Chancellor announces new ‘Marshall Plan’ for the developing world
In a recent speech at the National Gallery of Scotland, the Rt Hon Gordon Brown MP, Chancellor of the Exchequer proposed "a modern Marshall Plan for the developing world – a new deal between the richest countries and the poorest countries but one in which the developing countries are not supplicants but partners."
He began by wondering whether the disaster in the Indian Ocean could prove a powerful international spur to tackling global poverty.
Here are some of the highlights…
"Recent days have shown both our shared vulnerabilities and our linked destinies as an earthquake in one continent has left families devastated in every continent. But humbled first by the power of nature, we have since been humbled by the power of humanity – the awesome power of nature to destroy, the extraordinary power of human compassion to build anew. For in recent days we have we have witnessed not only an unprecedented demonstration of sympathy but also an unprecedented demonstration of generosity.
"More people giving spontaneously than at any time and in any previous appeal. Young children giving often more than they can afford. Men and women separated by geography but drawn closer than ever together by a shared determination to help, to care, to heal the wounds. Individuals in afflicted countries, even when they have been left with so little themselves, selflessly doing so much to help others."
"And the true test of the international community will be how we can fund and assist both the immediate day-to-day emergency services needs but also the long-term reconstruction of these countries."
"Although the scale of last week is unprecedented, tragically natural disasters can befall any country but the capacity of countries to withstand and respond to these events in part reflects the state of the emergency services, health care systems, the basic infrastructure. And all of these reflect the underlying levels of prosperity and poverty. Put starkly, countries without adequate warning systems, with less developed health care and sanitation systems, with poorer infrastructure, weaker institutional capacity and fewer resources are more vulnerable during disasters, less able to cope in their aftermath and a minute of devastation can wipe out years of development. So from new early warning systems to proper healthcare the world will have to do more."
"Does not already the response to the massive tidal wave in south east Asia show just how closely and irrevocably bound together today and in our generation are the fortunes of the richest persons in the richest country to the fate of the poorest persons in the poorest country of the world even when they are strangers and have never met? People who now see that they have the same shared concerns, the same mutual interests, the same common needs and the same linked destinies."
"When I delivered the CAFOD lecture a few weeks ago about the economic, social and moral case for us now seeing people we have never met and may never meet in other continents not as strangers but as neighbours, I argued that what impelled us to action where there is need was not just enlightened self interest that recognises and acts upon our interdependence - our dependence each upon the other for our sustenance and our security – but, even more important, a belief in something bigger than ourselves: our shared moral sense that moves human beings even in the most comfortable places to sympathy and solidarity with fellow human beings even in far away places in distress."
"And the worldwide demonstration in the last few days not just of sympathy but of support shows that even if we are strangers, separated and dispersed by geography, even if diverse because of race, even if differentiated by wealth and income, even if divided by partisan beliefs and ideology - even as we are different diverse and often divided - we are not and we cannot be moral strangers. We are one moral universe. And the shared moral sense common to us all makes us recognise our duty to others.’
‘It is because I want a world that does not have to choose between emergency disaster relief and addressing the underlying causes of poverty and injustice - between advancing first aid and advancing fundamental change - that the proposals I am putting forward today to advance the interests of all the developing world will – the Government believes – find support in all parts of the world."