50 Facts That Should Change the World E-Book

Jessica Williams

• Herausgeber: Icon Books
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 496

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2007

Beschreibung

In this new edition of her bestseller, Jessica Williams tests the temperature of our world and diagnoses a malaise with some shocking symptoms. Get the facts but also the human side of the story on the world?s hunger, poverty, material and emotional deprivation; its human rights abuses and unimaginable wealth; the unstoppable rise of consumerism, mental illness, the drugs trade, corruption, gun culture, the abuse of our environment and more. The prognosis might look bleak, yet there is hope, Williams argues, and it's down to us to act now to change things.

Leseprobe

Praise for50 Facts that Should Change the World

‘I have been dipping in and out of Jessica Williams’ very fine book, imbibing it in parts and largely on the run. The facts are incontrovertible, but the questions remain of why is it so, who is responsible and what can we do? I thought that the strength of Jessica Williams’ essays is that they are calm, never shrill, and therefore invite the reader into the discussion rather than leaving us with merely a sense of overwhelming difficulty. A fearless and compelling work. You need to know what’s in this book.’ Monica Ali, author of Brick Lane

‘A research handbook for the No Logo generation’ Guardian

‘A must-read’ BBC Liverpool

‘Lucidly written, excellently researched, and with detailed referencing, the world won’t look so rosy when you’ve put it down’ Ecologist

‘A book to surprise, enrage and inform, it is a powerful antidote to apathy which offers information on how to make a difference. A gem of a book.’ Agenda

‘A shocking, eye-opening look at what is really going on in the world today. The cold statistics are so severe they speak for themselves, yet each one is elaborated upon with several pages explaining why the stark reality of the statistic has come to be, and what can be done about it … these figures would transform life as we know it, if only more people would become aware and take action.’ Midwest Book Review (US)

‘Provides proof of why we cannot be complacent about the world as it is today. Should become the bible of political activists everywhere.’ Ziauddin Sardar, New Statesman

‘An admirably well-intentioned book that will provoke countless debates’ Good Book Guide

‘A remarkable snapshot of the state of global civilisation today, and just how fragile it really might be’ The Booklover (Hong Kong)

‘Memorable, hard-hitting and to the point’ MSN Entertainment: Books

‘Should foster action’ Church Times

‘Provides much needed and very enraging information’ Publishing News

To my aunt, Rosemary Williams, a tireless activist for animal rights whose memory inspired me as I wrote this book

50 facts that should change the world

Jessica Williams

ICON BOOKS

Originally published in 2004 by Icon Books Ltd.

This updated edition published in the UK in 2007 by Icon Books Ltd, The Old Dairy, Brook Road, Thriplow, Cambridge SG8 7RG email: [email protected]

Sold in the UK, Europe, South Africa and Asia by Faber and Faber Ltd, 3 Queen Square, London WC1N 3AU or their agents

Distributed in the UK, Europe, South Africa and Asia by TBS Ltd, TBS Distribution Centre, Colchester Road, Frating Green, Colchester CO7 7DW

This edition published in Australia in 2007 by Allen & Unwin Pty. Ltd, PO Box 8500, 83 Alexander Street, Crows Nest, NSW 2065

Distributed in Canada by Penguin Books Canada, 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2YE

ISBN 978-1840468-46-5

Text copyright © 2004, 2007 Jessica Williams

The author has asserted her moral rights.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any means, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Typesetting by Hands Fotoset

Printed and bound in the UK by Clays, Bungay

Contents

 

Acknowledgements 

 

Introduction 

1. The average Japanese woman can expect to live to be 84. The average Botswanan will reach just 39. 

2. A third of the world’s obese people live in the developing world. 

3. If you stand at the junction of Oxford Street and Regent Street in central London, there are 161 branches of Starbucks within a five-mile radius. 

4. China has 44 million missing women. 

5. Brazil has more Avon ladies than members of its armed services. 

6. Ninety-four per cent of the world’s executions in 2005 took place in just four countries: China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the USA. 

7. British supermarkets know more about their customers than the British government does. 

8. Every cow in the European Union is subsidised by $2.50 a day. That’s more than what 75 per cent of Africans have to live on. 

9. In more than 70 countries, same-sex relationships are illegal. In nine countries, the penalty is death. 

10. One in five of the world’s people lives on less than $1 a day. 

11. More than 12,000 women are killed each year in Russia as a result of domestic violence. 

12. In 2006, 16 million Americans had some form of plastic surgery. 

13. Landmines kill or maim at least one person every hour. 

14. There are 44 million child labourers in India. 

15. People in industrialised countries eat between six and seven kilograms of food additives every year. 

16. David Beckham’s deal with the LA Galaxy football team will earn him £50 every minute. 

17. Seven million American women and 1 million American men suffer from an eating disorder. 

18. Nearly half of British fifteen year olds have tried illegal drugs and nearly a quarter are regular cigarette smokers. 

19. One million people become new mobile phone subscribers every day. Some 85 per cent of them live in emerging markets. 

20. Cars kill two people every minute. 

21. Since 1977, there have been more than 120,000 acts of violence and disruption at abortion clinics in North America. 

22. Global warming already kills 150,000 people every year. 

23. In Kenya, bribery payments make up a third of the average household budget. 

24. The world’s trade in illegal drugs is estimated to be worth around $400 billion – about the same as the world’s legal pharmaceutical industry. 

25. A third of Americans believe aliens have landed on Earth. 

26. More than 150 countries use torture. 

27. Every day, one in five of the world’s population – some 800 million people – go hungry. 

28. Black men born in the US today stand a one in three chance of going to jail. 

29. A third of the world’s population is at war. 

30. The world’s oil reserves could be exhausted by 2040. 

31. Eighty-two per cent of the world’s smokers live in developing countries. 

32. Britons buy 3 billion items of clothing every year – an average of 50 pieces each. Most of it ends up being thrown away. 

