Background
Across the International Development Cooperation (IDC) sector, knowledge is increasingly being acknowledged as a key resource to achieve effectiveness.  In recent years, many NGOs in the Netherlands and beyond have developed knowledge-related programmes, and in some cases, established or further expanded organizational units specialized in knowledge sharing and learning. It is however not clear whether they amass to a real change of the knowledge landscape.

 One of the impediments to development approaches in the Netherlands is commonly felt to be the fact that the different knowledge domains of researchers, practitioners and policy-makers are not working together to create new knowledge for development. Hence cross-domain knowledge integration – understood as processes of knowledge co-creation linking domains particularly those of policy-making, science and practitioners – has received increased attention. This workshop aims to tease out elements and principles that determine effective knowledge creation processes.

 Central to the seminar is the results of research on effective knowledge creation processes undertaken by Wenny. It  has its roots in both Hivos’ and IKM Emergent’s interest and experiences in how knowledge integration occurs and how it can be facilitated.

Hivos Knowledge Programme is a practitioner-academic collaboration aimed at developing knowledge on issues imperative to the work of civil society organisations (CSOs) and the development sector at large. To achieve its goals Hivos works closely with CSOs and academic centres worldwide.

IKM Emergent argues that development is a knowledge industry and the interaction between these domains is needed at a fundamental level if development issues are to be resolved.

]]> http://3eintelligence.wordpress.com/2012/02/13/a-safe-and-just-space-for-humanity-can-we-live-within-the-doughnut/ Mon, 13 Feb 2012 20:07:12 +0000 Willy De Backer http://3eintelligence.wordpress.com/2012/02/13/a-safe-and-just-space-for-humanity-can-we-live-within-the-doughnut/ “Humanity’s challenge in the 21st century is to eradicate poverty and achieve prosperity for all within the means of the planet’s limited natural resources. In the run-up to Rio+20, this discussion paper presents a visual framework – shaped like a doughnut – which brings planetary boundaries together with social boundaries, creating a safe and just space between the two, in which humanity can thrive. Moving into this space demands far greater equity – within and between countries – in the use of natural resources, and far greater efficiency in transforming those resources to meet human needs.”  

Absolutely brilliant analysis by Oxfam in preparation of the Rio+20 Summit. Must-read!

Read also this excellent article by George Monbiot on the Oxfam report.

Earlier this week, the International Planned Parenthood Foundation (IPPF) held an event at which speakers debated the motion: “Women’s empowerment and sustainable development—have we failed?”

Leymah Gbowee, the 2011 Nobel peace prize co-laureate and Liberian peace activist, spoke illuminatingly about the crucial role women play in times of conflict. She highlighted the unique ways in which women facilitate peace in times of war.

Firstly it is women who provide basic services, in the form of food and shelter, to those internally displaced by civil war. It is also women who negotiate and secure safe passage through checkpoints set up by rival factions. And, thirdly, women negotiate peace on behalf of their communities by identifying and validating those that are members of the community. Women carry out these roles in the face of the constant threats of kidnapping, rape and murder.

The paradox of war is that women find themselves empowered during times of conflict to the same degree that they are disempowered in times of peace. When conflicts end, Gbowee explained, women are dismissed as underqualified and so excluded from formal peace negotiations. She has called for recognition of the valuable experience of women during times of conflict. Her efforts as an activist involve encouraging female participation in elections.

The fact that conflict affects men and women differently has only recently begun to influence the peacekeeping and development efforts of foreign governments and NGOs. The constant threat of rape directly inhibits the ability of women to carry out their peace-facilitating roles. Gry Larsen, the Norwegian state secretary for Foreign Affairs, spoke at the debate of the importance of gender-appropriate post-conflict strategies.

Making development and aid projects gender-appropriate often involve simple considerations of logistics, management and communication. Placing food stores, medical tents and toilets, for example, closer to communities, along well-travelled routes or in open spaces significantly reduces the risk of rape. And information relating to when and where fresh aid supplies will be delivered allow women, who most often collect the aid, to arrange safe travel.

Ram Mashru

The Lancet has an excellent article on the link between health and sustainability in the run-up to the Rio+20 conference.

This new OECD report looks at how developing countries can master the sustainable use of their natural resources.

As the government enhances its power to pursue a national development agenda, ensuring the Law does not contribute to an erosion of democracy is required to protect the rights of citizens and to mitigate risk for investors.  Currently, the Government is drafting the technical regulations associated with the Law; regulations alone are insufficient to uphold Indonesia’s democratic principles, thus three points require consideration: constitutionality, transparency, accountability.

