PUBLIC REASON

Journal of Political and Moral Philosophy

Public Reason is a peer-reviewed journal of political and moral philosophy. Public Reason publishes articles, book reviews, as well as discussion notes from all the fields of political philosophy and ethics, including political theory, applied ethics, and legal philosophy. The Journal encourages the debate around rationality in politics and ethics in the larger context of the discussion concerning rationality as a philosophical problem. Public Reason is committed to a pluralistic approach, promoting interdisciplinary and original perspectives as long as the ideal of critical arguing and clarity is respected. The journal is intended for the international philosophical community, as well as for a broader public interested in political and moral philosophy. It aims to promote philosophical exchanges with a special emphasis on issues in, and discussions on the Eastern European space. Public Reason publishes two issues per year, in June and December. Public Reason is an open access e-journal, but it is also available in print.

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Public Reason is available online at http://publicreason.ro ISSN 2065-7285

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© 2012 by Public Reason

PUBLIC REASON

Journal of Political and Moral Philosophy

Vol. 5, No. 2, December 2013

ARTICLES

Rafael Ziegler

Real Social Contracts for Sustainability?

Philosophical and Political Implications of Social Agreement

in Circumstances of Poverty and Degraded Ecosystems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Karsten Klint Jensen & Tine Bech Flanagan

Climate Change and Compensation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21

Li Jianjun

Heavy Fog and Smog in Beijing: A Watershed towards a Green Future . . . . . .33

Thierry Ngosso

The Right to Development of Developing Countries:

An Argument against Environmental Protection? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

Alobwede John Ngome

Unlocking Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA)

with Development Inspiration from the South . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

Sirkku K. Hel sten

The End Of Development?

Reflections on the Unsustainability of the Current Development Paradigm and a Quest for an African Alternative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .79

BOOK REVIEWS

Philippe Van Parijs, Just Democracy The Rawls–Machiavel i Programme . . . . . . . .95

Reviewed by Ileana Dascălu

Public Reason 5 (2): 3-20

© 2013 by Public Reason

Real Social Contracts for Sustainability?

Philosophical and Political Implications of Social Agreement in

Circumstances of Poverty and Degraded Ecosystems

Rafael Ziegler

Social-ecological research platform GETIDOS

Abstract. Social agreements, roughly put, are a focused and actual variant of social contracts.

They are focused on the agreement of parties to cooperate and they pertain to basic aspects of living and living together; however, not comprehensively but focused on a specific theme or themes such as sanitation, water supply or energy provisions. Unlike hypothetical social contracts, social agreements can be empirical y studied. So what is their implication for hypothetical social contract, and beyond that for justice and sustainability? This paper introduces social agreement via a case study of social agreement in watershed development in an arid zone with low-income farmers. Watershed development in this context seeks to restore degraded land and simultaneously local democratic institutions. It is an ecological and social investment with medium-term and long-term benefits, i.e. for both present and future generations. Social agreement makes us rethink some issues in the theory and practice of justice and sustainability: how we frame the relation of generations in intergenerational saving, how we think about stability beyond the nation state, and how agreement is a dynamic process that creates the space for the capabilities required to support it in a just and sustainable way. On the global level, social agreement is a possibility for the affluent to discharge their responsibility via investments in such agreements.

Key words: social agreement, social contract, justice, sustainability, social innovation.

“Social contract” has become associated with comprehensive and hypothetical reasoning about justice1. However, such an approach – the “received view” on social contract – need not exclude philosophical attention to social contracts in practice. I will call the latter “social agreements” so as to avoid confusing terminology. The major philosophical approaches hardly pay much, if any, attention to social agreement. This paper proposes that social agreement provides philosophical and political insights for thinking about various aspects of social contracts and their underlying, profoundly important, concern with agreement (Freeman 2007, 17), and beyond that for the theory and practice of justice and sustainability more general y.

Let me start with some suggestions why the study of social agreement might be of interest in terms of reframing some issues and learning from social agreement for theory 1] The most famous 20th century version of this approach is no doubt Rawls’ theory of justice (Rawls 1999a). In this paper, I draw on it as my paradigm for a social contract approach. Samuel Freeman helpful y characterizes social contract approaches as a framework for justification in ethics that, however, is used in quite different ways (Freeman 2007, 17ff): interest-based approaches start from the desires of individuals. They model these desires as amoral, and from Hobbes to Buchanan and Gauthier, ask what moral principles it would be rational to choose for individuals with given ends. Right-based approaches start from moral notions. From Locke, Rousseau, and Kant to Rawls they ask what principles of justice ought to be agreed on with a view to these moral notions.

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Real Social Contracts for Sustainability?

and practice. Agreeing on joint action is an attractive way of doing things, and prima facie not open to the same kind of skepticism that hypothetical agreement has to deal with (e.g.

What if anything is the implication of a hypothetical agreement for the real world? Is this not a philosopher’s myth?). Social agreement is in a much more straightforward way a source of creating obligation, and it is simply a question of philosophers’ humility to remain open to possible lessons from agreement in practice, even if this partly reframes how we think about agreement. As we will see below, social agreement does not require that all members of a state agree on joint action. In action-contexts agreement can be focused on those directly affected and involved in a practical problem; for example a drought or a flood in a watershed, or the energy provision of a district, or access to sanitation in a vil age etc. It helps rethinking social contract beyond the nation state in an age of ecological crisis and increasing global inequalities. Partial social agreement may be especial y important in a context of poverty and minimum justice – or in a problematic political language: in a “development context”2 – where government is distant, weak or incomplete. In such a context, social agreement is evidence for normative creativity in response to urgent ethical chal enges and might offer a model to be supported and fostered via policies. Last but not least, social agreement just as much as hypothetical agreement involves difficult reflection on values, their coherence and implications, role-taking etc. Participants with different backgrounds (class, gender, language etc.) have to agree on joint action with others. The apparent gulf between hypothetical social contract and social agreement may be more of a gradual difference due to different emphasis (i.e. the goal of an elaborate justification versus the goal of dealing with a practical, urgent problem). Again this suggests that much can be learnt about values and justification strategies from real-world contexts in which people may not put much emphasis on elaborate justifications and concept clarifications but in which they are pressured to find ways of agreeing with each other.

