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Journal of Human Development, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2001
Eradicating Systemic Poverty: brief for a global
resources dividend
THOMAS W. POGGE
Thomas W. Pogge is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University
Article 25: Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate
for the health and well-being of himself and of his family,
including food, clothing, housing and medical care.
Article 28: Everyone is entitled to a social and international order
in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this
Declaration can be fully realized. (Universal Declaration
of Human Rights)
In two earlier essays (Pogge, 1994, 1998a), I have sketched and defended
the proposal of a global resources dividend. This proposal was meant to
show that there are feasible alternative ways of organizing our global
economic order, that the choice among these alternatives makes a substantial
difference to how much severe poverty there is worldwide, and that there
are weighty moral reasons to make this choice so as to minimize such
poverty. My proposal has evoked some critical responses (Kesselring, 1997;
Reichel, 1997; Crisp and Jamieson, 2000) and spirited defenses (Kreide,
1998; Mandle, 2000) in the academy. But if it is to help reduce severe
poverty, the proposal must be convincing not only to academics, but also to
the people in governments and international organizations who are prac-
tically involved in poverty eradication efforts. I am most grateful therefore
for the opportunity to present a concise and improved version of the
argument in this journal.
Introduction: radical inequality and our responsibility
One great challenge to any morally sensitive person today is the extent and
severity of global poverty. Among six billion human beings, 790 million lack
adequate nutrition, one billion lack access to safe water, 2.4 billion lack basic
sanitation (United Nations Development Programme, 2000, p. 30), more than
880 million lack access to basic health services (United Nations Development
Programme, 1999, p. 22), one billion are without adequate shelter, and two
billion without electricity (United Nations Development Programme, 1998,
p. 49). Two hundred and fty million children aged between 5 and 14 do
ISSN 1464-9888 print/ISSN 1469-9516 online/01/010059-19 2001 United Nations Development Programme
DOI: 10.1080/14649880120050246
T. W. Pogge
wage work outside their household — often under harsh or cruel conditions:
as soldiers, prostitutes, or domestic servants, or in agriculture, construction,
textile or carpet production (World Bank, 2000, p. 62). About one billion
adults are illiterate (United Nations Development Programme, 2000, p. 30).
Roughly one-third of all human deaths, some 50,000 daily, are due to poverty-
related causes and thus avoidable insofar as poverty is avoidable (UNICEF,
1999; World Health Organization, 2000). If the US had its proportional share
of these deaths, poverty would kill some 820 000 of its citizens per year —
more each month than were killed during the entire Vietnam War.
There are two ways of conceiving global poverty as a moral challenge
to us. We may be failing to fulll our positive duty to help persons in acute
distress. And we may be failing to fulll our more stringent negative duty
not to uphold injustice, not to contribute to or prot from the unjust
impoverishment of others.
These two views differ in important ways. The positive formulation is
easier to substantiate. It need be shown only that they are very badly off,
that we are very much better off and that we could relieve some of their
suffering without becoming badly-off ourselves. But this ease comes at a
price: some who accept the positive formulation think of the moral reasons
it provides as weak and discretionary, and thus do not feel obligated to
promote worthy causes, especially costly ones. Many feel entitled, at least,
to support good causes of their choice — their church or alma mater,
cancer research or the environment — rather than putting themselves out
for total strangers half a world away, with whom they share no bond of
community or culture. It is of some importance, therefore, to investigate
whether existing global poverty involves our violating a negative duty. This
is important for us, if we want to lead a moral life, and important also for
the poor because it will make a great difference to them whether we afuent
do or do not see global poverty as an injustice we help maintain.
Some believe that the mere fact of radical inequality shows a violation
of negative duty. Radical inequality may be dened as involving ve elements
(extending Nagel, 1977).
(1) The worse-off are very badly off in absolute terms.
(2) They are also very badly off in relative terms — very much worse off
than many others.
(3) The inequality is impervious: it is difcult or impossible for the worse-
off substantially to improve their lot; and most of the better-off never
experience life at the bottom for even a few months and have no vivid
idea of what it is like to live in that way.
(4) The inequality is pervasive: it concerns not merely some aspects of life,
such as the climate or access to natural beauty or high culture, but most
aspects or all.
(5) The inequality is avoidable: the better-off can improve the circumstances
of the worse-off without becoming badly off themselves.
The phenomenon of global poverty clearly exemplies radical inequality as
dened. But I doubt that these ve conditions sufce to invoke more than a
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Eradicating Systemic Poverty
merely positive duty. And I suspect most citizens of the developed West
would also nd them insufcient. They might appeal to the following
parallel: suppose we discovered people on Venus who are very badly off,
and suppose we could help them at little cost to ourselves. If we did nothing,
we would surely violate a positive duty of benecence. But we would not
be violating a negative duty of justice, because we would not be contributing
to the perpetuation of their misery.
This point could be further disputed. But let me here accept the Venus
argument and examine what further conditions must be satised for radical
inequality to manifest an injustice that involves violation of a negative duty
by the better-off. I see three plausible approaches to this question, invoking
three different grounds of injustice: the effects of shared institutions, the
uncompensated exclusion from the use of natural resources and the effects
of a common and violent history. These approaches exemplify distinct and
competing political philosophies. We need nevertheless not decide among
them here if, as I will argue, the following two theses are true. First, all three
approaches classify the existing radical inequality as unjust and its coercive
maintenance as a violation of negative duty. Second, all three approaches
can agree on the same feasible reform of the status quo as a major step
toward justice.If these two theses can be supported, then it may be possible
to gather adherents of the dominant strands of western normative political
thought into a coalition focused on eradicating global poverty through the
introduction of a Global Resources Dividend (GRD).