33. A quarter of the world’s armed conflicts of recent years have involved a struggle for natural resources. 

34. Some 30 million people in Africa are HIV-positive. 

35. Ten languages die out every year. 

36. More people die each year from suicide than in all the world’s armed conflicts. 

37. Every week, an average of 54 children are expelled from American schools for bringing a gun to class. 

38. There are at least 300,000 prisoners of conscience in the world. 

39. Two million girls and women are subjected to female genital mutilation each year. 

40. There are 300,000 child soldiers fighting in conflicts around the world. 

41. Nearly 26 million people voted in the 2001 British General Election. More than 32 million votes were cast in the first season of Pop Idol. 

42. One in six English teenagers believe that reality television will make them famous. 

43. In 2005, the US spent $554 billion on its military. This is 29 times the combined military spending of the six ‘rogue states’. 

44. There are 27 million slaves in the world today. 

45. Americans discard 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour. That’s enough bottles to reach all the way to the moon every three weeks. 

46. The average urban Briton is caught on camera up to 300 times a day. 

47. Some 120,000 women and girls are trafficked into Western Europe every year. 

48. A kiwi fruit flown from New Zealand to Britain emits five times its own weight in greenhouse gases. 

49. The US owes the United Nations more than $1 billion in unpaid dues. 

50. Children living in poverty are three times more likely to suffer a mental illness than children from wealthy families. 

 

Sources for the 50 facts 

Notes 

Glossary 

Getting involved 

Index 

Acknowledgements

I had always believed that writing a book would be a solitary process, but I believed wrong. Numerous people have helped, inspired and contributed, and I am incredibly grateful to all of them.

Extra-special thanks go to Neil Durkin of Amnesty International and Steve Crawshaw of Human Rights Watch; to Jacqui Hunt of Equality Now!; to Gladwell Otieno at Transparency International Kenya; and to Barry Hugill of Liberty, Neera Sharma at Barnardo’s and Simon Davies at Privacy Inter national. Thanks also to the people who took time to talk to me, to those who contributed or inspired the arguments herein, and to all the groups, large and small, working to make the world a better and fairer place.

There are two people without whom this book would not have happened, and I mean that without the slightest exaggeration: Professor Ziauddin Sardar, whose generous recommendation and encouragement really did set this all in motion, and Andrew Furlow at Icon Books, who dealt with an apprehensive and doubt-stricken author with true aplomb.

To my colleagues at HardTalk – Carey, Tim, Sola, Ali, Bridget, Tanya, Sian, Tama, Nick and Dougal – thank you for your inspiration and enthusiasm. Thanks also to my family and friends for their kindness, unstinting support and understanding in the face of a suddenly silent telephone. My best friend Callum managed to cheer me on from 12,000 miles away – an impressive feat by anyone’s standards. And then, there is John – who has been my first sub, my sounding board and a wonderful and patient partner in crime. He will be truly embarrassed to be in any list like this, which just makes me more determined to thank him.

About the Author

Jessica Williams is a journalist and television producer for the BBC, where she has researched and produced interviews with such disparate figures as the political philosopher Noam Chomsky, President Paul Kagame of Rwanda, Sir David Attenborough, Northern Ireland First Minister David Trimble, and the late American academic Edward Said.

Introduction: Why should these 50 facts change the world?

Setting out to change the world is a pretty difficult task. At first, it’s hard to see how a fact, a simple piece of information, can do that. But I firmly believe that each one of the 50 facts in this book is capable of changing the way we think – and when it comes to changing the world, that’s the most important step we can take.

Each fact in this book tells us something important we need to know about modern life in the modern world. Each is accompanied by a short essay which aims to give a bit of context, looking at the story behind the statistic: what the scope of the problem is, how we got here, and what we can do now. At the end of the book there’s a full list of where the 50 facts are sourced from; you’ll also find a glossary which will explain any unfamiliar terms, and a guide to how you can get involved.

This is the third edition of 50 Facts That Should Change the World – the first came out in 2004, the second (which had some minor updates) in 2005. This edition has had a fairly major overhaul – updating some of the facts, completely replacing others. And there’s one major reason for this: the world is changing.

Some of the original 50 facts are just simply not true any more. The first edition contained a fact about how 70 per cent of the world’s population had never heard a dial tone. That’s no longer true, thanks almost entirely to mobile phones. It made me so happy to draw a big line through that fact, thinking that maybe with this mushrooming of technology we might be making some serious progress in eroding the ‘digital divide’, the huge gaps that used to exist between the information-saturated rich world and the countries where you might face a year-long wait to have a telephone connected. There’s quite a long way to go yet, but the momentum is there.

Another fact that’s missing from this edition is the one about the US spending about the same amount of money on pornography as it does on foreign aid. America is now spending far more than it did on overseas development assistance: some $27 billion, according to the OECD’s figures, helpfully broken down by the website globalpolicy.org. The porn industry hasn’t grown at the same rate – if anything, it’s deflated slightly. It’s heartening that the US is giving so much more development aid, although globalpolicy.org notes that nearly $7 billion of that figure is going to Iraq.

Obviously, this book can’t take the credit for those advances (I wish it could!). But there is one overriding force that can take credit: the desire of people in the world that they should happen. People speaking out, making their voices heard, influencing the debate, making politicians listen to them. And this trend is growing every day.

Since the original 50 Facts book was released, there’s been a huge surge in what I guess you could call everyday activism. One of the ideas behind 50 Facts was that if you didn’t like what you read – if the facts made you angry, sad, upset or keen for change – then you could go out and do something about them. In some cases there are real, definite actions you can take: for example, if you’re concerned about food miles, start embracing locally-grown and seasonal produce, get inspired by the slow food movement and take a real interest in where your food comes from. In others, it’s more about joining groups that are pushing for change, keeping certain issues in mind when you vote, that sort of thing. Those courses of action feel somewhat less direct, perhaps, but they’re just as good a way to effect change.