First, unlike China, Indonesia is a Constitutional Democracy; therefore, the Constitution (as interpreted by the Constitutional Court) maintains the highest authority, not the National Land Agency (BPN) or provincial governors. The Constitutional Court must protect minority communities and ensure that Chapter XA, Article 28I (3), “The cultural identities and rights of traditional communities shall be respected in accordance with the development of times and civilizations”, is upheld as traditional and marginalized communities face the highest risk from cronyism within infrastructure projects.

Second, transparency will enhance consistency and predictability which are essential to minimizing investor risk, and to ensure that the Law is enforced in a similar manner across Indonesia’s vast archipelago.  An open database displaying: the project, the site, the shareholders, the project value, expected tax revenue, and expected profits is necessary to ensuring that the international standard of ‘Free, Informed Prior Consent’ is upheld throughout the musyawarah (local public consultation) process.

Third, ultimate accountability resides with voters, so voters must be informed on the land acquisition process to allow for the removal of officials who abuse the Law.  Within the dispute mechanism as currently outlined, the review team may consist entirely of unelected officials while the Provincial Governor appoints the ‘academic’ on the six-member review team, and civil society is remains uninvited.  In this model, the only mechanism for political accountability vis-a-vis the Governor is on election day.  Increased political risk is a necessary check in a democratic society and a principle that investors must be willing to uphold.

Overall, opportunities from the Law are exciting as the previous process was opaque and inefficient thus hindering development.  Furthermore, previous processes increased risk to vulnerable groups who were unable to fend off land speculation or afford to engage in the costly litigation process.  By ensuring constitutionality, transparency, and accountability, Indonesia’s future economic growth will increase qualitatively, not only quantitatively.

Excellent article by Paul Collier on the opportunities and challenges for the greening of Africa’s economy and energy system.

The conclusion:

"Asia in particular needs to find its own path to development. Going one step further the region must redefine what it means to be developed. Rather than follow the West down the plank of fossil-fueled and consumption-led growth, Asian leaders should pause and take stock of where that has gotten their Western counterparts."

Via www.global-inst.com

Busan is like a life-sized lesson for participants in this conference. As the Korean president Lee Myung-bak reminded delegates in his speech to the conference, when he was a child, this was one of the poorest countries in the world, and Busan was used to import food to stop people starving after the civil war. In From Poverty to Power, Oxfam’s Duncan Green makes this point too, recalling that 50 years ago Korea’s main export was wigs made from human hair.

Aid played a part in this, and it’s worth looking at why Korea succeed in moving from being a recipient to a member of the OECD Development Assistance Committee, the donor group that oversees Official Development Assistance (ODA).

The first lesson is that ODA has to be stable and reflect a long-term commitment. Korea could count on the US and Japan, and knew from one year to the next what funding to expect. Volatility makes programme management harder, or even impossible. I’ve heard stories from the field of health, education, and other projects that were started, were going well and then had to be stopped because promised funding suddenly dried up. The OECD says that the value of aid is reduced by 15% to 20% when it is unpredictable and volatile.

For the outsider, one of the more opaque terms of the “aid community’s” particularly opaque jargon is “ownership”. What it means is that countries receiving aid take charge of the process. Korea didn’t always agree with its partners, but the results show that it knew best what strategy corresponded to its needs and resources. It wanted non-military aid rather than the guns, tanks and planes it was being offered, and it insisted on focusing on large enterprises rather than the small and medium-sized businesses foreign development experts told it were the key to success. Samsung and Sons would no doubt have been a great little shop for the latest Japanese and American gadgets.

However, to “own” the development process a country needs to develop a whole range of skills and institutions. For instance, if it’s going to export, it needs lawyers who understand international trade rules and port managers who can get the goods onto the ships on time. This is what’s meant by “capacity building”. Countries can’t be expected to acquire all these capacities on their own, but they shouldn’t depend on outsiders either. While over 1500 foreign experts were sent to Korea between 1962 and 1971, over 5 times as many Koreans received training abroad.

Another thing about aid programmes is that the best ones become useless because they’re no longer needed. In the 1950s and 1960s, practically all of Korea’s foreign funding came from grants, but by the mid-70s, grants only represented 11% of funds, the rest being loans. The fact that Korea respected repayment conditions reassured private finance and encouraged foreign direct investment in the country. 