With a view to exploring these ethical and political implications, I would like to discuss social agreement in the philosophical context of social contract thinking. I take this context to demand a chief concern with social justice and sustainability in the present and between generations. My focus is on an actual case – social agreement for watershed development in poor communities with rainfed agriculture in India – and what might be learnt from it for ethical reflection on agreement as a framework of ethical justification and substantive claims about justice made in terms of this framework. In line with the focus of this special issue, I focus on social agreement at the local level, in a context of poverty and with a focus on natural resources and their sustainable use. No doubt, social agreement can also be studied on other levels – and I will turn to one recent proposal in the sustainability context below and in the final section – . . . yet, the present focus is clearly a focus of immediate relevance from a justice and sustainability perspective.

The first Rio Earth summit in 1992 is known for putting sustainable development on the agenda of governments on all levels (Agenda 21, national sustainability, international 2] For a detailed discussion, see Rist 1997.

Rafael Ziegler

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regimes). It aimed to bring together the concern for environmental conservation with the demand for development of those facing poverty and oppression (World Commission on Environment and Development 1987). On this global level, social contract has also played a prominent role in the preparations for the 2012 Rio+20 conference. The WGBU3

proposed it as an organizing theme of its influential flagship report “World in Transition – a Social Contract for Sustainability” (WGBU 2011). The report cal s for a global social contract that preserves natural life-support systems for present and future generations, improves participation by civil society and science on all political levels via “proactive states,” which seek to support pioneers of sustainability and that cooperate global y with a view to justice and sustainability. It is a bold proposal for policymakers that at the same time chal enges the focus of many social contract approaches on the nation state and their only limited attention to the natural environment and our responsibility for future generations. Like these approaches, however, the WGBU also understands the social contract not as the “description or definition of actual processes” (WGBU 2011, 299). Towards the end of this paper, I will draw attention to the possible lessons of social agreement also for this policy level. Social agreement in a context of poverty and with a focus on resource management prima facie is an idea for development that needs to be scrutinized as a possible social innovation. It concerns the “pioneers” that according to the WGBU proactive states ought to promote national y or as a part of international development co-operation4.

The next section introduces social agreement via a case study from Maharashtra, India. Sections II-IV discuss philosophical aspects of social agreement with a view to justice and sustainability. Section V concludes and turns to the political level and the proposal of a global social contract for sustainability. The purpose of this paper is exploratory: it seeks to make the case for the philosophical and political relevance of taking social agreement seriously. To this end I highlight various implications and make some putative proposals.

I. A CASE STUDY ON SOCIAL AGREEMENT5

For rainfed agriculture, water availability for personal use and for farming depends on the ability to harvest and retain rain in the land. Yet, over half of the Indian territory is degraded; wind and water erosion along with deforestation cause desertification (Ministry of Environment and Forestry, India 2001, 15ff). Such chal enges also hold for the Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra, the focus area of this case study.

3] The WGBU is the German Advisory Council on Global Change.

4] Social Innovation here is used in a wide sense as the development and delivery of new ideas (products, services, models, markets, processes) at different socio-structural levels that intentional y seek to improve human capabilities, social relations, and the processes in which these solutions are carried out.

See also Nichol s and Murdock 2011.

5] This section draws on joint research for the social-ecological research group GETIDOS (Ziegler, Partzsch, Gebauer, Henkel, Mohaupt and Lodemann 2014).

6

Real Social Contracts for Sustainability?

A major drought occurred in 1972 in the state of Maharashtra: an estimated 25

mil ion people needed help. Subsequently further droughts and near drought situations fol owed. While these droughts are not reported to have caused famines, they contributed to the poverty of the rural population in Maharashtra, including effects like malnutrition, forced migration, indebtedness and suicides.

Watershed development refers to the conservation and regeneration of water in its relation to the land, vegetation, animals and humans within the draining basin of a catchment. The specification of the drainage area and regeneration potential is a technical task, and typical y watershed development is a technical, top-down approach. Yet in the Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra, a participatory approach emerged facilitated by the Watershed Organization Trust (WOTR).

WOTR is a non-governmental organization with its head office in Pune, India, a project office in Ahmednagar and nine regional resource centres in the states of Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan, as well as a training centre in Darewadi (Maharasthra)6. WOTR’s goal is “to contribute to poverty reduction and improvement in the quality of life of rural communities in a manner that is upscaleable and replicable”. Its vision is that “communities, especial y the poor within, be empowered to live in dignity and secure their livelihoods in sustainable ecosystems” (WOTR 2012). Equal participation and community ownership are at the heart of WOTR’s vision and its contribution to participatory, rather than top-down, technical watershed development.

Drawing on its practical experiences over the last two decades, WOTR developed the Wasundhara approach for joint implementation of its approach to watershed development together with vil ages. ‘Wasundhara’ is a Sanskrit term meaning “flourishing earth” and for WOTR, connotes compassion, caring, co-responsibility and harmony. More technical y it is an acronym for “WOTR Attentive to Social Unity for Nature Development and Humanity in Rural Areas” (Jewler 2011, 6). This watershed development approach has two phases.

Phase 1 (12-18 months): Providing the ground for participatory watershed development

If a vil age indicates interest in the approach, WOTR offers audio and visual aids for further learning about the approach and organizes exposure visits to vil ages that have already participated in watershed development. Only if the Gram Panchayat, the local vil age government, passes a resolution in favour of starting the watershed development process, will WOTR engage more ful y in the first part of the watershed development.

