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PEOPLE-CENTERED
DEVELOPMENT: PRINCIPLES FOR A NEW CIVILISATION James Robertson
We are
presently in a transition towards a post-modern and
post-European civilisation, much as Europeans were in
transition 500 years ago from the medieval to the modern
era. People-centered development is about facilitating
this transition to a new civilisation- a sharp contrast
to more familiar forms of development that have taken
their mission to be the modernisation and Europeanization
of the world.
New
civilisations are characteristically defined by what they
reject of the civilisations they replace. Thus it is
entirely appropriate to define the principles of
people-centered civilisation in terms of opposites to the
principles of modern Euro-American civilisation that it
rejects. The following are eight such rejected principles
and their people-centered opposites.
- Wealth
confers legitimate power over other people.
People-centered development rejects the concept
of modern development that originated in
countries like Britain when the common people
were pushed off the land and turned into paid
labourers and employees dependent on those richer
and more powerful than themselves. It believes in
economic justice and democracy through policies
that favour small producers, co-operatives, and
worker- or community- owned corporations.
- Progress
and development are products of the
ever-increasing exploitation of the Earth by
people who have knowledge and power as
"lords and possessors of nature".
People-centered development rejects the
anthropocentric humanism of the Enlightenment. It
values people's cultural and spiritual respect
for the places and natural systems, including the
Earth and the Universe itself, to which people
belong. It holds that, in so far as the natural
environment belongs to anyone, it belongs to all
people- not just to the rich and powerful.
- Economic
activities form an impersonal system governed by
deterministic natural laws, to be understood
"scientifically" and conducted as if
personal, ethical and spiritual values are not
fully relevant to them. People-centered
development rejects the intellectual split
between economics and the moral sciences and the
belief that an invisible hand automatically turns
greed into public benefit. To the contrary it
believes that economic choice involves inevitable
moral responsibility and that markets serve best
as instruments for achieving personal goals and
public policies, not as determinants of them.
- Only
those things that can be counted have value and
money is the only valid measure of value in
public life. People-centered development
believes that what is of greatest value often
cannot be counted or appropriately valued in
monetary terms - such as life itself. Economics
is considered to be a tool to be used in the
service of higher values.
- The
world economy is a system of competing national
economies. People-centered development
rejects the idea-obviously absurd, but still
generally taken for granted- that people's
livelihoods appropriately depend on the ability
of their national economy to compete with other
national economies on the far side of the world
in the production and sale of goods and services
which are not strictly essential for a decent
life. People-centered development views a
properly functioning world economy as a
multilevel, decentralising system, so organised
that the function of each level enables the
levels "below" to develop in a
people-enabling and environment-conserving
direction. This system includes the household and
the local community levels- which are ignored in
modern economic understanding.
- Economic
progress takes place in the sphere of men, and is
based on masculine drives and values.
People-centered development recognises that the
development roles and stakes of women-and
children and elderly people too - are as
important as those of adult males. It also
recognises the role of the social economies of
the household and local community in creating
real wealth.
- Economics
is separate from politics. People-centered
development recognises that different people have
different interests, and that economic policy
decisions are inevitably political decisions. It
asks on each occasion, "Who will get the
benefit and who will incur the cost and the
risk?" It recognises the pseudo-objective
calculations of a single overall balance between
economic benefits and costs, or benefits and
risk, are spurious. It rejects the idea that
economic institutions can operate outside the
framework of political and social choice.
- Trade-offs
have to be made between economic freedom and
efficiency on the one hand and social well-being
and ecological sustainability on the other.
People-centered development recognises that these
supposed trade-offs are usually conflicts of
interest between different people. It rejects the
kind of economic freedom espoused by proponents
of "free markets" and "free
trade" that makes some people free to
diminish the freedom of others. It likewise
rejects the centralised regulation of the command
economy and the social democratic consensus of
corporate elites in a conventional "mixed
economy". In their place it seeks to create
institutions that enable all people to develop
the capacity to meet their needs and the freedom
to do so, in ways that enable others to do the
same. Believing that economic efficiency must be
defined by the goal to be achieved, it addresses
questions of economic efficiency in terms of the
optimal allocation of resources to best achieve
social goals.
The
following are illustrative of the priority actions
required at three levels to advance the wider application
of people-centered development principles.
- Global
Governance. Global governance mechanisms must
be restricted so that economic concerns will be
balanced with other public policy priorities
under democratic control and accountability. The
present structure of global governance leaves the
setting of global economic policies largely in
the hands of the Bretton Woods institutions - the
World Bank, IMF and WTO - which function in
secret beyond the reach of democratic
accountability and place corporate and economic
concerns ahead of social and environmental
concerns. UN reform initiatives should give a
high priority to bringing the Bretton Woods
institutions within the main UN structure to
function under the jurisdiction of the UN
Security Council, General Assembly and
Secretary-General. Within that more democratic
and transparent policy-making framework, global
policies on trade, aid and investment, as now
framed and carried out by GATT, the IMF and the
World Bank, can be considered within the larger
context of social and environmental concerns, a
fundamental step toward people-centered
development.
- National
Policies. It is vitally necessary that
national policies, especially in rich-countries,
be reoriented to support people-centered,
ecologically sustainable development. This would
be in the interest of the entire world, including
the citizens of the rich countries. For example,
systems of subsidies and taxation must be
restructured to discourage pollution and waste of
resources, reduce the costs of employing people
so that more jobs will be created, and enable
people to do useful and rewarding unpaid work as
an alternative to paid employment.
- Local
Economic self-reliance. Greater local
economic autonomy and self-reliance are important
features of people-centered development. Local
currencies will be one of its instruments. Why
should local people have to earn national
currency, regulated in accordance with national
monetary policies, in order to be able to engage
in purely local transactions between themselves,
using local resources to meet local needs? A
purist might see the LETS (Local Exchange Trading
System), through which a group of people issue
their own money to support transactions between
one another, as the only genuinely
people-centered monetary instrument. But a
variety of kinds of local currencies, issued by
local government authorities (and perhaps also by
local community enterprises and local
businesses), will certainly have their part to
play in local people-centered development in the
coming years.
For most
of us who live in Western industrialised countries, the
top priority will be to help reorient our own countries
toward people-centered development and thereby reduce the
burdens that our economies place on the resources
available to less wealthy nations. By doing so, we will
be working for a better future for ourselves while at the
same time contributing to the efforts of friends and
colleagues working for people-centered development in
other parts of the world.
James Robertson, is
an independent writer, speaker and consultant, a founder
of The Other Economic Summit (TOES). and a contributing
editor of the People-Centered Development Forum. He may
be reached at The Old Bakehouse, Cholsey, Oxon OX109NU,
UK; tel:(44-491)652-346.
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