Korea also proves that it’s possible to recover from even the most desperate situation. At the end of the 1950s this was a mainly agricultural country still suffering from a war that had killed or injured over 2.5 million civilians. If conference delegates want to see a success story, they just have to look around them. And if they want a reminder that the fruits of economic success aren’t always shared equally, they can look at those women scrubbing the ground they walk on.

 Useful links

OECD work on developent cooperation

"Development progress in the world’s poorest countries could be halted or even reversed by mid-century unless bold steps are taken now to slow climate change, prevent further environmental damage, and reduce deep inequalities within and among nations, according to projections in the 2011 Human Development Report."  

Norway, Australia and the Netherlands top the rankings. 

Report warns that climate change and other sustainability crises including social inequality could reverse good progress made over the last 40 years.

The Guardian’s Damian Carrington has a good article on this sustainability challenge.

Show original

In preparation the commissioned a number of ‘diagnostics’ that I think could be used as templates for studies in other countries. It include a very interesting study of SMERU (a local think tank) and a comparative study of middle income countries’ investment in economic and social policy research:

The proposed ‘Revitalising Indonesia’s Knowledge Sector for Development Policy’ program aims to enable Indonesian policy-makers to make contestable, evidence-informed decisions on how best to spend national budgetary resources in ways that help the poor. It will support the domestic supply of knowledge products to inform policy, as well as the ability of decision makers to use those products to inform their policy choices.

Design document

• Revitalizing Indonesia’s Knowledge Sector for Development Policy—Design Document [PDF 1.2mb]

Diagnostics documents

• Diagnostics commissioned for Revitalising Indonesia’s Knowledge Sector for Development Policy [PDF 89kb]

• Economic Factors Underpinning Constraints in Indonesia’s Knowledge Sector [PDF 342kb]

• Study of the role of Indonesian Government research units (‘Balitbang’) in bridging research and development policy [PDF 401kb]

• In search of an identity for the DRN [PDF 373kb]

• Study of the role of the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) in bridging between research and development policy [PDF 605kb]

• Diagnostic on evidence-based public policy formulation under decentralisation [PDF 354kb]

• Study of knowledge needs and supply constraints for gender research in Indonesia’s knowledge sector [PDF 842kb]

• Overview of the Indonesian knowledge sector [PDF 777kb] 

• Review of social science capacity building support to Indonesia’s knowledge sector [PDF 226kb]

• Comparative experiences of middle income countries [PDF 2mb]

• The political economy of policy-making in Indonesia—Opportunities for improving the demand and use of knowledge [PDF 815kb]

• The SMERU Research Institute: History and lessons learned [PDF 344kb]

• Knowledge for policy: Regulatory obstacles to the growth of a knowledge market in Indonesia [PDF 580kb]

More information on the programme can be found in the draft document

I would have liked to see more direct support to the media and political parties (as both intermediaries and ‘demanders’ of research) as well as possibly thinking of think tanks as intermediaries instead of suppliers of research but I recognise that one donor cannot do it all in one go. The strategy is significant and long term enough to offer plenty of opportunities for learning and review. This will certainly offer an opportunity for more studies on the role of knowledge in politics in Southeast Asia.

Today’s post is from  

Yesterday I had the opportunity to address the G20 Working Group on Development and to thank its representatives for the contribution they have made to a new global consensus on development. The Government of Korea deserves much credit for insisting on development as a crucial component of any formula to ensure global economic stability, and for promoting the Seoul Development Consensus—an ambitious effort to place development high on the agenda of the world’s economic powers.

An important upcoming event on this agenda is the High Level Forum in Busan later this year. This will be the fourth in a series of forums convened to look at urgent issues of development flows and their value for money. Earlier forums set forth what are now widely recognized principles of aid effectiveness. The principles were based on an accumulating body of evidence that increased development resources were not necessarily translating into enhanced performance—and a keen awareness that improvement was needed.

While the same concerns are still with us today, the dynamic for the Busan forum is entirely different. While earlier forums were donor-driven, today, developing countries are setting the agenda and are active and essential parties to the process. And they have high expectations from their development partners. They want better cooperation, ownership of their own development agendas, and alignment of resources to their strategies. They are asking for more transparent and more predictable resource flows. And they are looking for measurable results. They want DAC donors to coordinate better with non-DAC providers of assistance, and they want to know how this will be done. Finally, from Busan, they expect an agreement that can be monitored, to make commitments tangible.

