Although the poor do possess personal somethings (chart on the left; source), they also need many other things, such as clean water and health care. How does the world spend itself resources, including money, indicates our collective values and moral compass. Each year, the world spends approximately $1 trillion on military expenditures. The chart below represents that dollar amount. Study the chart carefully.

Military expenditures by the United States government alone totaled $767 billion in 1995. The U.S. spends more money on its armed forces than any other country, but relative to their GDP (gross domestic product, the wealth of a country) countries rank very different. Look at a chart of defense spending as percent of GDP for the top 23 countries and the cost of some U.S. military aircraft. The peacekeeping budget of the United Nations, by contrast, was only $3.6 billion in 1995. President Bush, Junior, is prepared to spend $100 billion to rid Iraq of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) but is unwilling to spend more than 0.2% of that sum ($200 million) on the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis, and Malaria -- Weapons of Mass Salvation (WMS). How governments spend money reflects their ideologies, among them issues of war and peace! [The Economist, 26 October 2002, 71]
The 1992 Earth Summit cost $10 million. The 1994 Paris Air Show and Weapons Exhibition (U.S. portion only) cost $12 million. What do these facts say about what matters?

Each square in the chart represents one-tenth of one percent of annual world military spending, or $1 billion. Source: World Game Institute

The red-green areas represent annual costs of various global programs that would solve the major human need and environmental problems we face today. It is clear the world has enough money to accomplish these goals. The combined total cost of these programs is approximately 25% of the world's total annual military expenditures. People in the USA spend $8 billion a year on cosmetics and Europeans $50 billion on cigarettes, yet the world cannot find the $10 billion the United Nations needs to give all people access to clean drinking water and sanitation. 1.1 billion people lack access to safe water and more than twice as many have no sanitation. More than 2 million die each year from such diseases as diarrhea! The cost of solving all the problems identified in the chart above are less than four percent of the combined wealth of the 225 richest people! These 225 richest people have a combined wealth of over $1 trillion, equal to the annual income of the poorest 47 percent of the world's people (2.5 billion).

The strategies are examples of what anyone (students, politicians, policy makers or the general public) could come up with if everyone had access to the data. This concept is central to the mission of the World Game Institute. WGI is very interested in your comments and suggestions for strategies. Please e-mail these to wgi@worldgame.org or write to: World Game Institute, 3215 Race Street, Philadelphia PA 19104 USA

