Dear Bono....

In addition to media consumers inundating the various media accountability systems of the world with complaints, the numerous news mediums themselves need also be outflanked. If the United States Bush administration could launch a war on something as intangible as ‘terror’ – then the prospect of embarking on a war on extreme poverty can be equally as plausible. And besides, being at war is the rage these days. If we aren’t at war with someone or something, then we really aren’t trying hard enough. If we were to assign roles for our war, the media would be like Second World War Italy. At present, they are responsible for contributing to the killing of millions of innocent people. However, once we have them on side, the media will be on the side responsible for saving them.

But to start off, the battle will need to be merciless. If we are dealing with an industry as ghastly and ominous as the world’s media then all key players must look deep into their hearts for the dirtiest, most cunning and ruthless tactics they can find. We’re talking knee-to-the-balls type play. There is absolutely no room for compassion in a war on extreme poverty. We are dealing with a problem so severe that it has become part of our culture to ignore the suffering. Ergo, in order for us to be truly kind, we need to be newsworthy; and in order for us to be newsworthy, we need to be interesting; and in order to be interesting; we must unfortunately, check all kindness at the door.

First of all, like any good war – we need a hero; a warrior-type figure such as the Greek Achilles or Celtic William Wallace. And since this book is titled Dear Bono – already we have a personality brimming with edge, credibility, courage and most importantly – recognition. The Great Irish Bono has fought many battles already on the frontline for extreme poverty. He is familiar with the appalling statistics surrounding extreme poverty deaths and has seen first-hand accounts of corruption in Africa and the distribution of aid throughout the various charities and non-government organisations. And he is also friendly enough with the media to sustain a relationship that could prove in the media’s best interests to keep onside. In mid 2007 Bono and NBC news reporter Brian Williams travelled together to sub-Saharan Africa to highlight the humanitarian crisis to the network’s viewers. While some say Bono might have sold out his beliefs in order to keep onside particular international leaders over time, the self-discipline he has exercised throughout the years in picking battles discerningly, has allowed him to maintain momentum in the public eye, illustrating a sense of wisdom, practicality and productivity.

For the world’s media to be onside and fight against extreme poverty, what I propose is 12 months of solid reporting on the humanitarian crisis. We need Bono to sell it and we need the world’s media moguls to buy it. And so there is no confusion, solid reporting purports to extreme poverty becoming Priority One news. For 12 months every front page of every metropolitan newspaper and every leading story on every television and radio news bulletin should commit to the biggest and most important story of the day – the tragic, unnecessary and preventable deaths of 25,000 men, women and children. Technically, in accordance to the various journalism codes of ethics, this story should be the leading news story indefinitely; however, for the purposes of compromise in a far from perfect world, these results most certainly need to eventuate prior to the novelty wearing off amongst a 21^st Century audience. Thus, for an entire year, the world needs to be inundated with the tragedy that is famine.

There is no need to complicate such a project with copious amounts of rules. What is necessary is going back to the emaciated codes of ethics our media was founded upon and reminding audiences that they do have a choice. They do have the opportunity to contribute to news agenda, reshape it and demand exactly what should be decided as priority reportage. We need to be reminded of ethical guidelines such as listening to the voiceless, not distorting facts by wrong or improper emphasis and maintaining a responsible attitude among the press. When you abide by these codes, there should be no other course of action than reshaping news agenda. There is no bigger public relations nightmare for the media, than the world finding out it has the power to right major denials of basic human rights but fails to do so. Of course the world would need to be told by the very media itself, which will definitely be problematic, but the slight trend of late by journalists to challenge their employers over what is deemed newsworthy has become more and more apparent, with the recurring frustration illustrated when news stories are nothing but preposterous – such as the Brzezinski/Paris Hilton incident at MSNBC discussed in Chapter 9.

