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The final report on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) concludes that the project has been 'the most successful anti-poverty movement in history'. Two key claims underpin this narrative: that global poverty has been cut in half, and global hunger nearly in half, since 1990. This good-news narrative has been touted by the United Nations and has been widely repeated by the media. But closer inspection reveals that the UN's claims about poverty and hunger are misleading, and even intentionally inaccurate. The MDGs have used targeted statistical manipulation to make it seem as though the poverty and hunger trends have been improving when in fact they have worsened. In addition, the MDGs use definitions of poverty and hunger that dramatically underestimate the scale likely of these problems. In reality, around four billion people remain in poverty today, and around two billion remain hungry - more than ever before in history, and between two and four times what the UN would have us believe. The implications of this reality are profound. Worsening poverty and hunger trends indicate that our present model of development is not working and needs to be fundamentally rethought.

Researchers have argued that wealthy nations rely on a large net appropriation of labour and resources from the rest of the world through unequal exchange in international trade and global commodity chains. Here we assess this empirically by measuring flows of embodied labour in the world economy from 1995–2021, accounting for skill levels, sectors and wages. We find that, in 2021, the economies of the global North net-appropriated 826 billion hours of embodied labour from the global South, across all skill levels and sectors. The wage value of this net-appropriated labour was equivalent to €16.9 trillion in Northern prices, accounting for skill level. This appropriation roughly doubles the labour that is available for Northern consumption but drains the South of productive capacity that could be used instead for local human needs and development. Unequal exchange is understood to be driven in part by systematic wage inequalities. We find Southern wages are 87–95% lower than Northern wages for work of equal skill. While Southern workers contribute 90% of the labour that powers the world economy, they receive only 21% of global income. Hickel and colleagues find that, in 2021, the economies of the global North net-appropriated 826 billion hours of embodied labour from the global South, across all skill levels and sectors. Unequal exchange is understood to be driven in part by systematic wage inequalities. They find Southern wages are 87-95% lower than Northern wages for work of equal skill. While Southern workers contribute 90% of the labour that powers the world economy, they receive only 21% of global income.

Wealthy countries can create prosperity while using less materials and energy if they abandon economic growth as an objective. Wealthy countries can create prosperity while using less materials and energy if they abandon economic growth as an objective.

The safe and just space framework devised by Raworth calls for the world's nations to achieve key minimum thresholds in social welfare while remaining within planetary boundaries. Using data on social and biophysical indicators provided by O'Neill et al., this paper argues that it is theoretically possible to achieve a good life for all within planetary boundaries in poor nations by building on existing exemplary models and by adopting fairer distributive policies. However, the additional biophysical pressure that this entails at a global level requires that rich nations dramatically reduce their biophysical footprints by 40-50%. Extant empirical studies suggest that this degree of reduction is unlikely to be achieved solely through efforts to decouple GDP growth from environmental impact, even under highly optimistic conditions. Therefore, for rich nations to fit within the boundaries of the safe and just space will require that they abandon growth as a policy objective and shift to post-capitalist economic models.

