The search for a ‘sustainable’ development model for the world is the dominant theme of this year’s annual meetings of the IMF/World Bank, taking place in Marrakesh, Morocco. It has been heralded in part by a recent expression of Ajay Banga, World Bank President, who said: “I think the twin goals have to change to being the elimination of poverty, but on a liveable planet, because of the intertwined nature of our crises.”
He is reminding us of the intricate relationship between the goal of ending extreme poverty by the year 2030 (about seven years away) as part of the Sustainable Development Goals, and the need to reclaim the earth from all the forces that are threatening its physical existence, including those resulting from anti-poverty activities.
Banga, new on the saddle at the bank, is advocating a new approach to the fight against poverty that will ensure a safe earth remains for all to live in after the battle is won. In other words, he is telling us that we should go about it in a way that after the victory is won, both the rich now and those delivered from poverty will still find a space on this earth.
But this is a step that was taken or initiated long before by the global community as it sought to secure the future for mankind before we got there. That we seem to be approaching the issue now as a fresh initiative, rather than consolidating efforts and successes achieved, shows inconsistency on the part of our leaders and institutions.
It has long been admitted that poverty, whether urban or rural, is a result of wrong development processes. It has also been noted that solving the problem of poverty could become a threat to the environment if it is not properly done. Besides, in all of these, the role and significance of the environment has also been identified.
The confusion here is a product of our misconceptions about the words ‘environment’ and ‘development’, the key elements that the international community needs to find creative ways to handle. Answers to these were provided in the 1980s, by the World Commission on Environment and Development, chaired by Gro Harlem Brundtland, the Prime Minister of Norway.
The commission was established by the UN, and its mandates included, among others, “to propose long-term environmental strategies for achieving sustainable development by the year 2000 and beyond”.
Brundtland and her team produced a book “Our Common Future,” published in May 1987. In her foreword to the book, she provided clarifications on the key issues – environment, and development – that are still relevant to the current conversation.
On the environment, she declared that the “environment does not exist as a sphere separate from human actions, ambitions, and needs, and attempts to defend it in isolation from human concerns have given the very word “environment” a connotation of naivety in some political circles”.
Similarly, Brundtland observed that the word ‘development’ has also been “narrowed by some into a very limited focus, along the lines of “what poor nations should do to become richer”, and thus again is automatically dismissed by many in the international arena as being a concern of specialists, of those involved in questions of “development assistance”.
This has been the reality of the talks about climate change, global warming, and environmental degradation. They have been marked by blame frames, where most discussants point at others’ contributions to the crises while distancing themselves from the causes. Most of the time, discussants are likely to give the impression that they are talking about an environment that is located somewhere else, with no relationship with their own activities.
“But the “environment” is where we all live; and “development” is what we all do in attempting to improve our lot within that abode. The two are inseparable,” Brundtland made it clear.
The rural poor, who eke out a living by cutting down trees for sale as firewood and other economic activities are engaged in development, as they seek to improve on their conditions. So do the gigantic factories in the global north that daily send tons of pollutants into the air, ultimately harming the ozone layer, because they too are trying to improve their lot on this earth where we all live.
Failure to provide rural dwellers with clean energy is also a way of telling them to go into the forests and cut down trees for their cooking.
We must “urbanise” the rural areas so that the people there do not flock to the cities en masse. And it does not take much to do this. We need to provide some basic infrastructure in the villages: roads, portable water, healthcare, power, and communication.
A situation where the villages are cut off from the cities is an invitation to an exodus from the villages, swelling up the ranks of the urban poor. If we do not take part of the urban areas to them, they will come flocking to the cities, and we may not be able to stop or keep them. Then there will be a crisis.
According to the commission, poverty is a major cause and effect of global environmental problems. It is therefore futile to attempt to deal with environmental problems without a broader perspective that encompasses the factors underlying world poverty and international inequality.
The key here is that we have to undo the wrong things we have been doing all along. One of them is the compartmentalisation of the effects of our actions within nations and sectors. We have talked about the environmental crisis, energy crisis, and development crisis. These inadvertently isolated the potential effects of what happens in one nation or sector on others. In truth, these are not realistic and account for the limited success of the efforts so far.
“These are not separate crises: an environmental crisis, a development crisis, an energy crisis. They are all one,” the authors of Our Common Future,” it said.
Development must meet the needs and aspirations of the people wherever they live. And the basic of the needs is a livelihood. And that can be supported most effectively by employment. That is the best way to fight poverty, growing our economies so they can create jobs for the people.
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