Poverty Before All Else

Many people believe environmental issues are the most important problem to solve on Earth. Others believe we need to stop draining our blue and green planet of its precious, natural resources. To be straight forward, all of these ideas are impossible. Unless we can solve the poverty problem. 

People living in poverty are similar to those who are stuck on one side of a fallen bridge. All the resources to rebuild the bridge are on the other side, but the people in poverty have no access to them. Unless, per say, someone across the gaping crevice where the bridge once stood, decided to rebuild it themselves, allowing for the freeing of poverty stricken people from the one side of the bridge they'd known their whole life. 

People in poverty cannot produce a solution for their challenge without the aid of outsiders. Goal #1 for The Global Goals, is to decrease the population of poverty stricken people to 1% by 2030. With the amount of people that recovering from poverty increase, so do our chances and abilities at solving the rest of our world problems. 

The percentage of people living in poverty in 1992 was 25%. That's approximately 1.4 billion people. By 2010, that number was reduced almost in half to 12.7%. This progress is great news, but still not good enough. All life has value, and as more fortunate and educated human beings, it is our responsibility to help our less lucky neighbours. 

Once our poverty problem is taken care of, we can begin to shift focus onto other important matters involving our troubled Earth. With a greater number of people saved from poverty, and able to take action and aid other world problems, the better shot we have at making this world a better place for all of us to live in.   

Our world is precious, and there is only one like it. We are special and must take care of each other. We must end poverty to begin the salvation of our planet.