> > >
> > > I think this is a terribly out-of-date 19th-century view -- and
> > > puritanical to boot! Today the problem isn't scarcity, but abundance.
> > > It's overproduction that killing us. And above all overproduction of
> > > "goods" that are, on balance, more bad than good.
So here's some non-ad-hominem info.
1. Nutrition.
Numbers of People Supported by 1992 Global Food Supply with Different Diets 1.1 Population potentially supported by 1992 food supply with a basic diet 6.3 billion (115% of world population) 1.2 improved diet 4.2 billion ( 77% of world population) 1.3 full-but-healthy diet 3.2 billion ( 59% of world population) Source: FAO, 1993.
"the adequacy of the global food supply depends not only on amount, but also on quality — on how one defines “adequate diet.” Of three types of diet representing different levels of nutritional adequacy and variety, the basic diet is almost purely vegetarian. It is assumed that few of the world’s available cereals, roots and pulses, fruits and vegetables, are fed to animals. Instead, they directly serve human consumption. The above computation is based on this diet. The second diet is “improved” vegetarianism, supplemented by small amounts of animal-derived foods: 15% of the calories come from animal products. This diet is comparable to what many South Americans and Asians eat today. Finally, a “full-but-healthy” diet would incorporate richer and more varied foods (vegetables, fruits, oils), along with 25% of calories from animal sources. I f we re-compute global food supply data in the light of these two diets, we find that in 1992, 4.2 billion and 3.2 billion people respectively could be fed with available food supplies — significantly less than the actual world population of 5.47 billion.''
Dietary Energy Supply ( DES) remains very low in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia (below basic average requirements). It is higher in the rest of Asia and in Latin America. DES is highest in all the developed countries, followed closely by the Near East and North Africa. The difference between the per capita availability of calories in sub-Saharan Africa and the UnitedStates and Canada is 1,500 per person per day.
Per Capita Dietary Energy Supply by Region, 1990 sub-Saharan Africa 2099 North America 3600 Near East & North Africa 3094 Europe 3450 South Asia 2245 Oceania 3330 South East Asia 2446 Former USSR 3380 China 2657 Central America 2822 South America 2625 Source: ACC/SCN, 1993: 119; FAO, 1992b: 21.
(note: these are 1992 FAO figures: since then more than 75% of Russian livestock has been slaughtered and ex-Soviet dietary standards have declined significantly, helping worsen general level of public health and lowered life expectancy)
Refugees An important category of food-short people, which partly overlaps with the preceding category of famines, is that of refugees. Refugees are defined as people who have been driven across international borders as a result of war or civil strife. Their possessions (assets) and sources of income disappear, often overnight. As a result, their entitlement set collapses, in the worst cases below starvation level. The latest data by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the U.N. organization primarily responsible for assisting and repatriating refugees, indicate that at the end of 1992, 19.7 million persons were refugees, an increase by almost 1 million and 3 millions compared to 1990 and 1991. In 10 countries, refugees constitute more than 5% of the total population; a l l of these are poor countries. (U.S. Committee for Refugees, 1993: 53) In addition, approximately 24 million people forced out of their homes and regions remain within the borders of their own countries (UNHCR, 1993). According to international law and practice, these are not properly speaking refugees, but “displaced persons.” These data, then, confirm that the spread of ethnic conflict since the end of the Cold War is pushing increasing numbers of people into extreme food insecurity. For the first time in fifteen years, this sad evolution touches Europe. According to the FAO, in 1990 785 million persons were malnourished (ie received enough protein-energy for light activity but not productive manual labor)
Actually you don't need a passport to see the problem: just go into your own ghettoes. In the United States, the Center on Hunger, Poverty and Nutrition Policy at Tufts University, directed by Larry Brown, estimates that 13% of all Americans, or 30 million people, (12 million children and 18 million adults)
are food poor. This list has been discussing bad diet among the poor. The low birthweight rate for African-Americans (US citizens) places them in 77th position worldwide, after countries such as Ivory Coast, Guinea-Bissau, Mauritania, Iraq, Senegal, Lesotho. Even the average U.S. data place the country in 31st position, behind all other industrialized nations and quite a few Third World countries, including Costa Rica, Egypt, Iran and Hong Kong (Children’s Defense Fund, 1992: 2). That this denotes a serious public health and social policy problem in the U.S. goes without saying.
