An epidemic of hunger: covid-19 and poverty

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Hello and welcome to the intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host, Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. The Mekong river starts in China and spills into Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. Or at least in supposed to. A new series of hydroelectric dams has stemmed the flow to the valleys below with increasingly disastrous effects. And there's no shortage of advice on coping with lockdowns. One frequent suggestion is to keep a diary, but one of our editors has found more solace and insight by reading others diaries than by writing our own. First up, though, In normal times, people in poor countries have myriad ways to cope with shocks. Let's say one member of a family gets sick. The others can work longer hours, or maybe they can ask cousins or neighbors for help. Even if an entire village is hit with a bad harvest, someone might have a relative working in the city who can send some extra cash. These, though, are not normal times. All these coping mechanisms depend on calamity that doesn't strike everywhere at once. Sadly, COVID 19 has done just that, and it could reverse years of progress in curbing global poverty.

COVID 19 really gravely threatens one of the big achievements in the world in recent decades, which has been the huge reduction in global poverty.

Kenly Salmon is our Africa correspondent.

Back in 1990, there were about 2 billion people living on less than $1.90 a day. And by last year, that had come down to around 630 million. But now with Covid's impact, for the first time since 1998, that number is going to go up, and it's going up very fast. And there are a few estimates of how bad this could be. One from Andy Sumner of King's College, London, suggests that if the global income per head fell by 20%, which it may well do for a few months at least, the number of people living in extreme poverty could increase by 420 million. That's about as much as the entire population of South America. And this would wipe out about a decade of progress in the fight against poverty.

And a lot of that effect is down to the economic constrictions that come with lockdowns.

Yes. So few of the world's poorest people can work from home, and of course, very few of them have any savings to fall back on. Similarly, governments in the poorest countries don't have very much money. And in fact, they're seeing their own revenues, their own ability to spend, getting hit as well. They're getting poorer too, and so they're not able to support their citizens through this period as much as they might want to. They've announced extra social spending in a number of poorer countries, but so far that amounts to just $1 per head. That's in total, not an amount per day. I mean, of course, these people who lack savings or don't have that safe net, they wouldn't normally stop working. But of course, because of lockdowns, millions upon millions are being forced to do exactly that.

So how are people coping then?

While they're being forced into some pretty difficult decisions, Some people are selling assets. So we spoke with someone called Nathan in Uganda who has been forced to sell livestock from his family's property. Other people he knows are selling land. Some people are coping as well by eating fewer meals. In Sierra Leone, for example, 60% of people in towns responded saying they'd eaten less in the last week than normal. But both of these things, selling assets and eating less, make it harder for people to escape poverty in the long run. So people who are selling productive assets today, like land, livestock, they won't have a source of income for tomorrow. And those who are eating less are risking malnutrition. And we know that, sadly, that can be very damaging, particularly for young children in terms of their ability to grow and develop normally. And that also has long term impacts on their ability to earn in the future. So it's a pretty difficult set of circumstances that they're facing and they're having to take very tough choices in order to cope.

And so this plays into a discussion we've had on the show before about the degree to which lockdowns are doing more harm than good. It sounds like it's a different calculation in the poor world.

Yes, I mean, it is important to recognise that governments had relatively little information and had to react quickly initially. But prolonging these kinds of blunt lockdowns over time can have really big costs. And one of the ways is through the impact on the health system. So a team at Johns Hopkins University calculated that across about 118 poor and middle income countries, the disruption to health systems and hunger could kill 1.2 million more children and about 57,000 mothers over just. Similarly, a report from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine estimated that if restrictions prevent vaccinations from happening In Africa, about 140 children will die for every COVID 19 death prevented. And in fact, the threat to vaccinations is something that the WHO Director General has spoken about in recent days.

Initial analysis suggests the provision of routine immunization services is substantially hindered by in at least 68 countries and is likely to affect approximately 80 million children under the age of one living in these countries. Any suspension of childhood vaccination services is a major threat to life.

So to your mind, is there a clear case then on how to deal with lockdowns at this stage in these poor countries?

Well, certainly some countries have been loosening their lockdowns. We've seen that in Ghana, in Nigeria as well. There's been a loosening in big cities and others are looking at the as we speak. I think what's important to recognize is the choice isn't binary. It's not total lockdown or no precautions at all. Governments and citizens for that matter, can do quite a lot to prevent infections without putting the whole economy in a deep freeze. So for example, they can focus on protecting vulnerable groups like the elderly, but let most adults go to work and certainly let children go to school. They can also try to keep environments that are perhaps higher risk, like nightclubs or large gatherings closed down, but allow bus stations and factories to open as long as they comply with using masks, hand washing and social distancing. None of this is of course easy to do and it will need better testing and more data to do it well. But I think there are some clear options out there that governments are already beginning to move toward.

