Lives Of Poor People Research Articles

Progress towards Millennium Development Goals? Strategies for housing and informal settlement in Gauteng, South Africa

The housing delivery plans of the South African province of Gauteng and two of its metropolitan municipalities broadly respond to Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for improving the lives of slum dwellers and eradicating poverty. This paper evaluates some South African responses to the MDGs by considering the housing delivery and settlement upgrading plans of the provincial and local authorities for two major cities in Gauteng. In the face of pressure to demonstrate progress in meeting the MDGs, public servants have resorted to devising strategies that will present a positive picture. These include semantic changes such as subscribing to a narrow definition of informality as illegality and shifting responsibility away from particular organs of the state and onto residents, the private sector and other spheres of state. These strategies are unlikely to bring significant improvement to the lives of poor people living in informal settlements.

Development of integrated bioenergy devices for the improvement in the quality of life of poor people

Abstract Sudan enjoys abundant solar, wind, hydro, and biomass resources. Like many tropical countries, Sudan has ample biomass resources that can be efficiently exploited in a manner that is both profitable and sustainable. Fuel-wood farming offers cost-effective and environmentally friendly energy solutions for Sudan, with the added benefit of providing sustainable livelihoods in rural areas. Biogas from biomass appears to have potential as an alternative energy in Sudan, which is potentially rich in biomass resources. This is an overview of some salient points and perspectives of biomass technology in Sudan. The current literature is reviewed regarding the ecological, social, cultural and economic impacts of biomass technology. This article provides an overview of biomass energy activities and highlights future plans concerning optimum technical and economical utilization of biomass energy available in Sudan.

Aspectos del microcrédito en su concepción original, en búsqueda de factores de mayor impacto en Colombia: revisión de tema

El artículo tiene como propósito revisar la bibliografía existente de las metodologías utilizadas y los resultados del impacto social de la filosofía microcrédito Grameen en Bangladesh, su país de origen, para encontrar diferencias y posibles determinantes del bajo impacto que éste ha tenido en Colombia y señalar los aspectos fundamentales para alcanzar las metas que se buscan con el microcrédito que se pueden resumir en “erradicar la pobreza”. Adicionalmente, se hace referencia a los modelos de mayor éxito en Latinoamérica como referentes en similitud al caso colombiano. La información se obtuvo mediante la revisión, por palabra clave “Microcrédito”, de publicaciones impresas y bases de datos en internet como Dialnet, E-Libro, CEPAL, EBSCO, entre otras, además gran parte de la información se tomó de las publicaciones del Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo (BID) tanto en lengua inglesa como española. Asimismo, se manifiestan factores que pueden llevar al éxito en las microfinanzas de acuerdo a investigaciones realizadas por algunos autores. En general, se establece que en Colombia se pueden adoptar los principios del Banco Grameen, ya que publicaciones mencionadas en esta investigación demuestran cómo han mejorado las condiciones de vida de las personas pobres en diferentes países.

Learning the Moral Economy of Commodified Health Care: “Community Education,” Failed Consumers, and the Shaping of Ethical Clinician-Citizens

Leaders of health professional schools often support community-based education as a means of promoting emerging practitioners' awareness of health disparities and commitment to serving the poor. Yet, most programs do not teach about the causes of health disparities, raising questions regarding what social and political lessons students learn from these experiences. This article examines the ways in which community-based clinical education programs help shape the subjectivities of new dentists as ethical clinician-citizens within the US commodified health care system. Drawing on ethnographic research during volunteer and required community-based programs and interviews with participants, I demonstrate three implicit logics that students learned: (1) dialectical ideologies of volunteer entitlement and recipient debt; (2) forms of justification for the often inferior care provided to "failed" consumers (patients with Medicaid or uninsured); and (3) specific forms of obligations characterizing the ethical clinician-citizen. I explore the ways these messages reflected the structured relations of both student encounters and the overarching health care system, and examine the strategies faculty supervisors undertook to challenge these messages and relations. Finally, I argue that promoting commitments to social justice in health care should not rely on cultivating altruism, but should instead be pursued through educating new practitioners about the lives of poor people, the causal relationships between poverty and poor health, and attention to the structure of health care and provider-patient interactions. This approach involves shining a critical light on America's commodified health care system as an arena based in relations of power and inequality.

