Ups and downs of sustainable development

I agree with Martin Kace: as I’ve written in several of my prior blog posts, experience has taught me that following the leadership of local stakeholders and addressing issues in the most comprehensive multi-faceted approach possible – including integrating insights from all stakeholders – increases the likelihood of sustainable success. But, even then, you have to closely follow the project and make the course corrections that reveal themselves as an initiative proceeds. Over the decades, working with leaders from government, business, NGO and other public and private stakeholders, we have experimented with various metrics but again this is tricky business as you must evaluate quality and depth, not simply quantity and reach. True collaborative multi-sector partnerships require all involved to be mutually respectful and stick it out together before long-term affects can be seen. I have often found myself nurturing the commitment level of any one or more of the partners who may have been looking for a quick fix and want to abandon an effort if success does not come in the immediate short-term.

This is such an important issue to me. I’ve written extensively about it in my two books, Motiba’s Tattoos and Planet India. I’ve written about the disappearance in France of the fabric of rural life, including the culture that is inseparable from it, during the 1980s in the Massif Central. This is an ongoing global phenomenon. I suggest in Planet India that a key to dealing with reconciling development with the wrenching apart of traditional cultures and societies is to redefine what “development” means. Classically, development means transitioning from an agrarian to an industrialized society. It means moving populations off farms and into cities. I would suggest, and there is much in the air right now along this line, that it is time to redefine development, radically. We simply cannot keep going on the linear, teleological path of industrialization / urbanization. We are running out of resources, our industrialized agricultural land is suffering from over-use of pesticides, chemical fertilizers, we are running out of water, etc. Michael Pollan is one of my heros on this. William Bissell at FabIndia is onto some interesting ideas in the Indian context. There is much interesting thinking and efforts that are breaking down the traditional divide between rural – traditional and urban – modern: organic farming in skyscrapers or on each apartment’s balcony, for example. And speaking of the Indian context, I believe, and I argued in my last book, that India has immense cultural resources to come up with a way of developing differently which is both more suited to its own situation and to the global moment in which we find ourselves. Now, the interesting thing to explore would be the relationship between capitalism and development. I don’t think it’s automatic, and I think that Mao and Stalin’s heavy-handed efforts to develop their countries, e.g. to industrialize and urbanize them, prove that development thus construed is a separate animal from the economic and political system used to advance it.