Justin Guariglia/NG Image CollectionGlobal
LocatorNG Mapsabundance of those who have much; it is whether we pro-
vide enough for those who have too little.”
Raising the standard of living for poor countries
requires the universal education of children and the
elimination of illiteracy (}ÕÀiÊÓ°£ä). Improving the
status of women is crucial because women are often
disproportionately disadvantaged in poor countries. In
many developing countries, women have few rights and
little legal ability to protect their property, their rights to
their children, and their income.
We have entered an era of global trade, within which
we must establish guidelines for national, corporate, and
individual behaviors. For example, the flow of money
from developing countries to highly developed countries
has exceeded the flow in the other direction for many
years. Former West German Chancellor Willy Brandt
termed this phenomenon “a blood transfusion from the
sick to the healthy.” A world that values social justice and
environmental sustainability must reverse this flow. Debts
from the poorest countries should be forgiven more
readily than they are now, and international develop-
ment assistance should be enhanced.
Population growth rates are generally highest where
poverty is most intense. If we pay consistent attention
to overpopulation and devote the resources necessary
to make family planning available for everyone, the hu-
man population will stabilize. If we do not continue toRecommendation 1: Eliminate Poverty
and Stabilize the Human Population
The ultimate goal of economic development is to make it
possible for humans throughout the world to enjoy long,
healthy lives. A serious complication lies in the fact that the
distribution of the world’s resources is unequal. Residents
of the United States are collectively the wealthiest people
who have ever existed, with the highest standard of liv-
ing (shared with a few other rich countries). The United
States, with fewer than 5 percent of the world’s people,
controls about 25 percent of the world’s economy but de-
pends on other nations for this prosperity. Yet we often
seem unaware of this relationship and tend to underes-
timate our effects on the environment that supports us.
Failing to confront the problem of poverty around the
world makes it impossible to attain global sustainability.
For example, most people would find it unacceptable
that about 24,000 infants and children under age 5 die
each day (2008 data from U.N. Children’s Fund). Most of
these deaths could have been prevented through access
to adequate food and basic medical techniques and sup-
plies. For us to allow so many to go hungry and to live
in poverty threatens the global ecosystem that sustains
us all. Everyone must have a reasonable share of Earth’s
productivity. As U.S. President Franklin Delano Roos-
evelt said in his second inaugural address in 1937, “The
test of our progress is not whether we add more to the
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These girls are not at school because they
are employed as weavers at looms in a
workshop. Photographed in Cambodia.