The popularity of a concept insinuating that the few hundred CEOs and presidents of our largest communications conglomerates are sitting on the answer to extreme poverty is enough to influence even some of its advertisers to change course. The irony of course is that such an idea would never realise without the help of these public figures in the first place, which is why a certain existential approach is necessary for any hope to be taken seriously. This break in a materialistic society can only be achieved through a constant reminder of our mortality – which the issue of global warming has so successfully done with its whole ‘we’re all going to die’ evocation. Therefore, we need to convince our ancient media moguls with their ample skin; massive ears and ever so delicate scent of moth balls and stale urine that as they will most probably die within the next 15 years, the thrill of the hunt for wealth and corporate success will soon be worth zilch. And philanthropy will once again be as attractive as it was when they were younger and tolerated real blood in their veins.

t is no secret that there is no answer to extreme poverty without the cooperation of the media moguls. And by media moguls I don’t necessarily mean rich, but executive. An attitude by some might be unless you live in Saudi Arabia driving a car made out of solid silver might you be rich. Most media moguls are far from the days when they would run around with notebooks and attend press conferences – some never did; which is why these men and women; mums and dads, husbands and wives, need to be dealt with professionally and in a business-like manner and not through the romantic ideals of ‘doing good’ that reporters might have started their careers possessing.

Incidentally, the orders that come down in memos and emails to staff, to photocopy less and minimise the number of print cartridges they use weekly, are from the same people who can pass policies to reshape news agenda. These are the same people who can demand Priority One reporting and rationalise it as imperative for upholding responsible journalism (which it certainly would be) and contributing to something truly worthwhile and truly beyond the parameters of materialistic success.

A newish concept with the potential to deliver the world from complete suffering is that of the Responsibility to Protect (or its gangster name, R2P). Endorsed by the 2005 World Summit, the doctrine is designed to assign the international community an obligation of care towards its intercontinental neighbours. While this sort of well-intentioned policy could quite easily be busting at the seams with enough rhetoric as a pledge of 0.7 per cent of gross national product from a non-Scandinavian country – recent events suggest the creed does have its merits in relation to stimulating discussion amongst heads of state to bring about some sort of physical outcome in a crisis. And again, while ‘stimulating discussion’ does seem the opposite of a ‘physical outcome’ – the concept does convey quite a promising amount of potential.

The wording of the doctrine reads as follows:

138. Each individual State has the responsibility to protect its populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. This responsibility entails the prevention of such crimes, including their incitement, through appropriate and necessary means. We accept that responsibility and will act in accordance with it. The international community should, as appropriate, encourage and help States to exercise this responsibility and support the United Nations in establishing an early warning capability.

139. The international community, through the United Nations, also has the responsibility to use appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian and other peaceful means, in accordance with Chapters VI and VIII of the Charter, to help protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. In this context, we are prepared to take collective action, in a timely and decisive manner, through the Security Council, in accordance with the Charter, including Chapter VII, on a case-by-case basis and in cooperation with relevant regional organizations as appropriate, should peaceful means be inadequate and national authorities manifestly fail to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. We stress the need for the General Assembly to continue consideration of the responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity and its implications, bearing in mind the principles of the Charter and international law. We also intend to commit ourselves, as necessary and appropriate, to helping States build capacity to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity and to assisting those which are under stress before crises and conflicts break out.

Bearing in mind the principles of the Charter and international law, R2P needs to be made more accessible by our media. These days when addressed in the news, R2P is an idea we use when discussing what the UN should have done, rather than what it should be doing. Examples such as Rwanda and Ethiopia are tossed around when really, and especially in 2005, it should have been common knowledge amongst the middle income households, when hundreds of thousands of people were being butchered in Darfur by the Sudanese government’s janjaweed militia.

It was also increasingly interesting to see the hypothetical questions that spawned in May of 2008 from Cyclone Nargis’ merciless assault on Burma. Without trivialising the startling detail that 145,000 people died during this natural disaster, the do-gooders at the UN were faced with an awkward situation when the Burmese Government imposed a blockade on humanitarian aid from overseas countries. What followed was debate over whether the UN Security Council should be exercising its responsibility to protect, which was so affectionately embraced at the 2005 World Summit. In other words, the issue was pondered to send aid to Burma whether the Burmese military wanted it or not…in as peaceful a way as humanly possible, of course.

While there is much criticism amongst soccer mums and anti-colonialists on an international R2P, much of the dogma’s support comes from those you’d least expect. An extensive survey conducted by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs’ illustrated that it was the people of China who, funnily enough, showed the highest level of support towards the idea that the United Nations Security Council had a responsibility to intervene in the Sudanese region of Darfur (at 76%). Of course, China has always been tied to Sudan (although no longer since the 2008 Beijing Olympics) through its oil for guns program. So the average Chinese man and woman might be a touch more sympathetic towards the poor slaughtered and displaced folk of Darfur than other humble nationalities. Next from the survey were Americans (74%), Palestinians (69%) and Israelis (64%).

