Reduce.

As I delve into the world of sustainability (not just development) I am more and more aware of how far our lifestyle is beyond a critical point. Not just environmentally, which will follow, but economically, politically http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifand socially. I apologize to those who feel I may be strong arming the topic at hand, sustainable development, but I ask that you bear with me.

If those of us who live in Europe and North America have an environmental footprint of 6 or more while people in Africa have a footprint of about 1 (see Ecological Footprint) it seems to me that maybe we should be putting a lot more effort to "reducing" our footprint rather than increasing the footprint of the developing world. (This may be a controversial statement but in the end, I think, if we fail to do this the quality of ALL our lives will be far below the current quality of life of many people in the developing world.)

Many, many people are familiar with the Mennonite book "Living More with Less" and the cookbook "More with Less". These were first published in the '80s when the idea that our lifestyle could have significant implications on the world around us was just crossing the line from a fringe idea to an idea that many people began to hear about, if not believe. At the time that might have been true, that by reducing our consumption we may have been able to keep getting more and doing more. Unfortunately I think that time has passed; in 2011 we just need to reduce. Less of more. Less. Period.

John Naish has a very good book called "Enough". It's an easy read about how through the ages, specifically from an evolutionary point of view, we have been programmed to want and need more. However, for the first time in human history, a huge percentage of our population's physical needs are satisfied. Unfortunately we're still wired for more and so that same circuitry that helped us become a dominant species now needs to have the wires cut. Naish says the evolutionary key to the future will be the idea of temperance and knowing when is enough. (Certainly a well known concept throughout the ages.) He goes through the topics of Information, Food, Stuff, Money, Work and demonstrates how far overboard we have gone with each subject and what a detriment it is to our development. BTW, he also lists "Small is Beautiful" by E.F. Schumacher and "Limits to Growth" by Donnella & Dennis Meadows as the best books for this train of thought.

In the same way that people like David Suzuki, a Canadian environmentalist, have used arctic as an early warning signal of global warming and environmental chaos, I think someday we will understand that the environment itself and upheaval that it is going through is an early warning signal for us has a whole. The environment is a classic example of an extremely complex system where small perturbations have huge effects and some huge perturbations have negligible effects. Going one step back from that, our cultural, political and even economic systems have grown out of this natural environmental system and one could say are even founded upon it. The fact that our natural environment is changing drastically should serve as an early warning signal to us that those other systems are about to change as well.

And the more that we can do to mitigate environmental changes the more we will spare ourselves the pain of dealing with drastic changes to our economy, politics and society.

Kurtis (biking in Waterloo but still living unsustainably)

When is development just local capacity

My mind is quite a few places these days (including my upcoming series of posts!) but Jordan's comments do bring a few thoughts to mind.

1. "[Korten] published a paper proposing a novel planning method. He called it the Learning Process Approach. He based his theory on lessons learned from at least 5 highly successful rural development projects in Asian countries. These projects were started by visionary individuals within developing countries."
I found the paper online and skimmed it. I saw a few patterns that emerged. All five of the projects were started by local people (it seems like they were often fairly charismatic) either from a business or government background. I did not see any mention of IMF, World Bank, UN, USAID, etc. These successful initiatives were all by local people who had a vested interest in the outcome. We have similar business and political figures here in Canada. A politician who took on a particular cause as their own and really ran with it.
My point is that, at what point does standard entrepreneurship and governance become development work? I met a couple of expat businessmen in Tanzania who were helping "develop" the country simply through their industries. This is the case for lots of businesses in Africa. And similarly to the developed world - some fundamental components of our society (national parks, social services) can be traced back to individuals who championed a cause. So why are we surprised when that's how it works in other places as well?

2. My second thought comes from again from another way of achieving a proper fit. The last part of Jordan's post talks about how connected the planning process is to the ground. The triangle of program - organization - beneficiaries, the comments about using various subcontractors and finally the comment about the time involved for successful projects (20 years) all point to locally initiated endeavors. The only people who will really be able to understand the connections between the stakeholders, or who will plan and implement the process with sincerity and stick around to make sure things work out are those with a vested interest - ie local people. (And I would say that someone who has moved into a community and stayed for 20 years is pretty much a local.)
And the examples seem to back this up. The successful projects all had vast amounts of continuity compared to what we think of as development projects now-a-days. I wonder if this criteria alone would go a long way to mend what isn't working in our current development model. "All development workers and projects are expected to continue for a minimum of 10 years, usually 15 to 20." Ok, rereading that I realize that wouldn't solve everything but it would be interesting.