Living on a Spike: How is the 2011 Food Price Crisis Affecting Poor People?

Living on a Spike: How is the 2011 Food Price Crisis Affecting Poor People?

Globalisation and the foreignisation of space: seven processes driving the current global land grab

The current global land grab is causing radical changes in the use and ownership of land. The main process driving the land grab, or ‘foreignisation of space’, as highlighted in the media and the emerging literature is the production of food and biofuel for export in the aftermath of recent food and energy crises. However, there are several other processes driving the land rush. In this article I argue that an analytical framework that focuses on only one or two processes that drive the global land grab offers a narrow perspective on this complex process. It will be unable to take into account the full range and extent of agrarian and social changes that occur in light of the land grab and their strategic implications for poor people's livelihoods. An important starting point is to identify the broad processes driving the current land rush, and trace their structural and institutional origins. To do so, I identify and examine seven factors that are giving rise to radical changes in landownership and land use in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Finally, ‘codes of conduct’ as proposed by several quarters in the context of global land grab are unlikely to work in favour of the poor.

Migration in Tanzania: Patterns, Characteristics and Impact

In recent years, there has been a growing interest on the subject of migration, not only on issues of scale, structure and regional trends, but more so on the socio-economic impact of migration. On the economic consequences of migration a lot of emphasis has been placed on remittances. This is understandable for two main reasons. One, remittances have emerged as a major source of external development finance in recent years. Given their large size, governments from developing and developed countries have focused attention on both the development impact of remittances and on regulatory issues in sender and receiver markets. Two, remittances do affect positively poor people's livelihoods to the extent that they now constitute a major source of income, insurance and capital accumulation. This being the case, direct and indirect linkages unfold between migration and poverty reduction strategies. These linkages become of interest to academics and development practitioners in Africa given the on-going poverty reduction initiatives, in almost all sub-Saharan Africa countries, aimed at achieving one of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of reducing poverty by half by the year 2015. In this context, migration constitutes one of the strategies for attaining the goal. This is more so when one views remittances as private financial aid that flow directly into the hands of households and the fact that they tend to be counter-cyclical. This suggests that very often they serve as an important source of both income and consumption smoothing strategies for vulnerable poor and non-poor households.

Hanging in, stepping up and stepping out: livelihood aspirations and strategies of the poor

In recent years understanding of poverty and of ways in which people escape from or fall into poverty has become more holistic. This should improve the capabilities of policy analysts and others working to reduce poverty, but it also makes analysis more complex. This article describes a simple schema which integrates multi-dimensional, multi-level, and dynamic understandings of poverty, of poor people's livelihoods, and of changing roles of agricultural systems. The article suggests three broad types of strategy pursued by poor people: ‘hanging in’, ‘stepping up’, and ‘stepping out’. This simple schema explicitly recognises the dynamic aspirations of poor people, diversity among them, and livelihood diversification. It also brings together aspirations of poor people with wider sectoral, inter-sectoral, and macro-economic questions about policies necessary for the realisation of those aspirations.

Energy access in urban and peri-urban Buenos Aires

This article describes the results of a study on the living conditions and the energy access of the urban poor in Argentina. The study is based on primary data collection among poor inhabitants of Villa Fiorito and Budge, in southern Greater Buenos Aires. These data are complemented by qualitative information. We found a notable absence of appropriate and comprehensive policies both for providing access to clean energy and for securing its affordability. Specifically and going beyond energy aspects, the roots of poverty are related to two unaddressed structural issues: land tenure and the availability of regular employment. Although modern energy sources (LPG and electricity) are broadly used by poor households in Greater Buenos Aires, LPG availability and affordability is found to be a key issue. Compounding fuel availability, another barrier to access can be the high upfront cost of LPG cylinders. Often it is replaced by charcoal and kerosene by poor slum families, and these fuels are dirtier and less efficient, thus increasing energy consumption and possibly even fuel expenditure for cooking. The study attempts to quantify unmet basic energy needs, finding that cooling, lighting, and space-heating have the smallest satisfaction levels. The study found that 54 % of the total surveyed energy expenditure is on cooking fuels. The study revealed some desirable actions and possible substitution between fuels. LPG should replace charcoal for cooking as much as possible, since the former is a cleaner fuel and substantially more energy-efficient. In the longer run, natural gas network connection and a safe and affordable electricity service should be available. Facilitating access to LPG and natural gas through subsidized tariffs and efficient equipment would also trigger a positive impact on the environment, on the quality of life of poor people, and their perception of social inclusion.

