IFPRI Forum

October/November 2007

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At the midway point in the effort to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, an IFPRI 2020 conference in Beijing considers how to overcome the most intractable poverty and hunger.

On October 17, the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, some 400 people gathered in Beijing, China, to share ideas on how to overcome extreme poverty and hunger. After all, even if the poverty and hunger Millennium Development Goal is achieved, millions of people will still be living with the most brutal forms of poverty and hunger.

To focus attention on this troubling reality, the 2020 Vision initiative of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the Chinese State Council Leading Group Office on Poverty Alleviation and Development co-organized a conference called "Taking Action for the World's Poor and Hungry People," held October 17-19 in Beijing, to examine what new and different action is required to improve their welfare. The conference was hosted by the International Poverty Reduction center in China, IFPRI, and the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences. "It's clear that current efforts are not reaching the poorest people," said Rajul Pandya-Lorch, head of IFPRI's 2020 Vision initiative. "This conference is designed to help shed light on the reasons why and point the way to more effective action."

The conference looked at what steps are needed to improve the welfare of the world's poorest and hungry people, based on the best available research and experience and focusing on several critical questions: Who are the poorest of the poor and those most afflicted by hunger? What are the key pathways out of extreme poverty and hunger? Which strategies, policies, and interventions have been successful in eradicating extreme poverty and hunger so far?

Participants at the conference included leading researchers and practitioners from NGOs, international agencies, and the private sector from 40 countries. Altogether more than 400 international and Chinese policymakers and thinkers attended, including about 25 participants at the ministerial and vice ministerial levels. The three days of proceedings included more than 100 scientific and policy presentations and rich discussions on theoretical and practical aspects of poverty and hunger alleviation.

To design and implement effective policies and programs for overcoming poverty among the most destitute, policymakers need to know more about who the poorest people are, where they live, and why their poverty persists. New IFPRI research sheds light on people living below the US$1-a-day threshold, showing that the ultra poor (those living on less than 50 cents a day) are concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa—the only region where ultra poverty predominates. In Asia, on the other hand, most of the poor live just below the dollar-a-day line, and only a small minority are ultra poor (see sidebar on "The World's Most Deprived").

Why is poverty so persistent in some places? According to Partha Dasgupta of Cambridge University, many poor people are stuck in poverty traps—situations in which people find themselves unable to climb out of poverty, owing either to fixed costs of survival that they are not able to meet or to complementary processes that lead to a spiraling of misery. One example might occur when a shock harms local institutions that govern natural resources. As common property becomes scarcer, households need more hands just to survive and they often increase the family size. But higher fertility puts more pressure on natural resources, thus creating a vicious circle.

Conference presentations also made clear that progress has been made on measuring poverty in more accurate and useful ways and on targeting policies more effectively to the poor. Nonetheless, there is some debate about how much decisionmakers should rely on indicators of income poverty as compared with more multidimensional measures.

Attention was drawn to often-overlooked minorities and marginalized people, who make up a substantial share of the poor. Lennart Bage, president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) pointed out, "There are an estimated 370 million indigenous peoples worldwide. They are 5 percent of the world's population but represent 15 percent of the world's poor. Put simply, indigenous people and ethnic minorities are among the poorest in the world." Because these people are often socially and economically excluded, their potential and capacity often go untapped, at great cost to themselves and their communities. A number of speakers discussed options for overcoming the hurdles faced by marginalized people, including women and people with disabilities.

Several key areas for action emerged from the conference discussions. A consensus arose that developing countries and their partners could do a great deal to reduce poverty by, for example, promoting inclusive growth with an emphasis on rural growth, given that most poor people still live in rural areas. Ernest Debrah, Ghana's minister of food and agriculture, pointed out that Ghana had halved hunger nine years ahead of the Millennium Development Goal target date of 2015 by adopting a poverty reduction strategy based on rural development, macroeconomic stability, provision of infrastructure, and good governance.

Yet not all growth is equal in terms of reducing poverty. Martin Ravallion of the World Bank explained that growth does much more to reduce poverty in countries with low inequality than it does in countries with high inequality. Inequality is not always bad, however, said Ravallion. "The bottom line is that there are both good and bad inequalities. The good are those that both reflect and reinforce market incentives, that allow people, including poor people, to take up opportunities," he said. "By bad inequalities, I essentially mean inequalities of opportunity."