My only last comment is to read the one comment by I.:.S.:.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif - that whole white flag comment strikes as quite appropriate. I wonder if, in the future, people will look back at North America as "winning" the during the 20th and 21st centuries.

Jordan, as usual, thanks for a very well thought out and professional line of thought.

For those who really want to read the report here is a open link to the paper:
References:

Korten, D. C. (1980). Community Organization and Rural Development: A Learning Process Approach. Public Administration Review, 480-511.

Finally, I hope we haven't lost all of our readers due to my slow responses. Over the next few posts I will try to approach development from the first world perspective. In other words, what progress and changes should we be trying to bring about in Europe, North America and the rest of the developed world in order to really qualify as "developed" and a target worthy of the rest of the world to shoot for.

Kurtis (in Waterloo)

Learning to fit in

A paper came out in 2002, after the latest invasion/intervention in Afghanistan was already under way, reflecting on the reasons why mainstream development projects, the ones with billions of dollars behind them, are still planned and managed in much the same way they have been for the past 50 years (Barakat & Chard, 2002). The paper chronicles how best practices in project design and management developed in the 80s have been repeatedly ‘rediscovered’, updated and ignored.

The Marshall Plan, that famous ‘injection’ of cash into the battered Japanese and German economies after World War 2 was based on a particular economic theory, planned and put into action. It was massive, quick and remarkably effective.  Before long the German and Japanese economic machines were running again and within 40 years they had achieved what looked like a development miracle going from their economic death-beds to being members of the global economic elite.  Wow!

Development planners in the 40s and 50s treated development like a natural science.  They developed a theory, then conceived a plan around that theory and implemented it.  Economic development was assumed to follow laws and proceed in a predictable, linear fashion, regardless of the context.  As long as the rules were followed, certain results were to be expected.

It seems ‘we’ are still running development that way despite considerable advances in sociology, anthropology and planning theory.

In 1980, David Korten published a paper proposing a novel planning method.  He called it the Learning Process Approach.  He based his theory on lessons learned from at least 5 highly successful rural development projects in Asian countries.  These projects were started by visionary individuals within developing countries. Korten identified two core elements of these projects that contributed to their long term success. 

The first element was fit (Figure 2).  Korten highlights the importance of fit between program (the set of plans or projects being implemented), organization (the one implementing the program, providing resources and management) and the beneficiaries (those intended to benefit from the program). It should be obvious that fit between these three elements of a project is a fundamental requirement for success.  But a quick read of the news coming out of Afghanistan and Iraq over the past decade will make it obvious that fit, if even considered in the first place, is very difficult to achieve and not just in conflict-affected countries.

(Korten 1980:495)

Another aspect of fit that should come as no surprise is that it may well take time to achieve fit and that the requirements for fit may change over time.  Thus the organization that learns how to learn and makes learning an organizational priority is much more likely to achieve fit in the long-run.

An organization that subcontracts someone to write a project plan, then, when the consultant has long gone, attempts to implement the plan by subcontracting the execution of it to someone else, is unlikely to learn anything about fit.  But that’s the way a lot of the development projects in Afghanistan and Iraq, and some parts of Pakistan, are being carried out at present – 30 years after Korten published his paper.

If fit is achieved and sustained then a project is likely to proceed through 3 stages  (Figure 4).

(ibid: 400)

Stage 1 involves learning to be effective, stage 2, learning to be efficient and stage 3 learning to expand.  These three phases are self-explanatory.  Transition between phases requires visionary, risk-taking, humble leadership and the whole process can take a lot of time, maybe 20 years.  This is a far cry from the 3-5 year project cycles still in wide use in development.

This is not to say that the learning process approach is fool-proof.  It is clearly a risky endeavour.  And there are projects where the blueprint approach (the mainstream approach described above) is appropriate  (large scale infrastructure projects, for example). The point I’m trying to make is that, especially in conflict-affected countries, billions of dollars are being thrown at ill-fitting, ineffective, unsustainable programming.  My question is, even if the only concern driving these billions is the security and peace-of-mind of middle class Americans and Brits, wouldn't it make more sense to invest the time to learn how to be effective development practitioners, learning together with project beneficiaries over the long term?

References:

Barakat, S., & Chard, M. (2002). Theories, rhetoric and practice: Recovering the capacities of war-torn societies. Third World Quarterly, 23(5), 817-835

Korten, D. C. (1980). Community Organization and Rural Development: A Learning Process Approach. Public Administration Review, 480-511.