WOTR initiates self-help groups for women, and there is a Shramadan, a required participation in watershed development works for four days. WOTR only continues 6] WOTR is financed through donations and grants from governments, business and civil society institutions. Of special importance has been multi-year support from Germany via the Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KfW) and the Deutsche Gesel schaft für International Zusammenarbeit (GIZ).

Rafael Ziegler

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the project if at least 70% of the population participates for four days in a watershed activity. In short, via the Shramadan there is a test to see if the vil ages not only live up to a formal agreement, but also are able to practical y agree to work together on participatory watershed development. So-cal ed participatory net planning then gives each family an improved understanding of their land and its watershed potential; a woman and a man from each family have to participate (for a detailed description, see Joshi and Huirem 2009). WOTR also organizes a participatory wealth ranking. The organisation supplies the categories “very poor,” “poor,” “middle class” and “better off,” and the vil agers concretize the categories and classify the wealth distribution in the vil age. Final y, there is the formation of a Vil age Development Committee (VDC, formerly Watershed Development Committee or VWC), as well as a Sanyukta Mahila Samittee (SMS) – Joint Women’s’ Committee – a federation of women self-help groups (SHGs) on the vil age level. The VDC includes the different geographical and wealth groups of the vil age based on the prior wealth-ranking exercise.

Phase 2 (3-4 years): Participatory Implementation

In this period, the main implementation of watershed development and socio-economic development are tackled. It includes again a Shramadan. With the help of government, as well as development cooperation funds, jobs are created for afforestation, pasture development, soil and water conservation measures, horticulture, agriculture and livelihood measures. Grants and loans are given to women’s self-help group activities. The work is accompanied by monitoring and evaluation, including peer-group assessment (vil ages cross-examine their work). A maintenance fund for the post-watershed development is set up and WOTR assists with building relations, for example, with government agencies. It also assists with making demands, for example, where the government has not lived up to infrastructure promises.

As far as watershed development projects are concerned, by 2011 WOTR has operated in five states of India: Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Jharkhand. By 2015, WOTR reports to have been directly involved over 1,815,500

people in 1,992 vil ages covering 1,329,688 hectares with its approach.7

Watershed development and social agreement

The WOTR approach to social agreement draws on a central principle: community ownership. This is a complex and dynamic normative principle. Here it will be introduced in a chronological manner.

WOTR early on launches a test of consent and participation. It asks the members of the vil age to participate in voluntary four-day watershed development work. Only if at least 70% of the households of the vil age have participated, will the process continue.

WOTR then facilitates the creation of the vil age institutions, in particular the VDC, 7] http://www.wotr.org/projects, accessed February 25, 2015.

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Real Social Contracts for Sustainability?

which is chiefly responsible for the watershed development. Members of this committee are to be selected from each social group and geographical area of the vil age (D’Souza and Lobo 2008, 125, 131; Jewler 2011): 50% women, representatives from all wealth groups (based on the prior exercise in wealth ranking) and geographical representation is ensured via subdivision in territorial subgroups or wards. These formal requirements for participation in decision-making are accompanied by activities targeted at making decision-making informed and enabling people to participate. Participatory net planning ensures that each household is informed regarding the characteristics and potential of its land. The early initiation of women self-help groups provides women with a forum of discussion prior to, and then complementing the, VDC process. During the project implementation, the VDC and the entire vil age have to meet at least once every three months. A qualitative impact matrix along with peer-review visits to see the work of others (including a regional award) promotes information flow about the vil age and between vil ages. In short, an effort is made that people in the vil age do not have only a formal possibility to participate but a real opportunity to get involved.

The economic dimension of control over the environment is the other side of the community ownership principle. It is one thing to own land, another thing to hold land that is valuable. The chal enge in rainfed agriculture in an arid zone is one of increasing the productive value of the land and reducing the risk to agriculture from drought or insufficient water availability. If it is not possible to live on the land throughout the year, stable political participation is clearly also not possible. Changes in the material value of land for livelihoods are indicated by changes in the monetary value of land, in the crop yield, in the effective time during which agricultural employment is possible in the vil age, and linked to these, changes in primary migration (here understood as migration due to lack of employment in the vil age8).

Thus, the community principle can be unpacked in terms of a) a voluntary and practical test of wil ingness to participate, b) creation of a (regularly meeting) institution according to inclusive membership rules, c) accompanying efforts to make decision-making informed, and d) an approach to the natural resource base (watershed development) aimed at making it possible to live from and permanently on the land. In this way, a “real social contract” emerges in time. The aspect of real agreement is also appreciated as such by the participants; or as VDC members put it in a feedback evaluation of the approach: “consent of all is always the basis of obligation” (Joshi and Huirem 2009, 42). With a view to Indian history, we could call such social agreements on the local level Ghandian moments9 in vil age democracy. So what is the implication of these agreements emerging from a development context of poverty and degraded resources 8] I owe this point to Balachandra Hegde.

9] In plural, because I think that further instances of such social agreements can be found, for sanitation see Ganly and Mair 2009 and Ziegler 2012.

Rafael Ziegler

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for philosophical social contract approaches, as well as for the policy proposal of a social contract for sustainability?

II. JUSTICE BETWEEN GENERATIONS

In hypothetical social contract theory, again fol owing Rawls’ lead, a two-stage model of responsibility for the future is widely discussed. In a first accumulation phase, members of society have to make compulsory savings up to the level where there is sufficient capital (in a wide sense of the word) to maintain just and stable institutions (Rawls 1999a, §

44). Once this level is attained, no further compulsory savings are required. The saving is limited to the maintenance of what is required for just and stable institutions. On the Rawlsian perspective, further savings beyond this level are optional; on a luck egalitarian perspective there should also be a prohibition of further savings on the ground that such savings would be at the cost of the least well-off in the present generation (Gosseries 2005).

