- en.chinagate.com.cn

Scaling up the Fight on Poverty for Peace and Stability

A major conference on poverty reduction, sponsored by the World Bank and the Chinese government, opened in Shanghai on May 26, 2004 with a call for a new commitment from rich and poor countries to cut poverty in half by 2015. World Bank President James Wolfensohn warned that the world community must meet the Millennium Development Goals it set for reducing poverty as a matter of self interest: "without alleviating poverty there is no potential for peace and stability."

Wolfensohn spoke to more than 1000 people, mostly from developing countries including the leaders of Brazil, Tanzania, and Bangladesh along with many government ministers, development experts, civil society groups and non government organizations.
Over the next two days they will examine nine months of development research including: 100 case studies, a dozen field visit reports and results from extensive global discussions among development experts and practitioners.

The World Bank President said the challenge is to find ways to dramatically scale up current approaches to fighting poverty and that is why the conference is being held in China: "in this country, in the last 20 years, between 300 and 400 million people have been lifted out of poverty" China has achieved this by looking at the totality of the challenges and implanting solutions over long periods of time.

While the world has much to learn from China he says China also can learn from the world and the global research being shared at the conference.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao acknowledged his country has made great progress but said it still faces a daunting task: "we still have nearly 30 million rural citizens who do not have adequate food and clothing…" Jiabao said in order for the fight on poverty to be successful all countries must work together to create an environment of peace and stability. And he urged the developed countries to pay more attention to the plight of developing countries by: "providing them with more aid, relieving their debts, accelerating technology transfers and rolling back trade protection."

Jiabao announced his country will contribute an additional US$20 million to the Asian Development Bank to create the China special Fund for Poverty Reduction and Regional Cooperation to target poverty in the Asia-Pacific region.

Brazil's President Lula, who is campaigning to eradicate poverty at home, called the Shanghai conference a web of opportunity and stated that hunger is the greatest weapon of mass destruction of our time claiming millions of victims every year. Tanzanian President Mkapa and the Bangladesh Prime Minister Zia also embraced the conference goal of scaling up poverty reduction.

Wolfesnsohn said key themes are already emerging from the extensive research conducted on the way to move forward: poor people must take the lead in finding solutions to their poverty; local communities must be empowered to control money that is targeted to help them; and development practitioners must start thinking on a much larger scale and envision ways to expand small projects to the point where they are addressing the totality of the poverty challenge.

It is hoped the spirit generated in Shanghai and the knowledge shared among rich and poor countries will reenergize the world community to reach the goal it set of cutting poverty in half by 2015.

For speeches, transcripts, webcasts please see www.reducingpoverty.org

Contacts in Shanghai:

Sunetra Puri - 13681727991 - spuri1@worldbank.org
Carl Hanlon - 13681864017- chanlon@worldbank.org
Li Li - 13501258056 - lli2@worldbank.org

(China.org.cn May 26, 2004)