Dracunculiasis, Onchocerciasis, Schistosomiasis, and Trachoma

The four diseases discussed in this chapter (dracunculiasis, onchocerciasis, schistosomiasis, and trachoma) are among the officially designated "Neglected Tropical Diseases," and each is also both the result of and a contributor to the poverty of many rural populations. To various degrees, they all have adverse effects on health, agricultural productivity, and education. The Carter Center decided to work on these health problems because of their adverse effect on the lives of poor people and the opportunity to help implement effective interventions. As a result of the global campaign spearheaded by the Carter Center since 1986, the extent of dracunculiasis has been reduced from 20 to five endemic countries and the number of cases reduced by more than 99%. We have helped administer nearly 20% of the 530 million Mectizan (ivermectin) doses for onchocerciasis, which is now being controlled throughout most of Africa, and is progressing toward elimination in the Americas. Since 1999, two Nigerian states have been using village-based health workers originally recruited to work on onchocerciasis to also deliver mass treatment and health education for schistosomiasis and lymphatic filariasis. They now also distribute vitamin A supplements and bed nets to prevent malaria and lymphatic filariasis. Ethiopia aims to eliminate blinding trachoma in the Amhara Region of that highest-endemicity country by 2012, already constructing more than 300,000 latrines and other complementary interventions. Because of the synergy between these diseases and poverty, controlling or eliminating the disease also reduces poverty and increases self-reliance.

CDM implementation in Brazil’s rural and isolated regions: the Amazonian case

There is a growing understanding that energy services play a crucial role in underpinning efforts to achieve the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDG) and in improving the lives of poor people. Brazil remains challenged in regard to a number of social issues, notably poverty reduction in isolated areas, where access to electricity is as poor as their population. In the Amazonian region, most people have no access to electricity, or else have only a precarious supply. Due to several economic and technical reasons, many cities have old, inefficient diesel generators. In such a scenario, CDM (Clean Development Mechanism) can be an instrument both to mitigate climate change and to promote sustainable development in these remote areas, thereby contributing to the achievement of the MDGs in Brazil. However, CDM implementation in Brazil is still restricted to a few types of projects (such as sugar cane bagasse cogeneration and landfill gas use), mostly proposed by big companies and hardly ever directed to the Amazon region. The main objectives of this article are to assess the potential of CDM as a possible tool to promote electricity access to the poor rural population in the Amazonian region, and to discuss the main reasons why it has not become a reality so far.

Poverty, Inequality and the Underestimation of Rural–urban Linkages

Cecilia Tacoli argues that there is a complex web of relations and connections incorporating rural and urban dimensions that determine poor people's livelihoods. Ensuring that poor people's voice is heard in policy debates needs to take into account theses realities in order to break down the rigid divide between ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ in sectoral policies.

Lucas vs. Lucas: On Inequality and Growth

Lucas (2004) asserts that Of the tendencies that are harmful to sound economics, the most seductive, and in my opinion the most poisonous, is to focus on questions of distribution... The potential for improving the lives of poor people by finding different ways of distributing current production is nothing compared to the apparently limitless potential of increasing production. In this paper we evaluate this claim using an extended version of Lucas' (1987) welfare-evaluation framework. Surprisingly, we find that the welfare costs of inequality outweigh the benefits of growth in most cases. These calculations support the case for a research agenda that treats not only growth but also inequality as a priority.

Lucas vs. Lucas: On Inequality and Growth

Lucas (2004) asserts that Of the tendencies that are harmful to sound economics, the most seductive, and in my opinion the most poisonous, is to focus on questions of distribution ... The potential for improving the lives of poor people by finding different ways of distributing current production is nothing compared to the apparently limitless potential of increasing production. In this paper we evaluate this claim using an extended version of Lucas' (1987) welfare-evaluation framework. Surprisingly, we find that the welfare costs of inequality outweigh the benefits of growth in most cases. These calculations support the case for a research agenda that treats not only growth but also inequality as a priority.

