OCTOBER PF UN prioritize poverty reduction vs environmental concerns

***Please excuse any my partner and I's, this is well, was our case...ONLY ARGUMENTS RD 1, no rebuttals please. Mahatma Ghandi said "Poverty is the worst kind of violence." It is because we agree with this statement and realize that it is time the United Nations step up to take care of an issue that has been plaguing the globe for decades that my partner and I affirm, Resolved: When in conflict, the United Nations should prioritize global poverty reduction over environmental protection. My partner and I are in strong support of this resolution with the following 3 contentions: 1)Poverty causes many problems 2)Poverty prioritization can solve environmental problems 3)The UN has the capability to accomplish poverty reduction To our first contention, By prioritizing poverty, the UN will be able to also solve many social problems plaguing the globe. Death is the major result of poverty, with the number of people dying from it equivalent to "the hypothetical nuclear warfare between US and the USSR, the number totaling 232 million over the course of 15 years" says James Gilligan of Harvard's medical school. Gilligan also finds, "Violence emerges from these hopeless situations, and nearly 14 to 18 million resulting structural violence deaths occur every year, not including the near 100,000 deaths that result from armed warfare in these areas." Jack M. Hollander, Professor Emeritus, Energy and Resources finds that poverty is recognized as the main cause of the lack of education, technology, and employment. Because of this lack of technology, the impoverished rely on a form of cooking that is destructive to the environment with the use of biomass. This destruction is costly, but easily solved with the reduction in poverty. According to the 2005 Task Force on Hunger, because of the inability for economic growth to solely take care of poverty, those who are impoverished are more likely to be socially and politically expelled, therefore being unable to demand their rights, making poverty an easily ignored issue for the countries that need to deal with it the most. As Shown it is simply more practical for the United Nations to focus on the protection of peace, the people and their wellbeing. To our second contention, By prioritizing poverty, environmental problems will also be reduced. As Hollander finds, "economic growth may be the key ingredient to saving the forests. Increased education and investment opportunities arising from economic growth are beginning to stimulate the efficient agricultural practices." This efficiency will decrease the need for new land and may allow the return of agriculture land to forest growth. As seen in Taiwan, Korea, Mexico, and Israel, David Vogel, Professor of Public Policy at Berkeley cites that "as a nation's living standard improves, so does its willingness to devote additional resources to protecting its environment and improving the health of its citizens." While it may be detrimental in the immediate future, in the long run, countries will rehabilitate the environment and correct the damage done. It requires sufficient funding to improve the environment, which is why impoverished nations are so taxing on it. Looking to Yale's calculations of different countries and their environmental performance index (EPI), the top 20 nations are also those with the least amount of poverty, an example being France, number 10 on the EPI ratings, and number 87 in poverty rankings, with only 6% of its population in poverty. As shown, it is obvious that poverty must be prioritized so these nations can later solve the environmental impacts they have created. To our third contention, When taking a look at practicality and effectiveness, the UN should prioritize poverty based on the fact that poverty reduction is an area where they can succeed. The UN specifically states that they were founded to keep the peace and stabilize security for the world. If they hope to be effective in keeping up with that, they need to prioritize poverty, which causes war in these impoverished areas, Darfur being an example. It is not practical for the UN to focus on the environment, because they have not yet succeeded, and each attempt is a bigger failure than the last. From Fox News, a UN investigative unit warned the UN's management that "programs were completely out of control and approaching chaos." Furthermore, the report points to the fact that the UN's environmental programs are not improving, but becoming worse. The Kyoto Protocol, a plan to reduce emissions, was a complete failure, not reducing emissions or establishing any plans for reducing said emissions. The Law of the Sea Treaty was also a failure, an attempt to reduce pollution in the oceans, failed first in 1958, then again in 1960, and then again in the 1980s. It is shown that the environmental protection programs the UN has invested in are a complete failure, and this wasted money could go toward the Millennium Goals that were missed by only 30 million in its attempt to halve poverty. It could have been reached with more spending that was not wasted on environmental protection. The UN can be successful in poverty reduction where it fails at environmental protection, and can solve environment while it solves poverty, and the many social problems associated with it. Based on these three contentions, I look to an affirmative vote.