As Chair of the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) and someone who has taken part in the OECD/DAC and followed it since the 1990s, I can testify that among the members of this group, the awareness that we cannot operate in a donor vacuum has grown enormously since the first forum on aid effectiveness. Perhaps the most dramatic reflection of this growth has been the evolution of the OECD/DAC-sponsored Working Party on Aid Effectiveness. Today, half of the members of this forum represent developing countries. Civil society is at the table, as are the multilateral organizations, the UN, the World Bank, the IMF and the regional banks.

Even so, we know that there is still much the DAC needs to do. We know, for example, that we must:

• be more transparent in all that we do, creating the systems that will give our partners and our own citizens real-time information on our resources and programs;
• be more predictable about our plans, revealing our forward-spending intentions so that partners can also plan;
• find better ways to integrate global funds and national needs;
• reduce the fragmentation that impedes rather than facilitates strategic development goals;
• come to the assistance of fragile states, who often have less funding than their needs and performance warrant;
• clarify the role of official development assistance (ODA) to ensure that it supports the emergence of “the developmental state” and leverages other, larger, flows of resources without being captured by special interests;
• and open our doors and our minds to those who are proud to practice what is broadly called “South-South cooperation”, nations whose standing to assist others is based on their own success in poverty reduction and the affinity that is a natural by-product of a shared experience with poverty.

Busan will be a success if it provides the political impetus to ensure that not only DAC members, but all development players follow through on what we know will produce positive development results.

We are on the verge of a new era of development cooperation. Development cooperation programs can catalyze, help build capacity and fill revenue gaps, but they defer to the ownership of our partners and their own, accountable governments.

The OECD/DAC believes that the Working Party on Aid Effectiveness will continue to be an indispensible vehicle for this new era. We also understand the need to engage the United Nations even more fully. Our operational relationship with UNDP and the UN Development Cooperation Forum are already strong, and they will certainly become even deeper as we sharpen the focus on developing country strategies and results. The DAC also seeks to engage even more fully with other national providers of assistance, with civil society organizations and with the private sector.

We recognize that if Busan outcomes are to be institutionalized internationally they must be monitored objectively. The OECD/DAC’s Development Cooperation Directorate—an entity that has no operational role and no programs that need rationalizing—is well placed to provide this monitoring, as it has done in the past.

One of the important challenges of Busan is to create a post-Busan structure that will engage political leadership at a high level, along the lines of a global development forum bringing together DAC members, emerging economies, leaders from the developing countries, civil society and the private sector. As a ministerial-level body, such an entity could bring more policy coherence to development, recommend ways to leverage ODA to attract private sector investment, monitor compliance with agreements reached in Busan, and act as a political voice for development.

To me, the message is clear: there should be no political obstacles to a meaningful agreement in Busan. An ambitious agreement at Busan will go far in reaching the MDGs, as well as goals set more recently by the G20. It is fundamental to set the bar high. The global challenges that confront G20 leaders—financial, security, food, infrastructure, health, education—cannot be solved without development progress.

 Useful links

 OECD work on aid effectiveness including the Paris Declaration and the Accra Agenda

“The marginalization of the (poor) majority leads to narrow and shallow domestic markets…

So landowning elites orient their production to export markets where consumers do have purchasing power…

By doing so, elites have ever less interest in the well-being or purchasing power of the poor at home, as the poor are not a market for them, but rather a cost in terms of wages to be kept as low as possible…

By keeping wages and living standards low, elites guarantee that healthy domestic markets will never emerge, reinforcing export orientation…

The result is a downward spiral into deeper poverty and marginalization, even as national exports become more “competitive” in the global economy.

One irony of our world, then, is that food and other farm products flow from areas of hunger and need to areas were money is concentrated, in Northern countries.”

- Peter Rosset, “Genetic Engineering of Food Crops for the Third World: An Appropriate Response to Poverty, Hunger and Lagging Productivity?”

——————————————————————————————————————-

“Dr Judith MacKay, Director of the Asian Consultancy on Tobacco Control in Hong Kong, claims that tobacco’s “minor” use of land denies 10 to 20 million people of food. “Where food has to be imported because rich farmland is being diverted to tobacco production, the government will have to bear the cost of food imports,” she points out.

