I totally agree with Mohammed - unless the problem is viewed holistically, it is futile. Additionally, I think that the goal to "eradicate poverty" or "extreme poverty" is unrealistic and unattainable begin with. A more realistic goal might be to "improve the quality of life" for individuals who are in extreme poverty. This involves changing legal, political, and religious thinking of a massive scale - these things affect the social structure of societies and how resources are shared. It involves how  justice is administered.

For example, who will ensure that a man or woman's labor is not exploited and the only real thing of value that he or she has (her labor) is not stolen from therm? Who gets access to schooling, medicine - even clean drinking water? All the aid, and all the global conferences on ending poverty are fruitless so long as greed and corruption persist. It is like gathering water with a sieve...

We can go on replacing the goals from one fancy name to another, for example from Millennium Development Goals to Sustainable Development Goals. But that may not necessarily take us to where we intend to be. In my opinion, we should understand what does Sustainable Development mean before attempting to set the goals. To put simply it means - Attain decent quality of life (Economic) without social or environmental injustice, and it is essential to see this concept as wholesome. However it is unfortunate to see that the concept of Sustainability is sometimes restricted to Environmental Sustainability. The researchers should investigate the problems in a holistic manner thereby making contribution to true sustainability.

I totally agree with Mohammed - unless the problem is viewed holistically, it is futile. Additionally, I think that the goal to "eradicate poverty" or "extreme poverty" is unrealistic and unattainable begin with. A more realistic goal might be to "improve the quality of life" for individuals who are in extreme poverty. This involves changing legal, political, and religious thinking of a massive scale - these things affect the social structure of societies and how resources are shared. It involves how  justice is administered.

For example, who will ensure that a man or woman's labor is not exploited and the only real thing of value that he or she has (her labor) is not stolen from therm? Who gets access to schooling, medicine - even clean drinking water? All the aid, and all the global conferences on ending poverty are fruitless so long as greed and corruption persist. It is like gathering water with a sieve...

To add to Ruth and Mohammed the thorny issue of population growth remains a huge barrier. If one determines a minimum quality of life and the energy and resources required to sustain an ever growing population is this possible never mind sustainable. 

If one wishes to take out a loan one has to show one has sufficient collateral to repay the loan but the same is not applied to population growth. As Ruth says poverty is lack of access to resources or it can also be too many trying to access limited resources.

On the one hand bulk infrastructure requires a certain economy of scale to be economically feasible, but limited by the natural resources it may access and thus the population it may sustain. In almost all instances control of such resources as well as access is through price and hence a vicious circle.

In South Africa a few years ago we had the lowest priced electricity in the world for which access was not a problem and led to rapid economic and population growth. This led to too many clamoring for the same resource so prices are hugely increased to pay for new infrastructure leading to job losses, economic slowdown, service delivery protests etc. Like trying to sieve clay.

So the system says lets raise prices to increase the provision of new infrastructure capacity to ensure sustainable access to resource and provision of quality of life rather than curtail population growth to suit the current infrastructure and resources, which as Ruth notes would require massive change.

The justification is that job losses etc have to be sacrificed in the short term so that in the long term we are able to maintain population and economic growth and hence the viscous circle. As such poverty can and never will be alleviated it will simply fluctuate.

Thus poor countries trying to develop infrastructure incur huge debt and become even poorer by raising prices and taxes to repay the loan thus creating the environment in which greed and corruption thrive.

We need to understand the basic reasons of abject poverty in any reason. The first and foremost is lack of education and skills. Give them proper education and they will earn for themselves. I have seen in India that there is lot of job opportunities in every sector, we don't get the right people. Even labour do not fell like working as they can get 100 days employment guarantee. Why should they work? There should not be anything free. It makes people dependent. If you want to give something, let them make efforts to get that. It will have more value. 

In order to eradicate poverty we should invest in education and technology, reduce inequality between regions, tackle inequalities in incomes, health outcomes, well-being, and facilitate trade. Everyone should be able to realize his potential and to share the benefits of growth and increased prosperity. We should break down the barriers to inclusive growth and reach new frontiers in policymaking and implementation.

A very interesting discussion i should say. Thanks to Ruth for stating the realistic goal of 'ending poverty' which is 'A decent quality of life for all'. I strongly feel the policy research community should adopt this goal and, more and more research is needed in describing the spatial variations in pursuit of basic human needs. The literature often reports the variations at the level of nations, international regions etc., which gives a macro picture. But it is not sufficient. We need a micro picture, especially in the developing countries, that is - the spatial variations at the lowest level possible (for example in India the structure is Nation-State-District-Block/Mandal-Village). I think this would be the starting point to understand the needs of societies that may help the governments in developing plans and programs aimed at reducing the variations, and thus reducing the poverty, in accordance with Mounir.

I strongly feel the SD goals should be specific to region, or nation if required, although generic goals may be defined for the world, and the micro level variations should form the basis for regional SD goals.

Further as pointed out by Gregory and Ruth, the root cause of the problems is Greed, as a result of which the human systems are all corrupted in the sense they have become selfish. It is extremely important to recognize this fact and if this is not addressed in our solutions, we would never achieve our goal, and one day the whole system may collapse.