Women The latest data reproduced in the Second Report on the World Nutrition Situation show that 400 million women of childbearing age — or approximately 45% of the total — have a weight below 45 kg (ACC/SCN, 1992: 2). This does not mean that all are malnourished (or that every woman weighing more than 45 kg is well nourished), but a weight this low is a readily available indicator that is more or less linked with undernutrition, and often indicates obstetric risk. This proportion varies from 62% in South Asia and 44% in South East Asia, to 21% for sub-Saharan Africa and 10% for South America (ACC/SCN, 1993: 116). Other similar indicators computed by ACC/SCN, such as the proportion of women whose height is below 145 cm., whose arm circumference is below 22.5 cm, or whose Body Mass Index (BMI) is below 18.5, basically present the same picture
Children Proportion of Children Wasted and Stunted, 1980-1990 wasting (12-23 months) stunting (24-59 months) sub-Saharan Africa 10 39 Asia (without India and China) 11 53 India 27 65 China 8 41 Latin America 5 26 North Africa 2.5 25 All 13 46 Source: World Bank, 1993
20% of the world's population is chronically undernourished (UNDP estimate)
MICRONUTRIENTS Less visible than protein-energy undernutrition are deficiencies in t he micronutrients, e.g. iron, iodine, vitamin A, and the other vitamins, major minerals and trace elements. These manifestations of “hidden hunger” are extremely important both because of the number of people who suffer from them, and because of their health consequences. Until recently, micronutrients were low on the development/hunger agendas. As a result, few programs specifically designed at remedying these forms of undernutrition were implemented, and few efforts were made at gathering reliable and comparative data. However, in the second half of the 1980s,and especially since the beginning of the 1990s, considerable efforts have been undertaken to remedy this situation. International organizations of specialists have been created, and databases, among others for iodine, have been started. The major donors (World Bank, UNICEF, United States Agency for International Development) have strongly increased their budgets for programs in these fields. The reasons for this increased interest in micronutrients include the recent understanding that micronutrient deficiencies touch more people and have more serious consequences than previously thought and that prevention or treatment of such deficiencies can be achieved at low cost (Maxwell & Frankenberger, 1992: 26; UNICEF, 1992c: 9). According to Reutlinger (1993: 9), a third reason is that measures to deal with these kinds of malnutrition have the capacity to “reduce human suffering yet do not threaten the existing economic and political structures.” Vitamin A deficiency can lead to various forms of damage to the eye, ranging from night blindness to full blindness, and to increased morbidity and mortality in young children between 6 months and 6 years old. It also increases the severity of measles and other infectious diseases, dramatically increasing their morbidity and mortality. According to a group of experts, “these increases occur at levels of vitamin A deficiency less severe and chronic than required for night blindness and other manifestations of xerophthalmia [ ] — i.e., [with] populations which are only mildly or marginally deficient.” Vitamin A supplementation is therefore recognized as an important, effective and potentially efficient intervention tool, capable of “reducing childhood mortality by as much as 34% ( Helen Keller International, 1992; ACC/SCN, 1992: 39).” Iron deficiency leads to iron anemia, impaired work performance, damaged learning ability and dysphagia. It is increasingly recognized that these impacts occur even in the absence of clinical iron-deficiency anemia, i.e., with small deficiencies. Iron deficiency anemia is particularly widespread in premenopausal women. It increases their susceptibility to illness, pregnancy complications, and maternal death (U.N., 1991: 58), in addition to decreasing their productivity. Among the effects of iodine deficiency are goiter, cretinism, deaf-mutism, impaired fetal growth and brain development. According to the experts, iodine deficiency is probably the leading cause of preventable mental retardation in t he world today, and may have important effects on socioeconomic development (WHO, 1991: 5). Concomitantly, “when iodine is restored to an iodine deficient community, cretins no longer are born, and improvement occurs in the indicators of thyroid function which probably signals an improvement in human performance.” Both cretinism and goiter disappear, and with them their burden on the health system and the community (Stanbury, 1992). Hence, micronutrient deficiencies put a significant burden on children and can have lasting effects, decreasing both their immediate chances of survival in case of sickness and their long-term learning and work capacities.xiii As the WHO states: “Thus in fact all three forms of micronutrient malnutrition [vitamin A, iron and iodine — PU] have quadruple effects, through impairment of growth and development (physical and mental) and survival of infants and young children; physical and intellectual development of school-age children; work performance and productivity of adults; and reproductive performance of women. Thus the micronutrient deficiencies e a c h singly constitute a brake on socioeconomic development and mostly are combined in synergistic action to the detriment of t h e world’s already underprivileged groups.” (WHO, 1991: 5)
“The rate of appearance of new cases (incidence) of severe vitamin A deficiency, measured as eye damage, was estimated in Indonesia at around 2.7 cases per 1000 pre-school children per year. This led to an estimate of up to 500,000 new cases of e y e damage per year for Asia. Applying this rate to all countries with known vitamin A deficiency gives world-wide estimates o f some 700,000 new cases per year, among pre-school children.” (ACC/SCN, 1987: 33)
If we apply the RDAs for vitamin A and iron set by the Food and Nutrition Board of the NRC and modified for non-U.S. populations or the “safe” WHO/FAO recommendations, and include some allowance for waste, apart from Africa and the Middle East, no region in the world has average availabilities of these micronutrients sufficient to be able to supply enough for all its population.
