A follow-up to the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) being held here is aimed to further Agenda 21, the blueprint for sustainable development which was adopted at the Rio conference.

To promote better standards of living in a better global environment, Agenda 21 stressed the need for poverty eradication as the priority among problems hindering sustainable development.

According to the United Nations (UN), poverty means a condition characterized by absence or deprivation of essential needs at a basic level such as nutrition, housing, health services, safe drinking water and sanitation facilities, and education.

People in developed countries have come to expect much better standards of living in the past 50 years. But the developing countries have to struggle against the scourge of poverty.

The latest UN report on global poverty reveals an appalling fact.

Of the 4.6 billion people in developing countries, almost 800 million are not getting enough food, more than 850 million are illiterate, and over 1 billion people lack access to clean water supplies.

Although the Asian poverty rate has fallen from about 28 per cent in 1990 to 15 per cent in 1998, the rate in sub-Saharan Africa has remained unchanged at about 48 per cent with the number of people living in poverty increasing from 220 million to 300 million over the last decade.

Over the past few years, the human development index has declined in more than 30 African countries. The average African household consumes 20 per cent less today than it did 25 years ago.

When people living in poverty are asked to identify their priorities, care for the environment or the need for sustainable development are rarely at the top of their list. Housing, feeding and clothing the family, education for their children and care in their old age are significant concerns in their daily life.

Some 60 per cent of the world's poor live in fragile and highly vulnerable areas that have witnessed rapid environmental degradation caused by natural and man-made factors.

And the ecological degradation is likely to continue because low-income countries with a high incidence of poverty do not have adequate resources to directly address environmental issues.

For example, Africa, as the poorest continent in the world, suffers from land degradation, drought, desertification, adverse climatic changes, pollution, wetland destruction, deforestation, and loss of bio-diversity.

"The fundamental constraint on achieving sustainable development is social inequality and its associated evils: poverty and ignorance," said Klaus Toepfer, executive director of the UN Environment Programme.

World leaders have set an ambitious target for poverty reduction: halving poverty and hunger by 2015. It is vital for the international community to show political will, but no nation can achieve this without collective efforts made by a global partnership.

Meanwhile, only integration of environmental improvement and poverty eradication can lead to the fulfillment of basic needs, improved living standards for all, better protected and managed ecosystems and a safer, more prosperous future.

The UN has called for a substantial flow of financial resources from the developed countries to the developing countries in order to cover the incremental costs of actions they must take to deal with global environmental problems and to accelerate a programme of sustainable development.

But unfortunately, most of the rich countries failed to meet the target set by the UN of providing 0.7 per cent of their gross domestic product as development assistance. In fact, the world average is now closer to 0.2 per cent.

With less than 400 billionaires holding assets that equal the total worth of 45 per cent of the world's population, the developing countries want to see a change in the flow of resources for poverty reduction.

In the fresh, early years of the new millennium, the eradication of poverty and hunger and greater equity in income distribution remain major challenges everywhere. The struggle against poverty is the shared responsibility of all countries and all individuals on earth. The world can be truly fed only by feeding everyone. Our goal should be not only to feed ourselves, but to leave no one living in poverty.

(Xinhua News Agency August 28, 2002)