Given absolute poverty is defined by the World Bank as "people living below the poverty line of $1.9 per day", there's an implicit requirement that people be in the International System to be not in poverty. Personally, I see a disconnect between the given definition and my preconception of what poverty actually is. To my mind, impoverishment has more to do with loss a connection with the natural world and traditional culture than it does with an arbitrary monetary remuneration.
Wikipedia gives these definitions of general poverty
United Nations: Fundamentally, poverty is the inability of having choices and opportunities, a violation of human dignity. It means lack of basic capacity to participate effectively in society. It means not having enough to feed and clothe a family, not having a school or clinic to go to, not having the land on which to grow one’s food or a job to earn one’s living, not having access to credit. It means insecurity, powerlessness and exclusion of individuals, households and communities. It means susceptibility to violence, and it often implies living in marginal or fragile environments, without access to clean water or sanitation.
World Bank: Poverty is pronounced deprivation in well-being, and comprises many dimensions. It includes low incomes and the inability to acquire the basic goods and services necessary for survival with dignity. Poverty also encompasses low levels of health and education, poor access to clean water and sanitation, inadequate physical security, lack of voice, and insufficient capacity and opportunity to better one’s life.
In many ways these definitions have more to do with integrating people into the International System than with the quality and value of their lives.
There are considered to be two major independent demographic trends in the developing world, specifically Rural Impoverishment and Urbanisation. International Development programs set poorly defined goals towards alleviating poverty with programmes aimed at pulling poor traditional communities out of "poverty". This is a self-fulfilling programme, the demographic change from rural poor to urban life gives aid organisations the opportunity to pat themselves on their collective backs for a job well done, while helping re-enforce the belief and the reality that rural communities need saving from their lives.
The move from relatively sustainable subsistence lifestyles to city life is a process of increasing complexity and as such both requires and allows greater flows of energy and resources as economic development occurs. This is only possible due to the ability of the system as a whole to provide sufficient exergy to allow this "growth" to occur and be sustained. As we move post-peak available energy declines (as is quantified by the somewhat controversial ETP model), there will likely be more absolute poverty in developing nations as a result, but this will only illicit more aid, and a greater impetuous towards accelerating the processes making rural life unsustainable just when we really need the diversity of skills and cultural knowledge to squeeze through the bottleneck.
Am I alone seeing things this way?