Some groups—including children, the elderly, the disabled, excluded groups, and people living in remote areas—are simply not in a position to take advantage of growth to rapidly improve their livelihoods. For these people, social protection policies implemented at an early stage—before poor people reach outright destitution—are key. Such policies can include safety nets, social security, and health insurance. Summing up a session on reducing vulnerability and enhancing social protection, Ling Zhu of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences pointed out that it is critical to tailor interventions to the problem. Cash transfers conditional, for example, on children's school attendance or participation in health services, can help reduce both short-term and long-term poverty—although they are not a silver bullet. Social security and health insurance schemes may be difficult to implement, but they are important to manage the high levels of risk that poor people face.

Several countries with successful records of poverty reduction shared their experiences. Brazil has already achieved MDG1—cutting extreme poverty in half. Patrus Ananias de Souza, Brazil's minister of social development and fight against hunger, described the country's combination of growth in the services sector and social protection policies, including one called Bolsa Familia. The program has helped raise poor people's purchasing power and helped stimulate local economies. In recent years, Brazilians at all income levels have experienced increased incomes, with the poorest groups showing higher rates of growth than the richest.

The appropriate mix of policies is different for different countries and regions. Although country-specific contexts need to be taken into account, in general discussions pointed to the need for African countries to increase agricultural growth, overcome conflicts, and improve the policy environment. Asian countries should work to overcome exclusion and inequality, reduce child undernutrition, and connect small farmers to value chains. Latin American countries should focus on improving education quality, better targeting social expenditures, and enhancing local capacity.

There was particular interest in China's experience, given its striking success in reducing poverty over the past three decades. Hui Liangyu, vice premier of China's State Council, said the country's poverty reduction was based on pro-poor growth, agricultural and rural reform, the mainstreaming of poverty reduction efforts into national economic and social strategies, capacity building in poor areas, and mobilization of all walks of life in the poverty reduction effort. Although China still must make further progress in reducing development gaps within its society, said Hui Liangyu, "the Chinese government will in the future further strengthen collaboration with relevant countries and international organizations to strive for more sustainable economic growth mechanisms, more balanced global poverty reduction strategies, and more inclusive anti-poverty partnerships, as well as to holistically enhance development capability and poverty reduction efforts."

The conference reinforced the idea that a wide range actors are needed to participate in the global effort to eradicate hunger and reduce poverty. One such group consists of social entrepreneurs—people who identify and solve problems on a large scale, driven by a passion to create social change and a belief in the ability of all people to contribute. Such people, however, are still in short supply, according to Suresh Babu, an IFPRI senior research fellow. "To build capacity for social innovation and entrepreneurship, we need to re-orient education systems toward problem solving and entrepreneurship education, identify and encourage policy entrepreneurs at national levels, and scale up of innovative interventions using social entrepreneurship," he said.

In addition to appropriate actions from developing-country governments, developed-country governments, and the development community, success will depend on the participation of poor people themselves, acting as agents of change. Vijay Kumar, chief executive officer of India's Society for the Elimination of Rural Poverty, pointed out that 8.7 million extremely poor women have been organized into self-help groups in Andhra Pradesh, India. These groups have succeeded in undertaking activities such as marketing, bulk purchasing of commodities, and exerting pressure on local governments for the provision of services, improving their livelihoods in the process.

United Nations Secretary-General Bon Ki-Moon sent a message to the conference along these lines: "Today, the world must refocus its attention, and its resources, on the places and people that are being left behind. As we do, we must bear in mind that none are more committed to ending poverty than the poor themselves. Often, all they lack is the guidance, the tools, and the opportunities to win this fight."

IFPRI prepared a statement in consultation with conference participants and incorporating many of the ideas discussed at the conference to serve as a call for moving ahead (see "The Way Forward"). Different countries and regions will need to pursue a different mix of policies and programs. But any successful strategy for reducing poverty and eliminating hunger is likely to include inclusive growth; better access to assets, infrastructure, and markets for poor people; strong social protection policies; investments in health, nutrition, and education; and policies to include the excluded.

"Going beyond the Millennium Development Goals to fight extreme poverty and hunger is not just a matter of a project here and a project there," said IFPRI Director General Joachim von Braun in his closing remarks. "Instead, it involves strategy and meeting a complex policy challenge. The conference offered strategic guidance. To actually meet the challenge, new action for and with the poor is needed now."

To learn more about the conference and associated outputs, go to http://www.ifpri.org/2020chinaconference/index.htm.