… The bottom line for governments of developing countries is that the net economic costs of tobacco are profoundly negative — the cost of treatment, disability and death exceeds the economic benefits to producers by at least US$200 billion annually “with one third of this loss being incurred by developing countries”.

— John Madeley, Big Business Poor Peoples; The Impact of Transnational Corporations on the World’s Poor, (Zed Books, 1999) pp. 53, 57

http://www.globalissues.org/article/7/causes-of-hunger-are-related-to-poverty

  Peter Rosset, “Genetic Engineering of Food Crops for the Third World: An Appropriate Response to Poverty, Hunger and Lagging Productivity?”

http://www.globalissues.org/article/533/tobacco

John Madeley, Big Business Poor Peoples; The Impact of Transnational Corporations on the World’s Poor, (Zed Books, 1999) pp. 53, 57

“The marginalization of the (poor) majority leads to narrow and shallow domestic markets…

So landowning elites orient their production to export markets where consumers do have purchasing power…

By doing so, elites have ever less interest in the well-being or purchasing power of the poor at home, as the poor are not a market for them, but rather a cost in terms of wages to be kept as low as possible…

By keeping wages and living standards low, elites guarantee that healthy domestic markets will never emerge, reinforcing export orientation…

The result is a downward spiral into deeper poverty and marginalization, even as national exports become more “competitive” in the global economy.

One irony of our world, then, is that food and other farm products flow from areas of hunger and need to areas were money is concentrated, in Northern countries.”

- Peter Rosset, “Genetic Engineering of Food Crops for the Third World: An Appropriate Response to Poverty, Hunger and Lagging Productivity?”

——————————————————————————————————————-

“Dr Judith MacKay, Director of the Asian Consultancy on Tobacco Control in Hong Kong, claims that tobacco’s “minor” use of land denies 10 to 20 million people of food. “Where food has to be imported because rich farmland is being diverted to tobacco production, the government will have to bear the cost of food imports,” she points out.

… The bottom line for governments of developing countries is that the net economic costs of tobacco are profoundly negative — the cost of treatment, disability and death exceeds the economic benefits to producers by at least US$200 billion annually “with one third of this loss being incurred by developing countries”.

— John Madeley, Big Business Poor Peoples; The Impact of Transnational Corporations on the World’s Poor, (Zed Books, 1999) pp. 53, 57

http://www.globalissues.org/article/7/causes-of-hunger-are-related-to-poverty

  Peter Rosset, “Genetic Engineering of Food Crops for the Third World: An Appropriate Response to Poverty, Hunger and Lagging Productivity?”

http://www.globalissues.org/article/533/tobacco

John Madeley, Big Business Poor Peoples; The Impact of Transnational Corporations on the World’s Poor, (Zed Books, 1999) pp. 53, 57

Unfortunately, the project we were visiting had produced more problems than exciting results. And the Wild West frontier town turned out to be a decaying white elephant (see article). We were told that casino managers had started to use “innovative” methods to collect money from indebted gamblers’ families. The Chinese and Lao Governments then jointly closed down casinos, hotels, bars and other establishments. There still were red bras on nearly all laundry lines, but otherwise this was just an oversized border truck stop. And trucks there were: no wild-mountains-remote-community-ethnic-forests, but the “east-west-passage”, a truck lane linking China’s landlocked south-west with the ports in Thailand and Myanmar.

But it was wild. Totally wild. Everywhere. It turned out to be the major topic of our trip. The figures we got cannot be verified, there are official sources only. But I have no doubt they are approximately right. White gold everywhere.

Luangnamtha is one of Lao’s rice baskets. The province has about 160’000 inhabitants, 25’000 families, producing 65’000 tons of rice on 12’000 ha. That’s a surplus of at least 10’000 tons per year, the province is ordered by the 5-year-plan to boost rice production by an additional 10% per year. Improving rice production is what the project we visited would be about. But that’s not wild, that’s not white gold. It ‘s something like 40% of provincial GDP, which stands at meager 650 USD/capita. 10% annual growth in rice production will increase GDP by 4% per year. But GDP growth is 10% per annum already!

White gold is totally different. White gold comes on 27’000 ha. 2’000 ha are on-stream today, contributing roughly 10% to the province’s GDP. 25’000 ha will come on-stream in the coming 2 to 3 years. They will double the province’s GDP in the next couple of years. That’s the wild, wild thing everybody is talking about. Rubber will change the north of Laos in a way and pace that’s simply difficult to image.

