From poverty to power - Oxfam-Québec

FROM POVERTY TO POWERThe wrong kind of aid: When faced with a distant emergency, membersof the general public often give what they have at hand.As a result,donations of used clothing or canned goods that are too expensive toship, or are simply not needed, can eat up the scarce resources ofhumanitarian agencies. The clogging of the port of Colombo, Sri Lankawith containers of spontaneously collected and dispatched children’sclothes and toys after the tsunami, for example, was so severe that itdelayed the location and release of equipment essential for supplyingclean water.Sadly, donor governments often behave in a similar way, disposing ofsurplus goods that are unsuitable for the crisis in question, or whichcould be sourced much more economically in or near the areaexperiencing the disaster. Expired medicines commonly turn up in suchdonations, but perhaps the most egregious example is in-kind food aid.Ask members of the public about their picture of humanitarianrelief and they will often cite feeding the hungry. Food aid is a preciousresource that saves lives where there is a regional shortage of food, asin North Korea today. Worldwide, about 10m tonnes of foodstuffs areprovided each year to some 200 million needy people, at an estimatedtotal cost of $2bn.All too often the root problem is poverty, not production, andhunger occurs even when food is readily available in local markets.Under these circumstances, shipments of surplus grains from the USAand elsewhere can undermine local farmers by flooding the marketand driving down prices. Even when food is not available locally at thetime of an emergency, food aid takes on average four to six months toarrive, by which time the country concerned may be recovering – andthe sudden arrival of cheap food can ruin local farmers just as they aregetting back on their feet. 180In-kind food aid has become a knee-jerk response to crises, notbecause food needs to be shipped halfway around the world,but because rich countries need to dispose of their surplus farmproduction. In fact, the donor group charged with overseeing food aidis housed not at an aid body but at the International Grains Council, atrade body based in London.Shipping food from donor countries can also be wasteful. Withhigh oil prices, transport can eat up much of the food aid budget –388