One of my biggest dilemma is how to teach development education, when I am not able to give any solution. Is really raising awareness enough? Should we make propaganda?
All those questions appeared in my head on one training, when we had guest speaker talking about global problems. It looked a bit like this, that she used all the shocking data, added same pictures and put it all on her 1,5h speach.
The outcome was amazing, all the participants were very happy to see that, were very happy that finally we are talking about concrates, but what next? After this presentation I talked to her a bit. We entered the topic of the economic development, and the role of people and politicians in the development. And this was this kind of person who was critisizing - Millennium Development Goals as not realistic, J. Sachs for everything (including transformation in Eastern Europe and South America).
I started wondering - what are we doing. How we can be honest while teaching development education, if we as activist are only critisizing. And is there the solution?
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I have writen once paper which reflect about the conflict between to development economists - Sachs and Esterly
Searchers versus Planners, Easterly versus Sachs
Is there a solution to solving global problems? What can we do to combat extreme poverty? Is it our responsibility to do something? The question is not only how to help “Africa”, but also a question how to help the developing world; it is an important point on the agenda of politicians, scientists, and many activists. There are a lot of people who are concerned about this topic and there is no one answer as to what should be done.
In my paper I will focus on the work of two economists, Jeffrey Sachs who is an American economist and Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and William Easterly, as well as economist, specializing in economic growth and foreign aid. Both of them started the argument on how should we go about ending poverty. Easterly criticizes the Sachs’ theory in his book “End of poverty” and his work in general, in his response book “The White Man’s Burden”, where he has presented the theory of planners and searchers. But looking closer at the work of those two we can find many similar approaches, and a lot of the Easterly’s criticisms are not necessary.
Sachs’ main idea is that investments in Africa were weak and not sufficient and because of that development couldn’t occur. He claimed that by increasing foreign aid and changing the way of its redistribution it is possible to fight extreme poverty. Easterly says that the international community has already put a lot of money into Africa’s development ($2.3 trillion) and there are no visible results, so he is against to the idea of continuing the work in the some way and suggests that developing countries should free their markets . Easterly writes: “(…) the most obvious thing the West could do to transform the Rest was to introduce free markets”. Similarly, it is important to note here that Sachs is as well a big supporter of free markets. He is the architect of the Polish transformation into the market economy, but he argues to enter the global markets countries need to be prepared for that. He says “Free-market forces are vital. But they are limited when you have people so poor that they are essentially isolated from markets. People that don't even grow enough food to bring to market, don't have electricity or access to roads, clinics, or schools, find themselves isolated from the world economy”. Both of these economists are in favour of free markets, with a small difference in their ideology in which Sachs claims that at first developing countries need to get prepared how to compete. The most questionable argument is how the agricultural products which developing countries most likely would produce can compete with EU markets that have very high supplies and protection. Already in the shops in Morocco we can find only Spanish chicken, because it is cheaper to import it from EU than to self produce it. It is reasonable to create regional free trade areas where countries with the same status of development can compete with each other, but the idea of implementing free markets without the previous preparation for this is questionable.
Easterly mainly criticizes Sachs in terms of his idea being focused on only money. He writes, “it’s all about the money (…) It’s just, you know, spend more money and that will solve the problem”. This is actually not true. Yes, Jeffrey Sachs believes that money is important in order to let countries develop, but as well he focuses on the solutions. The best example is his Millennium Villages Project. This project provides the full support for villages including “interventions in food production, nutrition, education, health services, roads, energy, communications, water, sanitation, enterprise diversification and environmental management” . All the investments were consulted with the local communities, and they were involved in the decision making process. There was no one simple solution for all the villages. At first the needs were recognized, based on specific situation, climate, local problems, and then the necessary help was provided. It is actually what Easterly is suggesting, bottom-up work together with local people. In his book he underlines a lot of times that it is better to provide the bed-nets, what is an example for bottom-up work, rather than starting the huge projects. A part of the Millennium Villages Project is to provide vitamin and mineral supplements, access to anti-retroviral medicines, insecticide-treated bed nets, improved access to water and fuel wood. He wants to help people with their problems to let them focus on more important things like where to get clean water. He helps kids like Amaretch from Ethiopia mentioned in Easterly book. Projects like Millennium Villages would help her to go to school instead of bringing the wood and selling it in for the whole day on the market.
What is important and what Easterly doesn’t recognize is that all the problems of developing world are interconnected and only the complex treatment can help overcome it. Let’s take the example of Amaretch. Let say her father will get a job, and the amount of money she earns by collecting and selling wood. Would it solve a problem? Would she be able to go to school? The answer to these questions is most probably not, because she wouldn’t have books. If she would have books, most probably she wouldn’t perform well enough at school, because of lack of energy. Most likely she wouldn’t get proper food to get enough energy. Also, the other questions that may arise are; what about the health? What would happen if she gets sick? What Amaretch needs is not only the possibility to go to school, she needs access to sanitation, health care, nutrition, communication to be able to get to school. Therefore I think that the complex solutions provided by Millennium Villages Project are worth consideration.
