POVERTY AND GLOBALIZATION
COMMENTARY ARCHIVES, 26 Oct 2008
President Jean Bertrand Aristide, now in enforced exile in South Africa, might be sardonically entertained by a new report just published by the world’s Club of the Rich, the OECD –Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.
This report, titled “Growing Unequal” examines the accelerating trend toward economic inequality in the societies of the world’s richest countries.
The report contains several mind-blowing discoveries which will, no doubt, amaze journalists and policy-makers in the Western hemisphere and keep them entertained for many years.
The major finding is that globalisation and free trade have hurt millions of people, particularly the poorest.
Another ground-breaking discovery is that “work reduces poverty”.
One of these days Jamaicans and other Caribbean people may decide to find out whether these theses are true and whether if they are, we should have signed on to the new EPA with the European Union.
If our ginnigogs were able and willing to read they might become aware of a phenomenon called the “resource curse’ which appears to condemn developing countries with enormous mineral wealth to misery, war, corruption and destitution.
If our ginnigogs could or would read, they might find it useful to discover whether an acre of land under citrus or pumpkins is not more productive, sustainable and valuable than that same acre destroyed for bauxite.
If our ginnigogs could or would read, they might become aware of the fate of the island of Nauru, ‘discovered’ less than two hundred years ago, mined for phosphate, returning a per capita national income rivaling Saudi Arabia’s two and three decades ago and now to be abandoned because the land has been mined to death and is destined to disappear shortly beneath the waves of global warming.
Softly, softly, catchee monkee
If our ginnigogs were able to read and willing and able to defend the interests of Jamaica and the Jamaican people they might discover that bauxite mining will, within a relatively short time, contaminate all the water resources of Jamaica, destroy our cultural heritage, wipe out our priceless biological diversity, deprave our landscape and reduce those of us who survive to a state of penury and hopelessness. Goodbye tourism, goodbye farming, welcome hunger, welcome clay patties.
According to the experts if you drop a live lobster into a pot of boiling water the creature will make frenzied efforts to escape. If, on the other hand, you put him in a pot of cold water and bring it slowly to the boil, the lobster will perish without a struggle.
Jamaica, on the atlas, is shaped a bit like a lobster.
Bon appetit.
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 26 Oct 2008.
Anticopyright: Editorials and articles originated on TMS may be freely reprinted, disseminated, translated and used as background material, provided an acknowledgement and link to the source, TMS: POVERTY AND GLOBALIZATION, is included. Thank you.
If you enjoyed this article, please donate to TMS to join the growing list of TMS Supporters.
This work is licensed under a CC BY-NC 4.0 License.