There are two sides to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which appear at risk of contradiction. One calls for humanity to achieve harmony with nature and to protect the planet from degradation, with specific targets laid out in Goals 6, 12, 13, 14, and 15. The other calls for continued global economic growth equivalent to 3% per year, as outlined in Goal 8, as a method for achieving human development objectives. The SDGs assume that efficiency improvements will suffice to reconcile the tension between growth and ecological sustainability. This paper draws on empirical data to test whether this assumption is valid, paying particular attention to two key ecological indicators: resource use and CO2 emissions. The results show that global growth of 3% per year renders it empirically infeasible to achieve (a) any reductions in aggregate global resource use and (b) reductions in CO2 emissions rapid enough to stay within the carbon budget for 2°C. In other words, Goal 8 violates the sustainability objectives of the SDGs. The paper proposes specific changes to SDG targets in order to resolve this issue, such as removing the requirement of aggregate global growth and introducing quantified objectives for resource use per capita with substantial reductions in high‐income nations. Scaling down resource use is also the most feasible way to achieve the climate target, as it reduces energy demand. The paper presents alternative pathways for realizing human development objectives that rely on reducing inequality—both within nations and between them—rather than aggregate growth. Los Objetivos de Desarrollo Sostenible (ODS) tienen dos caras que parecen estar en riesgo de contradicción. Una exige que la humanidad alcance la armonía con la naturaleza y proteja el planeta de la degradación, con metas específicas establecidas en los Objetivos 6, 12, 13, 14 y 15. La otra exige un crecimiento económico mundial continuo equivalente al 3% anual, como se describe en el Objetivo 8, como método para alcanzar los objetivos de desarrollo humano. Los ODS presuponen que las mejoras en la eficiencia serán suficientes para reconciliar la tensión entre el crecimiento y la sostenibilidad ecológica. Este documento se basa en datos empíricos para comprobar si esta suposición es válida, prestando especial atención a dos indicadores ecológicos clave: el uso de recursos y las emisiones de CO2. Los resultados muestran que un crecimiento mundial del 3% anual hace empíricamente inviable lograr (a) cualquier reducción en el uso agregado de recursos globales y (b) reducciones en las emisiones de CO2 lo suficientemente rápidas como para mantenerse dentro del presupuesto de carbono para 2°C. En otras palabras, el Objetivo 8 atenta contra los objetivos de sostenibilidad de los ODS. El documento propone cambios específicos en las metas de los ODS para resolver este problema, como la eliminación del requisito del crecimiento global agregado y la introducción de objetivos cuantificados para el uso de recursos per cápita, con reducciones sustanciales en los países de altos ingresos. Reducir el uso de recursos es también la forma más viable de alcanzar el objetivo climático, ya que reduce la demanda energética. El documento presenta vías alternativas para alcanzar los objetivos de desarrollo humano que se basan en la reducción de la desigualdad, tanto dentro de las naciones como entre ellas, en lugar del crecimiento agregado.

The revolution that brought the African National Congress (ANC) to power in South Africa was fractured by internal conflict. Migrant workers from rural Zululand rejected many of the egalitarian values and policies fundamental to the ANC's liberal democratic platform and organized themselves in an attempt to sabotage the movement. This anti-democracy stance, which persists today as a direct critique of \"freedom\" in neoliberal South Africa, hinges on an idealized vision of the rural home and a hierarchical social order crafted in part by the technologies of colonial governance over the past century.In analyzing this conflict, Jason Hickel contributes to broad theoretical debates about liberalism and democratization in the postcolonial world.Democracy as Deathinterrogates the Western ideals of individual freedom and agency from the perspective of those who oppose such ideals, and questions the assumptions underpinning theories of anti-liberal movements. The book argues that both democracy and the political science that attempts to explain resistance to it presuppose a model of personhood native to Western capitalism, which may not operate cross-culturally.

(3) Given the focus on profits and accumulation, there is a constant pressure to ‘cheapen’ inputs—specifically labour and nature—by compressing wages and resource prices while externalising social and ecological damages.8 Capitalism has always been organised as a world system, where accumulation in the ‘core’ (i.e., the affluent economies of Europe, the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Israel and Japan) is predicated on a large net appropriation of labour, energy and materials from the ‘periphery’ (developing economies in the global South), either directly as during the period of European colonialism, or indirectly through the patterns of unequal exchange in international trade and global commodity chains that predominate today.9 10 This arrangement drains the global South of resources that are necessary to meet human needs, and perpetuates patterns of poverty and underdevelopment.11 We need an analytical framework that can assess the extent to which these arrangements may have adverse effects on health outcomes. The historical geographer Jason Moore has used the term capitalogenic to specify that the ecological crisis we presently face is not simply a natural phenomenon or a problem caused by generic human activity, but is being produced by the capitalist system of production and by processes of capital accumulation.12 The term has become indispensable to analysts across disciplines for identifying the causal dynamics of ecological crisis and envisioning pathways out of it. Among affected populations, health outcomes remain poor as a result.24 These are artificial scarcities, and they could be ended by mobilising productive capacity to support high-quality public services for all.25 6) Diseases related to work Many disorders, including cardiovascular disease, mental health problems and other stress-related diseases, are due to unemployment, precarious employment, overwork, and lack of autonomy and control in the workplace.26–29 These problems are often produced by the structure of the economic system. All of these problems could be resolved with basic principles of economic democracy, whereby less-necessary forms of production could be scaled down, necessary labour could be shared more evenly and a public job guarantee could ensure universal access to socially useful jobs with democratic conditions and living wages. 7) Health disparities in race and gender Capital’s drive to cheapen labour has long leveraged ideologies of racism to justify the superexploitation of vulnerable or minoritised factions of society, particularly in the ‘peripheries’ of the world system.8 This directly affects the health outcomes of these communities, and also results in extreme disparities in wages: e.g., input-output data reveals that workers in the global South are paid on average 87%–95% less than workers in the global North, for work of equal skill.30 Racial health inequalities—both within countries and between them—can