1. Eliminate starvation and malnourishment: $19 billion per year total; $2 billion per year for 10 years for global famine relief--spent on international grain reserve and emergency famine relief; $10 billion per year for twenty years spent on farmer education through vastly expanded in-country extension services that teach/demonstrate sustainable agriculture, use of local fertilizer sources, pest and soil management techniques, post harvest preservation, and which provide clear market incentives for increased local production; $7 billion per year for indigenous fertilizer development. Educational resources of #10 coupled with this strategy. Closely linked with numbers 2, 2A, 2B, 4, 5, 9, 10.
2. Provide health care: $15 billion per year spent on providing primary health care through community health workers to all areas in the world that do not have access to health care. Closely linked with numbers 1, 3, 4, 5.
   • 2A. Child health care: $2.5 billion per year spent on a) providing Vitamin A to children who lack it in their diet, thereby preventing blindness in 250,000 children/year; b) providing oral rehydration therapy for children with severe diarrhea; and c) immunizing 1 billion children in developing world against measles, tuberculosis, diphtheria, whooping cough, polio and tetanus, thereby preventing the death of 6-7 million children/year.
   • 2B. Special health problems: $40 million per year for iodine addition to table salt to eliminate iodine deficiency, thereby reducing the 190 million who suffer from goiter and not adding to the 3 million who suffer from overt cretinism.
3. Eliminate inadequate housing and homelessness: $21 billion for ten years spent on making available materials, tools and techniques to people without adequate housing. Closely linked with numbers 1, 4, 5, 9.
4. Provide clean and abundant water: $10 billion per year for ten years spent on water and sanitation projects--wells, pipes, water purifying systems. Closely related to numbers 1, 2, 3, 9.
5. Eliminate illiteracy: $4.5 billion per year for ten years; $2 billion spent on a system of 10 to 12 communication satellites and their launching; $2 billion spent on ten million televisions, satellite dish receivers, and photovoltaic/battery units for power--all placed in village schools and other needed areas throughout high illiteracy areas; the rest (90% of funds), spent on culturally appropriate literacy programming and maintenance of system. Closely related to numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 9, 10, 11.
6. Increase efficiency: $33 billion per year for ten years spent on increasing car fleet mileage to over 50 m.p.g., plus increasing appliance, industrial processes, and household energy and materials use efficiency to state of the art. Closely linked with numbers 7, 8, 12, 13, 14.
7. Increase renewable energy: $20 billion per year for ten years spent on tax and other incentives for installation of renewable energy devices, graduated ten year phase-out of subsidies to fossil and nuclear fuels, research and development into more advanced renewable energy harnessing devices. Closely linked with numbers 6, 8, 11, 12, 13, 14.
8. Debt management: $30 billion per year for ten years spent on retiring $450 billion or more of current debt discounted to 50% face value. (Much of developing world's current debt is already discounted to 10-25% face value.) Not only helps developing countries get out of debt, but helps banks stay solvent. Closely linked with numbers 1, 6, 7, 10, 11, 14.
9. Stabilize population: $10.5 billion per year for ten years spent on making birth control universally available. Closely linked with numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
10. Reverse soil erosion: $24 billion per year for ten years spent on converting one-tenth of world's most vulnerable cropland that is simultaneously most susceptible to erosion, the location of most severe erosion, and the land that is no longer able to sustain agriculture, to pasture or woodland; and conserving and regenerating topsoil on remaining lands through sustainable farming techniques. Both accomplished through a combination of government regulation and incentive programs that remove the most vulnerable lands from crop production; and by farmer education through vastly expanded in-country extension services that teach/demonstrate sustainable agriculture and soil management techniques. Closely linked to #1.
11. Reverse deforestation: $7 billion per year for ten years spent on reforesting 150 million hectares needed to sustain ecological, fuel wood, and wood products needs. Planted by local villagers, costs would be $400 per hectare, including seedling costs. Additional costs for legislation, financial incentives, enforcement of rainforest protection. Closely linked with #10 and 14.
12. Reverse ozone depletion: $5 billion per year for twenty years spent on phasing in substitutes for CFCs, CFC taxes, incentives for further research and development. Closely linked with #14.
13. Stop acid rain: $8 billion per year for ten years spent on combination of tax incentive, government regulation and direct assistance programs that place pollution control devices (electrostatic precipitators, etc.) on all industrial users of coal, increase efficiency of industrial processes, transportation, and appliances. Closely linked to numbers 6, 7, 11, 14.
14. Stop global warming: $8 billion per year for thirty years spent on reducing carbon dioxide, methane and CFC release into atmosphere through combination of international accords, carbon taxes, increases in energy efficiency in industry, transportation, and household, decreases in fossil fuel use, increases in renewable energy use and reforestation. Closely linked with #'s 6, 7, 11, 12, 13.

• Ho-Ping: Food for Everyone, World Game Institute, Doubleday, New York #1,10.
• State of the World's Children, UNICEF, Oxford University Press, 1990; #2, 2A, 2B.
• UNICEF, Giving Children a Future: The World Summit for Children, New York, UNICEF, 1990, pp. 4-6, 10; and "Moving Towards a Global Ethic," Development Forum, p.1, Sept./Oct. 1990; #2, 2A, 2B.
• State of the World 1988, Worldwatch Institute, Washington, D.C.; #4, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11.
• Energy, Earth and Everyone, World Game Institute, Doubleday, New York; #6, 7.
• Soft Energy Paths, Amory Lovins, Ballinger, Boston; # 6, 7.
• 1990 Report on Progress Towards Population Stabilization, Population Crisis Committee, Washington, D.C.; #9.
• World Resources 1986, 1987, World Resources Institute, Washington, D.C.; #12, 13, 14.
• The Sky is the Limit, Strategies for Protecting the Ozone Layer, World Resources Institute, Washington, D.C., 1986; #12.

©1995 World Game Institute