International Development: Shaping the mosaic
the era of “Sustainability” in development
By Fonju Ndemesah
Present development debate is full of ideas on sustainability. Because of the growing criticism, policy makers and some development thinkers tried to reanimate the development discourse after the shock produced by the “lost decade”. Now, development had to be rendered sustainable; how this will be done still remained a question.
The first step to address sustainability in development came from the Brundtland Report produced by the environment and development commission with the title “Our common future”. This report expressed the risk to the world’s ecosystem and humanity done by development which does not respect the environment. The Brundtland Report asked for a sustainable use of the world resources, which will not jeopardize the needs of future generations. Before then, to portray the dangers of the economic centered vision of development, some scholars had argued that, for the energy consumption of developing countries to be at the level of developed countries by 2025, we have to multiply by five the quantity of energy used in the whole world; a condition that the world ecosystem will be unable to support (Rist: 1996).
The Brundtland Report was followed by the World Earth Summit organized in Rio de Janeiro from the 3rd to the 14th of June 1992. The meeting was flanked by an “unofficial” gathering of civil society leaders and critics, popularly known as the “Global Forum”. The official meeting came out with five documents:
Henceforth, the development debate became preoccupied with the sustainable use of the world’s resources. Despite the clairvoyance of the new transition, development still remains focused on economic growth. This has pushed some development critics to question how far development can be sustainable. These critics argue that, after universalizing the concept of development, the “developers” are now bent on rendering development sustainable (Rist, 1996).
The development discourse nowadays rotates around the sustainable use of the world’s scarce resource to promote development. To fight against poverty, targets have been established with date limits to bring “growth with equity”, or to bring development that does not forget the poor and vulnerable part of world’s population. The Millennium Development Goals (MDG) sets, for example, targets and deadlines, and wishes to draw the attention of the international community in the fight against poverty.
Development or Developments?
The question that comes in mind after looking at the various transformations of the word development is to know whether we can talk of developmefactnt or developments. Like Marc Augé, I believe that “une société n’est pas un roman”, which you can read and come off with clear lines of the story. Any reading trying to understand a complex concept such as development can only be like a bucket of water in that complex and vast sea call development.
Should we talk of development or developments? As we have seen, many significants have been given to the concept development. Nyerere proposed that development should be self-reliance, Rodolfo Stavenhagen proposes ethnodevelopment or development with self confidence, Jimoh Omo-Fakada suggest development from the bottom, Orlando Fals Borda and Anisur Rahman insist on participatory development (Sachs, 1992). Sen (1999) says development is freedom, what counts is the development of the capabilities of the individual and the removal of unfreedoms. This various moves by scholars to describe what is development ends up with different and sometimes opposite description. This portrays that any attempt to give a universal description of development is an unreachable enterprise.
This notwithstanding, rather than focusing on development, I believe one has to meditate more on what makes development a matter of actuality. The above assumption makes us say like Majid Rahnema that “there can be as many poor as many perceptions of poverty as there are human beings (Sach,1992). Thus there is no model, stages or prototypes of development that are to be followed by humanity in all angles of the world. Development above being self-motivated must respect the cultural and historical differences of the human race. As Kindo puts it, “development should, therefore, be understood as the unfolding of what lies hidden within the person or community. What others can do is, at best; create an environment that stimulates development. In other words, “development can be nurtured, but not generated”" (Boeren, 1994).
Development should thus have a greater consideration to the world’s poor, who have always been missing in the past and even in current development thinking. Development should have a human face not only in policy documents, but also in practice. Development should be the liberty to think, judge, choose and act freely. Any vision of development (growth, empowerment, poverty reduction, participation, good governance, self-reliance, modernization etc), should, to say like Kindo, help to “nurture” and not create development. The measurement of a countries wealth by its gross national product (GNP) as is done in today’s economic centered vision of development “measures things not satisfaction” (Nyerere, 1973) .
