The BBC reports that the Brazilian government has unveiled a new anti-poverty plan that, if approved, will provide millions of dollars towards the creation of jobs for 24 million people and improve basic infrastructure - like electricity - to some of the poorest areas of Brazil.

Some feel the plan is related to upcoming municipal elections this year and has been heavily attacked by critics. Regardless, creation of 24 million jobs is much needed in a country where 30 percent of the population lives under the poverty line.

Photo:whiffer (flickr)

In the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, the former chief economist of the Venezuelan National Assembly argues that Chavez has failed to live up to his pro-poor rhetoric, and that the policies of his administration have hurt both the national economy and the Venezuelan poor. While many observers outside Venezuela believe that Chavez has made the welfare of the poor his highest priority, the author notes that neither official statistics nor independent assessments show any evidence that Chavez's policies have helped combat poverty in Venezuela.

Photo: Steve Bailey (flickr)

My attention has recently been drawn to the increasing opposition students, consumers and activists are having to bottled water. A US-based group called Think Outside the Bottle is beginning an advocacy campaign to bring awareness to some of the more dire consequences of our thirst for bottled water, and even government agencies are beginning to act to reduce their consumption.

“City and state governments are looking at the economics of banning bottled water. Citing environmental concerns and a misallocation of resources, Los Angeles; San Francisco; Ann Arbor, Mich.; and the state of Illinois have banned the use of public funds to purchase bottled water for city and state functions…In June, the US Conference of Mayors adopted a resolution to bring attention to the negative impact of bottled water and promote local sources."

The director of a consumer rights group called Food and Water Watch has noticed that people of all types are showing increased awareness about issues involved with bottled water, according to the Christian Science Monitor. "I overhear small children in the grocery store telling their mothers not to buy it."

The negative impacts of bottled water are undeniable, but as a fact sheet the Monitor put out for World Water Day illustrates, the politics of water internationally are extremely complicated. In many parts of the world, bottled water is the only sanitary way to access the resource, and at the moment there is no alternative. The lesson? In places where the water is drinkable, drink it!

Malaria patient. Photo: Ashley Jonathan Clements (flickr)

Josh Ruxin, a community health expert who has spent the last several years living in Rwanda, explains that while the majority of tropical diseases seem archaic and too complex to think about for the average person, trachoma, river blindness, hookworm and the like are devastating over a billion people on the planet. Neglected Tropical Diseases, or NTD’s, are inexpensive to treat in comparison to HIV/AIDS, but don’t seem to carry the same social appeal.

“Together, the NTD’s produce just as much disability as the better known diseases and are a major reason why the poorest people in Africa cannot escape poverty…The great irony is that NTD’s can be effectively treated and controlled for a fraction of the cost of these other diseases.”

Higher food prices aren’t all bad, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. Rather, continued increases in the price of foods, especially basic staples like corn and wheat, could provide the pressure needed to break the international deadlock on agricultural policy. In an effort to prevent food shortages, many countries have already begun to reduce agricultural import tariffs as a means of increasing production.

Countries scrambling to fill grocery shelves may be willing to bend where they haven’t previously. If major exporters start exporting less, this in turn could make farm industries in developed countries like the United States feel less threatened by imports… Peter Mandelson, the EU trade minister, notes a shift already afoot: “There’s much less of a need for protectionism than when we started [the Doha Round of global trade talks] in 2001.”