Who is My Neighbour? 2
World Hunger, Disease and Other
Challenges Faced by Developing
Countries
David Carpenter
23rd September 2015
Portsmouth Cathedral
16 September 2015
Who is my neighbour 1? The so-called migrant problem.
23 September 2015
Who is my neighbour 2?
World hunger, disease and other challenges faced by developing
countries.
30 September 2015
The perfect person1. The moral landscape of new reproductive
technologies
7 October 2015
The perfect person 2. Worthwhileness of life in the face of
progressive disease and disability. Euthanasia- including assisted
suicide.
14 October 2015
Law and order; crime and punishment. How can the scales of
justice be balanced morally?
21 October 2015
Open session. It is likely that participants will identify further
topics – this session will be devoted to some of these.
World Hunger
795 million people – or one in nine people in the
world – do not have enough to eat.
98% of the world’s undernourished people live in
developing countries.
Where is hunger the worst?
Asia: 525.6 million
Sub-Saharan Africa: 214 million
Latin America and the Caribbean: 37 million
Women and Children
60 percent of the world’s hungry are women.
50 percent of pregnant women in developing countries lack proper maternal
care, resulting in 240,000 maternal deaths annually from childbirth.
1 out of 6 infants are born with a low birth weight in developing countries.
Poor nutrition causes nearly half (45%) of deaths in children under five – 3.1
million children each year. That is 8,500 children per day.
A third of all childhood death in sub-Saharan Africa is caused by hunger.
66 million primary school-age children attend classes hungry across the
developing world, with 23 million in Africa alone.
Every 10 seconds, a child dies from hunger-related diseases.
HIV/AIDS and other Diseases
35 million people are living with HIV/AIDS.
52 percent of people living with HIV/AIDS are women.
88 percent of all children and 60 percent of all women living with
HIV are in sub-Saharan Africa.
6.9 million children died in 2011 each year – 19,000 a day- mostly
from preventable health issues such as malaria, diarrhea and
pneumonia.
Launched in 2003, The Hunger Project’s HIV/AIDS and Gender
Inequality Campaign works at the grassroots level to provide
education about preventative and treatment measures.
The Position
• We are relatively rich
• We could give and save lives / reduce or
prevent suffering
• Do we have any moral obligation to do so?
• If so, what is the nature of that obligation?
• Might there be an obligation not to help?
Malthusian Population Theory
• Populations grow faster than food supplies
• Famine, warfare, disease etc – natural
phenomena to counter the problem
• We should not interfere with nature
• If we do so we will make things worse
http://www.s-cool.co.uk/alevel/geography/population
/revise-it/populationmodels
Population grows exponentially, for example, 1-2-4-8-16-3264.
Food supply grows arithmetically, for example, 1-2-3-4-5-6.
Therefore, population will inevitably exceed food
supply.
He then went on two say that there are two possible outcomes.
Firstly, he said population could exceed food supply only to be positively "checked"
(reduced) by famine, war, and disease.
Alternatively, the population could pre-empt the food shortages and so slow their
population growth keeping it within the limits of the food supply. Malthus called these
negative checks. These negative checks would include later marriages and
abstinence from sex (Remember Malthus was writing before wide spread
contraception!). People would make these decisions sub-consciously as food prices
increased and standard of living fell.
Hardin’s lifeboat ethics
“The harsh ethics of the lifeboat become even harsher when we consider the
reproductive differences between the rich nations and the poor nations. The
people inside the lifeboats are doubling in numbers every 87 years; those
swimming around outside are doubling, on the average, every 35 years,
more than twice as fast as the rich. And since the world's resources are
dwindling, the difference in prosperity between the rich and the poor can only
increase.
As of 1973, the U.S. had a population of 210 million people, who were
increasing by 0.8 percent per year. Outside our lifeboat, let us imagine
another 210 million people (say the combined populations of Colombia,
Ecuador, Venezuela, Morocco, Pakistan, Thailand and the Philippines) who
are increasing at a rate of 3.3 percent per year. Put differently, the doubling
time for this aggregate population is 21 years, compared to 87 years for the
U.S.
The harsh ethics of the lifeboat become harsher when we consider the
reproductive differences between rich and poor.
http://www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles/art_lifeboat_ethics_case_against_helping_poor.html
Moral Arguments – Not to help
We have a positive obligation not to feed the starving
It only prolongs suffering
Caused by nature – land cannot sustain the people
Population growth is inevitable
We ought to do nothing at all!
A crude utilitarian analysis
Demographic Transition Theory
High birth rate, high death rate – still steady population growth
Death rate declines, birth rate stays high – high population growth
Birth rate declines more than death rate – slow population growth
Stability – low birth rates parallel low death rates
Possible Obligations
Positive obligation to help
A duty to do x
Positive obligation not to help
A duty not to do x
Negative obligation to help
A duty not to do y
No obligation at all – purely optional
Charity
Charity
Distinction between being charitable and to whom we should be charitable
Kantian perspective of imperfect duty
No individual to whom a duty is owed
Cannot force charity eg through taxation
Really an issue of prioritisation – whether we should give
and to which causes
Social Justice - Globally
John Rawls 1921 - 2002
1. Each person to enjoy maximum liberty
compatible with all enjoying similar systems
2. Social and
economic inequalities should
Combined
be arranged
so that
effect
is to they are
maximise the
position of the
least well off –
‘maximin’
b) Attached to offices and positions open to
all
This is what
Rawls calls the
difference
principle
a) To the greatest benefit of the least
advantaged
This means
equality of
opportunity
Robert Nozick
1938 - 2002
Distribution of Goods
• Goods are not ‘up for grabs’
• Holdings have a history which confers
entitlements
• Holdings come into the world already
owned
• Redistribution can occur with consent
• Taxation is slavery
Communitarian Ethics
• Compassion
• Love
• Solidarity
• Humanity
Moral Arguments –to help
Must assist – utilitarian position
Must assist – people have a right to food
Problem of rights with no correlative duties
In any event we would have to counter the ‘not help’ argument
Wider Perspectives
Starvation is not simply a natural phenomenon – nor caused by
natural events alone
Social, political and economic factors
The lives of the starving are dependant on the actions of others
The issue is not typically the availability of food, it’s the entitlement to it
But these are largely empirical issues – what of the
moral?
What obligations do we have?
Are we obliged to ensure that they have adequate food entitlements
? Coerce the relevant national government
Set up trade relations
We can act – we should act
A strong obligation to assist
Dependency
The vulnerable eg children – cannot help their plight
Global economics
The arguments in favour
It can be achieved (earlier argument countered) – so we are in the
territory of simple collective and individual responsibilities
Duty to rectify injustice
Distant suffering assumes we are not responsible for the situation –
we are – this supports negative duties to assist – and ‘ordinary’
positive duties
We caused the plight
Discussion
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Portsmouth – Calais
Christian Perspectives – Christian Aid
Economic realities
Disease, drugs, drug development
La Follette, H. World Hunger In: Frey, R.G. and
Wellman, C. A Companion to Applied Ethics (2003).
Oxford: Blackwell