{w} What is extreme poverty and how does it differ from simply being ‘very poor’?
{Jeffrey Sachs} When I think of extreme poverty, I think of the inability of an individual or family or community to meet its basic needs reliably. What are the basic needs? The first is to be able to stay alive, [followed by] adequate food supply, the availability of emergency health care [and] a livelihood that is reliable.
{w}You operate at two very different levels: one being the macroscopic world of billion-dollar budgets and global financial flows, the other dominated by more local issues like the procurement of malaria nets and access to safe drinking water for small rural villages. What is the relationship between these two very different areas of involvement?
{JS} The essence of overcoming extreme poverty is a global movement and a global network which reaches from the villages to political leaders around the world and back again. The life of the poor is, of course, in their communities and solutions are largely going to be found in those communities but people stuck in extreme poverty need help. They need help to be empowered to find the solutions or to take the solutions that they know exist but can’t afford on their own. And that’s why there needs to be a partnership movement between those who are living, struggling with the realities and those who have the means to help empower them out of the poverty trap. {…}
But then simply to say “let them solve their problems” or “we’ll tell them what to do” is pretty useless often because [extreme poor] people often know just what to do and they’re so disempowered, they’re so poor, they lack assets, they lack voice, they lack representation that they can’t do these things on their own so the connections are a crucial solution to this.
{w} Aside from moral claims that “it’s the right thing to do”, why is eradicating extreme poverty in the world’s interest?
{JS} I think extreme poverty is first of all a shame of modern society: it’s an anachronism. If we were in the 17th Century it would be understandable as everyone was in poverty. We’re in the 21st Century, with the tools, the technology, the know-how, the knowledge to enable everyone to meet their basic needs. So I can’t answer that question in a certain sense because I don’t fully understand that question. To me, it’s an obvious matter. What is an economy for if it’s not ensuring that everybody can survive, be healthy and prosper? That, to me, is the starting point of an economy. {…}
I try to explain to them [skeptics] how little it would take to empower impoverished people to break free of their extreme poverty. So this is not some great struggle where those who don’t have are going to pull down those who do, which is one of the fears, I think, that people have. {…}
And then one can explain all the so-called instrumental reasons why living in a society that is divided between those who can barely survive and those who have more than enough—or a world society like that—is not only a tragedy, it’s a huge mistake. Poverty breeds instability. Poverty creates the fulminant conditions for disease transmission. Poverty breeds political unrest and upheaval. Poverty breeds [the] mass migration of people, which is a thankless fact for those who are moving and sometimes for those who are receiving environmental refugees or displaced people from violence. And so my view is, in an interconnected world, not only does it stand to reason that in a world where there’s enough money to solve these basic problems easily and readily we should do it, but we should appreciate the fact that everybody’s well being is at stake when you have people who are struggling for their very survival. I always think back to John Kennedy’s words in his inaugural address, the famous words that “if society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich,” and that was an admonition to the rich in America. What are we thinking if we’re not actively involved in helping to solve poverty in other places?
{w} Speaking of active solutions, what role do the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) stand to play in the eradication of extreme poverty and why are they important?
{JS} The importance of the MDGs is that they are quantified, time-bound targets and putting them front and center opens everybody’s eyes because [then] you have specific goals, something more than saying “we want to end poverty” or “we want children to survive” – that’s all fine, but those are sentiments. Those are not the bases for strategy or planning for specific investments whereas the MDGs say “by the year 2015, maternal mortalities shall be reduced by three quarters compared to the 1990 baseline”. {…}
And the reason I like these goals is that when you start asking that question, then you get specific because whether it’s nutrition interventions, whether it’s early childhood development programs, whether it’s emergency obstetrical rooms available for women in complicated labor or hemorrhaging, you get down to specifics. Then you draw the map and say “who has access to these services and who doesn’t have access? Why don’t they have access? Oh, because we can’t afford it in these places. Well, maybe we can’t afford it but Europe can afford it for Bangladesh or the United States can afford it for Bangladesh and the World Bank can afford it for Bangladesh. So let’s get serious.” And that’s the partnership.
{w} Are the MDG targets realistic and achievable? Where is the bridge between this global policy set forth by the United Nations and poor rural villages in remote areas of Bangladesh or Ghana?
{JS} This world has enough to ensure that extreme poverty is ended. Now the MDGs don’t even go that far. They say let’s cut extreme poverty by half by 2015; I say let’s finish extreme poverty by 2025. This world absolutely can accomplish this. I’ve done the dollars-and-cents calculations enough times and have looked at the specific things that can be done. So I say to the government [of a developing country], get your plans in shape, take seriously these goals, stand up for your country and stand up for the poor people in the country. You really are their voice. I do say to the poor people, as much as they can in the midst of all of their travails, to take on their local leadership in their communities and make demands of the national government to make demands also internationally as needed. We need a clinic, we need a school, we need electricity, we need an all-weather road. Those are the basics of what’s going to get a community out of extreme poverty. Livelihoods, health, education, basic infrastructure, basic business development: those are the five things, in my view, which achieve the MDGs. And every community needs its own organization: it can do something, the national government can do something. Then the international partners have their role to play.
{w} In The End of Poverty, you maintain that there is no “magic bullet” and in the same vein, through your Millennium Villages Project you’ve promoted a more holistic village-level approach to tackling extreme poverty. Can you tell me about that?
{JS} Others [some aid agencies] say “well we’re just in favor of girls’ education” and I say yes, but if the girls are walking to collect water for several hours a day or if the girls are ill or if there are no hygienic facilities for them or if they’re sick with malaria, you’re not going to get the girls education. Some people say “oh yes, but the key is something else” {…} Everybody has their list of the “one thing” but life doesn’t come like that. Life comes in a package where we better attend to the ability to eat, the ability to have safe water, the ability to be part of a market economy, which means a road, which means transport, which means electricity. And so my view is not the magic bullet, but I’d say the checklist, which is to make sure that the basics are fulfilled and you can identify who needs to do those things: the community in some ways, the government in some ways, private sector will fill in some of the blanks, microfinance can do it. Work through that checklist and if you don’t have a clinic, you’re not going to escape from extreme poverty. If you don’t have a school there, you’re not going to escape from extreme poverty. If you don’t have electricity there, you’re not going to escape from extreme poverty. So you better be sure, you need a plan and that’s the essence of the Millennium Villages approach.