There’s now so much emphasis on this kind of activism. The high profile given to climate change has given a particular urgency to the idea that we’re all able to do our bit: there are prime-time ads on television, huge features in newspapers, encouraging everyone to switch to energy-efficient lightbulbs, turning appliances off rather than putting them on standby, and a host of other tiny acts that, added together, make a big difference.

And if you want to take it further, there are now whole websites dedicated to this kind of thing: We Are What We Do (http://www.wearewhatwedo.org) sets out 100 everyday actions that will help change the world, from using a biro all the way from start to finish, to ringing your IT helpdesk just to ask how their day’s going. As I was writing this new edition, the hottest it-bag of spring 2007 was We Are What We Do’s collaboration with the handbag designer Anya Hindmarch, a reusable canvas shopping bag. Price: a hefty £5. The model Lily Cole carried one at London Fashion Week and demand for the bag ran so high that We Are What We Do’s web server collapsed under the strain and the bags were soon changing hands on eBay for more than £200. You wouldn’t have seen that kind of madness about a carrier bag five years ago.

It’s been fascinating to watch this change sweep over Britain, and there’s every sign it’s happening overseas too. In the US, we’ve seen individual states challenging the federal government (most recently, over climate change) and winning, forcing the Bush administration to change its ways. Websites are springing up everywhere, for every conceivable issue. Tech-savvy activists are harnessing new technologies like podcasting and video-sharing websites to get their point across. This is true in developing countries, too: one woman told the BBC that she believes mobile phones have done as much for Kenyan democracy as a change in the government.

So there’s a lot that has changed, but there’s still so much to be done. It’s still true that many of the facts in this book have at their core the issue of inequality. Whether we’re talking about an unfair distribution of income, of opportunity or of power, it’s still the biggest problem that the world faces. And it’s one of the toughest ones to solve.

Globalisation – which, in its most basic form, merely refers to the increasing interconnection of the world through trade, communications and investment – still could do much to address the inequalities the world faces. But this will happen only if it’s applied in the right way. Rich nations have been able to use globalisation as a further tool of exploitation, imposing tough barriers on developing countries while lavishly propping up their own economies. Corporations have used the abundance of cheap labour and natural resources in poorer countries to increase their profits. Using globalisation as a force for good is still the biggest challenge we face.

It was really interesting to gauge the reactions of people I encountered while I was promoting 50 Facts. I was derided as a chunky-cardigan-clad, sandal-wearing twenty-something by one prominent Australian newspaper – which made me laugh, because only one of those things is true, and only then if you class flip-flops as sandals. Reviews on the internet were mostly really positive, though I was tickled by a supporter of the National Rifle Association telling one website that I’d got it all wrong about gun control.

One of the more eye-opening experiences I had was a trip to Japan. 50 Facts was released in Japanese by Soshisha, and it turned out to be something of a success over there. I was invited over to Tokyo by Nihon TV who wanted me to present a segment of their show The Most Useful School in the World – I would be playing the part of a guest teacher, lecturing a ‘classroom’ of Japanese celebrities.

To the immense amusement of my colleagues, Nihon TV asked for me to send video footage of my office at the BBC, which was cut together into a montage that featured me at the end as a Facts-busting superheroine. It was all as surreal as you might expect – and then I gave my prepared lecture, and suddenly everything got very serious. I was told after the show that a couple of the celebrities had been in tears during the segment because they were so strongly affected by what they’d heard. After the show had aired, Soshisha were contacted by many readers urging them to publish a version for school children so that their kids could learn about these issues – and set about changing the world. I can only imagine what will happen when the next generation puts all its energy into making the world a fairer, better place.

When I started writing 50 Facts, I became convinced that individual actions could make a real difference. Now it seems that many other people are starting to embrace this idea. It really does prove that the eminent anthropologist Margaret Mead was right when she said ‘never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.’

I am convinced these 50 facts should change the world, because the world is changing. And after you read this book, I hope you will be convinced too.

The average Japanese woman can expect to live to be 84. The average Botswanan will reach just 39

If you were born in the developed world, there is a good chance you will look forward to a longer life than your parents – and your children will live longer still. The average human lifespan has doubled over the past 200 years, and in most countries the trend continues. In the developed and wealthy world, science has managed to eradicate previously devastating diseases and deliver us a quality of life that our ancestors – living the life Thomas Hobbes famously described as ‘nasty, brutish and short’ – would never have dared to hope for. We may not yet have the key to immortality, but we can have a damned good shot.

It’s only in very recent history that we’ve been able to dream of living long, active lives. During the Roman Empire, life expectancy was just 22 years. By the Middle Ages in England, some 1,500 years later, there was only a little improvement – people could expect to live about 33 years, and not necessarily healthy years either.1 The threat of famine was ever-present, and medicine was limited to a few brutal surgical techniques. Epidemics of typhoid and leprosy were common, and the Black Death, which swept through Europe between 1347 and 1351, killed a quarter of the population.

The dramatic improvement in human life expectancy didn’t start until the Industrial Revolution, which began in England in the 19th century and spread quickly throughout Europe. Since 1840, the average life expectancy in the longest-lived countries has improved steadily – rising by three months every year. And that growth continues to this day.

So what’s behind this sudden surge in our life expectancy? Certainly, the massive social changes in the early 19th century contributed a great deal. The growth of industry meant a huge boom in urban centres, and whole suburbs had to be built to accommodate the streams of workers leaving behind a harsh rural existence for a new life in the city. Those already in the cities no longer needed to live in cramped conditions where diseases spread quickly. There was access to clean water and proper sanitation, facilities we take for granted today which had a remarkable impact on public health. Tuberculosis and cholera, which previously would lay waste to whole communities, became far less common.