The first stage faces empirical and evaluative questions. The obvious empirical question it raises is: why is capital accumulation necessary for the establishment of just institutions? According to Axel Gosseries (drawing on work by Adam Przeworski), capital accumulation might make institutions more stable. Th e opposition in a rich country has something to lose: an affluent style of life. The opposition in a poor country has nothing or relatively little to lose (Gosseries 2004, 217-22). Social agreement in the case above supports this argument. In the watershed case, resource poverty means practical y that people cannot live from agriculture throughout the year. The result is forced seasonal migration with high costs to stable vil age culture and especial y to children and their education possibilities. With successful watershed development, agriculture throughout the year becomes possible. Migration becomes a matter of choice rather than necessity.

The central normative question on the first-stage of the model is why earlier generations should save for later generations. As already Kant remarked in his Idea for Universal History,

it is disconcerting here, however, that previous generations seem to have pursued their arduous endeavors only for the sake of the later ones, in order to prepare for them a level from which they can raise even higher the structure that nature intended; and that nevertheless only the later generations should have the fortune to dwell in the building which was the work of a long series of earlier generations (albeit without this being their intention), without themselves being able to share in the fortune that they themselves had worked toward. (2006[1795], 6).

The Kantian-Rawlsian reply is that liberty takes priority over wealth and income, and that therefore some constraints on wealth are legitimate if they are invested for the sake of setting up just institutions (Gosseries 2004, 217ff and2005, 44).

For those who remain troubled by this argument, not least because of the priority of liberties over economic aspects of justice, the social agreement case is instructive. I 10

Real Social Contracts for Sustainability?

will first set out the first generations savings chal enge in this case, and then return to the normative chal enge.

Watershed development is a straightforward example of an investment in natural (and social) capital. From ridge to val ey, the land is worked on to increase rainwater harvesting and reduce water run-off via catchments and dams. Simultaneously farmers are asked not to extract groundwater from deep wel s to facilitate groundwater replenishment. A ban on fel ing trees and free grazing is meant to promote soil erosion and improve water retention.

In short, this is both “arduous endeavor” and clearly a demanding social discipline for poor farmers in an arid environment. To be sure, first benefits already may be available in the medium-term of 5 years; stil , this is a long time for farmers facing poverty.

The built up of natural capital – here primarily freshwater, and with it vegetation and soil – requires a further specification of the Rawlsian capital accumulation requirement.

In watershed development, work is invested into a fund: water that regenerates if properly restored and managed. If this investment is successful y made, water can be sustainably used subject to the fund’s regeneration rate10. Such a focus on funds is especial y important in a context of rural poverty, where there is no prospect of earning income without a prior investment in the resource base.

The Kantian-Rawlsian framing of the first-stage normative chal enge is one of a first generation in isolation. “The first generation” somehow has to bite the bul et; for example as a noble act in the name of liberty. But built up or restoration of capital is a constant and diverse chal enge. In the age of ecological crisis, the modern assumption of linear progress can no longer be taken for granted11. We are increasingly aware and sensitive to generations that are confronted with run-down “capitals,” in particular natural capital in the form of depleted or pol uted groundwater, loss of forests and soils etc. Depending on the context, there are many “first generations,” which urgently have to accumulate (or restore) natural capital if they are to achieve a threshold level of sufficiency and stability.

At the same time, there are many “second generations,” with respect to this issue, and even more so with respect to other issues, who are well beyond the required capital level of stable institutions.

The discussion in the last paragraph suggests at least three different normative framings of the accumulation problem in the first phase: 1) As a problem solely for the respective first generation 2) Suppose the land is degraded because of a colonial history with tree-cutting for export or because of a global system of cooperation that make direct or indirect freshwater stock-extraction very profitable for some (e.g. sugar cane production), even though not for the locals. Eric Neumayer has shown that there is a correlation between high human development as measured by the Human Development 10] I focus here on the quantitative dimension. To be sure, water quality is also important for sustainable use. However, it is not the first chal enge in the present case.

11] To be sure, already Kant’s discussion was cautiously worded. See especial y his Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Perspective in Kant 2006[1795]; and specifical y on progress and reason in Kant’s philosophy of history Kleingeld 1995.

Rafael Ziegler

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Index and high unsustainability as measured by the ecological footprint of nations (Neumayer 2012). The high human development of some nations in terms of income, life expectancy and education is throughout correlated with unsustainability: a resource and sink requirement that is above the global y available average per capita. Such global data on environmental (un)sustainability provide evidence for a structural issue and the problems it raises in terms of a negative duty to support those in poverty, because they are unjustly harmed by colonial history or by the present system of cooperation or simply by the fact that there does not remain as good and enough land for the poor to have the development opportunities that the affluent enjoy (Pogge 2002). 3) Suppose a specific issue is relatively independent of external factors and better understood as an endogenous, local problem. Then there still remains the case for a positive duty to assist those in an unstable context (Rawls 1999b). In fact, in the set-up of WOTR the Indian government did accept support from the German government as a matter of development cooperation (as opposed to compensating for ecological debt).

In conclusion, social agreement offers a fresh perspective on one aspect of the problem of intergenerational justice and sustainability. The focus on social agreement suggests a reframing of the “first generation” problem: it is not only, or not just, a question of the heroic “arduous endeavors” of the first generation but also question of negative justice and duty of assistance for “second generations.” It suggests that the monolithic image of development as progress – modeled on the image of the Western modernized, industrialized nations that others have to catch up to – has to be replaced by prima facie many first and second generations subject to specific problems and chal enges for meeting at least the minimum threshold of justice and sustainability. Second generations have a possibility to help, and in many contexts may have a justice obligation to support, the built up of natural and social capital required for stable institutions.

This argument is based on the possibility of local social agreements for sustainability.

But can such agreements be just and sustainable? I will turn to this question via a discussion of the second stage of the intergenerational justice scheme in the next section.

III. JUSTICE AND STABILITY

The Rawlsian social contract approach provides a model of hypothetical agreement to construct and justify principles for a just and stable society. The principles are designed for the basic structure of a state and its people. As society’s major institutions have a pervasive effect on the life opportunities of individuals, the principles seek to comprehensively create fair opportunity for everyone and reduce the effect of “social contingencies and natural fortune” (Rawls 1999a, 63).

