· Explain the meanings of the underlined words in the text to the rest of the students,
· Speculate on the problem of poverty (how it emerged, developed and was or was not solved) in each of the suggested continents.
· Ask students several comprehension questions based on the text.
| Africa
Africa includes some of the poorest countries in the world. In much of Africa south of Sahara, harsh environmental conditions exacerbate the conditions of poverty. Dry and barren land covers large expanses of this region. As the poor try to eke out livings through famine and other subsistence practices, they exhaust the land, using up the soil nutrients needed to grow crops. Over time this has led to desertification, a process in which once fertile land turns to desert. During the late 20th century, desertification contributed to famines in a number of African nations, including Somalia, Ethiopia, and Mali. Political instability and wars in many sub-Saharan countries have also contributed to poverty.
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| South and East Asia
In 1996 Asia accounted for over two-thirds of the world’s 1.3 billion poorest people. Those people all lived on less than $1 per day. South Asia – that is, the Indian subcontinent, which includes India, Nepal and Bangladesh – had more than 500 million people living in extreme poverty in 1996. India had the greatest number of poor of any country in the world – more than 300 million people, more than one-third of its population. The caste system associated with Hinduism, the dominant religion in India, helps perpetuate some of this poverty. This system keeps many family poor from generation to generation by assigning certain groups of people to low status. More than 400 million people in East and Southeast Asia lived on less than $1 per day in 1996. China has very large numbers of poor due to the great size of its rural population. Such Southeast countries as Vietnam, the Philippines, and Indonesia also rank among the world’s poorest.
Several wars have contributed to poverty in South and East Asia. World War 2 and the wars in Korea (1959-1975) damaged land, crops, and forests; prevented many people from making a living; and killed and dislocated millions. In the late 20th century governments and industries around these regions sponsored massive deforestation, mining, and damming projects that damaged or hindered access to forests, fields, and water resources. Such projects also forced many people to abandon their homes and fields, making them more susceptible to poverty.
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| Eastern Europe and Central Asia
Many countries formerly part of the Communist bloc (the Communist countries of Eastern Asia), including those of the former Soviet Union, have relatively high levels of poverty. Historians and economists blame the legacy of Communism for much of the poverty in these countries. Communist governments owned and distributed most of their countries’ property and resources. Leaders of these governments proclaimed the benefits of this centralised system, but many people who lived under communism experienced lower standards of living than people who lived in countries with democratic governments and free-market economies, such as the USA and the nations of Western Europe.
The fall of communism ended a political and economic system in which all people had been virtually guaranteed jobs and basic needs, such as food and housing. Sudden uncertainty about the future led to decreases in the value of currencies in all formerly Communist countries. War and instability ravaged many of these countries. In the most devastating conflict, the former Yugoslavia erupted in violent civil war in 1991. In several formerly Communist countries, political and economic upheaval has led to a wide array of problems, including a dramatic increase in the number of
orphaned children. The high number of orphans has stretched the capacity of orphanages, and many orphans live in extreme poverty and suffer from malnutrition, disease and starvation.
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| Latin America
In Latin America (Central and South America, and the Caribbean), the poorest people are commonly Native Americans, people of African ancestry, and mestizos (persons of mixed Native American and European ancestry). People of European descent who live in Latin America generally have higher standards of living. Political instability has contributed to poverty in many Latin American countries, including Chile, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Panama. These countries have gone through long periods of military rule or dictatorship in which leaders have hoarded land and natural recourses and impaired people’s ability to make an adequate living. For many years the Caribbean country of Haiti has suffered economically from the effects of both political upheaval and environmental degradation. Brazil has the greatest number of people living in poverty in all of Latin America. This is in part because of its size, but also because of encroachment by urban populations on the land and forest resources of its many native people. Large-scale urban poverty, marked by crowded and unsanitary slums, plagues cities as Rio de Janeiro in Brazil and Mexico City.
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