And would that be enough, you think, to reverse the trend that we're seeing, to undo the damage already done?

Well, I think that would certainly help quite a lot. But whatever the approach taken in poorer countries, they will need help from developed countries. And of course, it is in the interests of developed countries to try and help these countries to grapple with the disease. Otherwise, there's a real risk that poorer countries could become a reservoir for the disease and ultimately come back to reinfect broader parts of the world. Rich countries have spent over $8 trillion on their own citizens. To give a sense of magnitude, the IMF has lent about $22 billion so far. So there is, I think, a need for more help. It's also worth noting, though, that in the past, crises have sometimes fostered real solidarity with the poor. So in Britain in the 1940s, life expectancy actually shot up by about seven years, and that was thanks to a wartime rationing system that ensured that everyone had nourishing, although perhaps slightly dull, food. And we also saw more recently that the big effort to fight Ebola in Sierra Leone had spillover effects. Aid workers and public servants also managed to help improve nutrition and child mortality at the same time. Of course, at the moment, rich countries are a little distracted dealing with their own problems, but it would be wonderful if COVID 19 could inspire similar efforts to help the poor as we've seen in the past.

Kenley, thanks very much for your time.

Thank you.

There isn't a single facet of life almost anywhere on the planet that has not been affected upended by the COVID 19 pandemic.

Things are getting pretty ugly. Investors are running away from assets they see as risky.

There is the risk that skepticism and fear and mistrust kind of snowballs into something that becomes as big of a problem in the fight against Covid as Covid itself.

For the latest on the pandemic and more, join us on Economist Radio. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. The Mekong river provides water for around 66 million people in six countries. Until recently, it ran freely, but a hydropower boom upstream is causing the river to dry up. China's huge dams limit what makes it to the lower basin, which had already been strained by a severe drought last.

Year, the water in the Mekong river fell to its lowest level in more than 60 years.

Charlie McCann is the Economist's Southeast Asia correspondent.

Cambodia endured months of debilitating electricity blackouts because there was just too little water to run a very big hydropower plant. And fish catches declined by as much as 80 to 90% in parts of the country. This is a place where people obtain almost two thirds of their protein from their nets. And in Vietnam, the measly flow spurred saltwater intrusion in the delta, which left many people without any fresh water to drink.

So why did this happen? Why were the levels so low?

Well, there was a drought. This was a huge factor. But a new study claims that the 11 dams built on the Chinese portion of the Mekong actually made things much worse. It found that in 2019, China's part of the basin received more rain and snow than normal. And had all that water flowed downstream, the river would have been between 7 and 8 meters deep as it entered Thailand. In fact, it was less than 3 meters. China disputes the study, and the Mekong River Commission, which is an organization that works with Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos to manage the rivers, also has reservations. But the study's findings actually confirm what local communities have been saying for a very long time, which is that the dams in the Chinese part of the river have been holding water back.

And so why is China building so many of them?

Urbanization and a growing consumer class mean that China has a huge demand for energy. Demand is expected to increase by 40% over the next two decades, and the country's leaders have long been mesmerized by big engineering projects. So in the 1990s, it began building dams along the Mekong river, which is ideally suited to dams. The river's steep descents, when dammed, create an awful lot of power. But just as China seems to care very little about the impact of these dams on the communities who live along the river in Thailand and further downstream, it has seldom shown much concern for its own citizens who've been displaced or disadvantaged by these dams. Yet these people have little recourse. China has every right to build these dams. Countries lucky enough to control the sources of big rivers often make use of the water for hydropower or irrigation.

But that's not to say that China can't cooperate a bit with the people downstream.

It could do that, and those downstream countries would like it to do so very much. But China has long resisted any formal commitment to curb its construction of dams or to guarantee those downstream countries a minimum allocation of water. It has started cooperating a little bit, but it's not enough. In 2016, when the lower Mekong was afflicted by another severe drought, China released waters from its dams at the behest of the Mekong River Commission. And this January, China boosted the flow again, this time at Thailand's request. But the extra water came at the wrong time. This water came during the dry season. The ecology of the river needs the river to be dry at this time of year.

And so what can those downstream countries do?

There are diplomats and the Mekong River Commission petition China to share more information and to cooperate more. It doesn't help, of course, that they are doing to each other what some argue China is doing to them. They themselves have built dams on the Mekong and have more plans to do so. Laos plans to build seven dams, which, of course, is only going to exacerbate the situation. Cambodia is moving in the right direction. In March, the government declared a moratorium on all hydropower projects on the Mekong for the next decade.