Here are a few of the things we talked about:

• 5’000 ha are said to be concessions to Chinese investors, 22’000 ha are “small-holder” plantations. While this probably stretches my understanding of small-holders, there is no doubt many ordinary farmers are planting white gold. I hope that’s good for them, I do not dare to judge. They try to live their middle-class dream, like many other poor people all over the world. Development is happing in northern Laos. A lot of it, and very vast. Nobody is or will be able to steer what is happening. It was fascinating to realize that party cadres, Government officials, development workers, and farmers are equally scared – it’s wild, wild, wild, scary wild.
• It takes about 3 agricultural laborers to work 1 ha of rubber plantation. With a population of 160’000, at least 70’000 new jobs will be created in the coming two or three years in Luangnamtha province. Where will those laborers come from? Officials and farmers were equally alert when we asked this question. One official even claimed this was the main reason why province authorities had banned further concessions to Chinese companies: stop immigration. At night over beer, the discussion had an undertone I know from other small countries bordering China: one child policy => female fetal abortions => small-poor-neighbor-country-pretty-women, small-poor-neighbor-country-men-very-nervous. Xenophobia at the edge to pure-blood racism.
• What is being sacrificed for white gold? The huge Nam Ha National Bio-Diversity Conservation Area that makes up roughly half of Lungnamtha province? Long term soil fertility, water quality, food security? Ethnic diversity, social identity, national stability? Sustainability thinking makes sense with 3% GDP growth conditions, the concept is useless with 30-50% growth: everything changes.
• What is the role of development partners under such circumstances? Officials think big; our traditional approaches don’t have much sex-appeal to them. 10% growth rate in rice production? No issue, they’ll put in a few more irrigation systems and double-crop the large paddy plains, 10 tons/ha or more. Upland rice? They became nostalgic: “it tastes so good, no comparison with what is produced under irrigation”. But it’s 5’000 ha, with 1 ton/ha on average … “you can’t be serious”. Our (SDC’s, we financed the socio-economic atlas) marginalized XX-poor upland ethnic minorities? They live too far away from schools and health centers, the Government cannot provide services unless they resettle in the lowlands along the road (national policy since the 1990ies).

Its gold rush time in northern Laos.

Click to find out more about 50 years of DAC work

In May, the Insights blog and The Guardian co-hosted a debate on the OECD’s role in official development assistance (ODA). Jonathan Glennie of the Overseas Development Institute argued that it was time for the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) to hand over to the UN. Brian Atwood, DAC chair, replied.

In July, the ODI organised a debate in London, at the Houses of Parliament. You can listen to Jonathan Glennie and Brian Atwood , as well as His Excellency Ernest Rwamucyo, High Commissioner of Rwanda to the United Kingdom, by clicking on the links below. Daleep Mukarji, ODI Council Chair, introduced the debate.

Among other questions, the debate explored the growing role and influence of non-traditional development actors such as China, and what could be achieved at this year’s Busan conference on aid effectiveness, and beyond.

Audio downloads

Introduction and Jonathan Glennie (MP3, 18.9mb)

Brian Atwood (MP3, 16mb)

Ernest Rwamucyo (MP3, 25.1mb)

 Useful links

OECD work on aid effectiveness including the Paris Declaration and the Accra Agenda

Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness Busan, Korea, 29 November – 1 December 2011

Hong-Kong-based social entrepreneur Chandran Nair was the odd one out at Friends of Europe’s policy summit on Europe and the Asian Century warning that Asia should not follow the Western example and continue on a consumption-driven economic growth path.

“I hope there will be no Asian century”, Nair said provocatively in his opening statement explaining that Asia does not need the “hubris” of “Asian exceptionalism” nor progress along the false trajectory of  a resource-hungry economic growth model.

If in the future 5.5 billion Asians want to have an American or European lifestyle, “it is game over”, Nair claimed, taking the examples of car ownership and fish consumption in the OECD and extrapolating the numbers for China and India.

“Growth is the problem” and “greening” the economy by just producing more so-called “green” consumption is an “intellectual lie”, said the founder and CEO of the Global Institute for Tomorrow and author of the stimulating and very successful book “Consumptionomics: Asia’s Role in reshaping capitalism and saving the planet”.

According to Chandran Nair, the world is going through a fundamental economic crisis because it has started to hit its ecological and resource limits. Therefore, what we need is not more free market but “strong government” setting rules for restrictions and constraints and focusing more on social prosperity than on GDP-growth numbers.

