Development as if the World Mattered*
The world desperately needs a new model of development. Most of the world’s people are stuck in poverty, and all major ecosystems are in decline. Spending more money, however, will not by itself solve the problems. The answer must include fundamentally rethinking international development so that it implements world best practice in sustainable development technologies in ways that promote the creation of locally controlled, viable businesses.
But unless there are changes in how development money is spent, and how development is done, merely increasing aid will not decrease poverty. Around the world, aid money creates perverse versions of a welfare society, benefiting big western contractors and foreign NGO’s. When the money runs out and westerners leave, the people are often in greater poverty. Each “crisis du jour� repeats the process – money pours in to help afflicted people, but winds up in the pockets of developing country contractors.
Real development starts its business planning from the bottom up. It asks how much does a farmer have to spend? Will a product increase an urban dweller’s income? Natural Capitalism and a growing array of other books prove how this can be done in ways that build local capacity, businesses and jobs.
In India, SELCO is delivering solar electricity without subsidies to poor families. In China “Eco-machines� of living plants are cleaning the water in polluted canals, while creating habitat and beautiful community parkways. SEKEM, in Egypt, is using private enterprise to lift thousands of people out of poverty, deliver quality organic food, and now, create a University.
Sustainability practices like efficient and renewable energy supplies, green building technologies, efficient water treatment systems, and sustainable approaches to providing food and health care do better to meet development needs than last century’s technologies offered by the western consulting firms development agencies typically hire.
Our tax dollars fund the current system of “development done wrong.� We deserve better, and the rest of the world desperately needs it.
L. Hunter Lovins, Time Magazine’s 2000 Hero for the Planet, and author of Natural Capitalism, has recently co-authored LASER, Local Action for Economic Renewal, available for free at www.global-laser.org. She works in such countries as Afghanistan, where she is an advisor to the Energy Minister.
*A full paper by this title can be downloaded here.
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