Business and Overseas Development: Connecting for sustainability?

Business has always been a key section of international development, though that has not always led to sustainable results. One might remember that international development's precursor was colonialism - which thrived in part because of the profit advantages to being able to obtain immensely valuable natural and human resources for almost nothing. Some of the larger 'development organisations' - not least the IMF and the World Bank - have been accused of opening the doors for Western businesses to enter into the developing world and continue that colonial trend - to the great social and environmental detriment of people and planet in the 'developing' world. Not too surprising that the business-development nexus is one fraught with tension - especially since many development actors (though usually not the larger ones) tend towards a certain skepticism of the benefits of 'private public partnerships' (PPP). Who is really profiting from those partnerships - the public-private elite, or the masses?

Yet in the past decade or so, international agencies from the US to the UK to Sweden have increasingly reached out to the private sector. It isn't just a variation of these aid agencies growing more neo-liberal; its also a recognition that a) business can add real value to development and b) that business is there - just as one can not ignore economics, nor can one ignore businesses (including multinational corporations). Working with governments isn't enough to reduce poverty. And as a report by the Business Civic Leadership Center pointed out, One of the signs of their presence - multinational corporations gave $3.5 billion to overseas development initiatives. If they were a country, they would be in the top 20 donors. It makes good sense for development to engage with these major actors - on multi-national, national and community levels, for both 'development' and 'business' reasons. Businesses affect pressing developmental issues, from worker safety and well being to environmental challenges to developing emerging markets in healthy directions, and include both global and national programmes. Development agencies act as strategic advisors and broker knowledge.

It's not an easy game to play for either side. Development agencies are numerous, fragmented and it is difficult for those in the field to know who is doing what, much less those coming in from outside. It is hard for businesses to know where responsibility and accountability lie. Many 'rules of the game' (especially around leveraging capital) are not developed - or contradictory. Most multi national companies don't work in one of the key priority areas - Africa. Despite these challenges, there are some success stories. USAID has leveraged over $9 bill with over 680 alliances to mobilize investments in sectors ranging from water to micro credit to agriculture. And of course, the micro-credit (and, growing very slowly, the micro-insurance) arenas are well known ways in which much has been done. There are international intentions (such as the UN Global Compact) which are providing a sandbox for figuring out what to do where. I'm not always sure how much is sustainable, and how much isn't. But I know that create sustainable development, both sides need to work together - and hopefully, to get a clearer sense of what is needed to both transform business and aid practices for sustainable development.

The Measure of Things

How do we gauge our progress towards our development destinations? Are economic indicators the best measure?

Development. Progress. These words and others like them are often bandied about in an attempt to describe a goal for a future that is somehow better than our present.

But what do we mean by “better”?

Do we mean more stuff?

The current development models, which focus on economic growth as the means by which nations and those within them can attain a better future, certainly seem to indicate that better equals more. And, for much of the world’s people who scrape by with barely enough food to eat, water to drink, and without adequate shelter, more stuff is an appealing prospect.

No one, I think is arguing that those who have the least should envision a future with still less.
However, the question remains how much stuff?

Do we envision a future with a Tata in every driveway, a steak on every plate, and an ipod in every hand?

Putting aside the effects that such a model of development would have on the environment, what is the effect that a stuff centered economy has on us?

My economics 101 professor in undergrad stated that if we viewed the economy as a giant pizza with those on the bottom getting the smallest slice of the pie, a bigger economy means everyone gets more even if their percentage remains the same.

But what if you’re lactose intolerant? Put another way what if the economy is offering up items that one neither needs nor desires.

In the past two years I have moved five times: from New York to Vermont, Vermont to DC, DC to Montreal, Montreal back to New York. The one thing I have not had a hard time doing is accumulating stuff. In a system predicated on producing ever increasing amounts of stuff attaining more stuff becomes a passive endeavor. In the past three months alone I have acquired two t-shirts, an apron, a jar of gourmet mustard, a magazine, and a hooded sweatshirt, all for free, all stuff I didn’t really want but didn’t feel that I could refuse. I’ve also refused several shirts, an ‘eco-friendly’ reusable fork/spoon combination designed to replace disposable ones, and way too many of those stress balls. What I found much more difficult to develop was a sense of community, interpersonal connections - the relationships that make life worth living.

Everyone, you see, was too busy working to get money to accumulate the right kinds of stuff, while at the same time bemoaning their lack of time to devote to relationships, hobbies… life. The societies with the most stuff - the US, Japan - it seems are often those with the most overworked and overly stressed individuals and the ones where interpersonal connections are heavily predicated on economic markers.

The exception, interestingly enough, was in Vermont, a solidly middle class state (it has the 22nd best economy in the country) based heavily on agriculture. Farm work, my dairy farming roommate pointed out to me, doesn't work on a clock schedule. Past a certain hour, or season, the work simply can't be done anymore.

My point isn’t that stuff is inherently evil, but rather that using the economy as the dominant indicator of what makes a healthy, well functioning society that serves the needs of its people is flawed. Community, friendships, hobbies, and families are all wonderfully contributing things that make life worth living and should be factored into development models which seek to create a ‘better’ future.

These are ideas are admittedly harder to calculate, but perhaps that is a sign of their relative importance. The things that often have the highest value are those for which it is near impossible to affix a price; friendships, after all, are not fungible.