When people did become ill, the advancement of medical treatment meant leeches and trepanation were cast aside. The discovery of antibiotics was another huge step forward, dramatically reducing the number of women who died during childbirth. It’s telling that the concept of ‘quality of life’ is such a recent invention. Until recently, life itself was enough of a blessing.

So how much longer will this growth continue? Does the body have a finite lifespan, or could we continue to prolong life indefinitely? One assumption is that despite advances in science and medicine, we will reach a point where our bodies just cannot continue to function. Established wisdom has it that our lifespan is determined by evolution. If we continue to give birth to babies that live longer and longer, the delicate balance between survival and reproduction could be lost: the average age of populations will grow steadily older, and this could have far-reaching impacts on the ability of governments to provide basic services. Indeed, developed nations may already be reaching this point.

The group with the longest life expectancy, Japanese women, currently reach 84.6 years on average, and they’re showing no signs of slowing down. At the time of writing, Japan boasts the oldest living person (Mrs Yone Minagawa, who turned 114 on 4 January 2007) and the world’s oldest man (Mr Tomoji Tanabe, a comparatively youthful 111). As remarkable as these ‘super-centenarians’ are, some believe that in the future this kind of extreme longevity could become commonplace. The American journal Science predicted that in six decades the average Japanese baby girl could expect to live to 100.2 No longer an occasion for a telegram from the Queen, reaching your century could become just another birthday – albeit one with a very large cake.

For those living in Central and Southern Africa, though, there is little cause for celebration. Life expectancies here are not growing. In fact, due to the ravages of the HIV/Aids pandemic, they’re declining rapidly. The US Census Bureau predicts that 51 countries will see a fall in the average life expectancy as the virus continues to claim millions of lives.

In Botswana, for example, a baby born in 2002 could expect to live an average of 39 years. That’s 30 years less than the average would have been without Aids. By 2010, Botswanans are predicted to live just 27 years.3 It’s a sobering thought, and one that makes the developed world’s centenary aspirations seem like a dreadful vanity.

Aids is the starkest reason for the lower life expectancies in the developing world, but there are many others. Infant mortality rates in many countries remain high. In Sierra Leone, 157 babies out of every thousand will die before their first birthday. Contrast that with Iceland’s 2.6 babies, and it’s easy to see why the infant mortality rate is considered such a sensitive measure of a country’s public health.4 Access to clean water, nutrition and healthcare are crucial during pregnancy. In the West, those are a given – but that’s still not the case in many countries. Young children who don’t get enough food are far more likely to die from diseases like flu and diarrhoea, and around the world UNICEF estimates that 150 million children are malnourished.

Poverty also greatly reduces life expectancy. Lack of access to safe drinking water is still a major cause of death in many countries. Polluted air or soil can cause disease, and it also makes food production more difficult. As rapidly growing populations put the land and natural resources under increasing strain, more and more land is turning to desert as local ecosystems are destroyed.

It’s clear, then, that life expectancy poses very different challenges to the developed and developing worlds. Higher-income countries must come to terms with their ageing populations and start to provide for the stresses that will be placed on health and welfare systems. Governments and corporations are already being forced to look at the way they provide for people in retirement. If the average British man now lives to 75, he will spend his last decade drawing a pension from the state. It’s a pleasant prospect, certainly, but one that will become harder and harder to sustain. Some European governments are already discussing raising the age for compulsory retirement, and as the population gradually grows older there will be fewer people working to put the necessary money back into the welfare system. Governments are already facing vociferous criticism from people who feel they’re being short-changed – the long-held belief that a productive working life should be rewarded by a comfortable retirement is proving hard to shake.

In the developing world, meanwhile, tackling the Aids pandemic is the biggest priority for many countries. African nations are worst hit at present, but there is every indication that China, India and the countries of the former Soviet Union will lose millions of their people to Aids in the next ten years. The World Bank highlights the need to prevent illness through better public health, but it’s hard to do that when literacy and access to education are limited.5 Aids is still a source of great stigma in most countries, and many governments have shown reluctance to acknowledge the problem. In June 2003 the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria had signed grant agreements worth $5.3 billion by the end of 2006, but it warned that it needs another $8–10 billion a year to reach the Millennium Development Goals.6

The World Bank also points to hard choices ahead for many governments. Treating people suffering from Aids is very expensive: it’s estimated that Britain’s National Health Service spends an average of £15,000 a year on each Aids patient. These costs create a great strain on health systems in the developed world – but in developing countries where funding is limited and resources scarce, it’s simply impossible to cater properly to all those who need treatment. The World Bank suggests that funding might best be spent on education and prevention – in short, concentrating on those who are still healthy rather than on those who are certain to die. But when hospitals are full and infection rates are still high, that seems like a very calculating decision and one that governments will almost certainly find hard to take.

A third of the world’s obese people live in the developing world

It seems like the cruellest irony of all: the world that is fighting hunger is also battling an epidemic of obesity. For the first time, the number of overweight people is starting to rival the number who are underweight. And the epidemic is not confined to the rich countries of the world.

More than 300 million people in the world are obese, and headlines about the current crisis of ‘globesity’ are common. But perhaps more worryingly, 115 million of the world’s obese people live in developing countries. It seems that along with the consumer trappings that come with increasing wealth, people in poorer countries are adopting some of the West’s most dangerous habits – with almost certainly devastating consequences. The World Health Organisation (WHO) says obesity rates across the globe have risen three-fold or more in the past twenty years, but often faster in developing countries.

