Public Forum, October Topic: Poverty Reduction vs. Environmental Protection

NOTE: Disregard any contextual inaccuracies (my partner and I) that result from the direct usage of in-round formalities within both debaters' first respective speeches. To my opponent: feel free to copy and paste your in-tournament PRO case if you already have one prepared. In resonance with Public Forum conduct, I ask my opponent to exclude any attempts of refutation in his first speech. Resolution: When in conflict, the UN should prioritize global poverty reduction over environmental protection. As a human race, one of our greatest shortcomings has been something of an inability to foresee the long-term consequences of our actions. From excessive government spending to the recent reckless loaning methods that led to the economic recession, we often fail to realize that it is useless gain short-term wellbeing by sacrificing long-term stability. Only by looking into the future alongside the present can we accurately weigh the significance of our actions. Because my partner and I understand that improvement is irrelevant if it cannot be sustained, we feel obligated to stand in negation to the resolution that, when in conflict, the United Nations should prioritize global poverty reduction over environmental protection. Definitions for poverty reduction and environmental protection can be allocated through the actions of their respective subdivisions within the UN, respectively the UNDP and the UNEP. Poverty is defined by the World Bank as a state of living in which capable of adults live on less than 2.50 US dollars per day. Contention One: Environmental and agricultural sustainability must precede poverty reduction efforts in order to ensure stability. Desertification is quickly reducing the amount of arable land in developing nations, especially in India and sub-Saharan Africa. Desertification is swiftly progressing due to unsustainable agricultural methods being practiced in those nations, such as overgrazing and improper irrigation and fertilization methods. Luckily, sustainable agriculture is easily maintained, self-incentivizing and requires little funding to carry out. Subpoint A: Sustainable agriculture is necessary to support persons in developing nations. According to a United Nations University conference on desertification, if current trends continue, Africa will only be able to feed 25% of its people by 2025. Even if poverty is eliminated, the reduction of poverty will be irrelevant if there is no food to be bought. Likewise, 47 % of India's once-arable land has been rendered inhospitable through desertification. If agriculture cannot be up kept in these developing areas, food supplies will decrease, food costs will increase, and the inhabitants will sink into deeper and deeper levels of poverty. Subpoint B: Agricultural stability precedes economic stability in developing nations. In many developing nations, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, a majority of inhabitants work as subsistence farmers. The majority being occupied with farming, there is little economic stimulus for modern markets for people to purchase their own food. Until local agricultural methods can be improved in order to provide an adequate surplus to feed people working outside of the agricultural industry, economic development will be severely hindered. Subpoint C: Stimulating agricultural sustainability is highly cost-effective in comparison to poverty reduction. Luckily for the farmers of Africa and India, superior methods of farming are a simple matter of education. In fact, according to UC-SAREP , sustainable agriculture methods tend to increase yield both in the short and long term. In contrast to the taxing reduction of poverty, restoring sustainable agriculture mainly involves teaching farmers correct grazing and irrigation methods, instruction on crop rotation, and proper water conservation. The prospect of increased crop yield is incentive enough to encourage farmers to practice these alternative methods: reversing the effects of desertification would be as simple as educational meetings or even pamphlet distribution. Contention Two: The United Nations lacks the necessary means to ensure global poverty reduction. Critics of the UN are quick to point out that it is plagued by having too little funding and power to get much of anything done. As it stands, there is no reason to believe that efforts by the UN aimed at reducing global poverty have any chance at even putting a dent in the problem. Subpoint A: The UN is inadequately funded too significantly reduce global poverty. The UN's unadjusted budget leaves the UNDP, the suborganization responsible for dealing with poverty, around 6 billion dollars to work with for the next two years. Even if the UN were to devote all of these resources exclusively to poverty reduction, ignoring the other Millennium Goals, it wouldn't even come close to making an impact on global poverty. The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation alone has an endowment of 30.2 billion dollars; the UN has so little funding that it shouldn't waste its time on a problem that is already being tackled on a much larger degree by countless charitable organizations. Subpoint B: Corrupted administrations and lack of transparency in developing nations severely hamper the effects of poverty reduction. A study conducted by political scientists Knack and Brautigam strongly correlates high aid levels with government deterioration. Furthermore, the often-corrupt governments responsible for allocating aid lack the transparency necessary to ensure that the money is getting where it needs to go. The same aforementioned study also drew direct connections between high aid levels and elevated in transparency levels. The amount of power that the UN can exert on a sovereign nation is basically up to the nation in question, and, as such, the UN lacks authority to assure that its funding will be used to feed the hungry as opposed to lining some greedy dictator's pockets. In conclusion, as opposed to resorting to irrelevant appeals to the emotional aspect of poverty, you, the judge, need to look at the facts. Not only is protecting the threatened environments of developing nations more beneficial and cost-effective than attempting to reduce poverty, but the funds that are allocated to reducing poverty will be so greatly affected by monetary and authoritative barriers that their results will be rendered negligible. The choice is clear.