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CU-Boulder GEOG 3682 - No End To Poverty

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This article was downloaded by:[University of Colorado Libraries]On: 16 July 2008Access Details: [subscription number 768413583]Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UKJournal of Development StudiesPublication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t713395137No end to povertyTim UnwinaaRoyal Holloway, University of London, London, UKOnline Publication Date: 01 July 2007To cite this Article: Unwin, Tim (2007) 'No end to poverty', Journal of DevelopmentStudies, 43:5, 929 — 953To link to this article: DOI: 10.1080/00220380701384596URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00220380701384596PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLEFull terms and conditions of use: http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdfThis article maybe used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction,re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expresslyforbidden.The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will becomplete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug doses should beindependently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings,demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with orarising out of the use of this material.Downloaded By: [University of Colorado Libraries] At: 17:51 16 July 2008 No End to PovertyTIM UNWINRoyal Holloway, University of London, London, UKFinal version received November 2006ABSTRACT This commentary is designed to provide a critique of Jeffrey Sachs’ The End ofPoverty: How We Can Make It Happen In Our Lifetime, highlighting in particular thedifficulties that arise from his focus on absolute poverty and his proposed recipe for its elimination.It begins by emphasising the many strengths of Sachs’ arguments, but then suggests that thesecould usefully be tempered by greater attention to relative conceptualisations of poverty and theethical grounds upon which his arguments are based. Six main issues are subsequently addressed:his use of the notion of a ladder of development; his concentration on countries rather than people;his understandings of geography and of history; his relative lack of attention to social and culturaldimensions of development; the inability of poor countries to absorb the levels of aid that heproposes; and the damage caused by suggesting that it is indeed possible to end poverty.I. IntroductionThe central purpose of this paper is to provide a critique of the increasinglyhegemonic position held within the global development community that proposesthat it is possible to eliminate poverty through a particular kind of economic growth.It does so primarily through an examination of Jeffrey Sachs’ (2005) influential workThe End of Poverty: How We Can Make It Happen In Our Lifetime (also subtitledEconomic Possibilities For Our Time in US edition), but in so doing it draws on awider set of debates and literatures. My essential argument is that:. It is not possible to end poverty.. Attempts to do so through the route advocated by Sachs, and others adhering tohis views, will not solve the underlying conditions that cause poverty.. We must therefore urgently encourage those charged with enabling the world’spoor and marginalised communities to enhance their lives to create and adoptalternatives to this hegemonic model.Such an agenda clearly begs important questions about the nature of poverty andwhether or not it can indeed be eliminated. At the heart of my argume nt is theCorrespondence Address: Tim Unwin, ICT4D Collective, Department of Geography, Royal Holloway,University of London, Egham, Surrey TW20 0EX, UK. Email: [email protected] of Development Studies,Vol. 43, No. 5, 929–953, July 2007ISSN 0022-0388 Print/1743-9140 Online/07/050929-25 ª 2007 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/00220380701384596Downloaded By: [University of Colorado Libraries] At: 17:51 16 July 2008 suggestion that we need to pay much greater attention to the notion of relativepoverty if the world’s poor are to be given appropriate opportunities to improvetheir lives. Even if we could eliminate absolut e poverty, inequalities would stillremain. Ind eed, I suggest that absolute poverty, the poverty in which the poorest ofthe poor are now living, is but one expression of the underlying structures that giverise to relative poverty. Put another way, if we do not address relative poverty, wecannot eliminate absolute poverty. In reviewing Sachs’ work, though, I also seek topoint out problems with the solutions that he proposes even for eliminat ing absolutepoverty. While Sachs has clearly moved debate forward about delivery of theMillennium Development Goals, there remain six key difficulties with his argumentthat tend to limit the likelihood of success for the solutions that he proposes.Since the early 1990s and the collapse of the former Soviet Union, there has beenan ever-increasing emphasis amongst donors, the international financial institutions(IFIs), the United Nations, and indeed the governments of many poor countries, ontwo key principles: that poverty can indeed be eliminated, and that economic growthis central to the achievement of this objective (see for example DFID’s 1997 WhitePaper, Eliminating World Poverty: A Challenge for the 21st Century). At the turn ofthe new millennium, the power of the economic growth associated with globalisationprovided the context for leaders of the UN’s member governments to sign up to theMillennium Development Goals, which enthusiastically espoused the belief thatpoverty could indeed be eliminated. Ambitious targets have been set for 2015,seeking to make dramatic inroads to poverty through interventions in education,health, gender inequality, environmental sustainability, and the creation of a newglobal partner ship in which the private sector will have a particularly prominent role(UN, 2006). Five years later, the arguments of the Commission for Africa (2005)were likewise fundamentally underlain by a consensus that enhancements ineconomic grow th and governance were essential if poverty in the continent


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