Jeffrey Sachs The essential ingredient

story. Poor countries are poor, in their view, because the poor do not behave like "us". The battle against poverty thus becomes a battle against corruption, wrong ideas and incompetence, and little more. Of course, the morality tale sometimes fits, as in present-day Zimbabwe, where an ageing tyrant, surrounded by rapacious lieutenants, is destroying his country in a vain and desperate attempt to cling to power. Yet serious analysis reveals starkly and powerfully that poor governance is just one of many factors that trap more than one billion people in extreme poverty. Biophysical constraints are also critically important barriers to development (ScientificAmerican, March 2001, p 70). In Africa, such constraints include the ancient grip of malaria and other diseases, the vulnerabilities of rain-fed agriculture in the tropics, and the high transport costs for the 80 per cent or so of subSaharan Africa's people who live more than 100 kilometres from the coast. Similar constraints of disease, ecology and physical isolation trap the extremely poor of Central and South Asia, the Andes and elsewhere.