Present development debate is full of ideas on sustainability. Because of the growing criticism, policy makers and some development thinkers tried to reanimate the development discourse after the shock produced by the “lost decade”. Now, development had to be rendered sustainable; how this will be done still remained a question.
The first step to address sustainability in development came from the Brundtland Report produced by the environment and development commission with the title “Our common future”. This report expressed the risk to the world’s ecosystem and humanity done by development which does not respect the environment. The Brundtland Report asked for a sustainable use of the world resources, which will not jeopardize the needs of future generations. Before then, to portray the dangers of the economic centered vision of development, some scholars had argued that, for the energy consumption of developing countries to be at the level of developed countries by 2025, we have to multiply by five the quantity of energy used in the whole world; a condition that the world ecosystem will be unable to support (Rist: 1996).
The Brundtland Report was followed by the World Earth Summit organized in Rio de Janeiro from the 3rd to the 14th of June 1992. The meeting was flanked by an “unofficial” gathering of civil society leaders and critics, popularly known as the “Global Forum”. The official meeting came out with five documents:
- The Rio declaration
- The convention on climatic change
- The convention on biodiversity
- The Forest declaration
- Agenda 21. This last point produced an 800 page document to save as action plan for the 21st Century.
Henceforth, the development debate became preoccupied with the sustainable use of the world’s resources. Despite the clairvoyance of the new transition, development still remains focused on economic growth. This has pushed some development critics to question how far development can be sustainable. These critics argue that, after universalizing the concept of development, the “developers” are now bent on rendering development sustainable (Rist, 1996).
The development discourse nowadays rotates around the sustainable use of the world’s scarce resource to promote development. To fight against poverty, targets have been established with date limits to bring “growth with equity”, or to bring development that does not forget the poor and vulnerable part of world’s population. The Millennium Development Goals (MDG) sets, for example, targets and deadlines, and wishes to draw the attention of the international community in the fight against poverty.
Development or Developments?
The question that comes in mind after looking at the various transformations of the word development is to know whether we can talk of developmefactnt or developments. Like Marc Augé, I believe that “une société n’est pas un roman”, which you can read and come off with clear lines of the story. Any reading trying to understand a complex concept such as development can only be like a bucket of water in that complex and vast sea call development.
Should we talk of development or developments? As we have seen, many significants have been given to the concept development. Nyerere proposed that development should be self-reliance, Rodolfo Stavenhagen proposes ethnodevelopment or development with self confidence, Jimoh Omo-Fakada suggest development from the bottom, Orlando Fals Borda and Anisur Rahman insist on participatory development (Sachs, 1992). Sen (1999) says development is freedom, what counts is the development of the capabilities of the individual and the removal of unfreedoms. This various moves by scholars to describe what is development ends up with different and sometimes opposite description. This portrays that any attempt to give a universal description of development is an unreachable enterprise.
This notwithstanding, rather than focusing on development, I believe one has to meditate more on what makes development a matter of actuality. The above assumption makes us say like Majid Rahnema that “there can be as many poor as many perceptions of poverty as there are human beings (Sach,1992). Thus there is no model, stages or prototypes of development that are to be followed by humanity in all angles of the world. Development above being self-motivated must respect the cultural and historical differences of the human race. As Kindo puts it, “development should, therefore, be understood as the unfolding of what lies hidden within the person or community. What others can do is, at best; create an environment that stimulates development. In other words, “development can be nurtured, but not generated”" (Boeren, 1994).
Development should thus have a greater consideration to the world’s poor, who have always been missing in the past and even in current development thinking. Development should have a human face not only in policy documents, but also in practice. Development should be the liberty to think, judge, choose and act freely. Any vision of development (growth, empowerment, poverty reduction, participation, good governance, self-reliance, modernization etc), should, to say like Kindo, help to “nurture” and not create development. The measurement of a countries wealth by its gross national product (GNP) as is done in today’s economic centered vision of development “measures things not satisfaction” (Nyerere, 1973) .