Practically speaking, one way of addressing Greed is 'Change in mindset', which is believed by many as one of the first and foremost solutions to achieve Sustainability. We need alternative models with a change in mindset - which ensure social justice and environmental justice in pursuit of various economic activities. Moreover we need empirical models rather than theoretical models. 

Mohammed I agree that any development must be based on the locally available resources and what they can support and sustain. SD development must account for a range of issues but in the end it is basic things like water, food and materials that are the determining factors; ie energy.

Many rural areas are far more sustainable in that people learn how to live without much and rely on what they may draw upon within reasonable reach. As soon as infrastructure of any kind is required it will require an economy of scale to maintain it and a need to draw upon outside resources. This means income is required and employment and business, town planning activity corridors  and of course finance to do this. Hence the whole growth and development spiral start.

As Ruth correctly says it requires a complete change of mindset and as you say SD needs to be carefully considered. One would require debate and discussion beyond the realms of this forum. We are but fleas on one dogs back!

@Gregory Your post highlights the importance of 'Financial Capital' in pursuing economic goals. Lets take an example - we need huge financial capital for launching an initiative to electrify villages in a certain region. And the potential investors are concerned about their return first and in that process if the electricity needs are fulfilled then they are happy. But if the returns are not attractive they will look for a better opportunity. Because in no case they would like their financial value to let down. Infact it should be the other way round. They should primarily be concerned about meeting the needs.

So we need models to counter this - We need Investors who make the availability of Capital easy and moreover who expect return on it only when the economic activities are running on their own: no doubt it is the characteristic of Government spending. But unfortunately the Government spending is also skewed now a days - it hardly focuses on the rural sector.

As you rightly said we need debate beyond the realms of this forum to realize such alternative models.

You may be aware of the fact that Open Working Group instituted by UNO has recently completed the draft of SDGs, available at link below: 

http://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/focussdgs.html

This draft includes 17 goals and 169 targets, which will be placed before the UN General Assembly some time this month and will then serve as the basis for intergovernmental negotiations in the 12 months thereafter. 

What do you think about these goals? I though some of you might be interested in discussing.  

In most countries where people pay tax, they give far more than this, possibly 15-30% to Income Tax. If one pays VAT of 10-20% then an one is paying some 25-50% of one income to Tax alone. Hence I do not think that 2.5% will resolve the problem although the concept is very charitable. This goes back to what Ruth and Mohammed note, which is to ensure such amounts do not vanish before they reach the intended recipient.  

Poverty is a socio-economic problem. since it is relative term, it is basically related with distribution of income and wealth. The price/market mechanism of liberal or free economy does not allow fair distribution of income and wealth, because of differ in efficiency and flow of resources to price-sector. To trade off this gap social control over the distribution of income and wealth is necessary thereby the absolute-poverty can be reduced/rooted-out. Building capability  in needy can help the poor to get opportunities to share the fruits of economic development which is the out-come of group-life/society.

The MDG had 8 goals & 21 targets .  It had a vision & established targets to developing countries to improve the lives of its poor citizens . Between 2000 to 2013 many targets were met , but more efforts were needed to meet all the targets by 2015 . Inspite of the inadequacies , it helped the governments to evolve a strategy to concentrate on core areas to bring a rapid change in the lives of the poor & various countries could be evaluated for their performance in achieving these targets .The 17 goals & 169 targets in the SDGs , as mentioned by Pahlaj Moolio would definitely improve on the MDG goals . It is ultimately the responsibility of the concerned governments to utilize these goals to improve the lives of their poor citizens .

We cannot ignore the connection between extreme poverty and extreme wealth.  Taxation was invented to avoid these extreme but this is not working anymore apparently.  Lets say that we would set a maximum to the ratio maximum income to minimum income and tax whatever income abore this ratio then there would be a common cause between these two extremes.

There are many suggestions here about Tax. But my question is why would someone agree to it? And even if they agree they will find some way to overcome it. As more and more strict laws/regulations are being implemented, we are witnessing smarter ways of breaching them because external changes are temporary. We need laws/regulations but they should ideally aim to instill a change in the individual - The change has to come within and only internal change is permanent.

Solutions often tend to focus on distributing the wealth of individuals for aiming social equity but i feel the focus should shift towards - How is it that only a few are accumulating the wealth ? If the creation of wealth is fairly distributed then we need not think about distributing accumulated wealth. But the creation of wealth will be fairly distributed only when we care about all the partners in the supply chains of all our economic activities. Which means all the supply chain agents should consider themselves as partners and they feel they have a definite role in reaching the common objective i.e., Comprehensive Well-being.

Such objectives should form a part of SD Goals.       

Thank you all for answering to my question. I really enjoyed reading. As most of you have said in some way that eradication of extreme poverty needs new mind set - radical rethinking in the approaches. Thanks once again.  

There are two type of wealth creation.  Innovation of all kind are true wealth creation.  Stock market bubble are false wealth creation.  Those creating the bubble, have insider information that allow them to transfer enormously speculative amont of money to them and they exit the bubble before it burst.  The net result of the bubble creation is inflation, lowering of the value of money and those less in position to rapidly increase their income, the extreme poor, are the one paying for this creation of false money in the stock market bubbles.  The stock market is a pump which transfer wealth from the poorer to the wealther. 

Let's get down the basics. People do not want to be poor. So, we should not look for 'innovative ways' to drag them out. We need one thing - respect for humanity. Start on that platform and we have a better world.