Whatever happens to the recovery at home, soaring food prices appear certain to drive the global poor deeper into destitution this year, Kane said.
Foreign multinationals' dominance of food grains, genetically modified seed, fertilisers and pesticides has sucked small farmers into a ruthless global market and led to debt and destitution.
Critics point out that neoliberal policies have created the widest gap between the very rich and very poor in history, with unprecedented wealth for the rich and poverty and destitution for millions of the global poor (Nikiforuk 2007, Pogge 2002).
In some cases these companies have driven "devastating impacts for Cambodian citizens and the environment, including land grabs that have caused mass displacements and destitution among Cambodia's rural poor", Global Witness says.
All three bodies of work exude the sadness of a world soaked in loneliness and destitution.
Lowry's world was a week away from destitution.
The Pope's forthcoming encyclical, or teaching letter, entitled Laudato Si, is addressed to the world's 1.2 billion Catholics and is expected to be a dramatic intervention in the international political process, insisting that the fight against global warming, no less than the fight against misery and destitution, is a moral issue which must be addressed by the whole world.
At the global level, substantial progress has been made in dragging people out of destitution, and extending their lives.
"On the global level we see a scandalous gap between the opulence of the wealthy and the utter destitution of the poor," he said in the lengthy address on technology.
The issue of eliminating cotton subsidies should take center stage at the coming global trade talks if we are serious about helping millions of impoverished people escape poverty and destitution.
