A major conference on poverty reduction, sponsored by the World
Bank and the Chinese government, opened today with a call for a new
commitment from rich and poor countries to cut poverty in half by
2015. World Bank President James Wolfensohn warned that the world
community must meet the Millennium Development Goals it set for
reducing poverty as a matter of self interest: “Without alleviating
poverty there is no potential for peace and stability.”
Wolfensohn spoke to more than 1,000 people, mostly from
developing countries. They included the leaders of Brazil,
Tanzania, and Bangladesh, along with many government ministers,
development experts, civic groups and non-government
organizations.
During the next two days they will examine nine months of
development research, including 100 case studies, a dozen field
visit reports and results from extensive global discussions among
development experts and practitioners.
The World Bank president said the challenge is to find ways
dramatically to scale up current approaches to fighting poverty.
That is why the conference is being held in China: “In this
country, in the last 20 years, between 300 and 400 million people
have been lifted out of poverty.” China has achieved this by
looking at the totality of the challenges and implementing
long-term solutions.
While the world has much to learn from China, Wolfensohn noted
that China can also learn from the world and the global research
being shared at the conference.
Premier Wen Jiabao acknowledged that China has made great
progress but that it still faces a daunting task. “We still have
nearly 30 million rural citizens who do not have adequate food and
clothing.”
Wen said that for the fight on poverty to succeed, all countries
must work together to create an environment of peace and stability.
He urged the developed countries to pay more attention to the
plight of developing countries by “providing them with more aid,
relieving their debts, accelerating technology transfers and
rolling back trade protection.”
Wen announced that China will contribute an additional US$20
million to the Asian Development Bank to create the China Special
Fund for Poverty Reduction and Regional Cooperation, targeting
poverty in the Asia-Pacific region.
Brazil’s President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, who is campaigning
to eradicate poverty at home, called the Shanghai conference a web
of opportunity and stated that hunger is the greatest weapon of
mass destruction of our time, claiming millions of victims every
year. Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa and the Bangladesh Prime
Minister Begum Khaleda Zia also embraced the conference goal of
scaling up poverty reduction.
Wolfensohn said key themes on the way to move forward are
already emerging from the extensive research conducted. Poor people
must take the lead in finding solutions to their poverty; local
communities must be empowered to control money that is allocated to
help them; and development practitioners must start thinking on a
much larger scale and envision ways to expand small projects to the
point where they are addressing the totality of the poverty
challenge.
(China.org.cn May 26, 2004)