Mal Fletcher comments

Mal Fletcher

A few years ago, at a Make Poverty History rally, Nelson Mandela said: 'Sometimes, it falls upon a generation to be great. You can be that great generation.'

I recently interviewed Dr Tony Campolo for a new TV series. Campolo is a respected sociologist and author and professor of sociology at Eastern University in Pennsylvania. A former advisor to President Bill Clinton, he is widely recognized as a leading advocate and campaigner on social justice issues.

I put it to him that making poverty history sounds good, but that for many people it remains little more than a noble dream, given the size of the problem.

His response was characteristically succinct: with the enormous reserves of wealth still held within the developed world and the forces of globalisation and digitisation in media, we are the first generation in history which could realistically put an end to poverty.

There are, of course, many factors that contribute to extreme poverty. Population growth is one. Every month, there are 7 million extra mouths to feed across the world and the world's population will reach about 9.5 billion people in the year 2050. Twenty years later, says the UN, it might start to decline.

Rising food prices are another real problem, especially for people who rely on food imports. Sadly, even when prices are low, millions will starve, because the poorest of the poor live in isolated areas, eking out a living on small landholdings a long way from where food is distributed.

Meanwhile, diseases like HIV/AIDS, hepatitis B and malaria add even more misery to the lives of the very poor. Every year, there are around 500 million new cases of malaria alone, most of them among children in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Then there's the issue of international debt. For decades, many poor countries have had to spend more on debt repayments to rich countries than on meeting the needs of their people. And the penalties they've been charged for unpaid debts have often exceeded the amounts they receive in aid.

If the international community is serious about knocking extreme poverty on the head, this has to be one of its first priorities. The G8 meeting in Scotland promised to reduce debts, but years later many of its own targets are still not met and poor nations are yet to see any cancellations of their debts.

As an international community we must also invest more in research and development - for drugs to fight killer diseases like HIV/AIDS, and for crops that are better able to tolerate drought and pests.

Some US companies are already using genetic engineering to develop these kinds of tolerance, but in Europe there's a huge debate about the impact of GM foods. Yet research has to continue - and it has to be funded more by governments and not just private companies so that the profit motive doesn't muddy the waters.

The weight of poverty statistics alone can leave us feeling totally overwhelmed - more than one billion people still live on less than one dollar per day.

Yet we can each make a difference, even if just on a local scale.

Recession is, of course, never good news. Three hundred and fifty people go bankrupt each day now in the UK and millions are out of work, many of them school leavers and university graduates. Yet for those of us who are still in work, recession gives us an opportunity to rethink our priorities.