State of the World

[drplokta]

So, disregarding the dodgy anecdotal evidence, how are the developing countries and the world's poor actually doing from globalisation? Karl Schroeder (an excellent SF author whose novels Ventus and Permanence you should all read) has posted some figures from the UN. And the answer is, they're doing very well indeed.

From 1982 to 2002:

• World infant mortality per 1000 live births dropped from 86.7 to 52.4
  
• Calories of food per capita in poor countries went from 2382 to 2740
  
• Percentage of households with access to safe water supplies went from 60.7% to 80.9% -- more households now have safe water than the total number of households in 1982, I should imagine
  
• Literacy rate in poor and middle income countries went from 64.7% to 78%
  
• World life expectancy went from 56.8 years to 63.8 years, despite the impact of AIDS

Apparently, the world is not going to hell in a handbasket, but rather in the other direction.

Comments

[frandowdsofa.livejournal.com]

I was very interested by the articles in the 2020 supplement to the Guardian on Saturday, in particular this one ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/2020/story/0,,1299051,00.html ) by Tony Allan (professor of geography at SOAS in London), which discusses the concept of "virtual water".

The thrust of the article is that is you use 90% of water to produce food, get the food from somewhere that has the water. And use what little water you've got for the other 10%. Get people off the land, educate them and put them in cities and buildings which are more water-efficient.

"A building occupying a site of a hectare could accommodate 1,000 workers. Those people could generate an annual turnover of £30m, but would use only 10,000 cubic meters of water each year. If that hectare were to be used as a wheat field, it might use the same amount of water, but would generate a turnover of less than £2,000 per year and would only support one tenth of one job. So the key to efficient use of water, through the deployment of virtual water, is job creation and removing people from poverty."

I'm still not sure what I think about this.