But somehow the ideas of Sachs and Easterly are very similar. Both of them are in favour of market economy, both of them are giving the same solutions for the problems. Let’s take their approaches. In one article we can read, “According to Sachs, donors should invest in specific inputs, allowing for "practical solutions to practical problems" related to the issues of poor health, rural isolation, lack of energy resources and crop production vulnerability in rural villages. ” Isn’t it exactly what Easterly is presenting? This is definitely not a top-down approach, where the West tells what the Rest has to do; nobody is building the big programs, which are very complicated which have no sense. Both of the economists knows where to start and it the bottom-up work with locals is; helping them to survive and improve their life quality.
Both of the economists have the similar approach to the idea of micro-credits, that they might be useful. Although Easterly is not a huge fan of them, he recognizes that they are useful. “Microcredit didn’t solve everything; it just solved one particular problem under one particular set of circumstances” . Similarly Sachs suggests that micro-financing might be one of the good tools, but not the sufficient one. Sachs says: "Microfinance is one of the institutions that can play a really nice role, along side health and agriculture [initiatives], once we get the basic infrastructure [in place]. "
Besides the similarities, Easterly points out one very important thing, why despite big funding given to the developing countries there is still a big problem with for example malaria: “Gordon Brown was silent about the other tragedy of the world’s poor. This is the tragedy in which the West spent $2.3 trillion on foreign aid over the last five decades and still had not managed to get twelve-cent medicines to children to prevent half of all malaria deaths. The West spent $2.3 trillion and still had not managed to get four-dollar bed nets to poor families”. But medicines and bed-nets are not the only expenses. There is still a control campaign going on. The blood tests can easily diagnose malaria when it is not too late, and taking into the consideration the big amount of cases per year (300-500 million cases ) it costs a lot.
This leads us to the Easterly’s main concern about the foreign aid – high costs of bureaucracy. He says “Tanzania produces more then 2,400 reports for its aid donors” and “I myself wasted government officials’ time on five continents during my bureaucratic career. Foreign aid did not supply something the poor wanted (roads), while it did supply a lot of something the poor probably had little use for (me and my fellow bureaucrats)” . That is what everybody agrees on – administration is expensive. It would be much better if that money will be spent on direct help. My question is whether it is possible. Easterly is criticizing the methods how administration works. But he is just criticizing. Sachs claims as well that the structure of aid funds should be changed. He thinks as well that the current aid was too small and badly administrated.
Both of the economists have the some solutions. I have already presented Sachs’s Millennium Villages. Easterly presents something very similar: “get the poorest people in the world such obvious goods as the vaccinations, the antibiotics, the food supplements, the improved seeds, the fertilizer, the roads, the boreholes, the water pipes, the text books, and the nurses” . They have just different tools. Easterly pays attention on criticizing the administration, and UN in general. He criticizes Millennium Development Goals. He claims that he wants to see results, not just intentions, but he doesn’t take any action. He obviously doesn’t agree with any top-down actions, but what he doesn’t realize is that only behind this top-down actions there are money. He is presenting solutions but without the follow up, without information where the money should come from.
Jeffrey Sachs works for the UN, invites a lot of celebrities to support his work, together with Bono he raised awareness about global poverty and he became a celebrity as well, what is that he is also criticized for. But there is one thing what he makes and Easterly doesn’t, he succeeds in fundraising. Because he invests in visibility, he educates about the importance of eradicating poverty and he says he knows how to do it, and he proves how to do it. Therefore, countries and private donors are more likely to support his mission. He makes many of the governments promise to fulfil their commitments to pay 0,7% of their GDP for development aid.
Although I don’t think that the argument which is going on between Easterly and Sachs is not necessary, Easterly points out some crucial problems, and direct the attention of international community on things which are not working well (although they are not working that bad as Easterly presents it). From the other side it is good that international community has someone like Jeffrey Sachs, who really works to “make poverty history”.
References:
Easterly, William “The White Man’s Burden” (2006),
http://www.oecdobserver.org/news/fullstory.php/aid/1251/False_economies:_A_global_health_crisis.html
http://www.uncdf.org/english/microfinance/pubs/newsletter/pages/2005_04/news_sachs.php
http://www.uncdf.org/english/microfinance/pubs/newsletter/pages/2005_04/news_sachs.php
http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/mv/mv_faq.htm
“Jeffrey Sachs on Beating Global Poverty”, U.S.News, April 11, 2008 http://www.usnews.com/articles/business/economy/2008/04/11/jeffery-sachs-on-beating-global-poverty.html
http://www.bigthink.com/business-economics/646/responses/all/by-popular/1
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