1302 



"There are more poor in the world than ever: The United States now 

 contributes less, others more, but to no avail" : 



The aid people tried for a quarter of a century. They spent billions of dollars. 

 They accomplished some remarkable feats. But they failed over -all. 



Afi 1973 ends, the world looks like this : There are 3.8 billion people on earth, 

 give or take 200 million because the computations are often vague. Of the total, 

 about 30 percent, those who live in North America, Europe, the Soviet Union 

 and Japan, are rich. They earn generally more than $3,000 a year, or $8.21 a day. 

 They con.sume 92 percent of the world's energy (the United States alone takes 

 a third) and most of the other mineral wealth. 



The other 70 percent of the world's population, those who have to get by on 

 ... 65 cents a day, divide the remaining 8 percent of the world's energy and 

 its leftover minerals.™" 



The economic consequences of the 1973-74 energy crisis has wid- 

 ened still further the gap between rich and poor. Caught up in a cross- 

 fire of rising prices for energy and growing food shortages, many 

 LDCs are experiencing a deepening economic crisis. Predictions have 

 already been made by responsible American officials of a possible fam- 

 ine in the offing in India. In March 1974, the Overseas Development 

 Council forecast the possibility of some 30 poor nations with 900 mil- 

 lion people facing economic collapse unless assistance was forthcom- 

 ing. The nations cited are in tropical Africa. Southeast Asia, and 

 Latin America and include Chile, India, Banghidesh. Uruguay, and 

 possibly the Philippines. According to James P. Grant of ODC, the 

 poorest nations need an additional $3 billion annually to cover in- 

 creased prices for food, fertilizer, and fuel, India may be one of the 

 hardest hit nations as the result of the energy crisis and food short- 

 ages.^^^ In the United Nations, Secretary General Kurt Waldheim 

 called for immediate assistance for countries threatened by economic 

 disaster. "The fate of millions of people," he told the opening special 

 session of the General Assembly on April 24, "may Avell depend, within 

 the next few months on what this special session does, or does not 

 do." ^«* 



These appraisals, and others of a similarly pessimistic nature, sug- 

 gest that the world's future, at least in the next three decades, seems 

 bleak : the gap in need and plenty can be expected to continue widen- 

 ing; prospects for escape seem not to be very promising. A scenario, 

 constructed on Gunnar Myrdal's 1958 theory of "circular causation" 

 that sketches out a continuing downward spiral in development among 

 the LDCs and a corresponding widening gap with the advanced coun- 



™2 The New York Times, Dec. 23, 1973, p. E3. 



'83 The Christkin Science Monitor, Mar. 6. 1974, p. 3B. For the American response at this 

 special U.N. session, see the address by Secretary of State Kissinger entitled, "Challenges of 

 Interdependence." (op. cit.). For a summary and analysis of the session, see, Barbara Ward's 

 commentary published in The Economist (May 18, 1974), pp. 65-73. Miss Ward observed 

 that when the session closed on May 2. "it left behind the feeling that possibly something 

 new had taken place." Secretary of State Kissinger, she wrote, called the session part of an 

 "unprecedented agenda of global consultations in 1974" which implied "a collective deci- 

 sion to elevate our concern for man's elementary well-being to the highest level." Mr. Ivor 

 Richard. Britain's chief representative at the United Nations, put it rather more simply : 

 "Things will never be the same again.'' (p. 65.) 



T8* The New York Times, Apr. 25, 1974, p. 10. 