By contrast, the social agreement described above is focused on the subnational, local level and is a hybrid of social category (vil age) and environmental category (watershed focus). There is a basic structure focus (resource management) but it is not comprehensive. The basic structure focus is focused: on watershed development, and not 12

Real Social Contracts for Sustainability?

for example religious freedom, the caste system etc. Justice is a major concern, but this concern is focused on minimum justice: lifting people to an acceptable level of living in dignity within ecosystems (and to be sure a further motivation is that creating conditions for sustainable resource management is a key to all further vil age development). The community principle invoked to achieve this minimum justice is a dynamic principle; its temporal structure is a key to the unfolding of this social agreement.

The comparison suggests a number of concerns with a view to social agreement as a just and stable approach. First, a local social agreement no doubt has organizational advantages but it also comes at a cost: how can it achieve stability given that it is embedded in the larger structure of the state and its coercive power? What benefit has even the most democratic local social agreement for example in the context of a corrupt bureaucracy or of market forces that necessarily strongly impact agriculture and all other commercial activity in the vil age? Second, next to the hierarchical problem of higher power, there may be a problem with overlapping issues. Focus on one theme such as watershed development leaves other justice issues untouched. This is moral y unsatisfactory, and it is instrumental y problematic because for example gender, class or caste divisions can become an obstacle to the stable achievement of social agreement. For example, affluent groups may seize all benefits from watershed development.

Research on vil ages with watershed development based on social agreement confirms the concerns with hierarchy in social agreement. The state “interferes” for example with water programs of its own and already established hierarchies of class, gender and caste cause serious limitation to social agreement in watershed development (Kale 2011). Interestingly, however, social agreement in this case also indicates at least two, interrelated ways of addressing this problem.

First, watershed development is to be “scaled up” as WOTR puts it. The practical meaning of this unusual expression is that people are to be constitutively included from the beginning (bottom “up”), but not just in one vil age but in many (“scaled”). The more successful this scaling strategy, the stronger the possible coalition power of such vil ages in the face of top down or external interference. The scaling strategy includes advocacy work on the regional and governmental level to change legislation in such a way to make it supportive of the local watershed approach. Over the last two years moreover an attempt at “clustering” of vil ages is emerging: vil ages working together against external pressure (for example market pressures for agricultural products). However, it would be a mistake to think of scaling as the “replication” of a model in the sense of a copy. Rather, the goal of scaling is to adapt the principles of watershed development to the respective context.

Second, in addition there is what could be cal ed, by analogy to the WOTR

expression above, scaling deep. In response to the problems with established gender, caste and wealth hierarchies, WOTR expands its watershed development approach. First the relation to gender, then the relation to wealth was included in the approach. For example, women self-help organization groups are separately started prior to the vil age watershed Rafael Ziegler

13

development; and since the early 2000s WOTR includes a wealth-ranking and wealth-sensitive contribution scheme as part of its approach.

Such responses of scaling up and scaling deep are certainly not capable of guaranteeing justice and stability (but to be sure there is no such guarantee on the national level either).

Not least as with climate change there is an external threat to water availability – especial y longer periods of droughts, more severe rain fal s, new climatic patterns – that is not only beyond the power of any individual vil age but even of any individual state or even of the affluent states together (Stern 2010)12. Stil , what the study of social agreement shows is an aspect that is quasi absent in the received social contract discussion: learning and scaling as a response to obstacles encountered. I will turn to the relation of this response to the policy level of a global contract for sustainability in section five.

In addition, the study of social agreement highlights the implications of a pragmatic aspect that has always been there in social contract approaches but the implications of which have not been paid much attention to. In the theory of justice, this pragmatic point is present when Rawls focuses on the nation state, and here on specific issues so as to get the, in his view, most urgent and relevant chal enges right. In as much as such a pragmatic point is a response to an urgent moral issue, for Rawls arguably income and racial inequality in the post-world war United States, such pragmatic focus is as understandable as is the WOTR focus on watershed development in an arid area with farmers pursuing rainfed agriculture. What the social agreement case suggests as one important additional consideration is the way in which an approach deals with additional or emerging chal enges concerning justice and stability. The capacities to learn and to scale have to the best of my knowledge been very much understudied in the philosophical discussion of social contracts and of justice more general y.

IV. JUSTICE AND SOCIAL AGREEMENT

This section turns to three objections to social agreement as an approach to justice and sustainability as such, and as facing similar problems as social contract thinking in general. An ethical objection to social agreement is due to the concern that social agreement has insufficient normative content to make it a contribution to justice and sustainability. Why could not the Mafia or any other robber gang make a social agreement?

On the interest-based approach to social agreement, this question is a powerful one: what would stop a number of self-interested people to gang up to their mutual advantage?

It is, I submit, difficult to provide a convincing answer as context-dependent strategic possibilities may always undermine the possibility of justice. On the right-based approach to social agreement, the matter looks different. On this perspective, social agreement is 12] Interestingly though, climate change adaptation has already become a theme of social agreement too, for example via the introduction of meteorological stations that inform farmers more efficiently of weather forecasts. For more information see the project on climate change adaption see http://wotr.org/

climate-change-adaptation (accessed May 10, 2013).

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Real Social Contracts for Sustainability?

an attempt to work out in practice principles and institutions for working together based on already widely held normative intuitions about justice. These intuitions are part of a deeper democratic culture, and as the case study shows, it is an ethnocentric fal acy to believe that such intuitions are only held in “the West”13. The general goal and chal enge of social agreement is as such not very different from hypothetical social contract: given our general and vague pre-commitments to justice and sustainability, what would be the principles and institutions for living together in a just and sustainable way? In case of social agreement as discussed the focus is not on private scheming for private gain but rather on public discussion for living together in dignity (which of course includes personal benefit as wel ). If this is correct, then the ethical objection has prudential value – scrutiny with respect to self-interested, private scheming – but it is hardly a knockdown objection to the study and practice of social agreement.

