Poverty in Africa Can Become History With Proper Use of Continent's Resources

[three_sixty]

Poverty in Africa Can Become History With Proper Use of Continent's Resources - UN

UN News Service (New York)
NEWS
June 27, 2006
Posted to the web June 27, 2006

Poverty for Africa's 800 million inhabitants can be made history if the region's wealth of natural resources is effectively, fairly and sustainably harnessed, but rapid deforestation, widespread land degradation, wasteful water use and climate change must be urgently addressed, according to a new United Nations report released today.

"The report challenges the myth that Africa is poor," UN Environment Programme (UNEP) Executive Director Achim Steiner said of the study, the Africa Environment Outlook-2 (AE0-2).

"Indeed, it points out that its vast natural wealth can, if sensitively, sustainably and creatively managed, be the basis for an African renaissance - a renaissance that meets and goes beyond the internationally agreed Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)," he added of the targets to slash a host of ills, such as extreme hunger and poverty, high infant and maternal mortality and lack of access to education and health care, all by 2015.

"But this is not inevitable and, as the AE0-2 points out, African nations face stark choices," he warned. "If policies remain unchanged, political will found wanting and sufficient funding proves to be elusive, then Africa may take a far more unsustainable track that will see an erosion of its nature-based wealth and a slide into ever deeper poverty."

Beyond home-grown issues like deforestation and water wastage, the report notes the imported challenges, ranging from genetically modified organisms and the costs of alien invasive species to a switch of chemical manufacturing from the developed to the developing world.

But it also cites a wide range of international environment treaties to which many African countries are now parties as well as new cooperative agreements covering shared river and ecosystems like the Limpopo and the Congo basin's globally important forests.

Initiatives like the African Union's New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) also promise to propel the region onto a more prosperous path that balances economic, social and environmental concerns.

Several African countries, like the Gambia and Zambia, are mainstreaming the environment in their Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers and other countries are starting to use tax and other market mechanisms to conserve ecosystems like forests.

"I am convinced that we are fast reaching a watershed in Africa's response and that the pieces of a sustainable jigsaw puzzle are being steadily put into place," Mr Steiner said.

"Governments are signalling an increased willingness to cooperate and to engage over a wide range of pressing regional and global issues. The economic importance of the environment is increasingly recognized by Africa's leaders as an instrument for development, for livelihoods, for peace and for stability. I sincerely believe we have a real opportunity to take this impetus a long way," he concluded.

Among the many sources of possible wealth the report cites the "huge but relatively untapped" potential for tourism based around nature and cultural sites; suitable land to feed its people; abundant but little used water resources for irrigation, drinking water and power generation; and its status as "a mining giant" producing nearly 80 per cent of the world's platinum, more than 40 per cent of the globe's diamonds and more than a fifth of its gold and cobalt.

It calls for a transition from being a major exporter of primary resources to being one with a vibrant industrial and manufacturing base.

And it warns against the pitfalls in development: pure market forces alone in food production could lead to greater land degradation, and industrial expansion could deprive the general public of water.

It proposes solutions such as government-held lands being put into production rather than over-exploiting existing agricultural land, and proper pollution controls and greater efficiency in water management

http://allafrica.com/stories/200606270358.html

[three_sixty]

o.k. and what is holding Africa back from realizing it's potential?

perhaps we "white progressives" in the west should be exerting pressure in the direction of staying out of Africa and other areas. perhaps what the U.S. needs is a real isolationist as opposed to the neo-liberal and neo-conservative wings of the double-headed imperial eagle party. getting out of others business just might be the best thing for the forcibly underdeveloped world, or in p.c. terms, "developing" world.

[Rootsie]

http://www.counterpunch.org/cruz06262006.html

"...As I noted in We Want Freedom, the BPP developed an internationalist perspective, because Huey P. Newton (the Party's Minister of Defense & co-founder) was curious about revolutionary struggles and liberation struggles that came before, whether in China, in Cuba, in Congo-Brazzavile, wherever.

What Party members learned was that people should study struggles in other parts of the world--and take what is useful, applicable, in their own struggles here.

What we see now, for the most part, is precisely the opposite: where folks from the so-called First travel to Third locations, and presume to teach lowly third-world populations how to struggle. I call this tendency "left imperialism", because those people, usually white leftists, base their claim to supremacy not upon their specific, or organizational work, but upon their privileged place in the Empire; their U.S. nationality, and often their Western background- their whiteness.

From what experience base can U.S. leftists claim supremacy? What project can they point to that is successful, and should be replicated anywhere else in the world? The mass incarceration? The poisonous public school system? The crumbling environment? The deepening racial rifts? The Clinton Administration?

Nothing succeeds like success; and U.S. "leftists" have precious little success to boast about--at home or abroad.

An example of "left imperialism" can be found in how easily so-called liberals applauded U.S. bombing, takeover and occupation of Afghanistan, and later Iraq. Liberals typically argue that Afghanistan was a "good" war and occupation; yet Iraq was "bad". In point of fact, both, if I'm not mistaken, violated international law. But beyond that, the Afghanistan war was allegedly justified on the basis that the Taliban regime "'harbored" terrorists.

At the same time that U.S. politicians were barking such charges, the country was flush with terrorists, who waged wars against their own peoples in defense of their American masters.

People who have waged bloody massacres against Haitian workers and students live in peaceful solitude in the U.S. Anti-Castro terrorists who have bombed planes, and poisoned crops, and bombed hotels live in splendid peace in Miami-today. Meanwhile, the Cuban Five are unjustly incarcerated in this country for fighting against U.S. sponsored terrorism.

I can't count how many dictators, generals, cut-throats, have been kicked out of their home countries, and found refuge in the U.S. One final note about 'harboring terrorists'.... more people have been taught torture techniques in the U.S. School of the Americas (since renamed), than in any dusty camp in Afghanistan. Latin Americans call the school, la escuela de golpes de Estado: coup d'état school.

How many graduates of this 'School of the Americas' have raped, tortured, garroted, blown up, killed--terrorized the people of Latin American countries?

The point is not to simply be anti-war, but to be above all anti-imperialist. That's something that left imperialists find impossible to, do."