By Peter Severinson
Canadians have a good habit of helping our world neighbours when a disaster hits. Whether it was the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the U.S., the South-Asian tsunami, or the recent earthquake in Pakistan, Canadians have shown themselves to be a compassionate lot.
But while we help threatened people around the world during high profile, emotionally compelling events, we tend to ignore their problems the rest of the time.
What Canadians don’t realize is that world poverty is directly related to the suffering caused by things like natural disasters and violence. When events like these are in the news, we’re often quick to act, but we disregard the underlying issues that really matter.
Consider this: In 2003 an earthquake measuring 6.5 on the Richter scale hit Bam, a poor Iranian city with mostly ancient brick buildings. The quake killed about 30,000 people. However, when a 7.6 magnitude earthquake hit Taiwan in 1999, the death toll was a 10th of that total.
Disasters are complex events so it’s difficult to compare them, but this example shows how much worse a disaster can be for poor communities compared to wealthy ones.
This is a general rule when it comes to disasters says Dane Rowlands, a professor at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University who specializes in foreign aid.
In poor nations, housing and basic infrastructure are simply not built to the standard of the developed world. When a major natural event hits a poor country, there’s a better chance buildings will collapse or highways wash away, making the disaster more deadly and harder to manage.
Because disaster damage is often a result of things like poor housing construction, relief efforts and specific development projects can’t do much to help. The problem in this case is basic poverty, Rowlands says. Here a gradual, long-term solution is needed to help reverse the trends that make certain countries poor.
While Canada is on par with other developed countries in contributing to disaster relief, we’re ranked 14th out of 22 developed countries in basic foreign aid, says Nancy Gordon, senior vice-president at Care Canada, a 60-year-old global development organization.
When it comes to the slow, unglamorous work of helping the world’s poor, we’re not doing our share.
In 1969, former Canadian prime minister Lester Pearson recommended to the UN that developed nations contribute 0.7 per cent of their gross national product to help poor countries become more prosperous.
Canada currently contributes about 0.3 per cent, which includes disaster relief, Gordon says. Although there have been recent commitments to increase aid, there’s no plan in place to reach the 0.7 per cent level.
The problem is that while Canadians are compelled to action when a disaster is in the news, Gordon says there’s less motivation for us to care about contributing to global development. Because the fight against basic poverty is a slow process, it’s difficult to get excited about it.
But this is an issue that touches on more than just natural disasters. Terrorism is another good example that affects people all across the globe. Terrorist attacks, like natural disasters, are a global threat frequently discussed in the media. They are also like the effects natural disaster in that they are tied to issues of poverty.
There’s been a long argument about what fundamentally causes terrorism, says Wade Deisman, a professor at the University of Ottawa specializing in policing and national security who is also the director of the National Security Working Group, an Ottawa-based research and public advocacy organization.
Deisman says international terrorism is a complex issue and there are no easy answers as to what causes it. However, the connection between terrorism and failing states is fairly clear, he says.
People living in desperate situations are generally more likely to turn to extremism, he says. On the other hand, people living comfortable, predictable lives are more likely to recognize the concerns of others and turn away from extreme actions.
This line of thought is leading more scholars to argue that the best way to preserve our security is to increase the security of people’s lives around the world through development. Deisman admits it could take decades before we see results out of this kind of strategy, but he points out that simply reacting to terrorism with force isn’t giving us any long-term solutions.
It’s clear that fighting world poverty has many benefits beyond just making us feel good. Development would help countries become less vulnerable to the disasters that shock us so much when we read about them in the news and could also create societies less likely to produce the terrorists we fear.
But these are just two examples chosen to make a point. There are more benefits to world development and the reduction of poverty than can be listed here, including a decease in war, protection from pandemic diseases and economic stability.
But there are challenges. We won’t be able to see quick results for our investments and there are no emotionally powerful events to compel us into this kind of work. We all need to be far-sighted, self-sacrificing and brave to invest in the slow process of global development and less concerned about feeling good about ourselves in the short-term.
We are a rich, free nation based on moral reason and responding to the disaster of the moment simply isn’t enough. We need to increase our commitment to foreign aid to help fight the root causes of so many of the world’s problems.