Lowbrow Contours

Robinson continuedfrom previous page thoroughly. The straggle inside the work is most openly disclosed here. The third part of the book, The Book ofCraving , takes a more narrative form. I was reminded in some ways of Eleni Sikelianos's The Book ofJon (2004), which alsoemploys varying formal strategies for approaching difficult autobiographical material. As with Sikelianos's book, a more straightforward "story" can prove a relief, a way for readers to get oriented within the layers of image and affect. Still more, The Book ofCraving owes something to Lyn Hejinian's My Life (1980, 1987). Not that Rodney is using Hejinian's strict formal grid, but like Hejinian , she embeds narrative in lyric patterning, with a number of phrases weaving in and out of the material in slightly altered articulations. Again, I feel the material could have functioned more sinuously if it were edited down. Overall, though, this section has a pleasing effect and offers, by way ofits formal shape, a sense of solidity and anchoring. Rodney sews past and present into a substantial garment as she "write[s] things down as they float up, transformed by changing context." It's a shadowy world that this book is grappling with; it's haunted, and we are fools if we don't realize that ghosts can sometimes be tedious. Rodney's ghosts are no exception, but when she sets herself to the task of wrestling them down, we see that she has considerable strength. In Rodney's hands, we discover that language can take new shapes. Even though "[w]hat dies is a structure, an old way of being," we are equally reassured that "[w]hat seems to be the surface is actually a composite of varying depths of perception, opening a galaxy of song." Elizabeth Robinson is the author of seven books ofpoetry, and a coeditor of 26 Magazine and EtherDome Chapbooks. Her most recent book is T (Apogee). Lowbrow Contours Jim Feast The Moss Gatherers Matt Briggs StringTown Press http://home.earthlink.net/~stringtown 206 pages; paper $14.00 Let's think about audience—specifically, how the audience for a small press writer such as Matt Briggs, whose short story collection The Moss Gatherers is on review here, differs from the audience for a writer such as Carolyn Chute, who is firmly in the mainstream. I am using Chute for the comparison simply because she shares with Briggs a deep sympathy for those on the lower fringe of society, a flavorful, comic tone, and the ability to create characters who stay indelibly strong in the reader's mind long after closing her book. Since I don't have any demographic statistics, I will assume that fundamental differences in the two authors' attitudes toward their similar material is reflective of attitudes with which their separate audiences would feel most comfortable. Basically, the one obvious difference is in the authors' view of fatefulness. Take Chute's The Beans of Egypt, Maine (1985), where, it will be recalled, Earlene, the demi-heroine, who begins by despising the ragtag, brawling, rabbit-proliferating Bean clan, through a series of comic-pathetic catastrophes, first marries Beal Bean, who is disposed ofin a hale ofpolice bullets, then ends up shacked up with the clan paterfamilias, Reuben, the county's omeriest , most law-despising son of a bitch. Over the whole book, there is an aura of Greek inevitability, not unlike (to broaden our reference in the American tradition ) that found in Reynolds Price's magnificent A Long and Happy Life (1957). This is another book about a woman's foreordained marriage, though instead of the rambunctious, dyspeptic style of Chute, Price adopts a measured prose and ties the fatefulness of the plot to the ongoing rhythms of nature. However, there is a contrasting tradition available here, that of Welty and Faulkner, in which the unavoidable restrictions in poor people's lives is balanced against their abilities to escape, at minimum , the psychological deficits, such as inferiority complexes and self destructive behavior, usually associated with the impoverished. Briggs belongs to this second school of writing insofar as his characters always have me possibility of transcending features of their circumstances. For instance, in his "Reverse Order," a marvel...

