You Are In: USINFO > Topics > Global Issues > Sustainable Development

Poverty, Hunger Can Be Eradicated Through Growth, U.S. Says

Secretary of Agriculture Anne Veneman (©AP/WWP)

By Judy Aita
Washington File Correspondent

United Nations -- Economic growth is the long-term solution to hunger and poverty, not schemes such as global taxes, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Ann Veneman says.

In September 20 remarks to a meeting of world leaders called "Action Against Hunger and Poverty," Veneman said that the United States is committed to reducing the number of hungry in the world by half by the year 2015, thus achieving the U.N. Millennium Development Goals. But she said that, despite decades of effort, the challenges of overcoming poverty are still enormous with nearly 850 million people facing chronic hunger.

Veneman rejected the use of global taxes, which was one idea suggested at the meeting, as a way of financing development. Summit leaders and an expert group proposed to tax such items as international financial transactions, airline tickets, greenhouse-gas emissions and weapons sales to raise money for economic development.

"Global taxes are inherently undemocratic; implementation is impossible," she said.

Veneman, who represented President George Bush at the summit, said that the commitment world leaders made in the Monterrey Consensus of 2002 is working.

In the document agreed upon at the U.N. Financing for Development conference in Monterrey, Mexico, the leaders vowed to fight poverty through development based on good governance, solid institutions, effective health systems, a vibrant private sector, open trade and investment, and effective use of science and technology. They also agreed that each country has the primary responsibility for its own development, with developed countries providing additional resources.

Veneman said that many developing countries are making "bold" reforms and developed countries are supporting these efforts. Total official development assistance worldwide has risen nearly 30 percent since 2000 and is expected to rise even further as countries turn their Monterrey pledges into actions, she said.

One of these actions, she said, is the United States' Millennium Challenge Account (MCA), designed to provide additional development assistance to countries that govern justly, invest in their people and promote economic freedom. The Bush administration projects that money channeled through the MCA will increase U.S. core development aid by 50 percent.

Briefing journalists before the summit, Veneman also said that foreign aid is not the only remedy for developing countries struggling to feed their people. She cited the often meager results of assistance provided so far.

"Any approach that fails to heed the lessons of our experience with development and foreign assistance and merely calls for more resources is bound to fail," the agriculture secretary said. "Foreign aid is important, but only one supportive element in a successful development strategy."

She emphasized, for example, the importance of science and technology in easing hunger.

The summit of world leaders -- convened on the eve of the 59th U.N. General Assembly by President of Brazil Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva and co-sponsored by the leaders of Spain, Chile and France -- aimed to give political impetus to the Millennium Development Goals, which are up for a five-year review in September 2005. Lula said his goal for the half-day meeting was not to discuss technical issues, but "to turn a new page in efforts to fight hunger and poverty."

The eight Millennium Development Goals and related targets include cutting in half by 2015 the portion of world population whose income is less than one dollar a day as well as the proportion of people who suffer from hunger.