With or without a hint of thought for the Responsibility to Protect, The World Food Programme helps feed hundreds of millions of people throughout the entire year. However, with the framework of the R2P and the support of the world’s people through the lobbying of the world’s media, the World Food Programme would be able to increase this assistance ten-fold. The Responsibility to Protect needs to be anchored by an annoyingly dense level of awareness. For a global body representing each and every individual in the world and advocating for the basic human rights of these individuals, the United Nations is almost as good as the world’s press councils for going unnoticed in the everyday kitchen conversations at family dinners. We need to lean on R2P like companies lean on public liability insurance for workplace injury claims. It needs to be enforced.

We have learnt too, through experience, that the more we become concerned about our national problems, the less we are concerned about others. It is the same method of distraction politicians use before they wage into a war. And as soon as media attention distributes modern-day western concerns and feeds the trivial hysteria, the worry and urgency warranted over extreme poverty subsides. With the recent inflation of fuel prices in conjunction with its subsequent news coverage, more and more stories on the crisis that is extreme poverty become derelict. The UN has said it takes 232 kilograms of corn to fill a 50-litre car tank with ethanol. This is enough to feed a child for a year. A news story using this sort of unorthodox method of delivering facts could illustrate to the world exactly how this is in terms we all understand. It demonstrates to us the child this amount of corn can save and shows how little our troubles are in comparison to those who’d rather eat corn than make gas out of it.

The main piece of advocacy journalism needed to end extreme poverty is through its promotion of a war on it. Our media needs to advocate a war on many fronts. At present, we can learn much from the peacekeeping operations taking place throughout the world today. We need to highlight it and we need to mirror it. If our media holds accountable the governments who do not commit to the strategies of the Millennium Development Goals they promised to abide by, pressure can see the goals to be met. And if we commit to the amount of gross national product promised by the nations at the G8 Summit in accordance with the Millennium Development Goals, we can contribute these funds to a strategy sending peacekeepers to developing countries in need. And instead of recruiting armies with 90 per cent military personnel, we contract builders and town planners and horticulturists and teachers with no experience whatsoever on how to shoot a gun or drive a tank. We have enough kids coming out of universities these days at ages when they are all searching for some sort of meaning in their lives. They defer their plans to get a job and work, instead, travelling the world and volunteering in third world slums to find out what it all means. A war on extreme poverty can utilize ‘voluntourism’ as well as this yearning for meaning in a time before these young adults start having their own families and settling down.

But the concept of funds needs also be addressed by our media as paramount to conquer world hunger. Imagine for an instant what could have been done with the trillions of dollars spent by the Coalition of the Willing’s war in Iraq. Whether one supported the war or not, it was a 50/50 chance it was going to take place. Now imagine if the war nearly took place but didn’t. Imagine what the US government could have done with $3 trillion. In October 2008, the Bush administration managed to waste $1 trillion raised from congress bake sales and raffle tickets on a rescue package for the American economy after the monumental and historic stock market crash. While it is highly ignorant to say the disposing of $1 trillion went unnoticed – one cannot deny the temptation to visualize the potential this money could have had if spent on a war on extreme poverty.

Regardless of the Responsibility to Protect and the constant lingering of this ongoing humanitarian crisis, the reason the developed world needs to make a conscious decision to end extreme poverty is utmost and foremost due to the catastrophic notion that is – it is only going to get worse. While climate change and pictures of polar ice caps raising sea levels have snatched the degree of media exposure away from third world famine, the same subject matter is making it more and more difficult for the people in drought-stricken areas such as sub-Saharan Africa to regain the self sufficiency and sustainability to harvest their own crops. Climate change, albeit a relatively selfish choice of catastrophe to burden oneself with worry; is an issue affecting the once popular catastrophe that was, extreme poverty. And unfortunately, this connection between climate change and extreme poverty has only injected into the mainstream an attitude that the African is, though unfortunate, a lost cause living on overpopulated and unharvestable soils.

