The obvious proverbial elephant is capitalism. You cannot fix the hole in a bucket by pouring more water into it. The way to fix poverty isn't to make the poor richer (the 20th century proved that). It can only be solved by redistributing the wealth stolen by the wealthy over centuries. We don't need to help the poor countries, we just need to stop exploiting and punishing them.

The old mantra of capitalists was that given free reign the market will self regulate. The new model is to join business with public bodies which assumes you get the best of both worlds. But if you bring a psychopath and a humanist together all you get is humanist pie. Its the habitable earth vs capitalism. One has to go.