets than the 600 million who make up the worlds poorest nations. The top 358 billionaires are collectively richer than almost a half of the earths inhabitants combined. Meanwhile aid from the developed countries remains exceptionally low. Only four western countries -Denmark, Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands- reach the UN target of 0.7 percent of national income. America, the world richest nation, is at the bottom of the table, with 0.1 percent. Yet according to one calculation by the UN Development Programme, a mere 4 percent of the wealth of the 225 richest individuals would be sufficient to provide elementary educational and medical facilities and adequate nutrition for all the worlds poor.

….extracted from The Dignity of Difference by Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi.

by Anonymous Wed Jul 09, 2003 13:33

http://www.guardian.co.uk/famine/story/0,12128,994506,00.html

and for good commentary on same, check out the links on the front page:-

http://www.guardian.co.uk

The lost decade

They were promised a brighter future, but in the 1990s the world's poor fell further behind

The widening gulf between the global haves and have-nots was starkly revealed last night when the UN announced that while the US was booming in the 1990s more than 50 countries suffered falling living standards.

The UN's annual human development report charted increasing poverty for more than a quarter of the world's countries, where a lethal combination of famine, HIV/Aids, conflict and failed economic policies have turned the clock back.

by Caoimhín - Green Party Wed Jul 09, 2003 13:24

there will be English subtitles on-screen.