American journalist Paul Roberts states in his exploration of the world food industry, The End of Food, that there has never been a worse time for Africa in a period where the western world is uncompromising on the goals of reducing the costs of food production in addition to increasing its volume produced. He acknowledges that climate change has led to even more of a dependency from the developing world on foreign aid due to the growing increase in undependable rainfall. Roberts states:

"In July of 2007, the United Nations’ World Food Program announced that soaring grain prices meant it would be able to feed considerably fewer than the ninety million hungry people it had assisted each year since 2002. After decades of all but drowning in excess food, producers and consumers alike are waking up to the possibility of a food economy that is once again defined by scarcity. – ‘We face the tightest agriculture markets in decades and, in some cases, on record. We are no longer in a surplus world,’ the UN’s Josette Sheeran told the Financial Times in mid-2007. Of course, the world has heard Malthusian forecasts like these before, and each time it has averted catastrophe through a combination of market forces and technological advances.

"But the world has also begun to confront the fact that its food economy will be harder to fix this time. A system so focused on cost reduction and rising volume that it makes a billion of us fat, lets another billion go hungry, and all but it invites food-borne pathogens to become global epidemics is now running into other problems as well. Arable land is growing scarcer. Inputs like pesticides and synthetic nitrogen fertilizers are increasingly expensive. Soil degradation and erosion from hyperintensive farming is costing millions of acres of farmland a year.

"Water supplies are being rapidly depleted in parts of the world, even as the rising price of petroleum – the lifeblood of agriculture – is calling into question the entire agribusiness model. More recently, forecasters have begun to tabulate just how damaging even a minor change in global climate will be to a food system built on the assumption of stable temperature and consistent rainfall. In this context, the question for many resource specialists isn’t simply whether we’ll be able to feed 9.5 billion people by 2070, but how long we can continue to meet the demands of the 6.5 billion alive today." (Roberts, 2008, p207-208)

In Roberts’ eyes the situation is hopeless. And here I was thinking global warming was all about ‘saving the planet’ from the CO2 monster terrorising the world and leaving carbon footprints all over the major cities for our children’s children’s children in a thousand years time. The stark reality is that this environmental crisis is a growing concern for us all. The unfortunate circumstances are that it affects some more than others. In the heart of Australia, the unforeseen drought has paralysed farmers for almost two decades, and with the help of reasonable governments (as opposed to preposterous regimes) in relation to subsidies and State and Commonwealth assistance, the Little Aussie Battler has roughed it, toughed it – and made it to the other side on many occasions. And there are hundreds of fascinating stories on the repercussions of these hardships such as chronic depression amongst men; the expanding social and cultural difference between city and regional nationalism; and the regard for particular trades once considered essential, now deemed obsolete.

In February 2004 in a bid to strengthen the Australian economy (in an election year too quite conveniently) the Howard Government signed a free trade agreement with the United States. In what had been a debilitating time for farmers in Australia with an unrelenting drought destroying agribusiness in the country’s northeast, a free trade agreement would give farmers some peace of mind through the notion that it would be in the federal government’s best interests to do more for Australian farmers in relation to subsidising irrigation and fortifying the export market. However, the exercise was to a large extent criticised for excluding our great nation’s sugar industry. The United States has a strict policy prohibiting cheaper imports of sugar resulting in its cost being two times that of world prices – making it a real worry in American cafes that customers aren’t being cheated with crack cocaine substitutes in their cappuccinos.

And with the speculated terms in the contract leaving one of the biggest industries in the State of Queensland without an invitation to the party, former Prime Minister John Howard decided to sign the deal anyway, with the hopes no journalist would want to drive all the way out to Queensland to actually talk to sugar farmers and see if they held any grievances. But the language Howard used to discuss the sugar industry was that of sympathy, stating he felt sorry for the farmers specifically, as they were victims of a "corrupted world trading system" – obviously not something he thought was of high priority needing tending to during his time in power – but forgive and forget, I say. Meanwhile, the South American nation of Brazil with its scattered pockets of extreme poverty is the leading exporter of sugar (as well as coffee, which goes great with sugar) in the world.

