The hundreds of NGOs and environmental groups assembled at the World Summit on Sustainable Development would like us to believe that they are the best spokesmen for the world’s needy. But as First World delegates sat in conference halls and debated, African and Indian farmers hit the streets of Johannesburg to tell the world what they really want and need — not sustainable development but economic growth. The contrast is stark between many developed country NGOs and the people they claim to represent: wealthy countries want the Earth to be green, the underdeveloped want the Earth fed.
The delegates have been busy discussing complicated alternatives as a solution to the world poverty problem: alternative energy (renewable energy); alternative water (not piped or canal); alternative dams (without concrete); alternative governance (not private sector or market-driven), implying that the government and global governance has a much bigger role to play in sustainable development.
But what poor farmers, street hawkers, and others, want is far simpler: the freedom to create wealth in the way that they best see fit, without First World demands and over-intrusive government.
Take the farmers. Proposals being tossed around in Johannesburg would condemn them to medieval agricultural practices in the name of sustainability, restricting the use of pesticides and genetically modified seeds. The demands of farmers include the freedom to grow any crop of their choice, to access available technology, to trade within and outside their countries, to improve agricultural productivity and to sell their products in markets not distorted by agricultural subsidies, tariffs or quotas.
A delegate from Sweden pointed out that “the poor should not be allowed to make the same mistakes the developed made leading to pollution, the poor should leapfrog in order to attain sustainable development”. What gives the developed nations the right to make choices for the poor?
The cleanest countries in the world are also the wealthiest. They can afford the technologies that reduce pollution, make water drinkable, and preserve forests, rivers and other natural habitats. Yet their initial stages of development relied on practices that would not today be considered “environmental-friendly”. Growth and wealth led to new technologies, which eventually resulted in a commitment to addressing environmental problems — but only once basic human needs had been met by society.
What developing countries need now is just that: the chance to develop, and the only way this can be achieved is through economic growth on their own terms.
The First World might also rethink its development aid strategy. During the 1980s and 1990s, well- meaning donor countries funnelled billions of dollars in aid to Africa. Unfortunately, much of it fell directly into the hands of corrupt governments, who used it to support their dictatorships or pass the riches on to a select group of cronies. Rather, developed countries should target such funding for genuine problems, such as the purchase of medicines to fight HIV/Aids.
Good governance in developing countries can also do much to encourage and facilitate entrepreneurship and economic growth. Developing countries must have well-defined and readily enforceable and exchangeable property rights, the rule of law, free markets and free trade. They should also decentralise ownership of resources and other assets and decentralise government, empowering people at the local level. And they should secure rights of personal liberty against abuses of tyranny and insecurity in general.
The poor do speak, but occasionally it is on the streets and in the fields, not at lecterns at big summits. It’s time to listen to them, not the groups that purport to represent them.
The author is the director of the Inter Region Economic Network in Kenya.