Three grounds of injustice
The effects of shared institutions
The rst approach (suggested in Nagel, 1977; O’Neill, 1985; Pogge, 1989,
§24) puts forward three additional conditions.
(6) There is a shared institutional order that is shaped by the better-off and
imposed on the worse-off.
(7) This institutional order is implicated in the reproduction of radical
inequality in that there is a feasible institutional alternative under which
so severe and extensive poverty would not persist.
(8) The radical inequality cannot be traced to extra-social factors (such as
genetic handicaps or natural disasters) that, as such, affect different
human beings differentially.
Present radical global inequality meets Condition 6, in that the global poor
live within a worldwide states system based on internationally recognized
territorial domains, interconnected through a global network of market trade
and diplomacy. The presence and relevance of shared institutions is shown
by how dramatically we affect the circumstances of the global poor through
investments, loans, trade, bribes, military aid, sex tourism, culture exports
and much else. Their very survival often crucially depends on our consump-
tion choices, which may determine the price of their foodstuffs and their
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T. W. Pogge
opportunities to nd work. In sharp contrast to the Venus case, we are
causally deeply involved in their misery. This does not mean that we should
hold ourselves responsible for the remoter effects of our economic decisions.
These effects reverberate around the world and interact with the effects of
countless other such decisions and thus cannot be traced, let alone predicted.
Nor need we draw the dubious and utopian conclusion that global interde-
pendence must be undone by isolating states or groups of states from
one another. But we must be concerned with how the rules structuring
international interactions foreseeably affect the incidence of extreme poverty.
The developed countries, thanks to their vastly superior military and eco-
nomic strength, control these rules and therefore share responsibility for
their foreseeable effects.
Condition 7involves tracing the poverty of individuals in an explanatory
way to the structure of social institutions. This exercise is familiar in regard
to national institutions, whose explanatory importance has been powerfully
illustrated by domestic regime changes in China, Eastern Europe and else-
where. In regard to the global economic order, the exercise is unfamiliar and
shunned even by economists. This is due in part, no doubt, to powerful
resistance against seeing oneself as connected to the unimaginable depriva-
tions suffered by the global poor. This resistance biases us against data,
arguments and researchers liable to upset our preferred world view and thus
biases the competition for professional success against anyone exploring the
wider causal context of global poverty. This bias is reinforced by our
cognitive tendency to overlook the causal signicance of stable background
factors (e.g. the role of atmospheric oxygen in the outbreak of a re), as our
attention is naturally drawn to geographically or temporally variable factors.
Looking at the incidence of poverty worldwide, we are struck by dramatic
local changes and international variations, which point to local explanatory
factors. The heavy focus on such local factors then encourages the illusion,
succumbed to by Rawls (1999, p. 108) for example, that they completely
explain global poverty.
This illusion conceals how profoundly local factors and their effects are
inuenced by the existing global order. Yes, a culture of corruption pervades
the political system and the economy of many developing countries. But is
this culture unrelated to the fact that most afuent countries have, until
quite recently, allowed their rms to bribe foreign ofcials and even made
such bribes tax-deductible?1— Yes, developing countries have shown them-
selves prone to oppressive government and to horric wars and civil wars.
But is the frequency of such brutality unrelated to the international arms
trade, and unrelated to international rules that entitle anyone holding effec-
tive power in such a country to borrow in its name and to sell ownership
rights in its natural resources (Wantchekon, 1999)? — Yes, the world is
diverse, and poverty is declining in some countries and worsening in others.
But the larger pattern is quite stable, reaching far back into the colonial era:
‘‘The income gap between the fth of the world’s people living in the richest
countries and the fth in the poorest was 74 to 1 in 1997, up from 60 to 1
in 1990 and 30 to 1 in 1960. [Earlier] the income gap between the top and
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bottom countries increased from 3 to 1 in 1820 to 7 to 1 in 1870 to 11 to 1
in 1913’’ (United Nations Development Programme, 1999, p. 3). The afuent
countries have been using their power to shape the rules of the world
economy according to their own interests and thereby have deprived the
poorest populations of a fair share of global economic growth (Pogge,
2001) — quite avoidably so, as the GRD proposal shows.
Global poverty meets Condition 8insofar as the global poor, if only they
had been born into different social circumstances, would be just as able and
likely to lead healthy, happy and productive lives as the rest of us. The root
cause of their suffering is their abysmal social starting position, which does
not give them much of a chance to become anything but poor, vulnerable
and dependent — unable to give their children a better start than they had
had themselves.
It is because the three additional conditions are met that existing global
poverty has, according to the rst approach, the special moral urgency
we associate with negative duties, why we should take it much more
seriously than otherwise similar suffering on Venus. The reason is that the
citizens and governments of the afuent countries — whether intentionally
or not — are imposing a global institutional order that foreseeably and
avoidably reproduces severe and widespread poverty. The worse-off are not
merely poor and often starving, but are being impoverished and starved
under our shared institutional arrangements, which inescapably shape their
lives.