However, back in Oz, two months after expected backlash from federal opposition that the sugar industry had been neglected, the Howard Government granted Queensland canegrowers a $444 million rescue package. Half of this was to go towards milling operations to improve canegrowers’ sustainability and regional diversification projects. There were also allowances of up to $100,000 for farmers willing to leave their farms, move to the city, work in an office, join an after-hours Pilates group and abandon any sense of community spirit they once had as they learn how to skateboard without a skateboard on public transport during peak hour.

While of course these types of systems are flawed, in places like Somalia or Sierra Leone there is no assistance. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo there isn’t any real government to even suggest any assistance. And in places where there are functioning governments, for instance Zimbabwe or Sudan, it is permeated with corruption. In the democratic nation of Australia, an opposition party added fuel to the argument that canegrowers were being neglected by their government during the signing of a free trade agreement with the United States which led to a $444 million rescue package for sugar farmers. Hence, the necessary evil for an opposition to constantly hold a government accountable contributes to the process of justice. In Zimbabwe, opposition party members are shot and killed. The UN Security Council needs to look into the Responsibility to Protect extensively for countries with a history of violence and requiring protection.

Economist at American University George BN Ayittey uses his heritage as a native of Ghana to protect himself from a genuine lack of sympathy towards the many misfortunes associated with Africa. He rather eloquently assigns blame to a developed culture of greed with people in power who are determined to look out for one’s self at any cost – as if they are paradigms of the modern man with carnal survival skills of self preservation. Ayittey states:

"Africa’s woes have more to do with bad leadership and the enabling role played by the Western governments and institutions. The centralization of both economic and political power turns the state into a pot of gold that all sorts of groups compete to capture. Once captured, power is then used to amass huge personal fortunes, to enrich one’s cronies and tribesmen, to crush one’s rivals and to perpetuate one’s rules in office. All others are excluded (the politics of exclusion). The absence of mechanisms for peaceful transfer of power leads to a struggle over political power, which often degenerates into civil strife or war. Chaos and carnage ensue. Infrastructure is destroyed. Food production and delivery are disrupted. Thousands are dislocated and flee, becoming internal refugees and placing severe strains on social systems of the resident population. Food supplies run out. Starvation looms." (Africa Unchained; Ayittey G; 2006; p48-49)

Blaming bad government for the failures of an economy is all well and good from an academic/economist’s point of view but, again, if we look at extreme poverty from an existential perspective, the viewpoint can be a little more benevolent. No one chose to be born in the time and place in which they arrived in this world and such individuals should certainly not pay the price for being denied basic human rights just because their respective governments blow. While I am proud to be an Australian as I am the hometown I was born, I refuse to be content with having ‘lucked out’ at arriving on Planet Earth in such a peaceful and prosperous country. Taking for granted this stroke of sheer luck is not a mature or responsible way to live. Australians, Norwegians, New Zealanders, Canadians and Swedes alike (as many other nations) should be holding regular public holidays in celebration of the fact its citizens were not the 1 in 6 people born into a life of starvation, chronic malnutrition and misery.

However, the inclusion of the Australian Government’s sweetener for sugar farmers to leave the land provides a suspicious look at the future of Australian agriculture. The compensation package alludes to the idea that there needs to be some level of encouragement towards farmers to come to the realisation that we may not be living in a time of prosperity for agribusiness anymore; which is a dangerous allusion to make in Australia where much of our 200 years of cultural identity is maintained in the romantic notion of rural farmers living off the land, chewing straw and riding our horses on 45 degree angles Man from Snowy River style. The government’s sweetener almost suggests agribusiness might have been beaten by climate change via the repercussions of drought, and that it is no longer viable to place our trust in consistent rainfall to remain sustainable. This then leads to the catastrophic conclusion that if drought can affect the lucky country of Australia’s "take it or leave it" farming industry, then extended periods of drought will cripple sub-Saharan Africa’s absolute dependency on the land for food, as well as its attempt at becoming self sufficient. Without becoming self-reliant, the African people will become more dependent on foreign aid which, according to Roberts, cannot be sustained.

If John Howard suggested the sugar industry’s multi-million dollar package was merely a band aid solution for a dead industry, then so too would the Millennium Development Goals’ increase in foreign aid to buy more food and water for more and more starving people. Therefore, the answer lies in putting that money into infrastructure. While this is not an original idea, the variation of money from gross national product percentages and NGO contributions being solely put into infrastructure is essential in building a developing world where its people can, as Jeffrey Sachs puts it, climb their way onto the first rung of self-sustainability.

