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Country Development Forum

John Lankford  - Retired lawyer.  Participant in various development-oriented projects. Living in Belize since 1993.

Core Needs, not Big Projects

We have established that the foundation of development is immensely broad-based. Participants have pointed out a long list of must-haves and must-do's, often noting that each depends on the other. Progress requires education, both on the part of those who propose to be providers and those intended to be beneficiaries, each in the ways and the thoughts of the other. But people cannot learn when they are sick and starving, wherefore access to adequate food, clean water, and some significant level of medical care must come first. Except for direct subsidy, however, those depend on ... education.

Experience has taught us that subsidy ... is counterproductive, generating an overpopulation of people without means to support themselves, eventually overwhelming the relief facilities. ... super-scale public works projects often leave populations blinking in bemused astonishment, as if a volcano had erupted in the rice paddy. 

And so, now we seek new ways. I submit the ways that succeed will not be comprehensive, but rather highly locale-specific.  The people sought to be helped spend their lives within a few hours' walk of their residences.

The most ancient known expedient for people confronted with habitat inadequacy is migration. As we debate, millions of people are doing just that, all over the world.

... exchange students, arriving at first-world universities to acquire educations, some to remain and some to return home and try to use them. ... Rather than be over solicitous about preserving the cultures they left, we should be more energetic about imparting the knowledge and benefits they came for. ... Such immigrants typically send money home to relieve immediate desperation, supplying the function of subsidy and emergency relief, and some eventually take or send knowledge home, too. 

Tourism Development in Belize

Here in Belize, it amazes naturalists that geographic, geological, and climactic conditions vary widely within just a few days' walks, or hours' rides. People dwelling in each such locality are culturally adapted to conditions different from those living short distances away.

Assuming we are going to be ever more done with conquest, the next context of human interaction is trade. Trade is based on consent. Consent inquires of the participants, "What do you need and want, and what do you have to exchange for it?" Too readily we assume without inspecting, that the answers of all the world's poor are "Everything, and nothing." This is almost never the case. Denizens of the prosperous world are inveterate tourists. Many a depressed locality, including many in Belize, have found they could make money doing what they always do, but allowing themselves to be observed and photographed by such gawkers, professional and amateur. Ecotourism, ethnotourism, and adventure tourism may be niches in the broad tourist industry, but a small portion of a whale is significant provender. 

Globalization is gradually extending access to world markets into the hinterlands of material development. Rare is the population that doesn't craft something to sell, and high are the prices the affluent will pay for such "authentic" artifacts. Tourism and global marketing of locally produced goods place additional stones in the foundation of a locally-focused development strategy. Are they being adequately addressed?

Exploitation or Opportunity?

Also far ahead of us are the activities of the multinational corporations seeking labor supplies and then markets. Desperation may lash workers into sweatshops, but, with few exceptions, governments no longer do much of that -- at least, except by policies by which the incumbents in power preserve their privileges, and ascendancy, by maintaining desperation. In any case, arduous toil at an underpaid job under unhealthy and dangerous conditions constitutes an improvement in the prospects of many of the desperately poor.  And they exploit it, in many cases living in the open or under cardboard and standing in line for those rotten jobs. The apt and astute assimilate techniques, as the Japanese learned to their dismay in Korea, and, within a generation, become the so-called exploiters' able competitors. Attempting to impose workplace and environmental standards on such multinationals' ventures is probably salutary to an extent, since it will tend to raise product prices in the developed world and transfer a smidgen of the increase to the intended beneficiaries while diminishing the eventual environmental cleanup costs they may face, but moderation is the watchword. The most powerful incentive to automation has been militancy by and on behalf of workforces, and absolute foreclosure of the exploitative opportunities we reflexively deplore could cause the poor to be relegated to the conditions they stand in line in front of sweatshops to escape, bereft of even that grim choice.

Micro loan and comparable systems, for example, inherently trust the clients to give local answers to the questions, "What do you need and want, and what do you have to exchange for it?" I write only to urge that processes already underway, more powerful and effective than bold new proposals, be regarded and exploited for the benefit of the poor rather than being deplored and dismissed. 

And, whatever schemes grand or modest we propose, they must at last answer "What do you need and want, and what do you have to exchange for it?". Else wise, we will sit around many tables, drink much coffee during working hours and other beverages in the evening, crunch many numbers, coin many conceptual terms and phrases, and do hardly anything to help the intended beneficiaries. All development, like all politics, is ultimately and predominantly local.