Never in the history of the world have we had so much to eat, but it seems that in a culture of plenty, the choices we make become even more important. As the world’s population becomes increasingly urban, eating habits across the globe are changing substantially. Public health experts refer to this as ‘nutrition transition’. Farmers who once grew a range of crops on a subsistence basis begin to concentrate on single cash crops. Countries begin to import more food from the industrialised world. Rather than eating fresh fruit and vegetables, people opt for highly processed, energy-dense foods, heavy in fat, sugar and salt. Combine this with increasingly sedentary lifestyles – where people drive rather than walk, work in offices rather than fields, watch sport rather than play it – and it’s a lethal prescription.

Obesity and excess weight increase the likelihood of serious chronic diseases. Cardiovascular disease, hypertension, strokes and certain forms of cancer are all more common in overweight people – as is the form of diabetes once known as ‘adult onset’, but now seen in children as young as ten. This in itself creates an increased risk of heart attacks and strokes, and can cause blindness, kidney failure and nerve damage. The financial and social burden is already placing a strain on health budgets in developed countries: obesity-related conditions cost the US 12 per cent of its health budget in the 1990s, some $118 billion – more than double the $47 billion attributable to smoking.1 According to the WHO, the majority of chronic disease cases are occurring in the developing world.2 And in countries where health systems are already sorely challenged, the strain could become intolerable.

In China, 5 per cent of the population as a whole is classified as obese – but look at the cities, and that figure increases to 20 per cent. Many of those are children, the ‘little emperors’ created by China’s one-child policy. Across Asia, it’s the same story. Obesity among Thai children between five and twelve years of age rose from 12 per cent to 15–16 per cent in just two years. Nearly 10 per cent of Japanese nine-year-old boys are overweight now – compared with 3 per cent in 1970.3

Rates of obesity are soaring in Latin America too, almost rivalling those in its neighbour to the north. Sixty-four per cent of Mexican women are overweight, and 60 per cent of men. It’s a familiar story here too: people moving to cities, working very hard in sedentary jobs, fuelling up on cheap industrially produced food. The Guardian notes that in some remote villages in Mexico it is easier to buy a bag of potato crisps than a banana.4

Over all, though, the world’s fattest people live in the Pacific Islands. In Nauru, 77 per cent of the adult population is obese – twice the rate of the wealthy European Union countries. Pacific cultures traditionally revere size as a sign of wealth and power. Once, you would have had to be very rich to eat enough to get fat. But now, a flood of cheap imported foodstuffs puts dangerous obesity within the reach of most people.

Where once local diets would have consisted of fish and tropical fruit, markets are full of meat rejected by richer overseas markets. Turkey tails from the US, lamb and mutton flaps from Australia and New Zealand – once these high-fat meats would have been used as pet food or fertiliser, now they are delicacies. In Tonga, healthier protein options such as locally caught fish were between 15 and 50 per cent more expensive than mutton flaps or imported chicken.5 Some have blamed the countries exporting these meats for ‘dietary genocide’. Samoa’s health minister, Mulitalo Siafausa Vui, described the imported meat as ‘junk food dumped by richer countries on poorer countries’.6 Fiji went further, announcing a ban on the import of lamb and mutton flaps – New Zealand threatened to lodge a complaint with the World Trade Organisation (WTO).7

Obviously, the world’s aid organisations make a priority of alleviating hunger. But they also acknowledge that obesity, and all its related health problems, is reaching a crisis point.

Part of the solution seems to be getting better information out to areas where obesity levels are soaring. The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) talks of the need to get food production experts (who decide how to grow more crops and where) in touch with nutritionists. The WHO is also striving to set down guidelines about what constitutes a good diet. National governments can do more to promote healthy eating and exercise in schools – Singapore’s Trim and Fit scheme has reduced obesity among children by nearly a half through changes in school catering and increasing the amount of sport and nutritional education.

But there is a clear danger that criticising certain food types too harshly could spark a huge backlash from the food industry. In April 2003 the WHO and the FAO were poised to issue a report on diet which suggested that sugar should make up no more than 10 per cent of a balanced diet. The US Sugar Association launched a stinging attack, calling the report ‘misguided [and] non-science-based’.8 The Association said 25 per cent was a far more realistic safe level, and it also wrote to the US Health Secretary calling for the report to be withdrawn. It also threatened to put pressure on the American administration to scrap the WHO’s funding. Defiant, the WHO and FAO report was launched, in what was seen as a victory for non-govern mental organisations over the lobbyists – but the message was clear, and far from palatable.

Nutritional education is part of the solution, but it’s clear that economics have a major role to play. In Tonga, a WHO report suggested that development of sustainable farming and fishing industries would help to make healthier traditional foods available at a reduced cost. Banning the importation of unhealthy food, as Fiji did, is another possibility. But options like this may incense the wealthier countries, who have much to gain from exporting cheap food to developing countries, and the consequence could be a complaint to the WTO. As the Tonga report concludes, ‘it behoves national policy-makers to be aware of the health impact of “commodities of doubtful benefit”, and of the role of trade in health of the population’.9

In the developed world, newspaper articles and television reports constantly discuss the merits of one miracle diet after another. But as most dieters know, the answers to overweight are seldom found in a glass of diet soda. And in the developing world, where obesity is as much to do with trade and globalisation as anything else, it’s a bitter draught indeed.

If you stand at the junction of Oxford Street and Regent Street in central London, there are 161 branches of Starbucks within a five-mile radius

Fancy a coffee? If you live in almost any major city in the West, there will be more than a dozen chain stores that will be happy to oblige you. In Britain we each consume 1.2 kilograms of coffee every year1 and last year we spent £730 million on it.2 As substantial a sum as that is, we still consume far less coffee than the international average of 4.6 kilos a year – and those coffee retailers obviously believe there’s still plenty of room for growth.