In April of 2007, American geologist from Boston University Farouk El Baz made one of the modern world’s most remarkable discoveries. He found 20,000 square miles of water. While underground water reserves are stumbled upon all the time, this mega-lake three times the size of Lebanon lies directly below the war-torn province of Darfur, a place where its dwellers travel kilometres each day to find water and bring it back to their homes at the risk of being raped and killed by the Sudanese janjaweed militia. El Baz, an Egyptian-born expert at radar topography was the same person responsible for turning Egyptian soil into fertile farming land after he discovered water underneath the deserts of Libya and Egypt in the early 1980s. El Baz and his team of scientists sold their discovery to the United Nations who agreed to finance the drilling of 1,000 wells with the assistance of the Egyptian government and (wait for it) the Sudanese government – the regime responsible for orchestrating the janjaweed’s terror in Darfur.

However, unless the administration of reserves such as this are responsibly managed will the rewards flow down to the ones who need this resource the most. After matters such as drilling, piping and construction schedules are tended to, next comes the rather problematic area of distribution and ownership. Although 26,000 UN troops will be working side by side with the Sudanese ‘government’ in 2009, my own experience from watching the odd episode of Batman where Catwoman tries to convince us she’s turned good when really she hasn’t done anything of the sort, makes me anticipate war to erupt in Sudan at the conclusion of drilling. Let’s not forget, this is a country that thinks it cool to butcher its own people based on their ethnicity. These actions are not the precursors of a mentally stable government.

Which is why we need to wage a war on extreme poverty. If we managed to conjure up a hostile ‘Coalition of the Willing’ willing to fight a country with no weapons of mass destruction, then I’m sure we can call upon a United Nations army into a war with no direct hostility aimed at eliminating a problem that is killing a billion people on our blue planet. The objective is honourable, the project is feasible and the funding reachable through the initial promises pledged by the participating nations of the Millennium Development Goals.

And while every ambitious pitch based on peace, love and mong beans needs a ‘how does it help me?’ factor for the already developed world – the answer lies in the subsequent benefits: helping our poor would build a better relationship with the regions that do hold our most precious natural resource (water); a war on poverty would help amend the damaged reputation of the ‘free world’ after its crude handling of the Iraq invasion; ending extreme poverty would help amend the UN’s damaged reputation as a rhetorical entity; and a war on extreme poverty beginning in the heart of sub-Saharan Africa is in close proximity with Saudi Arabia and its oil reserves therefore strengthening communications with the Arab world, creating a better dialogue and future trade rapport when oil is no longer our most utilized energy resource.

And these are the front page stories that would complement the Priority One reporting of famine and death. As the world has become desensitized with images of extreme poverty telling us of only bad news; a war on extreme poverty would, ironically, set in motion good news stories that would (a) build a sense of momentum on the homefront that the situation is not hopeless and (b) illustrate that the world’s authorities are regarding extreme poverty as a serious humanitarian disaster. It would be a war like no other as it would utilize the latest sensation that is voluntourism, employing skilled workers overseas on discount rates in return for the opportunity to help third world nations. Excessive military spending would be substituted by sending out engineers; builders; struggling Australian farmers; horticulturalists; student doctors; student agriculturalists; student scientists.

But much more thought needs to go into the damming of El Baz’s mega-lake and engineers need to plan the best way Darfur can benefit from a reservoir in a farming sense. However, mega-lake discoveries such as the El Baz finding situated under Darfur is, in itself, a band aid solution to the problems of drought caused by global warming. While more responsible water usage and better management of water on a global scale is the textbook example of prevention being better than cure in relation to the possibility of one day running out – history tell us that man’s inclination to be somewhat, a bunch of dickheads, rules out any chance we can count on each other to take shorter showers and make use of the half flush.