The rst approach can be presented in a consequentialist guise, as in
Bentham, or in a contractualist guise, as in Rawls or Habermas. In both
cases, the central thought is that social institutions are to be assessed in a
forward-looking way, by reference to their effects. In the present international
order, billions are born into social starting positions that give them extremely
low prospects for a fullling life. Their misery could be justied only if there
were no institutional alternative under which such massive misery would be
avoided. If, as the GRD proposal shows, there is such an alternative, then
we must ascribe this misery to the existing global order and therefore
ultimately to ourselves. As, remarkably, Charles Darwin wrote in reference
to his native Britain: ‘‘If the misery of our poor be caused not by laws of
nature, but by our own institutions, great is our sin’’ (quoted in Gould, 1991,
p. 19).
Uncompensated exclusion from the use of natural resources
The second approach adds (in place of Conditions 6–8) only one condition
to the ve of radical inequality.
(9) The better-off enjoy signicant advantages in the use of a single natural
resource base from whose benets the worse-off are largely, and without
compensation, excluded.
Currently, appropriation of wealth from our planet is highly uneven. Afuent
people use vastly more of the world’s resources, and they do so unilaterally,
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T. W. Pogge
without giving any compensation to the global poor for their disproportion-
ate consumption. Yes, the afuent often pay for the resources they use, such
as imported crude oil. But these payments go to other afuent people, such
as the Saudi family or the Nigerian kleptocracy, with very little, if anything,
trickling down to the global poor. So the question remains: What entitles a
global elite to use up the world’s natural resources on mutually agreeable
terms while leaving the global poor empty-handed?
Defenders of capitalist institutions have developed conceptions of justice
that support rights to unilateral appropriation of disproportionate shares of
resources while accepting that all inhabitants of the earth ultimately have
equal claims to its resources. These conceptions are based on the thought
that such rights are justied if all are better off with them than anyone would
be if appropriation were limited to proportional shares.
This pattern of justication is exemplied with particular clarity in John
Locke (cf. also Nozick, 1974, chapter 4). Locke is assuming that, in a state
of nature without money, persons are subject to the moral constraint that
their unilateral appropriations must always leave ‘‘enough, and as good’’ for
others, that is, must be conned to a proportional share (Locke, 1689, §27
and §33). This so-called Lockean Proviso may, however, be lifted with
universal consent (Locke, 1689, §36). Locke subjects such a lifting to a
second-order proviso, which requires that the rules of human coexistence
may be changed only if all can rationally consent to the alteration, that is,
only if everyone will be better off under the new rules than anyone would
be under the old. And he claims that the lifting of the enough-and-as-
good constraint through the general acceptance of money does satisfy this
second-order proviso: a day laborer in England feeds, lodges and is clad
better than a king of a large fruitful territory in the Americas (Locke, 1689,
§41 and §37).
It is hard to believe that Locke’s claim was true in his time. In any case,
it is surely false on the global plane today. Billions are born into poverty in
a world where all accessible resources are already owned by others. It is
true that they can rent out their labor and then buy natural resources on the
same terms as the afuent can. But their educational and employment
opportunities are almost always so restricted that, no matter how hard they
work, they can barely earn enough for their survival and certainly cannot
secure anything like a proportionate share of the world’s natural resources.
The global poor get to share the burdens resulting from the degradation of
our natural environment while having to watch helplessly as the afuent
distribute the planet’s abundant natural wealth among themselves. With
average annual per capita income of about $82, corresponding to the
purchasing power of $326 in the US, the poorest fth of humankind are
today just about as badly off, economically, as human beings could be while
still alive.2It is then not true, what according to Locke and Nozick would
need to be true, that all are better off under the existing appropriation and
pollution rules than anyone would be with the Lockean Proviso. According
to the second approach, the citizens and governments of the afuent states
are therefore violating a negative duty of justice when they, in collaboration
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with the ruling elites of the poor countries, coercively exclude the poor
from a proportional resource share.
The effects of a common and violent history
The third approach adds one condition to the ve of radical inequality.
(10) The social starting positions of the worse-off and the better-off have
emerged from a single historical process that was pervaded by massive
grievous wrongs.
The present circumstances of the global poor are signicantly shaped by a
dramatic period of conquest and colonization, with severe oppression,
enslavement, even genocide, through which the native institutions and
cultures of four continents were destroyed or severely traumatized. This is
not to say (or to deny) that afuent descendants of those who took part in
these crimes bear some special restitutive responsibility toward impoverished
descendants of those who were victims of these crimes. The thought is
rather that we must not uphold extreme inequality in social starting positions
when the allocation of these positions depends upon historical processes in
which moral principles and legal rules were massively violated. A morally
deeply tarnished history should not be allowed to result in radical inequality.
This third approach is independent of the others. For, suppose we reject
the other two approaches and afrm that radical inequality is morally
acceptable when it comes about pursuant to rules of the game that are
morally at least somewhat plausible and observed at least for the most part.
The existing radical inequality is then still condemned by the third approach
on the ground that the rules were in fact massively violated through countless
horrible crimes whose momentous effects cannot be surgically neutralized
decades and centuries later (cf. Nozick, 1974, p. 231).
