What could the £400bn lifeline thrown to British banks this week, let alone the telephone number size sums dug out of the US and other European governments' pockets, have meant to the 1.5bn people who live in abject poverty in the so-called developing world?

That is a question with which Oxfam's head of research Duncan Green has been playing. And although little of that money will find its way directly into poverty alleviation, he still draws comfort from the fact that world leaders were able to join forces and undertake joint action when they perceived a real threat to the capitalist system.

For it is joint action from rich nations that is needed to alleviate poverty.

Every ten years or so the Oxford-based charity, or non governmental organisation (NGO), carries out a survey into how its war on world poverty is progressing. And this year the survey has taken the form of two books, From Poverty to Power by Duncan Green (£15.95, Oxfam Publishing) and a small summary of the same book, The Urgency of Now by Duncan Green and Isobel Allen (£3.99, also from Oxfam).

The books tell us how we can avert a human and ecological disaster. The recipe for success involves what has come to be known as "Good Global Governance", ie governments pulling together — as they did in wartime, or against the threatened Severe Acute Respiratory syndrome (SARS) which killed 800 people in 2002-2003 and threatened to become an epidemic. And now, the financial crisis.

One way in which "good global governance" could reduce world inequality, Mr Green contends, would be to "regulate the global economy through, for example, changing the rules on trade, investment, and international financial markets."

Mr Green points out that the very structure of world finance is loaded against the poor. Sub-Saharan nations, for instance, comprise 27 per cent of World Bank members but have only eight per cent of the votes in the lending arm of that organisation.

And at present the head of the World Bank is always appointed by the USA while the boss of the International Monetary Fund is always appointed by Europe.

But does not changing the system mean, in layman's terms, transferring wealth from our rich world to their poor world; in other words promising us less and them more? And what politician would fight an election on that platform?

Mr Green said: "It is true that the politics are national and the problems are global — this is the difficulty.

"But such is the stuff of politics. Voters in the developed world must aim for longer-term stability, even though they are ruled by the four- or five-year election cycle. We are in Churchill country here: Democracy has its faults but it's the best system on offer.

"There are plenty of examples of what I mean happening in the past. For instance, income tax was introduced in the 19th century; people got less for their work but they began to see that their money could be put to good social use. It wasn't turkeys voting for Christmas. That is what we've got to do globally.

"Then there were men voting for votes for women, the abolition of slavery, the struggle against colonial rule — all these things were initially dismissed as unrealistic dreams."

But what is this disaster that governments must pull together to avert? Apart from ordinary poverty, climate change is now seen by scientists as threatening to render homeless by 2050 up to a fifth of the world population —mainly people in the developing world living in coastal zones threatened by rising sea levels.

Mr Green writes: "Homelessness can lead to migration, which on this scale is likely to cause unrest and ultimately conflict between and within countries.

"The amount of fresh water available could fall by 30 per cent in some regions, causing food shortages and civil unrest.

"Increasing shortages of basic resources — land, water, food — could destabilise much of the planet."

The incentive for concerted Government action is there, but do governments in the rich world have the political will to do the job?

Each year the global economy churns out about £5,400 worth of goods and services for every man, woman and child alive. That is more than 25 times the £208 a year (or one US dollar a day) which defines the "extreme poverty" in which more than a billion people live.

But is world poverty worse or better than ten years ago?

Mr Green said: "There's lots of room for optimism. Extreme poverty has fallen. And there are countries dotted around the world where governments have succeeded in investing in people and creating a virtuous circle which has meant better education, houses, and everything else.

"I was in Vietnam recently, for instance, and saw that motor bikes have largely replaced push bikes."

Mr Green believes in encouraging people within nations to become politically literate and to hold their governments to account in order, for instance, to eradicate corruption and make sure that money filters down to the poor who really need it. But could that policy not ferment political unrest?

Mr Green said: "Oxfam is not neutral. We are on the side of the poor. But we don't take political sides."

The Urgency of Now ends with a plea for readers "to talk about the ideas in this book" in order to spread the call for change. Among questions it poses are: Is it right that financial systems allow some people to become extremely rich while others live in abject poverty? Does it have to be this way?

And it argues that the rich world should pay more to ward off the threats of climate change, even though the poor world will be the main beneficiary. As Martin Luther King said: "Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilisations are written the pathetic words: too late."