Although we can always resort to the solar-powered car in the future to drive ourselves around when we run out of oil – come the day when obtaining water looks like the first hour of the Boxing Day sales, the problems for the average human being at staying as hydrated as we are told to by our GPs and personal trainers, are becoming more and more severe. Of course there is also talk that as a last resort we can turn our urine into water, all we’d have to do is merely start getting used to drinking water that happens to be made from piss. But my zero-to-none scientific background tells me that the day is bound to come when the water I am drinking is going to start tasting less like water and more like urine. The apocalyptic depiction is enough to give anyone nightmares of a futuristic world where everything feels the same, looks the same and sounds the same – but now smells like the cross between a nursing home and the concrete stairwell in a shopping centre car park. Now if that’s not an incentive to develop rainfall enhancement technology then I don’t know what is.

In 1980, the industrial core of South Africa was experiencing chronic water shortages spurring research into weather modification in an attempt to increase levels in rainfall. In a collaborative effort between the South African Weather Service, Department of Water Affairs and Forestry, Water Research Commission, University of South Africa and private sector organisation CloudQuest – a project was launched to test the hypothesis that seeding mixed-phased cumulus clouds with dry ice (or silver iodide) would enhance precipitation from those particular clouds. While meteorologists have undergone various weather modification trials before, none had received the results that the South Africans were stumbling upon.

A decade into testing and its stakeholders founded the South African Rainfall Enhancement Programme, which made some incredible discoveries on hygroscopic flare-seeding. Field activities involved in the project went from experimental to operational, resulting in 24 per cent more seeded clouds yielding rain than unseeded clouds. In layman’s terms, dry ice, the humble substance used in nightclubs making men and women appear less unattractive than they actually are, was being shot out of aeroplanes from 1500 metres in the air, helping it to rain. This method of hygroscopic flare technology produced at least 62 storms and enhanced South Africa’s rainfall to increase river runoff by as much as 10 percent.

With South Africa’s discoveries stemming from the early 80s, countries such as the United States, France and the United Arab Emirates have taken this technology developed by the South African Weather Service and used it to enhance their own rainfall enhancement technologies. In an extraordinary feat, the Republic of South Africa – neighbouring country to some of the world’s poorest nations crippled by the devastating effects of drought, had become the global leader in rainfall enhancement technology.

However, in 2000, the government decided to utilize the country’s current water supplies available to them instead of continuing to spend money on weather modification. The decision just happened to be made at a time when the issue of climate change was only starting to become popularised. Six years later, as the project laid dormant, South Africa’s original team of scientists led by Dr Deon Terblanche won a first prize worth US$200,000 in a special international weather modification award in Cape Town for the cloud-seeding project which had ended at the turn of the millennium. Six months after the award when the project had been re-emersed back into the media spotlight, in September 2006, after estimations surfaced that by 2020 South Africa’s water supplies would be uncompromisingly depleted, the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry announced it would reinstate its award-winning rainfall enhancement program.

Investing in this technology for our world’s poorest countries, in addition to rainwater harvesting and construction of tanks in catchment areas, can lead to producing pasturable and sustainable land. There is no future for the third world by relying on the developed world for constant handouts or by waiting around for it to rain in drought-affected areas. However, establishing a number of rainfall enhancement programs throughout the sub-Saharan regions could create an ongoing environment suitable for harvestable crops. This is the way South Africa can help its poorest neighbours.

The first thing to address is a need to prioritise the job of obtaining fundamental human rights for everyone. While humanitarian aid is no more than a band-aid solution for fighting hunger, the fact it is not reaching everyone means it is even less than that. Ayittey goes on to describe Africa as the globe’s very own Prodigal Son, burdening the world with its corruption and incapability to run an economy. Ayittey writes:

"The Western media bombards the international community with horrific pictures of rail-thin famine victims. Unable to bear the horror, the conscience of the international community is stirred to mount eleventh-hour humanitarian rescue missions. Foreign relief workers parachute into the disaster zone, dispensing high protein biscuits, blankets and portable toilets at hastily erected refugee camps. Refugees are rehabilitated, repatriated and even airlifted. At the least sign of complication or trouble, the mission bogs down and is abandoned (see, for example Somalia in 1995). This is until another vampire African state implodes and the same macabre ritual is repeated year after year. It seems nothing – absolutely nothing – has been learned by all sides from the melt-downs of Somalia, Liberia, or Rwanda.

