-Fight against poverty is cosmetic
"We have to help people understand that it is not difficult to eradicate extreme poverty", says Thomas Pogge at the CROP organized public roundtable 'Poor thinking: challenging dominant poverty research narratives.'
The roundtable was held in conjuction with the meeting of the CROP Scientific Committee, May 10-12, at the University of. Bergen.
Pogge thinks that one of the reasons why politicians aren’t bothered is because the general public isn’t interested in world poverty issues. People ignore poverty issues because they are afraid that their own prosperity might be affected if they have to contribute to combating global poverty.
Most people do not realise how easy it is to banish extreme poverty, and how little it would affect their own prosperity. The reality is that the poorest half of the world’s population receives only 3 percent of the global income, according to Pogge. Poverty would not exist if this percentage was increased to 6 percent.
This means that the richest half of the world would have to reduce their share from 97 to 94 percent, something which would hardly be noticeable, says Pogge.