In 1989, 24 out of 78 countries for which data were available suffered from national vitamin A shortage, defined as an average availability of Retinol per person per day of less than 550 RE. Their combined population was 464.12 million people. In t he same year, 21 countries, out of 71, suffered from iron shortage, defined as an average availability of iron per person per day below 14 mg. This represented a total of 1,988.9 million people — a very high figure, which is due to the inclusion of large countries such as China, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Brazil.
GDP 800m people have incomes less than the UN poverty level of less then $1 a day.
Among 149 countries, per capita GNP ranges
from $80 a year to $40,630 a year.
The under-5 mortality rate varies from 5 deaths per 1,000 live births to 320; the maternal death rate ranges from 6 deaths per 100,000 live births to 1,800. The primary school enrolment rate varies from 17% of young people to 100%.
Low pc GNP's result in child exploitation. A recent report by the International Labour Organization estimates that 250 million children between the ages of 5 and 14 work in developing countries; of that number, 120 million children work full-time. The report goes on to say that Asia is home to 61 percent of child workers, or more than 153 million children. Eighty million children (32 percent) work in Africa and 17.5 million (7 percent) in Latin America.
Douglas L. Kruse, a Rutgers University economist, worked with the AP to estimate the number of children working illegally in the United States. His findings: 290,200 children worked illegally in the United States last year; 59,600 of them were under age 14; more than 13,000 worked in garment sweatshops. By using child laborers rather than legal workers, employers saved $155 million. Compared with the 2 million children who worked in the United States a century ago, these numbers may seem small. But in the larger context of a globally conscious, humane market, they are astronomical.
How much stuff is there? Abunbdance or scarcity?
Renewable Resources
Water, like land, is a renewable resource on which human life depends.
Water is one of the most plentiful of the Earth's resources, yet it is
unevenly distributed throughout the globe. Vast supplies are frozen in
glaciers or stored underground in aquifers that may be tapped only
through deep wells. Water supplies are altered seasonally by cyclical
droughts or floods, so that the population "carrying capacity" may be
influenced more by periodic droughts than by average annual rainfall.
The dwindling supply of marine fish offers a good example of what can
happen when a renewable resource is overused. After nearly a five-fold
increase in the marine fish catch between 1950 and 1989, the marine
harvest (excluding shrimp or other fish raised domestically via
aquaculture) leveled off at 84 million to 88 million metric tons annually
between 1987 and 1993, and then jumped to 93 million metric tons in
both 1994 and 1995.
By increasing demands for food, fuel, shelter, and other amenities,
population growth and urbanization contribute to the loss of forests
around the world. Nearly one-half of the forests that covered the Earth
8,000 years ago are gone, primarily because of human activities,
according to a recent study by the World Resources Institute and the
World Conservation Monitoring Centre.15 Logging threatens 70 percent,
and agriculture threatens 20 percent, of the world's remaining frontier
forests.
PRESIDENT CASTRO'S SPEECH TO WHO -GENEVA MAY14TH
The following is the text of the speech delivered by Cuban President Fidel Castro at the Palace of Nations in Geneva on the occasion of the presentation to him of the Health for All Medal by the World Health Organization, Thursday, May 14, 1998.
Your excellencies, officials of the WHO, distinguished delegates.
All praise to the World Health Organization, which together with UNICEF, has helped to save the lives of hundreds of millions of children and millions of mothers, which has relieved the suffering and saved the lives of many more millions of human beings.
These two institutions -- together with the Food and Agriculture Organization, the United Nations Development Program, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, the World Food Program, the United Nations Population Fund, UNESCO, and other organizations so bitterly opposed by those who would like to erase from the face of the earth the noble ideas which inspired the creation of the United Nations - - have made a decisive contribution to the establishment of a universal awareness of the serious problems of the world today and the great challenges which we have before us.