If you’re standing on our street corner above – just outside one of the exits to Oxford Circus underground station – there are 86 branches of Starbucks within a half-hour walk.3 In fact, there are now more branches of Starbucks in London than there are on Manhattan Island in New York City – the archetypal caffeine-fuelled metropolis.4 And even then, that’s not enough. In January 2007 Starbucks announced that it aims to open a new store in London every fortnight for the next decade.

At the time of writing, Starbucks had 13,168 company-operated or licensed stores around the world.5 Its goal is to have 40,000 stores worldwide – which would make it bigger than McDonald’s.6 And right now, business is good. In the last quarter of 2006, the company opened more than eight new stores every day around the world, to boast a net revenue of $2.35 billion and an 18 per cent surge in profits.7

So far, this sounds like just another business success story. A company that started with a single outlet in Seattle 35 years ago has grown to become one of modern retail’s biggest success stories. There are outlets in some of the most conservative countries in the Middle East; the eighteen branches in Riyadh display the same décor and ambience as you would expect in any outlet around the world, except for the curtained areas where the female customers must sit, shielded from male eyes. There is even a Starbucks in the Forbidden City in Beijing, the site of the former Imperial Palace – although maybe not for much longer. The administrators for the UNESCO World Heritage Site are considering closing the store after half a million Chinese signed an online petition protesting against its presence in such a culturally important site.8

But sometimes it pays to look behind the headlines. Fuelling this boom in coffee is a commodity trade in which there are clear winners and clear losers. On the winning side are the coffee retailers who charge high prices for their beverages. The losers are the farmers who grow the raw beans.

The cup of coffee that you buy in a chain retailer might cost you £1.80 in Britain, perhaps $3 in the US; of that price, the farmers in Ethiopia who grew the beans for that cup get about 3 cents, or less than 2 pence. Or let’s do the maths another way. After deducting their costs, coffee farmers receive about $1.10 for a pound of coffee. A retailer selling espressos could get up to $160 for that same pound of coffee.9

This point is made with great force in a documentary called Black Gold, made by English brothers Nick and Marc Francis. The film follows Tadesse Meskela, a spokesman for Ethiopia’s impoverished coffee growers, as he tries to get a better deal for his people. Meskela runs a coffee farmers’ co-operative, and one moving scene from the film shows him explaining to the farmers how much their crop is sold for in rich countries. The farmers don’t make enough to live on and are dependent on food aid, while the fruits of their toil are sold for high prices. The film has certainly drawn attention to his country’s plight; Meskela has since met British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the film may well do for fair trade what Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth has done for climate change.10

The film-makers are adamant that they didn’t single out Starbucks for criticism – in fact, they say, they tried to contact the company many times during the making of the film. All the same, the coffee giant has swung into a charm offensive. Starbucks says the film doesn’t represent a full picture of what the company’s doing in Ethiopia: it has called the film ‘inaccurate’ and ‘incomplete’ and pointed to the company’s commitment to paying fair prices for coffee, as well as its humanitarian projects.11

But while this debate was raging, a somewhat more sinister story was unfolding. In 2005 the Ethiopian government filed applications to trademark three of its most famous coffee bean names: Sidamo, Harar and Yirgacheffe. Trademarking the names would allow farmers to negotiate better prices for these sought-after speciality beans and could add as much as $88 million in annual income for Ethiopia’s coffee industry. But according to Oxfam, Starbucks asked the US National Coffee Association to block the trademark bid.12

As Professor Douglas Holt of the Said Business School at Oxford University puts it, these actions are not surprising for a large multinational company. They have aggressive profit targets to meet and a market position to defend. But Starbucks has gone out of its way to convince its customers that it is no ordinary multinational and that it sells ‘coffee that cares’.13 In February 2007, Starbucks and the Ethiopian government issued a joint press release stating that the company would no longer stand in the way of the trademark applications. But Starbucks has since refused to engage in discussions on the issue and has also not signed a voluntary licensing agreement which would help increase the farmers’ bargaining power.14 Instead, the company promised to double purchases of East African coffee by 2009 and pledged $1 million in micro-finance to farmers in the region. This is, of course, better than nothing. But Starbucks had a real chance to lead the way in promoting fair trade, and that chance may have been missed.

As Starbucks continues its march towards its target of more stores than McDonald’s, it’s sobering to think too about what that might mean for the face of our towns and cities. Not so long ago, the best you could hope for on the English high street was that your local greasy spoon might have an Italian coffee machine. Sure, in the big cities there were cafés that might serve a decent cup, but they were by no means everywhere. Growing up in New Zealand, I don’t think I tasted an espresso until I was in my late teens. Coffee was either instant or (at best) drip-filtered, and it almost universally wasn’t great. Now, every shopping street in Britain (and in New Zealand, and much of the rest of the world) will have at least one chain coffee shop, complete with ‘baristas’ and staggeringly complex menus. No longer will your only coffee options be black or white, with sugar or without – you can order a drink as complicated as you like, in the style of 90s supermodel Linda Evangelista, whose coffee order became legendary: a half-caf, double-tall, non-fat, whole-milk foam, bone-dry, half-pump mocha, half sugar in the raw, double cup, no lid, capp to go.

