Breaking Out of The Poverty Cycle

If this is so, eradicating extreme poverty by half by 2015 should be feasible. But Liew points to several essential prerequisites if the goal is to be achieved: Good governance, stability and that governments will need to be focused and devise sound long-term social and economic strategies that improve human development.

The first of eight Millennium Development Goals seeks to 1) Half, between 1990 and 2015, the number of people who earn the World Bank determined benchmark of US$1 per day; and 2) Half the global hunger rate between 1990 and 2015.

While there are pockets of depravation in the Pacific, urban squatter settlements for instance, islands countries, Liew says, suffer more from poverty of opportunity or the lack of access to basic services.

This is the opportunity to be educated, to seek health services, to get information, to be employed and to participate in the market place. People are starved of opportunity rather than suffering from abject poverty.

"But there are people who eat only one meal a day because they can't afford it, so while they are not starving they're nutritionally deficient. And certainly many families can't afford the basic necessities. In fact, a large number of families are in poverty because one of the income earners is sick all the time. These situations shouldn't arise."

UNDP's 2003 Human Development Report says that only two goals are achievable in light of the current trends: Halving global poverty and halving those without access to safe water. But these goals, the report says, are driven largely by China and India.

Poverty and hunger reports in the Pacific vary and some islands countries have achieved certain areas of the MDG, such as primary education, which lead ultimately to reducing poverty.

An Asian Development Bank (ADB) 2003 paper titled Millennium Development Goals in the Pacific: Relevance and Progress, records MDG progress for several islands countries. Samoa, according to the ADB report, may be without extreme poverty or hunger but pockets of hardship (lack of opportunities/access) exist in various areas. However, there are growing signs of clumps of poverty in Samoa, the report observes. Most affected by hardship include the jobless, disabled, single mothers, homeless, the landless or those living on leased land, and the unskilled with children, youth and women represented as the most vulnerable.

For the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), it adds that an estimated 40 percent of its population falls below the minimum standard of living set in 1999 (based on a daily consumption of 2,223 calories and essential non-food expenditure).

Considerable inter-island disparities are evident: Chuuk (50%), Yap (13%), Pohnpei (35%) and Kosrae (29%) were below the poverty line.

In Papua New Guinea, there are signs the poverty situation has deteriorated in the past five years. Urban poverty, the ADB report says, is seen to have risen due to rural-urban drift resulting from poor delivery of rural services (transport, access to markets, education, health and safe water). Food price hikes, rising school fees and unemployment are cited as causes of urban poverty.

At a regional meeting of Pacific Islands countries on MDGs organised by the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat and UNDP earlier this year, participating countries agreed to adapt the MDGs to the local setting.

The intention, said Liew, is for these countries to set their own goals that are consistent with the MDGs or even exceed them, but not reduce the targets below the internationally accepted standards. In the case of poverty, every country is to assess their own poverty condition, set respective poverty standards and work at reducing the number of households that are in poverty as defined by each country.

Liew said: We have, to some extent, the natural, financial and human resources, particularly in a country like Fiji. Papua New Guinea has huge amounts of natural resources, but these resources need to be managed and redistributed productively.

When a copper mine can make a few million dollars a day, how come there are people still with no running water and no jobs? So distribution is a policy question. Governments need to set good governance structures that put people first in their agenda. And stability is a prerequisite for any form of sustainable development.

Atoll countries like Tuvalu, Kiribati and Tokelau have specific challenges in terms of having adequate natural resources to provide for the livelihoods of all their people.

"Breaking out of the cycle would be a challenge, but it can be done. It requires unrelenting, long-term commitment, and less talk and more action."