Read my post again, O; I didn't say that we are seeing more famine events, I said we are seeing more-serious famine events. Linguistically, those two ideas are very different from each other.
In what way are they more serious? Are people more starving than not having any food? Are these famines affecting larger areas - yes, but given that there are fewer people in those areas the actual starvation isn't getting worse. There are fewer people suffering from starvation - they might be in more numerous but smaller groups - so I fail to see how you interpret 'more serious' famines. Longer lasting, maybe?
O, in 2008, the global number of Forcibly Displaced People stood at 42m; by 2010 that had risen to 43.7m; by 2012, to 45.2m: by 2014 the figure had risen to 59.5m (considerably higher than the 1994 figure of 47m) (Figures from UNHCR Global Trend reports)
And the primary method of estimating those figures is... to review the population of refugee camps. If - as I suggested - we have more of those camps, and they are being better run, we'd have a higher estimate of people. If, regardless of that, we do have more displaced people than we used to (proportionally - that it's absolutely more isn't really in question) that doesn't automatically mean we're any worse, given that they are being better catered for than they ever have been. It's still a terrible thing, but it's not as terrible as often as it used to be.
Is that why we still measure the number of people living on less than a dollar a day?
Are we? Most reports I see of poverty are talking about relative poverty in their local area - trying to ask 'who earns less than a dollar a day' is largely meaningless given the vast differentiation in the purchasing power of a dollar (or equivalent) in various places.
Our poor are extremely wealthy in global terms, O.
In the UK, you mean? Or perhaps, more widely, Europe? Yes, yes they are - good, isn't it.
You clearly haven't lived alongside the poorest, O. When we worked in Nepal, our monthly stipend was equivalent to about £350 (for a family of 4). Add housing, education and medical costs (all covered by the agency from the monies we, as a family unit raised) to that and we were on about £700 a month. During our first 3 years we lived in an area where there were a few professional Nepalese families living and their monthly income was around about £300; in our second 3 year stint we lived in an area that was largely business (the jewellery quarter was 150 yards from the house), and their monthly income was nearer £400.
These were affluent areas of the town we worked in. Others in the agency lived out in rural areas, and their neighbours' monthly income would struggle to be £30-40, possibly as low as £20. OK, these folk might be the odd £ or 2 better off than their parents 40-odd years ago.
So they're able to get by within their community, and they've not gotten any worse. That's a shame, but it's not exactly terrible. How many places that aren't Nepal now have running water that didn't, now have access to medical care that didn't, now have communication with the outside world that didn't.
I'm not pretending everyone's living in a Utopia, nor that we're anywhere near finished, nor that everything's moving in the right direction. However, as a global picture, there is a lower percentage of the populace of the planet that are starving, infant mortality as a global measure is down, preventable diseases are increasingly being controlled or eradicated, access to clean water and basic foods is better, communications technologies are more widespread. These are all good things, these are all improvements in the fundamentals of life for thousand, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, and, in some cases, millions of people.
The world is a better place than it has been; let's keep that going.
O.