"At the next crisis, African leaders mount their high horses and appeal incessantly to the international community to save the continent, globe trotting with a bowl in their hands, begging, begging for aid. They cannot see that Africa’s begging bowls are punched with holes. What comes in as foreign aid and investment ultimately leaks away. Total foreign aid and investment into Africa from all sources amounts to $1billion annually. But capital flight out of Africa exceeds $20 billion annually. Destructive wars cost more than $10 billion annually in weapons purchases, damage to infrastructure, and social carnage. According to a UN estimate, in 1991 alone, more than $200 billion in capital was siphoned out of Africa by the ruling gangsters and briefcase bandits…" (Africa Unchained; Ayittey G; 2006; p49)

Ayittey pulls no punches when discussing the flaws within the mechanisms of need vs aid. But the convenience in blaming bad governments is not enough to justify the developed world’s continued neglect; especially when examples of the western world’s intervention of late have all been based mostly on the interests of the intervener. If Kuwait didn’t have oil and George W hadn’t promised his old-man Saddam Hussein for Christmas, both Gulf wars probably would never have happened. In an age when a superpower can go to war (a) on the basis of a country possessing weapons of mass destruction which don’t exist and (b) subsequent to the United Nations having condemned the decision – it must make the poor Africans wonder what torturous act their brutal governments in power need to do in order to receive some sort of disapproval.

While the United States’ occupation of Iraq was unpopular by many and even opposed by the UN, it did give us a new Guinness World Record for the worst thing a United Nations member-nation could get away with, without actually being kicked out of the United Nations. What we learnt from the Americans’ wacky little operation was exactly how anaemic the powers of the General Assembly really are and what few repercussions followed when a president stood up for what he believed in. It all sounds very much like a press council to me. But the alternative to letting the poor starve does not have to mean violence. And it does not mean having our cricket teams boycott tours to Zimbabwe either – the alternative to filling a fishing net with cash and avoiding hostile intervention, is through industry and infrastructure.

One anecdote relating to an organisation adopting a practical approach to foreign aid via industry and infrastructure comes from not-for-profit group, The Congo Appeal. Australian resident Polydor Mutombo who migrated from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is the co-ordinator of the charity which is one of Australia’s smallest registered with the Australian Taxation Office. Instead of raising money for others to distribute the wealth, the volunteers acquire donations of second-hand agricultural equipment such as tractors for the promotion of self-sustainability on the land. Help, specifically to the Congo region, can be particularly emotive as children’s alternative to passively dying of disease and malnutrition is tragically enlisting with the government’s formidable military or copious rebel militias.

Unfortunately it isn’t just the Congo subscribing child soldiers to perform some abhorrent tasks in return for food and shelter; hundreds of thousands of children are killing and maiming hundreds of thousands of people throughout Africa in the provinces of Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Burundi, Chad, Uganda, Cote d’Ivoire and the Central African Republic. Zimbabwe even established a youth militia where children are armed with weapons, provided drugs and used for acts of urban violence against political dissidents. Even Hitler treated his Nazi Youth better than this.

Apart from tractors, The Congo Appeal petitions for things such as harvesters, tree dozers, pulverisers for pesticides, seeders and ploughs – all to send to the DRC with volunteers teaching farmers how to produce their own food. The Congo Appeal also acquires other obscure donations such as new and used hairclippers for former child soldiers and street children, as barbershops are non-existent in the country. Other throwaways we take for granted which are considered valuable resources include random school equipment such as used dictionaries, textbooks, stationary and notebooks. In addition the charity also helps provide these children with new life skills to develop their own street corner enterprises. And this type of practical assistance can make for excellent good news stories.

The world’s media leaders all agreeing to twelve months of Priority One news reporting by every metropolitan newspaper, television and radio station in the world can be the way to put the Millennium Development Goals back on track. In a simplistic order of chronology, the roles of the various parties in the war against extreme poverty should look something like this: the community’s role is to lobby the press councils; the press councils’ role is to place pressure on the media; Bono’s role is to set up a meeting with the executives of the media corporations and press councils; the CEOs and presidents’ roles are to have their news mediums adhere to extreme poverty Priority One front page news and leading news bulletin reporting; the media’s role is to exercise this form of advocacy journalism for its consumers; the community’s role is then to lobby the government to honour its commitment to the Millennium Development Project; and then all the government needs to worry about is what its voters want from them in order to be re-elected. And the war needs to begin immediately.