There is nothing wrong with consumption, says the UN Development Programme's 1998 Human Development Report. In fact, consumption is essential for economic growth. But there is something very wrong with the great disparities in current consumption patterns.
Since 1950, the world's consumption expenditure has increased six-fold, to $24 trillion in 1998. Of this, 86 per cent is accounted for by the richest fifth of the world's population, while the poorest fifth's share is only 1.3 per cent. At $200 bn, sub-Saharan Africa's 1995 consumption expenditures amounted to a mere 0.9 per cent of the $21.7 trillion global total. The average African household consumes 20 per cent less today than it did 25 years ago.
The report points out that the entire world population's needs in the areas of basic health and nutrition, water and sanitation, basic education, as well as women's reproductive health could be met with additional annual expenditures totalling $40 bn. This compares with the $50 bn and $105 bn Europeans spend annually on cigarettes and alcoholic drinks, respectively, and with global spending of $400 bn and $780 bn on narcotic drugs and the military.
Current consumption patterns also put too much strain on the environment, says UNDP, with the burden of environmental damage falling most heavily on the world's poorest. As a result of global warming, for example, harvest yields are expected to fall in the next century in Africa, South Asia and Latin America, while water shortages are expected to increase in sub-Saharan Africa, the Arab states and South Asia. A one-metre rise in sea levels could see Egypt and Bangladesh lose 12 and 17 per cent, respectively, of their land mass. Indoor and outdoor pollution causes 2.7 mn deaths annually, of which 2.2 mn result from indoor pollution caused by burning dung and wood for heating and cooking in developing countries, mostly in rural areas, the report says. Nearly half a million such deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa.
Among the report's recommendations for achieving equitable and sustainable consumption are explicit government policies to attain food security, provide basic social services and encourage technological innovations in the use of renewable sources of energy and more productive agricultural techniques.
Half the world living in utter deprivationThe world's three richest people together own assets that exceed the combined gross domestic product of the 48 least developed countries. Meanwhile, almost 3 billion people live on less than $2 a day, totally excluded from the 20th century's boom in the consumption of goods and services. Half the world's population thus lives in utter deprivation, the result, in part, of warped spending priorities at national and international level. Several African countries, for example, have to spend far more on debt service than on health and education. [click on photo below for information on subject] |
Nobel Laureate, UN pay tribute to creator of Human Development Report
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, speaking of both Prof. Sen and Dr. Haq at the occasion, pointed out "what these two great South Asian economists have in common: the profound conviction that what matters in development is not quantities produced but the quality of life lived by human beings." He concluded, "It is with [Dr. Haq] that we most strongly associate the idea that governments should not focus simply on economic growth, but on expanding the range of choices available to ordinary people." Among the other speakers at the gathering were senior UN officials including Mr. James Gustave Speth, Dr. Nafis Sadik, Mr. Nitin Desai, Dr. Richard Jolly and Mr. Maurice Strong. -- F.B. |
Professor Amartya Sen, winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize for economics
in recognition of his work on poverty and famine, recently hailed the legacy
of the Human Development Report's architect, renowned Pakistani economist
Mahbub ul Haq, who passed away in July. At a commemorative gathering held
on 15 October at UN headquarters in New York, Prof. Sen, who collaborated
closely with Dr. Haq on the Human Development Report, remembered his friend
as "a visionary thinker whose work has brought about a major change
in the assessment and accounting of the process of development." Prof.
Sen recalled that when he and Dr. Haq were undergraduate students in economics
at Cambridge University, his friend told him, "We must learn conventional
economics, but not use it much ... because it doesn't concentrate on the
right questions." When Sen inquired why bother to study the subject
at all, the rejoinder was: "Nobody will listen to you if you don't
know all this stuff very well. And who knows, the stuff may prove indirectly
useful in answering even the right questions."