The 'girl effect' - the idea that investment in the skills and labour of young women is the key to stimulating economic growth and reducing poverty in the global South - has recently become a key development strategy of the World Bank, the imf, usaid and dfid, in partnership with corporations such as Nike and Goldman Sachs. This paper examines the logic of this discourse and its stance towards kinship in the global South, situating it within the broader rise of 'gender equality' and 'women's empowerment' as development objectives over the past two decades. Empowerment discourse, and the 'capability' approach on which it is based, has become popular because it taps into ideals of individual freedom that are central to the Western liberal tradition. But this project shifts attention away from more substantive drivers of poverty - structural adjustment, debt, tax evasion, labour exploitation, financial crisis, etc - as it casts blame for underdevelopment on local forms of personhood and kinship. As a result, women and girls are made to bear the responsibility for bootstrapping themselves out of poverty that is caused by external institutions - and often the very ones that purport to save them.

The dominant narrative of global income inequality is one of convergence. Recent high-profile publications by Branko Milanovic and the World Bank claim that the global Gini coefficient has declined since 1988, and that inter-country inequality has declined since 1960. But the convergence narrative relies on a misleading presentation of the data. It obscures the fact that convergence is driven mostly by China; it fails to acknowledge rising absolute inequality; and it ignores divergence between geopolitical regions. This paper suggests alternative measures that bring geopolitics back in by looking at the gap between the core and periphery of the world system. From this perspective, global inequality has tripled since 1960.

High-income countries have used neocolonial negotiating power, global policy leverage and capital to procure enough doses to cover 245% of their citizens while leaving few doses for poorer countries.2 As a result, lower-income countries may not be able to vaccinate their populations until 2023.3 Such inequity is yet another example of how the interests of racial capitalism run roughshod over the golden rule of global solidarity—attend to the highest risk first.4 Currently, older and medically vulnerable individuals are dying from COVID-19 disproportionately in poor countries, while young, healthy individuals are getting vaccinated in wealthy ones.5 Vaccine apartheid is a not novel phenomenon. The notion that only certain corners of the world get to benefit from life-saving treatments is an everyday reality of a global health system driven by a capitalist, philanthropic model.6 7 But in times of crises—and as new variants threaten the vaccination plans of wealthy countries—these inequities and their solutions come to the forefront of global debate.8 Policy-makers in rich nations are aware of these issues. Over 50 years ago, Kwame Nkrumah observed how aid is a ‘revolving credit’ which returns to countries of the global North in the form of increased profits.19 To the extent that COVAX is being leveraged to protect corporate patents and profits, Nkrumah’s words continue to be germane. The focus on a donor-based model of aid in achieving vaccine equity has distracted leaders from the ideologies, economic systems and trade regulations that leave access to medicine to the forces of the marketplace rather than global health priorities.32 Achieving global vaccine justice requires a rapid shift in trade regulations and contract transparency that streamlines IP sharing and technology transfers.