[afro-nets] Eliminating world poverty: making governance work for the poor (23)

["Jeff Buderer" <jeff@onevillage.biz>]

Eliminating world poverty: making governance work for the poor (23)
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George,

I apologize for not replying to your email in which you asked for further elaboration about what "we" meant. I meant I think in the sense of we as humanity.

Indeed the fact that the world does not care enough to address these issues really expresses the degree of human degradation and this is linked to humanity's ancient shame and fear based modes of existence.  From shame and fear and seeing the world as what it is NOT rather than what it IS or the POTENTIAL that exists, we create a feast/famine duality upon which one side has so much that they make themselves sick both mentally and physically, while the other side suffers from a lack of even the most basic resources.

What is missing from this equation is the realization that it is simply not in humanity's interests to maintain such a dysfunctional pattern of existence and the extremes we now see in the use of resources are not historical norms. In the past, I believe the distance between rich and poor was much less because of the practical limits to what technology could do. With the loss of those natural limits to growth and technology development, we see gross distortions between the haves and have-nots globally. This trend if unchecked will threaten the stability of not only globalization but the whole process of modernization itself as it will lead not only to rising resentment but increasing impulses to strike back at the powerful by any means necessary - terrorism.

Now in terms of your comments regarding the market system I agree but I want to add what I see as was and is still missing in the traditional left-right dialectic. First the left needs to accept the understanding that liberalization is necessary but the problem is how to liberalize. It is the difference between a development program based on rhetoric and results driven actions involves transparency and such action oriented development in my view involves the empowerment of local economic actors at the grassroots.

In Africa there are many famous stories of national leaders who started out driven by noble and idealistic visions and descended into corruption and dictatorship and civil war. In Tanzania my understanding was that collectivist approach inspired by Marx was a failure. Yet this does not mean that we should or do not need to be more collective in our approach. However, such strategies would in my view best designed as hybrid, market driven social enterprises. This includes in my view a community based development strategy that focuses on building a open society and encourages local innovation in moving away from top down development models that disregard the needs of local people while propping up the political legitimacy of Western as well as local elites.

Also key is the rise of clever appropriate technologies and approaches that bring people together in a multisectorial approach to development. For example, considering a lack of adequate food supply as a key health issue in Africa, we might consider the development of new Integrated Farming/sustainable agriculture systems that: requires little land; is highly productive; requires minimal inputs (mechanization, fertilizer and pesticides); and regenerates the soil. Today the small farmer dominated agricultural system in Africa is dependent on western agricultural development model that benefits the western agribusiness industries more than the people in Africa and this is the root of Africa's ills. And it is not just the corporations selling this corrupt system but it is western governments, academia and even most of the mainline NGO community. And I think the reasons for this are obvious - everyone (the established players) gets a piece of the development action.

Because most African societies are still agricultural and rural based, we need to look at this issue deeply. Any health care solution in Africa is not sustainable, if there is no sustainable economy for the grassroots. And most importantly we need to provide systems for providing healthy food for local people that does not degrade the environment to complement any serious approach to the many health issues discussed here. My suggestion is that the West needs to re-evaluate its role in creating the structural deficiencies in Africa and other developing regions and to see the key role its big business sectors play in this. If the West is going to claim to help Africa with its situation, we need to be serious about it and not actually do more harm than good, perpetuating our dysfunctional role in exacerbating Africa's problem that began with colonialism.

For example something is wrong with a system that exports coffee, fruits and other tropical products desired by temperate affluent regions of the world, while the people in these regions working the fields and playing other supportive roles in sustaining this infrastructure do not themselves have enough food to eat. We are all complicit in this dysfunctional system and we need to take responsibility for our complicity by doing more to support an alternative development model that promotes sustainable agricultural solutions that focus on local needs first.

The prices of desirable commodities produced in emerging markets would be based on a global tax as part of the WTO regime to ensure the cost of shipping these products to western markets:
1. Credible scientific evidence that fossil fuels contribute to global warming
2. Impact of primarily western owned plantations in terms of degrading the soil
3. Removal of biomass from tropical regions that ends up perversely in landfills in affluent nations and finally the reality.
4. Exploitation of the workers
5. Consideration of the fact that precious lands are being used to export foods in regions of the world where large sections of the local populations do not have their caloric and nutritional needs met.

The proceeds of this tax would go towards the funding of a comprehensive sustainable development plan that would ensure that local farmers promoting more sustainable agricultural practices could sustain themselves and that their production if necessary would in effect be subsidized so that more local people could afford to buy their products. This would have the effect of inducing more balanced agricultural development strategies so that the need to create foreign exchange through the export of commodities was balanced with the immediate needs of local people to adequately provide food, shelter, clothing, health care clean drinking water and proper sanitation to themselves and their families.

Jeff Buderer
oneVillage Foundation
mailto:jeff@onevillage.biz