Naming the world's greatest crisis is a popular pastime these days. At this month's Live Earth concerts a variety of experts -- punk rockers, academics and politicians among them -- argued earnestly that "climate change is the No. 1 problem facing humanity." That's one opinion. We suspect that many other residents of Earth might disagree. Among them the 980 million people living on less than $1 per day. The prospect of starvation tomorrow tends to put worries that the oceans may rise in the next 2,000 years into perspective.

And if we can agree that extreme poverty is a far bigger and more immediate problem than global warming, we might even allow ourselves to indulge in a rare bit of optimism.

As our story beginning on page 30 explains, the United Nation's Millennium Development Goals(MDG)comprise eight objectives. Chief among them is the heroic commitment to reduce by half the proportion of the world's citizens living in extreme poverty between 1990 and 2015. Already this percentage has fallen from a third to a fifth. "If progress continues, the MDG target will be met," states the UN's most recent update. So far, the number of people living on less than $1 a day has fallen by nearly 300 million.

This massive reduction in poverty in such a short time deserves to be recognized as one of the world's greatest achievements. And yet the UN spends little time on the likely success of its own poverty goal. A peculiar pathology of pessimism leads the authors to devote more attention to invented negatives such as increasing income inequality in some countries. And since most of the poverty reduction has occurred in booming China and India, the overall decline in worldwide poverty is widely seen as something of an illusory benefit.

All this is doubly curious. Income equality is a rich country's preoccupation. A starving family is made unequivocally better off when it emerges from extreme poverty and we should celebrate this, not look for reasons to wring our hands. As for the geography of poverty, it is true that Africa remains a benighted continent. But having set as a goal a reduction in worldwide poverty, why should it matter where those saved souls live? India and China deserve a spotlight for having had so much success, not an asterisk.

The fact that these two countries have experienced the best records in tackling poverty is not mere chance. These Third World countries' improvements coincide exactly with their participation in the global marketplace and their acceptance of First World tools of development. We may have many complaints with China in particular, on political and diplomatic issues, but that country's acceptance of trade, entrepreneurship and private capital as a means to feed the masses has been an unquestioned triumph.

Then again, perhaps that explains the curious reluctance to recognize this success. India and China have largely tackled poverty without the need for fundraising concerts, celebrity pleadings or high-minded international aid packages; Africa, on the other hand, continues to founder despite all such attention.

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