Friends of the present distribution sometimes claim that standards of
living, in Africa and Europe for instance, would be approximately the same
if Africa had never been colonized. Even if this claim were both clear and
true, it would still be ineffective because the argument I have sketched
applies to persons, not to societies or continents. If world history had
transpired without colonization and enslavement, then there would perhaps
now be afuent people in Europe and poor ones in Africa, much like in the
Venus scenario. But these would be persons and populations quite different
from those who are now actually living there. So we cannot tell starving
Africans that they would be starving and we would be afuent even if the
crimes of colonialism had never occurred. Without these crimes, there would
not be the actually existing radical inequality that consists in these persons
being afuent and those being extremely poor.
So the third approach, too, leads to the conclusion that the existing
radical inequality is unjust, that coercively upholding it violates a negative
duty, and that we have urgent moral reason to eradicate global poverty.
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T. W. Pogge
A moderate proposal
The reform proposal now to be sketched is meant to support my second
thesis: that the status quo can be reformed in a way that all three approaches
would recognize as a major step toward justice. But it is also needed to close
gaps in my argument for the rst thesis: the proposal should show that the
existing radical inequality can be traced to the structure of our global
economic order (Condition 7). And it should also show that Condition 5is
met; for, according to all three approaches, the status quo is unjust only if
we can improve the circumstances of the global poor without thereby
becoming badly-off ourselves.
I am formulating my reform proposal in line with the second approach,
because the other two would support almost any reform that would improve
the circumstances of the global poor. The second approach narrows the
eld by suggesting a more specic idea: those who make more extensive
use of our planet’s resources should compensate those who, involuntarily,
use very little. This idea does not require that we conceive of global
resources as the common property of humankind, to be shared equally. My
proposal is far more modest by leaving each government in control of
the natural resources in its territory. Modesty is important if the proposed
institutional alternative is to gain the support necessary to implement it and
is to be able to sustain itself in the world as we know it. I hope that the
GRD satises these two desiderata by staying reasonably close to the global
order now in place and by being evidently responsive to each of the three
approaches.
The GRD proposal envisions that states and their governments shall not
have full libertarian property rights with respect to the natural resources in
their territory, but can be required to share a small part of the value of any
resources they decide to use or sell. This payment they must make is called
a dividend because it is based on the idea that the global poor own an
inalienable stake in all limited natural resources. As in the case of preferred
stock, this stake confers no right to participate in decisions about whether
or how natural resources are to be used and so does not interfere with
national control over resources, or eminent domain. But it does entitle its
holders to a share of the economic value of the resource in question, if
indeed the decision is to use it. This idea could be extended to limited
resources that are not destroyed through use but merely eroded, worn down,
or occupied, such as air and water used for discharging pollutants or land
used for farming, ranching, or buildings.
In light of the vast extent of global poverty today, one may think that
a massive GRD would be necessary to solve the problem. But I doubt this
is so. Present radical inequality is the cumulative result of decades and
centuries in which the more afuent societies and groups have used their
advantages in capital and knowledge to expand these advantages ever
further. This inequality demonstrates the power of long-term compounding
more than powerful centrifugal tendencies of our global market system. It
is then quite possible that, if radical inequality has once been eradicated,
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quite a small GRD may, in the context of a fair and open global market
system, be sufcient continuously to balance those ordinary centrifugal
tendencies of markets enough to forestall its re-emergence. The great magni-
tude of the problem does suggest, however, that initially more, perhaps as
much as 1% of the global product, may be needed so that it does not take
all too long until severe poverty is erased and an acceptable distributional
prole is reached.3To get a concrete sense of the magnitudes involved, let
us then consider this higher gure. While afuent countries now provide
$52 billion annually in ofcial development assistance (United Nations Devel-
opment Programme, 2000, p. 218), a 1% GRD would currently raise about
$300 billion annually.4This is $250 per year for each person below the
international poverty line, over three times their present average annual
income. More broadly spread, $300 billion is $107 per year for each person
below the doubled poverty line, 82% of their present average annual income.
Such an amount, if well targeted and effectively spent, would make a
phenomenal difference to the poor even within a few years. On the other
hand, the amount is rather small for the rest of us: close to the annual
defense budget of just the US alone, signicantly less than the annual ‘peace
dividend’, and less than half the market value of the current annual crude
oil production.5
Let us stay with the case of crude oil for a moment and examine the
likely effects of a $2 per barrel GRD on crude oil extraction. This dividend
would be owed by the countries in which oil is extracted, although most of
this cost would be passed along, through higher world market prices, to the
end-users of petroleum products. At $2 per barrel, over 18% of the high
initial revenue target could be raised from crude oil alone — and comfortably
so: at the expense of raising the price of petroleum products by about a
nickel per gallon. It is thus clearly possible — without major changes to our
global economic order — to eradicate world hunger within a few years by
raising a sufcient revenue stream from a limited number of resources and
pollutants. These should be selected carefully, with an eye to all collateral
effects. This suggests the following desiderata: the GRD should be easy to
understand and to apply. It should, for instance, be based on resources and
pollutants whose extraction or discharge is easy to monitor or estimate, in
order to ensure that every society is paying its fair share and to assure
everyone that this is so. Such transparency also helps fulll a second
desideratum of keeping overall collection costs low. The GRD should, thirdly,
have only a small impact on the price of goods consumed to satisfy
basic needs. And it should, fourth, be focused on resource uses whose
discouragement is especially important for conservation and environmental
protection. In this last respect, the GRD reform can produce great ecological
benets that are hard to secure in a less concerted way because of familiar
collective-action problems: each society has little incentive to restrain its
consumption and pollution, because the opportunity cost of such restraint
falls on it alone while the costs of depletion and pollution are spread
worldwide and into the future.