But taken together, where is all this heading? How can this classic tragedy of the commons be stopped or at least mitigated?

But China could share more information with the other countries the river flows through. There are promising signs that it recognizes the need to do so. Last November, the Lansang Mekong Cooperation, which is an organization founded by China in 2016 to promote trade among the Mekong countries, agreed to team up with the Mekong River Commission to investigate what caused last year's drought. But greater transparency alone will not be enough. Unless other countries follow Cambodia's lead and stop building more dams, the Mekong River Basin, as it's been known for thousands of years, is not going to be the same in the future.

Charlie, thank you very much for your time.

Thank you, Jason.

In challenging times, writing a diary can be a comfort. It's a practice that many have taken up recently. But one of our editors, Emma Hogan, has found solace not in writing her own diary, but in reading those of others.

For frazzled minds, reading the diaries of other people can be even more therapeutic than writing your own. Unlike novels, which demand commitment, or at least the pretense of it, you can dip in and out of diaries. By their very nature, they are episodic, and entries are often hastily written and can be consumed just as quickly. What I found during this lockdown is that sometimes they also offer unexpected parallels with the pandemic. They suggest that in the face of very different adversities, people have experienced familiar feelings and fears to that which we're feeling today. Take, for example, Samuel Pepys diaries. These were written over several years, but one year in particular, 1665, stands out. He was 32 at the time, and it was the year in which the plague hit London. The early entries of that year, they're blithe, gluttonous, Descriptions of food and plays and women, arguments with his wife feature prominent in April, for example, he says that he lay long in bed, troubled.

With wind, but not much.

The end of that month, he refers to another ailment, great fears of the.

Sickness here in the city, it being said that two or three houses are already shut up. God preserve us all.

By June, he's looking around London and.

Seeing crosses painted on doors and Lord have mercy upon us writ there, which was a sad sight to me.

Yet even though the plague is coming on, the disease seems distant. It seems that disbelief and denial always seem to accompany an epidemic. In the middle of July, Pepys shares a water taxi with a stranger.

And he proved a man of love to music. And he and I sung together the way down with grand, great pleasure.

He has very nice dinner that evening, and then after all of that, all of the gaiety, all of the food, the wine, the company, he records Fairly.

Curtly above 700 dead of the plague this week.

War is definitely not a precise parallel for pandemics, but war diaries such as that by George Orwell are full of moments that I found resonated with today. He describes how a city can change from familiar to strange in the course of a few days in September 1940. He describes how huge areas of London.

Are almost normal and everyone quite happy in the daytime.

Four days later, though, he finds Oxford street empty of traffic and almost deserted.

And describes the late, late afternoon sun.

Shining straight down the empty roadway and.

Glittering on fragments of broken glass.

In the diaries of Derek Jarman, the personal and political views in a way that other diaries don't. He began the diaries in 1989, soon after he had been diagnosed HIV positive and just before he revealed that diagnosis publicly. It's easy to forget now, but at the time, that was very rare for people to be talking openly about that diagnosis. Behind the tally of the days, the weeks and the months there runs an undercurrent of mortality. It's a fate that many people, even if they know their death is close, just try to ignore. Instead, Jarman faces the ultimate inevitable adversary head on. The result spans the last five years of his life. It's angry, it's beautiful, and it's haunting, he writes.

I'm less alive, there's less life to lead. I can't give 100% attention to anything. Part of me is always thinking about my health.

But he also writes about things that give him pleasure. So that includes his companion and partner, HB and his garden at Prospect Cottage.

In Dungeness behind the facade. My life is at sixes and sevens. I water the roses and wonder whether I will see them bloom. I plant my herbal garden as a panacea, read up on all the aches and pains that plants will cure and know they are not going to help. Yet there is a thrill in watching the plants spring up that gives me hope.

Diaries tend to show people at their messiest. I mean, even when they're written for publication, or even at the best of times, people are anxious, they're lonely, they're bitter. At times they're prejudiced. Encompassing all of these feelings diaries, they can be as expansive and as gripping as fiction. I found that they display the best and the worst side of their writers. But more than that, they show readers that they're not alone in feeling scared or miserable. Reading the Lives of Others to me suggests that even at times of crisis and distress, it's possible to find and grasp moments of joy.

Emma Hogan on the Comfort of Other People's diaries. That's all for this episode of the Intelligence. If you like us, give us a rating on Apple Podcasts and you can subscribe to the economist@exterator.com radio. Offer 12 issues for $12 or 12 pounds. See you back here tomorrow.