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Combating Poverty or Promoting Development?On the growing convergence on the need for other policiesFrancine Mestrumwww.globalsocialjustice.com 
Twenty years after the World Bank introduced  for the second time  its proposals for povertyreduction strategies and ten years after the adoption of the Millennium Development Goals and thePoverty Reduction Strategies Papers, some very difficult questions remain: Why is poverty such apersistent problem? What are its root causes? Why do some countries have success and others havenot? And most of all: how to correct the situation?Whatever the recent UN, World Bank and UNDP reports on the MDGs say: extreme poverty mayhave been reduced, but this is only thanks to China and India. Looking at the World Bank statistics,one has to note that extreme poverty in Subsaharan Africa has almost doubled between 1981 and2005. The MDG Summit that will take place in New York end of September has nothing to celebrate.Numerous reports have been published these past years, first in order to conceptualize poverty, thenin order to define the strategies, finally looking at the results. Most of the time the conclusion is: yes,there has been progress, but not everywhere and much more has to be done. One question howevernever is examined: what are the causes of this poverty? Why is it that half of the world populationlives in poverty? Why is it that almost one billion and a half people live in extreme poverty? And howcan one say that extreme poverty is receding, while hunger is rising?These are not easy questions, but very important ones.On Friday 3 September, UNRISD, the UN Research Institute for Social Development, published itsflagship report 
Combating Poverty and Inequality. Structural Change, Social Policy and Politics
. Itsresults deserve to be widely discussed.UNRISD sees a couple of shortcomings in the poverty reduction strategies, such as the fact thatinflation remains the major priority of macro-economic policies, the fact that imposed social policiesare targeting the poor, the fact that the Bretton Woods institutions have no understanding of thepolicies that are needed for reducing poverty  Well, let us be honest, these are all cautious ways tosay that neoliberal policies cannot reduce poverty.Poverty outcomes, according to UNRISD, are the result of the development trajectories. Or, in otherwords, it was wrong to dissociate poverty reduction from economic and social development, and thiswas confirmed by different speakers during the event.Different speakers pointed to the truths about poverty reduction, but also to the failing evidence:there is no evidence that good governance contributes to poverty reduction, there is no evidencethat micro-credit contributes to poverty reduction, there is no evidence that property rights and landtitling contributes to poverty reduction, and there is no evidence that the bottom of the pyramidstrategies can help poor people What is needed, according to one speaker is heterodox macro-economic policies, the developmentof productive capacity, broad based income growth and a more important role for a developmental
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