Proceeds from the GRD are to be used toward ensuring that all human
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T. W. Pogge
beings will be able to meet their own basic needs with dignity. The goal is
not merely to improve the nutrition, medical care and sanitary conditions of
the poor, but also to make it possible that they can themselves effectively
defend and realize their basic interests. This capacity presupposes that they
are freed from bondage and other relations of personal dependence, that
they are able to read and write and to learn a profession, that they can
participate as equals in politics and in the labor market, and that their status
is protected by appropriate legal rights that they can understand and
effectively enforce through an open and fair legal system.
The scheme for disbursin g GRD funds is to be designed so as to make
these funds maximally effective toward those ends. Such design must draw
upon the expertise of economists and international lawyers. Let me nonethe-
less make some provisional suggestions to give more concreteness to the
proposed reform. Disbursement should be made pursuant to clear and
straightforward general rules whose administration is cheap and transparent.
Transparency is important to exclude political favoritism and the appearance
thereof. It is important also for giving the government of any developing
country clear and strong incentives toward eradicating domestic poverty. To
optimize such incentive effects, the disbursement rules should reward
progress: by allocating more funds to this country and/or by assigning more
of its allocation directly to its government.
This incentive may not always prevail. In some poor countries, the
rulers care more about keeping their subjects destitute, uneducated, docile,
dependent and hence exploitable. In such cases, it may still be possible to
nd other ways of improving the circumstances and opportunities of the
domestic poor: by making cash payments directly to them or to their
organizations or by funding development programs administered through
United Nations agencies or effective non-governmental organizations. When,
in extreme cases, GRD funds cannot be used effectively in a particular
country, then there is no reason to spend them there rather than in those
many other places where these funds can make a real difference in reducing
poverty and disadvantage.
Even if the incentives provided by the GRD disbursement rules do not
always prevail, they will shift the political balance of forces in the right
direction: a good government brings enhanced prosperity through GRD
support and thereby generates more popular support, which in turn will
tend to make it safer from coup attempts. A bad government will nd the
poor harder to oppress when they receive GRD funds through other channels
and when all strata of the population have an interest in realizing GRD-
accelerated economic improvement under a different government more
committed to poverty eradication. With the GRD in place, reforms will be
pursued more vigorously and in more countries, and will succeed more
often and sooner, than would otherwise be the case. Combined with
suitable disbursement rules, the GRD can stimulate a peaceful international
competition in effective poverty eradication.
This rough and revisable sketch has shown, I hope, that the GRD
proposal deserves serious examination as an alternative to conventional
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development aid. While the latter has an aura of hand-outs and dependence,
the GRD avoids any appearance of arrogant generosity: it merely incorpo-
rates into our global institutional order the moral claim of the poor to
partake in the bene ts from the use of planetary resources. It implements
a moral right — and one that can be justied in multiple ways: namely
also forward-looking, by reference to its effects, and backward-looking, by
reference to the evolution of the present economic distribution. Moreover,
the GRD would also be vastly more efcient. The disbursement of conven-
tional development aid is heavily inuenced by political considerations as
is shown by the fact that only 21% of these $52 billion go to the least
developed countries (United Nations Development Programme, 2000,
p. 218). A mere 8.3%, $4.3 billion, are spent on meeting basic needs (United
Nations Development Programme, 2000, p. 79), less than 1 cent per day
for each person in the poorest quintile. The GRD, by contrast, would
initially raise 70 times as much exclusively toward meeting the basic needs
of the global poor.
Since the GRD would cost more and return less in direct political
benets, many of the wealthier and more powerful states might be tempted
to refuse compliance. Would the GRD scheme not then require a global
enforcement agency, something like a world government? In response, I
agree that the GRD would have to be backed by sanctions. But sanctions
could be decentralized: once the agency facilitating the ow of GRD pay-
ments reports that a country has not met its obligations under the scheme,
all other countries are required to impose duties on imports from, and
perhaps also similar levies on exports to, this country to raise funds
equivalent to its GRD obligations plus the cost of these enforcement mea-
sures. Such decentralized sanctions stand a very good chance of discouraging
small-scale defections. Our world is now, and is likely to remain, highly
interdependent economically. Most countries export and import between 10
and 50% of their gross domestic product. No country would prot from
shutting down foreign trade for the sake of avoiding its GRD obligation. And
each would have reasons to fulll its GRD obligation voluntarily: to retain
control over how the funds are raised, to avoid paying extra for enforcement
measures and to avoid the adverse publicity associated with noncompliance.
To be sure, such a scheme of decentralized sanctions could work only
so long as both the US and the European Union (EU) continue to comply
and continue to participate in the sanction mechanism. I assume that both
will do this, provided they can be brought to commit themselves to the GRD
scheme in the rst place. This prerequisite, which is decisive for the success
of the proposal, is addressed in the penultimate section. It should be clear,
however, that a refusal by the US or the EU to participate in the eradication
of global poverty would not affect the implications of the present section.
The feasibility of the GRD sufces to show that massive and severe poverty
is avoidable at moderate cost (Condition 5), that the existing global order
plays an important role in its persistence (Condition 7), and that we can
take what all three approaches would recognize as a major step toward
justice (second thesis).
