The UN's Sustainable Development Goals do not question the role of human agendas and politics in the rise and spread of povertyIt has become a truism that the word "natural" should no longer be attached to disasters. We are living in the Anthropocene and these are human creations. This is the thought running through my head as I read George Monbiot's riveting coverage of the fires in Indonesia. He clearly documents that this massive environmental calamity is the direct result of land use policies, fascist regimes and corporate exploitation of natural resources - all of which displace local peoples and create widespread human suffering.The same is true for poverty.We never hear how poverty is created. There is a lot of talk about how itrises and falls, that people get trapped in it, that it is in need of eradication. But no one says who created it. We don't hear anything about the role of human agendas and work guided by political institutions in the rise and spread of mass poverty throughout the modern era.
