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Millennium Development Goals
Brazil
Brazil is a country of
contrasts. It’s flourishing culture, middle income status and leadership in
the Americas is coupled with entrenched poverty, persistent inequality and
strains on its natural environment. It is ranked 63 rd in the Human
Development Index, and has a GDP per capita of $8500 (adjusted by purchasing
power parity). A confluence of events, including the election of a President
with a strong social welfare agenda, created the opportunity to reinvigorate
poverty alleviation efforts. In Brazil, economic and social status tends to
vary by geography, race and gender, a legacy of the country's history.
Imposed and de facto colonial and post-colonial divisions among indigenous
peoples and descendents of Portuguese settlers, African slaves and European,
Middle Eastern and Asian immigrants created persistent structures of
exclusion and inequality.
Today, Brazil faces extreme income distribution: at the end of the 1990s,
the richest 1% and the poorest 50% of the population each commanded 10% of
national income; 3% of Brazilians hold approximately 66% of the country's
arable land. In fact, its Gini Index indicated 59.7 in 2004. There is also
an urgent need to clarify property rights — in agricultural lands, the
Amazon, indigenous peoples' areas as well as in the favelas — and
to extend water and sanitation, primary education and other social services,
especially to rural areas in the north. Closely related to these issues are
environmental concerns. The rain forests are being cleared, legally and
illegally, for timber and agricultural land, further threatening the
diversity and welfare of indigenous peoples, natural flora and the Amazon
basin.
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