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T. W. Pogge
The moral argument for the proposed reform
By showing that Conditions 1–10 are met, I hope to have demonstrated that
present global poverty manifests a grievous injustice that can and should be
abolished through institutional reform — involving the GRD scheme, per-
haps, or some superior alternative. To make this train of thought as transpar-
ent and criticizable as possible, I restate it now as an argument in six steps.
The rst two steps involve new formulations, so I comment on them briey
at the end.
(1) If a society or comparable social system, connected and regulated by
a shared institutional order (Condition 6), displays radical inequality
(Conditions 1–5), then this institutional order is prima facie unjust and
requires justication. Here the burden of proof is on those who wish to
defend this order and its coercive imposition as compatible with justice.
(2) Such a justication of an institutional order under which radical inequal-
ity persists would need to show either:
(2a) that Condition 10 is not met, perhaps because the existing radical
inequality came about fairly: through an historical process that
transpired in accordance with morally plausible rules that were
generally observed; or
(2b) that Condition 9is not met, because the worse-off can adequately
benet from the use of the common natural resource base through
access to a proportional share or through some at least equivalent
substitute; or
(2c) that Condition 8is not met, because the existing radical inequality
can be traced to extra-social factors (such as genetic handicaps or
natural disasters) which, as such, affect different persons differenti-
ally; or
(2d) that Condition 7is not met, because any proposed alternative to
the existing institutional order either:
— is impracticable, i.e. cannot be stably maintained in the long
run; or
— cannot be instituted in a morally acceptable way even with
good will by all concerned; or
— would not substantially improve the circumstances of the worse-
off; or
— would have other morally serious disadvantages that offset any
improvement in the circumstances of the worse-off.
(3) Humankind is connected and regulated by a shared global institutional
order under which radical inequality persists.
(4) This global institutional order therefore requires justication (from 1
and 3).
(5) This global institutional order can be given no justication of forms 2a,
2b, or 2c. A justication of form 2d fails as well, because a reform
involving introduction of a GRD provides an alternative that is practic-
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Eradicating Systemic Poverty
able, can (with some good will by all concerned) be instituted in a
morally acceptable way, would substantially improve the circumstances
of the worse-off and would not have disadvantages of comparable moral
signicance.
(6) The existing global order cannot be justied (from 4,2and 5) and hence
is unjust (from 1).
In presenting this argument, I have not attempted to satisfy the strictest
demands of logical form, which would have required various qualications
and repetitions. I have merely tried to clarify the structure of the argument
so as to make clear how it can be attacked.
One might attack the rst step. But this moral premise is quite weak,
applying only if the existing inequality occurs within a shared institutional
order (Condition 6)and is radical, i.e. involves truly extreme poverty and
extreme differentials in standards of living (Conditions 1–5). Moreover, the
rst premise does not atly exclude any institutional order under which
radical inequality persists, but merely demands that it be justied. Since
social institutions are created and upheld, perpetuated or reformed by human
beings, this demand cannot plausibly be refused.
One might attack the second step. But this moral premise, too, is weak,
in that it demands of the defender of the status quo only one of the four
possible showings (2a–2d), leaving him free to try each of the conceptions
of economic justice outlined in the second section, even though he can
hardly endorse all of them at once. Still, it remains open to argue that an
institutional order reproducing radical inequality can be justied in a way
that differs from the four (2a–2d) I have described.
One might try to show that the existing global order does not meet one
of the 10 conditions. Depending on which condition is targeted, one would
thereby deny the third premise or give a justication of forms 2a or 2b or
2c, or show that my reform proposal runs into one of the four problems
listed under 2d.
The conclusion of the argument is reached only if all 10 conditions are
met. Existing global poverty then manifests a core injustice: a phenomenon
that the dominant strands of western normative political thought jointly —
albeit for diverse reasons — classify as unjust and can jointly seek to
eradicate. Insofar as advantaged and inuential participants in the present
international order grant the argument, we acknowledge our shared responsi-
bility for its injustice: we are violating a negative duty of justice insofar as
we contribute to (and fail to mitigate) the harms it reproduces and insofar
as we resist suitable reforms.
Is the reform proposal realistic?
Even if the GRD proposal is practicable, and even if it could be implemented
with the good will of all concerned, there remains the problem of generating
this good will, especially on the part of the rich and mighty. Without the
support of the US and the EU, massive global poverty and starvation will
71
T. W. Pogge
certainly not be eradicated in our lifetimes. How realistic is the hope of
mobilizing such support? I have two answers to this question.
First, even if this hope is not realistic, it is still important to insist that
present global poverty manifests a grievous injustice according to western
normative political thought. We are not merely distant witnesses of a problem
unrelated to ourselves, with a weak, positive duty to help. Rather, we are,
both causally and morally, intimately involved in the fate of the poor by
imposing upon them a global institutional order that regularly produces
severe poverty, and/or by effectively excluding them from a fair share of the
value of exploited natural resources, and/or by upholding a radical inequality
that evolved through an historical process pervaded by horrendous crimes.
We can realistically end our involvement in their severe poverty not by
extricating ourselves from this involvement, but only by ending such poverty
through economic reform. If feasible reforms are blocked by others, then
we may in the end be unable to do more than mitigate some of the harms
we also help produce. But even then a difference would remain, because
our effort would fulll not a duty to help the needy, but a duty to protect
victims of any injustice to which we contribute. The latter duty is, other
things equal, much more stringent than the former, especially when we can
fulll it out of the benets we derive from this injustice.
My second answer is that the hope may not be so unrealistic after all.