One standard objection to social contract approaches is that national contracts insufficiently take into account externalities that negatively affect distant others (i.e.

in space). This is an important point with a view to climate change effects and unequal emission levels, water scarcity and virtual trade in water etc. The social agreement studied here reverses the perspective: it takes the perspective of groups that are clearly badly off with respect to a central issue for minimum justice. In this case, the externality objection turns into a justification of support. It can provide justification why the affluent have a negative duty to support such bottom-up real agreements in view of colonial history and the effects of global systems of cooperation. Stil , this point only is valid to the extent that the social agreement at issue concerns such approaches at the threshold of generating the conditions of living in dignity and with just and stable institutions.

This takes me to a second standard objection to social contract: the focus on moral actors and their agreements for mutual advantage tends to ignore or insufficiently deal with moral patients such as babies, non-human animals, living beings in general etc.

(Jamieson 2010, 316; Nussbaum 2006). With a view to social contract in a context of poverty this objection needs to be reframed. The focus of the social agreement discussed here is to create conditions of moral and political agency, and hence the “real freedom” (Sen 1999) that is required for environmental y responsible behavior. As people in poverty and unstable contexts hardly can be expected to act moral y with respect to the environment – a point that is readily acknowledged in the received view in the discussion of circumstances of justice, held to only obtain in contexts of moderate scarcity – the expectation of moral concern and responsibility for non-human others is hardly justifiable below a threshold level. And it is practical y counter-intuitive to raise this concern with people that have below average ecological footprints, and that leave significant environmental space for other living beings in comparison to the more affluent. In my view, the environmental 13] For India this case has been made in detail by Amartya Sen in his 2005 book on Indian culture and history.

Rafael Ziegler

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ethics question therefore rather leads to an important fol ow-up question: what happens and ought to happen if a group reaches such a threshold level? This is an important further question. With a view to this question, and again drawing on the case of social agreement I would only like to propose one consideration with a view to it. If social agreement is an attempt to publicly work out just and sustainable conditions of working together, there is no logical reason why such a workout ought to necessarily exclude concern for moral patients. To the contrary, such concern would seem to depend very much on ful y working out the pre-commitments of social agreement, along with the cultural, religious and educational sensibilities of the group involved, and how they would like to make an agreement with a view to moral patients. In short, there is no logical reason why social agreement ought to be an exclusive agreement to mutual advantage of moral actors; rather, there is an open question how social agreement may incorporate moral patients.

Social contract theory can be focused on the question of generating obligation and justifying the coercive power of the state or (though this is not necessarily exclusive) it can be a tool to help us figure out what is just. While the last objections were focused on this latter question, let me also turn to the first question. Even if the approach is based on a community principle, is it not external y imported (by WOTR) and the focus on social agreement therefore real y superficial, and possibly dangerous? According to a Humean objection to the social contract argument, the argument is simply descriptively false because people typical y do not explicitly consent to any social contract. We could at best speak of tacit consent. But then what is the value of tacit consent for generating obligation? Social agreement seems to be open to a variation of the tacit consent concern.

True there is real agreement. But, what choice do people in poor conditions real y have not to consent? Are there, in such conditions, not always very subtle possibilities of forcing people to agree?

True, WOTR external y sets principles as a condition of getting involved (voluntary trial test, inclusive membership criteria, getting informed); yet at the same time the approach thereby gradual y creates the conditions for people to be in a better position do decide for themselves with respect to watershed development. Put differently, poor people may in fact have no or very limited choice in the initial stage – though formal y they can of course always reject to work together with WOTR in the first place – but they do have an improved choice at a later stage, including opting out (secondary migration out of choice, or agreeing not to continue the approach). The WOTR approach brings together a public gathered by an issue (watershed development) and in the process moves this public in the direction of an empowered demos. This observation suggests a further insight from social agreement: creating just and stable institutions is not just a matter of “capital accumulation”, it is just as much a matter of creating spaces in the respective context for participants to develop their capacities. Social agreement generates free support; it does not just presuppose it.

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Real Social Contracts for Sustainability?

V. CONCLUDING REMARKS

In the paradigmatic case of the received view, Rawls’ theory of justice, social contract thinking clarifies the demand of justice in a process of reflective equilibrium between intuitions and considered judgments on the one hand, and principles of justice on the other hand. Social agreement is a dynamic equilibrium between intuitions and considered judgments on the one hand, and practical principles to achieve minimum justice and sustainability with a view to specific, practical issues such as freshwater supply, sanitation and energy provision. The social agreement studied here focuses on the restoration of a fund (freshwater) that is a central requirement for health and wealth for present and future generations.

Philosophical social contract approaches have not paid much attention to such social agreements. This paper suggests some first reasons why the study of social agreement is philosophical y relevant. First, it suggests that we ought to rethink some issue of intergenerational justice and stability and how they are framed. As argued in section two with a view to the two-stage model of intergenerational justice, it seems parochial in an age of ecological crisis to focus the accumulation phase in terms of an image of a first generation conceived of in isolation. With a view to degraded ecosystems worldwide and their frequently severe and direct implications for the poorest, the task of accumulation – here restoration of freshwater as a natural capital – ought to be discussed just as much as a negative duty of “second generations” in more affluent places that are typical y linked in various ways (colonial history, current systems of global and economic cooperation, effects of overuse of eco-space by the affluent on the eco-space opportunities of the poorest) to the respective “first generation” (who might have been better off in the past). The linear image of progress implicit in social contract thinking from Kant to Rawls here is replaced by a discussion of complex responsibilities of present generations for each other and for future generations. Social agreement as studied here affords a revised Rawlsian ethical perspective: the perspective of those least-advantaged with a view to social-ecological dynamics in a globalized world. Also, social agreement highlights the importance of agreement beyond the nation state. Rather than jumping to the “global state” the focus here has been on the public gathered by a specific, local issue co-defined by an environmental category (the watershed). This in turn revealed a novel concern with ensuring the stability of social agreement: learning and scaling (section III).