But there is another side to this blossoming of choice. Chain coffee shops, chain restaurants, chain boutiques are all leading to a strange new phenomenon: the Clone Town. The term was invented by think tank the New Economics Foundation (NEF) to describe a phenomenon it saw happening in Britain. Smaller commercial centres, among them many ancient market towns, have started to lose many of the features that made them representative of the areas they served. The NEF pointed out that between 1997 and 2002, specialist stores like butchers, bakers and fishmongers were shutting up shop at the rate of 50 a week. Twenty traditional pubs closed their doors every month.15 In their place: supermarkets, catalogue stores, chain pubs. The commentator Nick Foulkes paints the picture: ‘The homogenisation of our high streets is a crime against our culture. The smart ones get the international clones – Ralph Lauren, DKNY, Starbucks and Gap; while those lower down the socio-economic hierarchy end up with Nando’s, McDonald’s, Blockbuster and Ladbrokes.’16

When yet another national or international chain comes to our high street, we get the illusion that we have more choice. In fact, we get no choice. Smaller, independent retailers get pushed out and are replaced by national and multi-national operators whose huge economies of scale mean they wield enormous power over us. Consider the often-quoted statistic that for every £7 of retail spending in the UK, £1 is spent in Tesco supermarkets. Do you really want to give one business that much power in your life?

Of course, Starbucks is by no means the only retailer implicated in this trend, and it would be wrong to place too much blame at their door. But it seems that even the company itself is starting to wonder if it’s gone too far. In a recent memo leaked to the internet, Starbucks founder and Chairman Howard Schultz mused to his Chief Executive, James Donald, that he was worried about where the brand he’d built was heading. He wrote that the company’s massive expansion had led to the ‘watering down of the Starbucks experience’ and the ‘commoditization’ of the brand. ‘One of the results has been stores that no longer have the soul of the past and reflect a chain of stores vs the warm feeling of a neighbourhood store … some people even call our stores sterile, cookie cutter, no longer reflecting the passion our partners [employees] feel about our coffee.’17

It’s too early to tell if Schultz’s concerns will translate into a change of emphasis for Starbucks. But it should certainly make us think. I wouldn’t want to suggest you never visit Starbucks: from time to time, I go there too. It’s an almost-inevitable force in modern life. But when you do go there, make sure you go for the fair trade coffee. Pick up their literature in-store and don’t be afraid to write in to tell them what you’d like them to do. Then do the same thing in every chain coffee store you visit.

And don’t stop going to your local independent café just because there’s a new place down the road. It may not offer the same bizarrely-flavoured syrups or those ice-blended confections that are so tempting on a hot day – but chances are it’s a lot more precious to your community.

China has 44 million missing women

The official news reports had a faint but clear undertone of alarm. China’s state news agency reported in October 2002 that the latest national census showed something very concerning about the sex ratios in the world’s biggest nation. For every 100 baby girls born in China in 2000, there were 116.8 baby boys. And comparison with the past two censuses showed things were getting worse. If the gap continued to widen, said the Shanghai Star, some 50 million men in China might find themselves unable to meet a suitable wife. That would then cause problems for families, the economy and social services. One expert even predicted a rise in the kid napping of women as desperate men sought to find a bride.1

The imbalance is the chilling result of a preference for sons which is widespread in China, India and other parts of South and East Asia. Parents anxious not to have a baby girl may have scans to determine the unborn child’s sex, and if the foetus is shown to be female, they will seek an abortion. Many baby girls are killed in the first few days or weeks of their life, parents finding ways to outfox police and health workers by making the deaths seem like natural events. If the girl is lucky enough to survive babyhood, her birth may never be registered – leading to a life on the margins, where education, healthcare and even getting enough food to eat will be denied her.

Even though birth rates in India, China and Taiwan are falling steadily and are now coming close to those in the Western world, the long-standing bias against baby girls is not disappearing. The increasingly wide availability of ultrasound technology is making it easier for parents to choose not to give birth to a female child. Dr V. Parameshvara, a former president of the Indian Medical Association, estimated that 2 million sex-selective abortions are performed in India every year2 and a UNICEF study published in December 2006 said 7,000 fewer girls were born in India every day.3 In an effort to stem the tide, both India and China have made sex-selective abortions illegal. Doctors in both countries who perform routine scans on pregnant women are not allowed to tell them the sex of the baby. But some clinics don’t always obey the rules. The Shanghai Star reported that illegal ultrasound scans can be obtained for around $60–120,4 while doctors in India will find other ways to communicate the result: giving families a pink-wrapped candy if a foetus is a girl, blue if it’s a boy.5

In India, as post-mortem techniques become more sophisticated, parents are resorting to more gruesome ways to kill their daughters. Radha Venkatesar in the Hindu newspaper detailed some of the techniques described to her by mothers in the Salem district of Tamil Nadu.

‘One such “novel” method is feeding hot, spicy chicken soup to the babies. “They writhe and scream in pain for a few hours and then die” [according to one woman]. When NGO activists get wind of infanticide, the villagers promptly counter that “the child was suffering from bloated tummy and had to be given chicken soup”. Another ruthless elimination method catching up in Salem villages is to over-feed babies and tightly wrap them in wet cloth. After an hour of breathless agony they die … but the latest technique of asphyxiating the baby by placing beneath a pedestal fan at full blast has stumped the police who have managed to register just five cases of female infanticide in Salem in the past year.’4

For a baby girl who manages to survive her first weeks, there may be other more insidious perils still ahead. Boys may often be given preference in healthcare. One study in India showed no gender gap in deaths from severe and non-preventable diseases, but girls were twice as likely to die from diarrhoea – which is treatable.5 Boys may often have more money spent on their clothes, and be fed more nutritious food. Right from the start, their chances of survival are better. The girl child has a difficult life.

In China, the famous ‘one child’ policy has meant that many births go unreported. In rural areas especially, larger families are becoming more common. The Chinese government appears to be relaxing its strictly coercive approach to family planning, and as women move around the country to work, it becomes harder to monitor pregnancies. Chinese demographers say that spot checks by the State Statistics Bureau have yielded under-counts of up to 40 per cent in some villages. It’s hard to say what proportion of those ‘invisible’ children are girls. But the State Family Planning Commission says that some rural families are larger because the parents want a son.6

But what happens to these unregistered children? In the eyes of the law, they simply don’t exist. These children will not be able to go to school or receive state-funded healthcare. Their opportunities in life will be severely affected.

