A/42/427
Enqlish
Paqe 60
- ensuring a sustainable level of population;
- conserving and enhancing the resource base;
- reorienting technology and managing risk; and
- merging environment and economics in decision making.
1. Reviving Growth
29. As indicated earlier, development that is sustainable has to address the problem of the large number of people who live in absolute poverty – that is, who are unable to satisfy even the most basic of their needs. Poverty reduces people's capacity to, use resources in a sustainable manner; it intensifies pressure on the environment. Most such absolute poverty is in developing countries; in many, it has been aggravated by the economic stagnation of the 1980s. A necessary but not a sufficient condition for the elimination of absolute poverty is a relatively rapid rise in per capita incomes in the Third World. It is therefore essential that the stagnant or declining growth trends of this decade be reversed.
30. While attainable growth rates will vary. a certain minimum is needed to have any impact on absolute poverty. It seems unlikely that, taking developing countries as a whole, these objectives can be accomplished with per capita income growth of under 3 per cent. (See Box 2–1.) Given current population growth rates, this would require overall national income growth of around 5 per cent a year in the developing economies of Asia, 5.5 per cent in Latin America, and 6 per cent in Africa and West Asia.
31. Are these orders of magnitude attainable? The record in South and East Asia over the past quartet-century and especially over the last five years suggests that 5 per cent annual growth can be attained in most countries, including the two largest, India and China. In Latin America, average growth rates on the order of 5 per cent were achieved during the 1960s and 1970s, but fell well below that in the first half of this decade, mainly because of the debt crisis.[1] A revival of Latin American growth depends on the resolution of this crisis. In Africa, growth rates during the 1960s and 1970s were around 4-4.5 per cent, which at current rates of population growth would mean per capita income growth of only a little over 1 per cent.[2] Towards Sustainable Development Moreover, during the 1980s, growth nearly halted and in two-thirds of the countries per capita income declined.[3] Attaining a minimum level of growth in Africa requires the correction of short-term imbalances, and also the removal of deep-rooted constraints on the growth process.
32. Growth must be revived in developing countries because that is where the links between economic growth, the alleviation of poverty, and environmental conditions operate most directly. Yet developing countries are part of an interdependent world economy: their prospects also depend on the levels and patterns of growth in industrialized nations. The medium term prospects for industrial countries are for growth of 3 per cent, the minimum that international financial institutions consider necessary if these countries are going to play a part in expanding the world
- ↑ UNCTAD, Handbook of International Trade and Development Statistics 1985 Supplement (New York 1985).
- ↑ Ibid.
- ↑ Department of International Economic and Social Affairs (DIESA) Doubling Development Finance, Meeting a Global Challenge, Views and Recommendations of the Commitee for Development Planning (New York: UN. 1986).