My provisional optimism is based on two considerations. The rst is that
moral convictions can have real effects even in international politics — as
even some political realists admit, albeit with regret. Sometimes these are
the moral convictions of politicians. But, more commonly, politics is inu-
enced by the moral convictions of citizens. One dramatic example of this is
the abolitionist movement that, in the nineteenth century, pressured the
British government into suppressing the slave trade (Drescher, 1986). A
similar moral mobilization may be possible also for the sake of eradicating
global poverty — provided the citizens of the more powerful states can be
convinced of a moral conclusion that really can be soundly supported and a
path can be shown that makes only modest demands on each of us.
The GRD proposal is morally compelling. It can be broadly anchored in
the dominant strands of western normative political thought outlined in the
second section. And it also has the morally signi cant advantage of shifting
consumption in ways that restrain global pollution and resource depletion
for the benet of future generations in particular. Because it can be backed
by these four important and mutually independent moral rationales, the GRD
proposal is well-positioned to benet from the fact that moral reasons can
have effects in the world. If some help can be secured from economists,
political scientists and lawyers, then moral acceptance of the GRD may
gradually emerge and become widespread in the developed West.
Eradicating global poverty through a scheme like the GRD also involves
more realistic demands than a solution through private initiatives and
conventional development aid. Continual mitigation of poverty leads to
fatigue, aversion, and even contempt. It requires the more afuent citizens
and governments to rally to the cause again and again, while knowing full
72
Eradicating Systemic Poverty
well that most others similarly situated contribute nothing or very little, that
their own contributions are legally optional and that, no matter how much
they give, they could for just a little more always save yet further children
from sickness or starvation.
The inefciency of conventional development aid is also sustained by
the competitive situation among the governments of the donor countries,
who feel morally entitled to decline to do more by pointing to their
even less generous competitors. This explanation supports the optimistic
assumption that the afuent societies would be prepared, in joint reciprocity,
to commit themselves to more than what they tend to do each on its own.
Analogous considerations apply to environmental protection and conserva-
tion, with respect to which the GRD also contributes to a collective solution:
when many parties decide separately in this matter, then the best solution
for all is not achieved, because each gets almost the full benet of its
pollution and wastefulness while the resulting harms are shared by all
(‘tragedy of the commons’). An additional point is that national measures of
development aid and environmental protection must be politically fought
for or defended year after year, while acceptance of the GRD regime would
require only one — albeit rather more far-reaching — political decision.
The other optimistic consideration concerns prudence. The times when
we could afford to ignore what goes on in the developing countries are over
for good. Their economic growth will have a great impact on our environ-
ment, and their military and technological gains are accompanied by serious
dangers, among which those associated with nuclear, biological and chemical
weapons and technologies are only the most obvious. The transnational
imposition of externalities and risks will ever more become a two-way street
because no state or group of states, however rich and mighty, will be able
effectively to insulate itself from external inuences: from military and
terrorist attacks, illegal immigrants, epidemics and the drug trade, pollution
and climate change, price uctuations and scientic-technological and cul-
tural innovations. It is then increasingly in our interest, too, that stable
democratic institutions shall emerge in the developing countries — institu-
tions under which governmental power is effectively constrained through
procedural rules and basic rights. So long as large segments of these peoples
lack elementary education and have no assurance that they will be able to
meet even their most basic needs, such democratic institutions are much
less likely than explosive mixtures of religious and ideological fanaticism,
violent opposition movements, death squads and corrupt and politicized
militaries. To expose ourselves to the occasional explosions of these mixtures
would be increasingly dangerous and also more costly in the long run than
the proposed GRD.
This prudential consideration has a moral side as well. A future that is
pervaded by radical inequality and hence unstable would endanger not only
the security of ourselves and our progeny, but also the long-term survival of
our society, values and culture. Not only that: such a future would, quite
generally, endanger the security of all other human beings and their descen-
dants as well as the survival of their societies, values and cultures. And so
73
T. W. Pogge
the interest in peace — in a future world in which different societies, values
and cultures can coexist and interact peacefully — is obviously also, and
importantly, a moral interest.
Realizing our prudential and moral interest in a peaceful and ecologically
sound future will — and here I go beyond my earlier modesty — require
supranational institutions and organizations that limit the sovereignty rights
of states more severely than is the current practice. The most powerful states
could try to impose such limitations upon all the rest while exempting
themselves. It is doubtful, however, that today’s great powers will summon
the political will to make this attempt before it is too late. And it is doubtful
also whether they could succeed. For, such an attempt would provoke the
bitter resistance of many other states, which would simultaneously try very
hard, through military build-up, to gain access to the club of great powers.
For such a project, the ‘elites’ in many developing countries could probably
mobilize their populations quite easily, as the recent examples of India and
Pakistan illustrate.
It might then make more sense for all to work toward supranational
institutions and organizations that limit the sovereignty rights of all states
equally. But this solution can work only if at least a large majority of
the states participating in these institutions and organizations are stable
democracies, which presupposes, in turn, that their citizens are assured that
they can meet their basic needs and can attain a decent level of education
and social position.
The current geopolitical development drifts toward a world in which
militarily and technologically highly advanced states and groups, growing in
number, pose an ever greater danger for an ever larger subset of humankind.