In order to give these baby girls a chance, governments need to tackle the problem of female infanticide decisively. But what may be more difficult is tackling the deeply entrenched social attitudes that make people think it’s okay to kill baby girls. The problem is that infanticide – of both boys and girls – has a long and bloody history. The Society for the Prevention of Infanticide concludes: ‘Infanticide has been practiced on every continent and by people on every level of cultural complexity … [it] has pervaded almost every society of mankind from the Golden Age of Greece to the splendour of the Persian Empire.’7 In times when food was scarce, one way to control the effects of starvation was to restrict the number of children allowed to survive to adulthood.

In East and South Asia, the proverbs that enshrine the preference for boys are many. ‘Daughters are like water that splashes out of the family and cannot be got back after marriage.’ ‘Eighteen goddess-like daughters are not equal to one son with a hump.’

In patriarchal societies, the question of whose responsibility it is to care for one’s parents is particularly important. In these societies, a daughter’s role largely ends at marriage, while the son’s lasts for life. And where there is little in the way of social support for older people, that counts for a lot. According to Monica Das Gupta, a demographer at the World Bank, ‘the grown woman can be useful … she can work in the fields and be a good mother, but the fact that she’s educated and employed doesn’t change her value to her parents, who won’t benefit from all that’. In societies where daughters and sons share the job of caring for aging parents, sex ratios don’t display the same preference for boys.

As well as their role as good providers, sons are the ones who carry on the family name and inherit ancestral lands, and in some religions they are the only ones who can perform particular rites of passage on behalf of their parents. There is a lot of pressure, then, for women to give birth to sons. A woman’s value and standing in a community will go up if she bears sons, down if she bears daughters.

In India, parents of daughters dread the point at which their girls reach marriageable age and become enmeshed in the traditions of dowry. In the majority of communities in India, a groom’s family will demand some kind of payment from the bride’s family – cash, precious metals, real estate or some other valuable item. Sometimes, the demands don’t stop after the marriage, and parents may feel they have to give in to the requests to ensure the safety of their daughter. And with good reason: India’s National Bureau of Investigation believes that violence related to dowry claims sixteen women’s lives every day.8 Aid agencies believe that dowry is directly linked to the issue of female infanticide. One writer reported seeing signs in the Indian state of Haryana reading: ‘Make your choice – spend a few hundred rupees now [on aborting a female foetus] and save a few hundred thousand rupees later [in dowries].’9

It would be bad enough if this bias against the girl child were merely a matter of tradition – once the grisly reality of these traditions is laid bare, then they’re not impossible to change. But, sickeningly, the problem of the ‘missing women’ seems to be rooted in economics. Female children cost money, and when they marry these living pieces of property become part of their new husband’s family. It’s a simple, chilling fact.

There are signs that things are changing. Many previously agrarian societies are becoming more urbanised, and that is having an effect on these traditions – and their bloody outcomes. In South Korea, the sex ratios are starting to even out: whereas in 1990 there were 117 boys for every 100 girls, by 1999 that had declined to 110. Younger generations are becoming more economically independent of their families, and so the perceptions of sons as providers and daughters as burdens are slowly being worn away.10

In more agrarian societies, though, it may prove harder to convince parents of the worth of a female child. Census figures in India and China have drawn public attention to the growing imbalance between the sexes, and both governments have outlawed sex-selective abortions. Aid agencies and women’s groups descend on private clinics and lobby the government to close down those which are flouting the law. But it may take a generation of brideless men to kick-start a widespread social change.

Brazil has more Avon ladies than members of its armed services

It’s a strange mental picture – hundreds of thousands of smartly dressed women, marching through the streets of Brazil, hands not saluting but extended, ready to press a doorbell. While Brazil’s armed forces have 454,000 personnel on active service,1 Avon has 700,000 ‘revendadoras’ – or, as we would put it in English, Avon ladies.2 Working all over the country from the inner cities to the Amazon jungle, they’ve helped to make Brazil Avon’s second-biggest market by volume after the US.

Spurred on by growing discretionary incomes in the West, and expanding middle classes in the developing world, the beauty industry is enjoying a boom time. The global market is worth $95 billion and is growing at up to 7 per cent a year, more than twice as fast as the developed world’s GDP.3 Women, and increasingly men, are queuing up to purchase what industry pioneer Charles Revson famously called ‘hope in a jar’.

What exactly does the beauty industry sell? A cynic might say it pushes expensive containers filled with coloured, scented potions of dubious effectiveness. But there’s obviously a lot more to it than that. What are the forces at work that can make a grown woman delight in buying a brand new lipstick, when she has five others at home in exactly the same shade?

Far more than what’s in the pretty glass jars, the beauty industry sells a potent mixture of self-esteem, empowerment and evolutionary advantage. The desire to adorn ourselves is as old as the human race itself, and in every culture in the world, physical beauty confers many benefits. Unattractive men earn 15 per cent less than their more aesthetically appealing colleagues, while fat women earn 5 per cent less.4 A study of more than 10,000 people in 37 cultures by the American psychologist David Buss found that men consistently value attractiveness and youth in a potential mate, whereas women value ambition, status and resources. The uniformity of these preferences across so many cultures led Buss to conclude that they are a fundamental part of human psychology: ‘Youth is a cue to fertility, the physical appearance of the woman provides a wealth of information about her fertility, and then women want a good provider, someone who will be there through lean times.’5

But there’s more to the allure of ‘lipstick, powder and paint’ than just the possibility of ensnaring a mate. More recently, advertising for cosmetics and other beauty products has focused on the desire – no, more than that, the responsibility – that every woman has to pamper herself. We’re not doing this to attract men; we’re doing this to make ourselves feel better, to be the best person we can be.