Absolute Poverty, on the other hand, is a worse condition than relative poverty. It is when a person, or country, doesn’t even have enough money to afford their basic needs. The basic needs include: food, clean water, basic education, sanitation, health and information.
The main reason LEDCs (3rd World Countries) became poor is because of debt. The banks handed out loans to these countries and they took them. The interest went up rapidly and those countries now find themselves unable to repay the loan. In the 1970’s, Chile borrowed 3.9 billion dollars. By 1982, it had paid 12.8 billion in interest and still owed money! This is why we need world development, because the LEDCs are unable to afford to develop their countries when they have a loan to pay back first.
There is a need for world development because the poorest countries in the world are growing so many cash crops in order to raise money to pay back loans and afford other basic needs that they have barely enough land to grow crops to feed themselves. Cash crops are basically crops grown to sell rather than consume.
Most LEDCs are situated in areas that are extremely vulnerable to Natural disasters (earthquakes, floods etc.). It is extremely hard to rebuild and return to normal after disaster like these, even for MEDCs. It is especially hard for LEDCs, as they have invested all of their money into their buildings and if they fall down or get damaged then it would take years to pay for them to be restored/ repaired.
Another reason for world development is the amount of wars going on in the world at the moment. Most of the wars include an LEDC. This means that the LEDC will be spending most of its money on war equipment (tanks, machine guns etc.) rather than on its people’s basic requirements. Some of these wars include civil wars (wars fought between the same country), which have been very frequent recently in some LEDCs (like Africa). These usually start because the European empire-building in the 1800s meant that races were often joined, which lead to the ruling race badly treating the other race, which soon lead to war.
To conclude, it is obvious that there is a lot that is needed to improve in the world today, especially in the LEDCs. We need all loans taken out by them to be dropped so that they can start looking after their citizens. We need countries to develop because we are all interdependent countries, we need them to give us tea, coffee, chocolate, and lots more, and they need us to give them English products. We should follow the guidance of the bible and the Catechism of the Catholic Church because we are all one big, global community. People have stopped caring about it; they have got what is called ‘compassionate fatigue’ they have become immune to the shocks they get from hearing that “a person dies every 3 seconds” etc. Therefore, something has to be done… quickly.