What are the capacities required to respond to new and upcoming chal enges – such as climate change effects – so as to make an approach not just stable but also resilient? What are the capacities required to do so in col aboration with others? Final y, I noted as a third important and open issue how social agreement deals with the threshold issue once the watershed has been restored. There does not seem to be a necessity for social agreement to fol ow the economic growth logic rather than aim at what Mill cal ed a stationary state, Rafael Ziegler

17

or to exclude moral patients from consideration in the agreement. Could social agreement stably prevail at a threshold level and without economic growth? In this paper, I could only raise these questions as worthy of further attention, and as additions to the discussion of stability in the received view.

Social agreement is also of global, political relevance, and here I would like to return to the social contract for sustainability. According to the WGBU proposal, such a contract would central y involve proactive states promoting pioneers for sustainability. “Pioneer”, in the proposal, refers to innovators for sustainable, low carbon ways of doings things that ought to move from the niche to the mainstream. A closer look at the WGBU-report shows these pioneers to be primarily associated with countries or even regions (the EU) that take first moves in the direction of low-carbon economies, as well as cities, companies and NGOs that form coalitions in this direction. Social agreement, developed by social innovators such as WOTR in watershed development or Gram Vikas in sanitation, suggests a pioneer approach beyond the nation state or the innovativeness of companies and truly in the spirit of a social contract for sustainability. However, so far this approach appears to receive much less attention in comparison to technical and national level political approaches, even though reasons of justice and sustainability can be given for the support of affluent groups in support of this approach14. They offer substantive ideas for sustainable development. In particular, the case study above suggests as key aspects of such social agreement a) guidelines of fund restoration, b) guidelines for the unfolding inclusion of those directly living on the territory of the fund, c) and in view of the always to be expected obstacles to real social agreements a capacity for learning. So should social agreement receive more attention, also political y, in the global political discussion of sustainability?

Acknowledgements

This publication has benefited from research conducted with the support of Balachandra Hegde and Rohan Shetti in Mahrashtra, where WOTR gave us permission to conduct interviews with its staff and assisted with contacting participants in vil ages.

It has also benefitted from the financial support of the German Ministry of Education and Research for the research group GETIDOS (www.getidos.net), as wel as from participation in the network Rights to a Green Future, which is financed by the European Science Foundation. I would like to thank Adrian-Paul Iliescu, Thierry Ngosso and Axel Gosseries for organizing the ESF-ARC Workshop in May 2013, and Tim Meijers for presenting a comment on an earlier version of this paper.

rziegler@uni-greifswald.de

14] In his cosmopolitan proposal for a global resource dividend, Thomas Pogge does not specify specific actors on the expenditure side of his dividend for meeting basic needs (Pogge 2002, chapter 8).

Here too social agreement is worthwhile considering.

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REFERENCES

D’Souza, M., and Crispino Lobo. 2008. Restoring ecosystems and renewing lives: the story of Mhaswandi, a once poor vil age in India. In The Role of the Environment in Poverty Al eviation, edited by P. Galizzi and A. Herklotz, 121-44. New York: Fordham University Press.

Freemann, Samuel. 2007. Justice and the Social Contract. Essays on Rawlsian Political Philosophy.

Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Ganly, Kate and Johanna Mair. 2009. Kleine Schritte zum institutionel en Wandel. Ökologische Wirtschaften 2: 15-17.

Gosseries, Axel. 2004. Penser La Justice Entre Les Générations: De L’affaire Perruche À La Réforme Des Retraites. Paris: Flammarion.

———. 2005. The Egalitarian Case Against Brundtland’s Sustainability. GAIA 14 (1): 40-46.

Jamieson, Dale. 2010. When Utilitarians should be virtue theorists. In Essential Readings in Climate Change, edited by Stephen Gardiner et. al, 315-31. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Jewler, Sam. 2011. The Wasundhara Approach. http://www.wotr.org/ (acessed January 31, 2012) Joshi, Lalita and Ratna Huirem. 2009. Participatory Net Planning: Reflections and Learnings from the Field. Pune: WOTR.

Kale, Eshwer. 2011. Social Exclusion in watershed development: evidence from the indo-german watershed development project in Maharashtra. Law Environment and Development Journal 7 (2): 97-116.

Kant, Immanuel. 2006[1795]. Toward Perpetual Peace and Other Writings on Politics, Peace, and History. Edited by Pauline Kleingeld. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Kleingeld, Pauline. 1995. Fortschritt und Vernunft: zur Geschichtsphilosophie Kants. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann.

Neumayer, Eric. 2012. Human Development and Sustainability. Journal of Human Development and Capabilities 13 (4): 561-79.

Ministry of Environment and Forestry India. 2001. National Action Programme to Combat Desertification. http://www.preventionweb.net (accessed May 10, 2012).

Nichol s, Alex and Alex Murdock. 2011. Social Innovation. London: Routledge.

Nussbaum, Martha. 2006. Frontiers of Justice. Disability, Nationality, Species Membership.

Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Pogge, Thomas. 2002. World poverty and human rights: cosmopolitan responsibility and reforms.

Polity Press: London.

Rawls, John. 1999a. A Theory of Justice. Revised edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

———. 1999b. The Law of the Peoples. Cambridge; London: Harvard University Press.

Rist, Gilbert. 1997. The History of Development. From Western Origins to Global Faith.

London: Zed books.

Sen, Amartya. 1999. Development as Freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

———. 2005. The Argumentative Indian. Writings on Indian Culture, History and Identity. London: Penguin Books.

