I just watch an online video clip of a speech given by Paul Collier, an economist and the author of “The Bottom Billion”. Paul advocates four steps that we can take to help the one billion people who are trapped in poor or failing countries. He calls this group the “bottom billion” and is working to close the gap between this group and the richest nations on earth.
First, I find the term “bottom billion” inappropriate and offensive, as I have lived among many of these amazing people during the nearly two years I spent in Brazil. These people face almost hopeless poverty, have enormous challenges and we need to help them. However, they are not the “bottom billion”. These are beautiful people filled with amazing potential. These might be the poorest, most underprivileged people on earth, but I don’t agree with the label “bottom billion”.
Regardless of the semantics of the name for this group of people, I agree with Dr. Collier that we need to provide hope for these underprivileged people. Dr. Collier analyzes the role the United States took to help Europe after World War II as a model that the world can follow today to help solve this problem.
He recommends that we provide:
(1) AID
(2) TRADE - After WWII the US tore up the protectionist trade policy and totally reversed it, opening trade with Europe.
(3) SECURITY - After WWII, the US tore up it’s isolationist security policy and put hundreds of thousands of troops in Europe.
(4) GOVERNMENTS - Before WWII the US had not been willing to join the League of Nations, but after WWII we became part of a larger international community that helped create the solution for Europe.
DR. Collier spoke about the need to better utilize the resources booms in these under-developed countries. He recommended international standards to create informed societies, such as government financial transparency and competitive auction formats for contracts related to the developing country resources.
I agree with Dr. Collier that these lessons learned from the successfully rebuilding of Europe after WWII can provide us with several of the necessary pieces of the solution to end global poverty. However, many more solutions are available to help us solve this problem today as compared to 60 years ago. For, example, the power of the Internet allows us to facilitate microlending from millions of people around the world in a way that would have been impossible before the Internet.
Technology advances provide phenomenal solutions if they are shared with developing countries. For example, inexpensive solar panels can provide consistent power in developing countries that have struggled with insufficient and unreliably power supply. Inexpensive wireless technologies can facilitate communication necessary to efficiently run businesses, including access to telephones, email and the Internet. Vaccines for diseases such as malaria can help to halt the ravaging effects of these diseases.
Dr. Collier is right that we need to learn from the successes of the European construction after World War II, but let’s also open our minds to the additional innovative solutions that are available. We can certainly do a better job developing underprivileged countries today than was possible in the 1940s.
The video of Dr. Collier’s speech is embedded below:
Posted on June 1st, 2008 by admin
Filed under: Charity, Giving Back, Global Orphan Crisis, Innovation, Microlending, Poverty
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