“You had your 300 year party”, Nair told the Summit’s audience, “but that party is over”.

Nair’s analysis of where the world is heading when emerging Asia will adopt Western lifestyles is undisputable but one wonders whether Chinese, Indian and millions of other Asian citizens will have the wisdom and discipline not to join “the consumer party”.  Even so-called “Asian values” might not be strong enough to resist the many temptations of consumerism.

Moreover, I am convinced that the debate about which form of political and economic leadership (democracy and free market versus “state capitalism”) will be most appropriate to put the world on a sustainable path needs much more innovative thinking than Nair’s thought-provoking statements. Where I do agree fully with Nair is that the fate of the 21st century will be defined by China, India and Asia in general. In that sense, this will still be the “century of Asia” but will it also be the “age of sustainability”?

Further Reading:

• Chandran Nair, Op-ed in New York Times: “Can the Planet Support More Americas?” (6 June 2011)
• Asia Times Book Review: “Asians can’t have it all” (7 April 2011)
• Financial Times:  Book Review “Consumptionomics” (31 Jan 2011)
• Friends of Europe Report: “The Nature of Growth. In search of a new framework for progress and prosperity” (2011)

Imagine you can’t take your child to the doctor because the clinic is on the other side of a bridge it’s too dangerous to cross. Imagine you’re trying to get an education but you can’t read after sunset because there’s no light. Imagine the only people who’ll protect you from an armed gang are the members of another armed gang. Imagine you’re a government trying to deal with problems like these after a civil war or invasion that’s lasted for years and destroyed your country and you’ll easily understand why no fragile state has achieved a single Millennium Development Goal, or is likely to do so by the 2015 target date, even though these states receive over 30% of development assistance.

If the MDGs set the bar impossibly high, what should fragile states aim for? The International Dialogue on Peacebuilding and Statebuilding was created in 2008 after the Accra High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness to devise a set of realistic peacebuilding and statebuilding objectives that address the root causes of conflict and fragility. The first Dialogue, held in Dili, Timor-Leste in April 2010, saw the formation of the g7+, “an independent and autonomous forum of fragile and conflict affected countries and regions”. At the second global meeting in Liberian capital Monrovia last week, delegates from over 40 countries, international agencies and civil society organisations had a “frank and open exchange of views” on what has worked, what hasn’t and what can be done starting now.

“The problem is, you guys don’t trust us,” Timor Leste’s finance minister Emilia Pires told the donor countries, urging them to lose their control freak attitude. But delegates from fragile states were just as harsh regarding their own responsibilities, with one Togolese speaker suggesting that citizens of donor countries would refuse to spend another penny on aid if they knew where most of the money went. There was disagreement on using the term “fragile”, with some arguing that it stigmatised countries, other that it was simply being realistic and could be useful in determining whether particular kinds of assistance should be granted. One participant claimed that fragile would be an improvement on the state his country was in at present. Olivier Kamitatu, DR Congo’s planning minister, summed up the majority feeling, and the ambitions of the Dialogue, when he said that “The g7+ is extremely useful in giving us a common voice in international discussions, but it’s a club we’d like to leave as quickly as possible”.

The “Monrovia Roadmap”, agreed on by the whole range of development partners, defines five practical objectives for peacebuilding and statebuilding. “Establish and strengthen citizen security” is one of the five. Without security and the assurance that people can go about their daily lives in safety, the rest is meaningless. But who should implement objectives, and monitor progress? If the state hasn’t functioned for years or is seen as defending special interests, then political processes have to start by building trust among groups who may be hostile to each other, including the government and civil society. Therefore the Roadmap calls on states to “Foster inclusive political settlements and conflict resolution”.

Reggae legend Peter Tosh understood another of the objectives when he sang that he didn’t want peace but “equal rights and justice”. It is vital to “Address injustices and support increasing citizen access to justice”. Unemployment is a source of tension and can fuel conflict when joining an armed group may be the most attractive job available, or the only one. The objective to “Generate employment and improve livelihoods” will require a mix of labour-intensive public and community works, increased agricultural productivity, and domestic private sector development. All this costs money, and although international partners will continue to finance some activities, the objective is to “Manage revenues and build capacity for accountable and equitable social service delivery”. It’s an ambitious set of objectives, but as Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf pointed out in her closing remarks, “The challenges are huge, but they’re not bigger than challenges we’ve faced in the past”.

Useful links

OECD work on conflict and fragility