Deecting this development in a more reasonable direction realistically
requires considerable support from those other 85% of humankind who
want to reduce our economic advantage and achieve our high standard of
living. Through the introduction of the GRD or some similar reform, we can
gain such support by showing concretely that our relations to the rest of the
world are not solely devoted to cementing our economic hegemony and that
the global poor will be able peacefully to achieve a considerable improvement
in their circumstances. In this way, and only in this way, can we refute the
conviction, understandably widespread in the poor countries, that we will
not give a damn about their misery until they will have the economic and
military power to do us serious harm. And only in this way can we undermine
the popular support that aggressive political movements of all kinds can
derive from this conviction.
Conclusion
We are familiar, through charity appeals, with the assertion that it lies in our
hands to save the lives of many or, by doing nothing, to let these people die.
We are less familiar with the herein examined assertion of a weightier
responsibility: that most of us do not merely let people starve, but also
participate in starving them. It is not surprising that our initial reaction to
74
Eradicating Systemic Poverty
this more unpleasant assertion is indignation, even hostility — that, rather
than think it through or discuss it, we want to forget it or put it aside as
plainly absurd.
I have tried to respond constructively to the assertion and to show its
plausibility. I do not pretend to have proved it conclusively, but my argument
should at least raise grave doubts about our commonsense prejudices, which
we must in any case treat with suspicion on account of how strongly our
self-interest is engaged in this matter. The great moral importance of reaching
the correct judgment on this issue also counsels against lightly dismissing
the assertion here defended. The essential data about the lives and deaths of
the global poor are, after all, indisputable. In view of very considerable
global interdependence, it is extremely unlikely that their poverty is due
exclusively to local factors and that no feasible reform of the present global
order could thus affect either that poverty or these local factors. No less
incredible is the view that ours is the best of all possible global orders, that
any modication of it could only aggravate poverty. So, we should work
together across disciplines to conceive a comprehensive solution to the
problem of global poverty, and across border s for the political implementa-
tion of this solution.
Notes
1 A Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Ofcials in International Business
Transactions, which requires signatory states to criminalize the briber y of foreign of cials,
was nally drafted within the OECD under public pressure generated by the new non-
governmental organization Transparency International (www.transparency.de). The Conven-
tion went into effect in February 1999. Thirty-one states have ratied it at the last count
(http://www.oecd.org/daf/nocorruption/annex2.htm).
2 The World Bank estimates that 1.2 billion out of six billion human beings live below the
international poverty line, which it currently denes in terms of $32.74 PPP 1993 per
month or $1.08 PPP 1993 per day (World Bank, 2001, pp. 17, 23). ‘PPP’ stands for
‘purchasing power parity,’ so people count as poor by this standard when their income per
person per year has less purchasing power than $393 had in the US in 1993 or less
purchasing power than $466 have in the US in the year 2000 (http://stats.bls.gov/
cpihome.htm). Those living below this poverty line, on average, fall 30% below it (Chen
and Ravallion, 2000, Tables 2 and 4, dividing the poverty gap index by the headcount
index). So they live on $326 PPP 2000 per person per year on average. Now the $PPP
incomes the World Bank ascribes to people in poor developing countries are, on average,
about four times higher than their actual incomes at market exchange rates. Thus, the
World Bank equates China’s per capita GNP of $780 to $3291 PPP, India’s $450 to $2149
PPP, Indonesia’s $580 to $2439 PPP, Nigeria’s $310 to $744 PPP, and so on (World Bank,
2001, pp. 274–275). Since virtually all the global poor live in such poor developing
countries, we can then estimate that their average annual per capita income of $326 PPP
2000 corresponds to about $82 at market exchange rates. The aggregate annual income of
the poorest fth of humankind is then about $100 billion at market exchange rates or about
one-third of 1% of the global product.
3 In the face of 18 million poverty-related deaths per year, the go-slow approach governments
have non-bindingly endorsed at the 1996 World Food Summit in Rome — halving world
hunger within 19 years — is morally unacceptable. I also think that the World Bank’s
poverty line is far too low to dene an acceptable goal. The World Bank provides statistics
also for a more adequate poverty line that is twice as high: $786 PPP 1993 ($932 PPP or
roughly $233 in the year 2000) per person per year. 2.8 billion people — nearly half of
75
T. W. Pogge
humankind — are said to live below this higher poverty line, falling 44% below it on
average (Chen and Ravallion, 2000, Tables 3 and 4, again dividing the poverty gap index
by the headcount index). The aggregate annual income of these people is then about $365
billion at market exchange rates or about 1.25% of the global product.
4 The global product (sum of all gross national products) is currently about $30 trillion per
year: 78.4% thereof belongs to the ‘high-income economies,’ including 33 countries plus
Hongkong, which contain 14.9% of world population (World Bank, 2001, p. 275). The US,
with 4.6% of world population, accounts for 28.6% of global product (World Bank, 2001,
p. 275) — and has just managed to renegotiate its share of the UN budget from 25% down
to 22%.
5 The end of the Cold War enabled the high-income countries to cut their aggregate military
expenditure from 4.1% of their gross domestic product in 1985 to 2.2% in 1998 (United
Nations Development Programme, 1998, p. 197, 2000, p. 217). The peace dividend these
countries reap can then be estimated at $420 billion annually (1.9% of their current
aggregate GDP of over $22 trillion; United Nations Development Programme, 2000, p. 209).
Crude oil production is currently about 77 million barrels daily or about 28 billion barrel s
annually. At $25 per barrel, this comes to $700 billion annually.
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