The Right to Survival

The impacts of climate change are sparking a debate on just what is a "human right"?

Some nations want adequate supply of potable freshwater declared a human right.   Not surprisingly that's something supported by countries with severe freshwater threats and dismissed by nations particularly well water-endowed, such as our very own.

India is now debating whether food should be a right guaranteed to all of its people.   For India that's not a rhetorical debate.   As pointed out in a New York Times article, India's eight poorest states have more people living in poverty than Africa's 26 poorest countries.

For the governing Indian National Congress Party, which has staked its political fortunes on appealing to the poor, this persistent inability to make government work for [the poor] ...has set off an ideological debate over a question that once would have been unthinkable in India: Should the country begin to unshackle the poor from the inefficient, decades-old government food distribution system and try something radical, like simply giving out food coupons, or cash?



The rethinking is being prodded by a potentially sweeping proposal that has divided the Congress Party. Its president, Sonia Gandhi, is pushing to create a constitutional right to food and expand the existing entitlement so that every Indian family would qualify for a monthly 77-pound bag of grain, sugar and kerosene. Such entitlements have helped the Congress Party win votes, especially in rural areas.

These are largely internal debates now but, as our reaction to the water question clearly shows, there's a growing sense of unease among the "haves" to future demands from the "have nots."   Do not doubt for a minute that, in a world where the burden of seven billion mouths to feed has already exceeded the carrying capacity of the planet's renewable resources, that faint whisper of calls for redistribution and equitable allocations, is bound to turn into a clamour.  It's just a matter of time.   And that's when we'll see just what kind of people we Canadians really are.

Living In Butland

It can be a bit of a shock to the system to wake up one day and realize you're living in Butland, part of Butworld on planet But.

It seems that everything these days is delivered with a big, shiny "But." We're winning in Afghanistan, but... . Iraq is a huge success, but... . We're going to tackle the greenhouse gas business, but... .

"But other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?"

We're stuck in the era of "Ifs, Ands, or Buts." For every proposal, every problem, every event there's bound to be an If or an And or a But thrown in somewhere around the very end to make everything you just heard or read almost completely meaningless. You get your hopes up and then - someone drops the But bomb.

Take this story out of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. They just came out with some wonderful news. They're on track to cut global poverty by half by 2015. Now that is big news, certainly the best thing I've heard in a while. Until the But arrives.

It seems we're poised to cut global poverty in half but, if we don't want to see that success completely reversed, we'll have to tackle the little problem of - wait for it - global warming. The bank and the fund define extreme poverty as living on less than $1 per day. That bottom rung still stands at about a billion people.

The industrialization of India and China is creating market demands that spread newfound wealth to many impoverished corners of the earth. Unfortunately that wealth can come at the cost of a nation's rain forests and fisheries.

Raising a person's income from under $1 per day to over $1 per day may be significant to the World Bank or the IMF but it isn't that great a blessing for the individual who finds that grain prices and his basic sustenance have increased 100% in just one year. It isn't much of a boon if that individual can no longer find affordable fish to buy.

What it all boils down to is that the World Bank/International Monetary Fund goal of halving global poverty is being assessed in the context of a world that doesn't exist - a world without resource depletion, food shortages and all the environmental effects that are already being felt due to global warming. Give them credit for good intentions, but...