The topic of poverty in the world is one of the most popular debated topics today. “The Geographic of Poverty” by J. Sachs and the short response “Geography Lessons” by W. Easterly dives into two totally different reasons for world poverty. Both authors present interesting theories and hypotheses for world poverty. Sachs’ dives into the geographical reasons while Easterly takes a different approach. I feel that Sachs’ argument was more persuasive therefore I will devise a program for the development in Africa based on Sachs’ argument.
After reading both articles I thought back to many topics we covered in class. The first one being HIV/AIDS and Malaria. I think Sachs’ short response underestimated the affect that HIV/AIDS and Malaria has on poverty in Africa. There are some baffling facts about HIV/AIDS in Africa, especially in the Sub-Saharan Africa.64 percent of the world population of people living with HIV/AIDS is in Sub-Saharan Africa, 71 percent of the worlds AIDS deaths are in Sub-Saharan Africa, and finally 10 percent of the worlds AIDS population is in Sub-Saharan Africa. Now for some Malaria stats, 90 percent of all Malaria deaths occur in Sub-Saharan, and nearly one million people die a year from Malaria. With stats like that it makes it impossible not to be in poverty. They have to spend so much money on disease control and medicine that the government has no money for anything else.
Another topic we covered in class was winners and losers in climate change. What I discovered was almost all the low GDP countries were losers in climate change and vice versa. In Africa, crop yields and subsistence farming will see a decrease due to the increasing heat. In Southeast Asia people who live on the coast has to worry -about frequent flooding due to the increasing water levels. These are examples of situations in high poverty levels, so this will just be adding to the fire.
In Sachs’ “The Geographic of Poverty” the main points are climate...