According to the calculations of renowned economists, the world economy grew six-fold and the production of wealth and services grew from less than five trillion to more than twenty-nine trillion dollars between 1950 and 1997. Why then is it still the case that each year, 12 million children under five years of age die -- that is to say 33,000 per day -- of whom the overwhelming majority could be saved?
Nowhere in the world, in no act of genocide, in no war, are so many people killed per minute, per hour and per day as those who are killed by hunger and poverty on our planet -- 53 years after the creation of the United Nations.
The children who die and could be saved are almost 100% poor and of those who survive, we must ask why 500,000 are left blind every year for lack of a simple vitamin which costs less than a pack of cigarettes per year? Why are 200 million children under five years of age undernourished? Why are there 250 million children and adolescents working? Why do 110 million not attend primary school and 275 million fail to attend secondary school? Why do two million girls become prostitutes each year? Why in this world -- which already produces almost 30 trillion dollars worth of goods and services per year -- do one billion 300 million human beings live in absolute poverty, receiving less than a dollar a day -- when there are those who receive more than a million dollars a day? Why do 800 million lack the most basic health services? Why is it that of the 50 million people who die each year in the world, whether adults or children, 17 million -- that is approximately 50,000 per day -- die of infectious diseases which could almost all be cured -- or, even better, be prevented -- at a cost which is sometimes no more than one dollar per person?
How much is a human life worth? What is the cost to humanity of the unjust and intolerable order which prevails in the world? 585,000 women died during pregnancy or in childbirth in 1996, 99% of them in the Third World, 70,000 due to abortions carried out in poor conditions, 69,000 of them in Latin America, Africa and Asia? Apart from the huge differences in the quality of life between rich and poor countries, people in rich countries live an average of 12 years longer than people in poor countries. And even within some nations, the difference in life expectancy between the richest and poorest is between 20 and 35 years. It is really sad to think that just in the area of maternal and post-natal services, in spite of the efforts of the WHO and UNICEF over the last 50 years, the number of deaths from lack of medical services has been 600 million children and 25 million mothers who could have survived. That would have required a more rational and more just world.
In that same post-war period, in the area of military expenditure, 30 trillion dollars were spent. According to UN estimates, the cost of providing universal access to basic health care services would be 25 billion dollars per year -- just three percent of the 800 billion dollars which are currently devoted to military expenditure -- and this after the end of the Cold War.
There is no let up in arms sales, which have the sole purpose of killing, while the medicines which should be provided to save lives become increasingly expensive. The market in medicines in 1995 reached 280 billion dollars. The developed countries, with 14.6% of the world's population -- 824 million inhabitants -- consume 82% of the medicines. The rest of the world -- 4 billion 815 million people -- consume only 18%.
Prices of medicines are prohibitive for the Third World, where only the privileged sectors can afford them. The control of patents and markets by the large transnational companies enables them to raise those prices as much as ten times above their production costs. Some of the latest antibiotics are priced at 50 times their production cost.
And the world's population continues to grow. We are now almost six billion and growing at a rate of 80 million per year. It took two million years to reach the first billion people, a hundred years to reach the second billion, and 11 years to reach the last billion. In 50 years, there will be four billion new inhabitants on the planet.
Old illnesses have returned and new ones are appearing: AIDS, the Ebola virus, Anthrax, BSE or mad cow disease -- more than thirty according to the specialists. Either we defeat AIDS or AIDS will destroy many Third World countries. No poor person can pay the 10,000 dollars per person each year that current treatments cost -- which merely prolong life without actually curing the disease.
The climate is changing. The seas and the atmosphere are heating up. The air and water are becoming contaminated. Soil is eroding, deserts are growing, forests are disappearing and water is becoming scarce. Who can save our species? The blind, uncontrollable law of the market? Neo-liberal globalization, alone and for its own sake, like a cancer which devours human beings and destroys nature? That cannot be the way forward or at least it can only last for a brief period in history. The WHO is fighting heroically against these realities and it also has the duty of being optimistic.
As a Cuban and a revolutionary, I share their optimism. With a current infant mortality rate of 7.2 per thousand live births during the first year; a doctor for every 176 inhabitants -- which is the highest level in the world -- and a life expectancy of more than 75 years of age, Cuba has fulfilled the WHO Health for All program for the year 2000 since 1983 -- in spite of the cruel blockade it has suffered for almost 40 years, in spite of being a poor, Third World country. The attempt to commit genocide against our country has only made us redouble our efforts and increased our will to survive. The world can also fight and win.
Thank you very much.