Building skills in qualitative research to inform pro-poor policy: experience from a Bangladeshi NGO

This paper describes the research methodology followed in the ‘Livelihoods of the Extreme Poor Project’, a collaborative research project in Bangladesh between PROSHIKA (a large national NGO) and DFID (the UK government department for international development). The dual purpose of this project was to learn about poor people's livelihoods and train the PROSHIKA research team in the use of qualitative research methods. The research findings were to be fed directly into policy formulation and the planning of new development interventions for the poorest people in Bangladesh. The paper provides an assessment of what the approach used achieved both in terms of building staff capacity and in policy influence, concluding that it has been largely successful in achieving its purpose.

Beyond Approaches and Models: Reflections on Rights and Social Movements in Kenya, Haiti and the Philippines

These reflections arise from two related concerns. First, the worsening conditions of poverty in poor countries despite numerous development projects by governments and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) aimed at improving lives of poor people. Second, the phenomenon of parallelism (or even hostility) between development and human rights programmes, at least in Kenya. The core questions I reflect upon here are: what possible strategies for change lie beyond the formal socio-economic approaches and models used in official poverty reduction programmes? What can “rights approaches” offer and what can be learned from the emergence of social movements for rights in the struggle against poverty? My reflections are based upon study visits to Haiti and the Philippines and on the experience of Kenya, with a focus on the relationship between struggles for social reforms, human rights and the fight against poverty. In an effort to strike a balance between description and reflection in limited space, my observations are organised into three sections. First, a brief account is provided of the evolution and role of rights struggles and social movements in Kenya, Haiti and the Philippines. Second, I share a theoretical framework based on the notion of competing paradigms, exploring the role of social movements in relation to mainstream development and human rights programmes. In the third section, I conclude with a summary of significant lessons, including my personal reflections on poverty and its solutions. 2 Rights and social movements in Kenya, Haiti and the Philippines 2.1 Kenya: human rights and the fight against poverty Community perspectives on human rights The human rights discourse in Kenya is still limited to some sections of the Kenyan middle class and the international community. However, the majority of Kenyans continue to fight for their rights or entitlements on the basis of social justice perceptions ingrained in their socio-economic and political history. This study revealed that peasants in the rural areas and slum dwellers in the urban areas have a holistic perception of rights or entitlements. While most are unfamiliar with the human rights jargon, they are very clear about their entitlements and the injustices committed against them by state agents often hired by powerful non-state actors. For people at the community level struggling against injustice, human rights made sense when they heard that the law of all nations in the world was supporting them. They understood the language of human rights in the context of social justice.

Exploring the Frontier of Livelihoods Research

This article discusses the value of livelihoods studies and examines the obstacles which have prevented it from making a greater contribution to understanding the lives of poor people over the past decade. After examining the roots of the livelihoods approach, two major challenges are explored: the conceptualization of the problem of access, and how to achieve a better understanding of the mutual link between livelihood opportunities and decision-making. The article concludes that access to livelihood opportunities is governed by social relations, institutions and organizations, and that power is an important (and sometimes overlooked) explanatory variable. In discussing the issue of access to livelihood opportunities, the authors note the occurrence of both strategic and unintentional behaviour and the importance of structural factors; they discuss concepts of styles and pathways, which try to cater for structural components and regularities; and they propose livelihood trajectories as an appropriate methodology for examining these issues. In this way, the article also sets the agenda for future livelihoods research.

Beyond budgetary support: pro‐poor development agendas for Africa

The latest fashion in a sequence of global interventions by donors, designed to make a difference to the lives of poor people, is the use of budgetary support mechanisms. These have emerged afresh at the start of the twenty‐first century as the increasingly dominant mode of desired aid delivery for many donors in the African context. However, this paper argues that such an approach to ‘development’, particularly when combined with an understanding of poverty largely as an absolute concept that can be eliminated through economic growth, will have damaging effects on the lives of the poor and marginalised across the continent. The time is ripe for a new global agenda that seeks to place as much emphasis on equity as it does on economic growth.

On Civil Governance

In his discussion of how corporate responsibility will impact on tomorrow's global markets, Simon Zadek argues that corporate responsibility needs to make a real difference to the lives of poor people and the security of the natural environment. He outlines two scenarios for the year 2020. The first scenario, Grey Dawn, is broadly negative and undesirable, while the second, Civil Governance, presents positively how civil society and business relations with the UN could evolve in the future.