Science and Poverty — Esther Duflot « Writing Rights

by Zackie Achmat

Aaron Shapiro drew my attention to this great lecture. See Technology, Entertainment, Design. (TED) website. Zackie

Science and Poverty — Esther Duflot

So here it is: You can check, I am short, I’m French, I have a pretty strong French accent, so that’s going to be clear in a moment.

Maybe sobering thought, and something you all know about. And I suspect many of you gave something to the people of Haiti this year. And there is something else that I believe, in the back of your mind, you also know is, everyday, 25,000 children die of entirely preventable causes. That’s a Haiti earthquake every eight days. And I suspect that many of you probably gave something towards that problem as well, but somehow it doesn’t happen with the same intensity.

So why is that? Well, here is a thought experiment for you. Imagine you have a few million dollars that you’ve raised. Maybe you’re a politician in a developing country, and you have a budget to spend; you want to spend it on the poor. How do you go about it? Do you believe the people who tell you that all we need to do is to spend money, that we know how to eradicate poverty, we just need to do more? Or do you believe the people who tell you that aid is not going to help, on the contrary it might hurt, it might exacerbate corruption, dependence, etc.? Or maybe you turn to the past. After all, we have spent billions of dollars of aid. Maybe you look at the past and see has it done any good.

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