Engineering: issues, challenges and opportunities for development ...

ENGINEERING FOR DEVELOPMENT: APPLICATIONS AND INFRASTRUCTURE6.1.2Tony MarjoramPoverty reductionPoverty is conventionally defined as living below US$2 per dayand extreme poverty as living below US$1.25 per day. It thereforerelates particularly to the developing and least developedcountries, although not exclusively so – there are of courseexamples of relative poverty in most cities and countriesaround the world. In 2008, the World Bank estimated that2.6 billion people lived on less than $US2 a day and 1.4 billionpeople lived below US$1 a day in 2005. The eradication of poverty,especially extreme poverty, is the first of the MillenniumDevelopment Goals of the United Nations. Poverty dependson social and economic context and such issues as access toland and resources, and is a measure of income and resourcedistribution and inequality. Poverty leads to ill health, diseaseand death, and is a barrier to opportunities such as education.Poverty has a gender dimension; 60 per cent of the world’s poorare women, who are also in many countries mainly responsiblefor family care, food production, water supply, fuel gatheringand cooking. At the same time, most of these women are ineligiblefor bank loans because they are not employed or entitledto own property.While it is usually considered, measured and indicated financially,poverty relates essentially to the access of people to theresources with which to address their basic human needs,especially food. This depends on resource availability and populationpressure; people living in poverty, closer to the povertyline, spend more of their income on basic needs such as food,and are especially vulnerable to increases in the cost of living.This in turn depends on natural factors such as drought andfamine, and also on government policies regarding incomeand resource distribution. In the 1980s, for example, freemarketpolicies of economic liberalization and structuraladjustment cut government support of social programmes,subsidies and public financing in developing countries andlead to an increase in poverty and a substantial increase ininequality within and between countries. In the context of thedeprivation of resources for an adequate standard of living,poverty is also a denial of basic human rights to food, housing,clothing, a safe environment, health and social services, educationand training, decent work and the benefits of science andtechnology. The world has never been as rich as it is today, yetover one billion people suffer from extreme poverty even asfreedom from poverty has been recognized as a fundamentalhuman right.Poverty reduction – access to knowledge and knowledgeapplications …The access of people to the resources with which to addresstheir basic human needs also depends crucially on knowledge,and access to knowledge. The Industrial Revolution and developmentof agricultural technologies and the steam engine inparticular literally revolutionized rural and urban productivityto match increasing populations, and dramatically reducedpoverty, albeit with Dickensian effects until human and politicalrights caught up with industrial development. This helpedto break the perception, partly reflected in the Malthusiandebate, that until this period, food shortages and povertywas an inevitable fact of life. Apart from food supply, productionand processing, other areas of basic need include watersupply and sanitation, housing, energy, transportation, communication,income generation, employment and enterprisecreation.The application of knowledge in engineering, science andtechnology has been and will continue to be vital in addressingbasic human needs and the reduction of poverty as well asdriving economic and social development, as it is vital in emergencyand disaster response, reconstruction and prevention,and will be in climate change mitigation and adaptation. Engineeringand technology consists of ‘hardware’ tools, equipmentand infrastructure, and ‘software’ engineering knowledgethat designs, produces and develops the technology that surroundsand supports people around the world. The applicationof engineering and technology helps address poverty atmacro, meso and micro levels. At the macro, national and,increasingly, global levels, engineering and technology broughtthe Industrial Revolution, economic and social development,productivity and growth.At the macro level, while classical economics ignored technologicalchange, neo-classical and later economic growth theoriespaid increasing reference to technology and innovationas the main drivers of economic development and growth.Conventional economics also emphasizes economic growthas the main factor in the reduction of poverty, despite longterm criticism of the ‘trickle down’ effect. Recent research alsoindicates that growth does not necessarily reduce poverty, butalso requires government policies that reduce inequality. 108Infrastructure plays a key role here.At the meso level, many businesses in developed and developingcountries are medium and small-scale enterprises withless than 250 or fifty employees respectively, while many morebusinesses are at the micro level with less than 10 employees.Around the world, especially in developing and least developedcountries, micro, small and medium scale enterprises(MSMEs) account for the vast majority of companies and themajority of jobs, up to 50 per cent of GDP, and higher growthcompared to larger industries. Many MSMEs are also focusedon particular technologies and innovations. The butchers, bakersand candlestick makers of old have now been joined or dis-108 “The Developing world’s bulging (but vulnerable) middle class”, World Bank PolicyResearch Working Paper 4816, January 2009.© Victoria Hickman, EWB-UK Community participationwith slum dwellers andplanning for new housing inPune, India.255