Stern, Nicholas. 2010. The Economics of Climate Change. In Essential Readings in Climate Change, edited by Stephen Gardiner et. al, 39-77. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

World Commission on Environment and Development.1987. Our Common Future. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

WOTR. 2012. Vision and Mission. http://wotr.org/vision-mission-and-values (accessed January 31, 2012) Rafael Ziegler

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WGBU. 2011. World in Transition - A Social Contract for Sustainability.

http://www.wbgu.de/en/flagship-reports/fr-2011-a-social-contract/ (accessed May 10, 2012) Ziegler, Rafael. 2012. Capability Innovation and the (Re)making of Social Order. Gram Vikas and Social Agreement. In The capability approach on social order, edited by Bilal Hawa, Yanti Hölzchen, and Niels Weidtmann. 232-51. Münster: LIT Verlag, Münster.

Ziegler, Rafael, Lena Partzsch, Jana Gebauer, Marianne Henkel, Justus Lodemann, and Franziska Mohaupt. 2014. Social Entrepreneurship In The Water Sector. Getting Things Done Sustainably. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.

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Public Reason 5 (2): 21-32

© 2013 by Public Reason

Climate Change and Compensation

Karsten Klint Jensen & Tine Bech Flanagan

University of Copenhagen

Abstract. This paper presents a case for compensation of actual harm from climate change in the poorest countries. First, it is shown that climate change threatens to reverse the fight to eradicate poverty. Secondly, it is shown how the problems raised in the literature for compensation to some extent are based on misconceptions and do not apply to compensation of present actual harm. Final y, two arguments are presented to the effect that, in so far as developed countries accept a major commitment to mitigate climate change, they should also accept a commitment to address or compensate actual harm from climate change. The first argument appeals to the principle that if it is an injustice to cause risk of incurring harm in the future, then it is also an injustice to cause a similar harm now. The second argument appeals to the principle that if there is moral reason to reduce the risk of specific harms in the future, then there is also moral reason to address these harms if they materialize now. We argue that these principles are applicable to climate change, and that given the commitment of wealthy countries to a “common but differentiated responsibility,” they lead to a commitment to address or compensate harm from climate change in poor and vulnerable developing countries.

Key words: harm, risk of harm, injustice, developing countries.

In the discussions within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) about what to do about global climate change, the focus is on how to mitigate climate change and to some extent on how we as humans should adapt to future climate change. Even though the issue of addressing losses and damages associated with climate change in developing countries (that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change) has been on the agenda of a work programme since COP 16 in Cancun 2010, the prospect of reaching agreement on this topic looks somewhat bleak – mainly because developed countries have concerns related to liability or compensation.

The aim of this article is firstly to briefly describe the linkage between the issues of mitigation and poverty eradication that make compensation important. In the ethical literature, however, compensation has been met with skepticism. Secondly, we argue that this skepticism tends to frame the issue mistakenly and that it does not affect compensation for currently occurring losses and damages, which is our interest. Thirdly, we present and investigate two arguments to the effect that the commitment of the wealthy countries to mitigation also obliges them moral y to commit to providing compensation for losses and damages related to anthropogenic climate change.

Please note that throughout the article we distinguish between and generalize across two groups of countries: the poor countries (the so-cal ed developing countries1) and the wealthy countries (the so-cal ed developed countries2).

1] The notion “Developing Countries” refers to the definition used by the World Bank: “Developing countries are countries with low or middle levels of GNP per capita.” (World Bank 2004) 2] The notion “Developed Countries” refers to the definition used by the World Bank: ”High-income countries, in which most people have a high standard of living” (World Bank 2004).

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Climate Change and Compensation

I. BACKGROUND

The background is twofold. First, climate change is already a reality (e.g. UNFCCC

2011; IPCC 2007). The average global temperature at the Earth’s surface has increased by 0.74°C during the last 100 years (e.g. European Commission 2011), which has brought serious consequences to part of the world’s population. The World Health Organization (WHO 2005) thus estimates that

the effects of the climate change that has occurred since the mid-1970s may have caused over 150,000 deaths in 2000. It also concluded that these impacts are likely to increase in the future.

The causes of these deaths include heat waves, severe weather phenomena such as hurricanes, floods and declining availability of food and clean drinking water (WHO

2005).Secondly, there appears to be a conflict between the goals of mitigating climate change and the eradication of poverty. It might be thought that a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions would benefit al , including the world’s poor. This may be true in the long term, but not in the short term. Even in the scenario where the goal of the UNFCCC is to keep the average global temperature rise below two degrees Celsius relative to pre-industrial times is fulfil ed, the temperature will continue to rise in the present century with considerable consequences.

According to the IPCC and WHO, there is a clear tendency that the World’s poor are experiencing and will continue to experience the most serious consequences of climate change. This is due to two main reasons. First, the population in developing countries often lacks the necessary resources to be able to adapt and protect themselves from even the smal est fluctuations in climate. Secondly, because of their geographical location in subtropical or tropical climate zones where climate changes have and are predicted to have the biggest impact, the World’s poor are and will be more exposed to changes in the climate (e.g. IPCC 2007; UNFCCC 2011; European Commission 2011).

This means that climate change will probably counteract the goal of eradicating severe poverty and increase vulnerability to further poverty (Ahmed et al. 2009; Nelson et al.

2010). Moreover, there will be an increased tendency for the extremely poor3 to remain in poverty.

The other side of this coin is the observation that the relative success of fighting severe poverty since 1990 appears to be unsustainable in the sense that it has been accompanied by increased emissions in greenhouse gases. In 2008, in spite of the population growth, both the number of people living in extreme poverty and the poverty rates fell in every developing region compared with 2005 (UN 2012). In developing regions, the proportion 3] The notion “extremely poor” refers to the definition used by the World Bank: “Extreme poverty is defined as average daily consumption of $1.25 or less and means living on the edge of subsistence.” (World Bank 2012)

Karsten Klint Jensen & Tine Bech Flanagan

23

of extremely poor fell from 47% in 1990 to 24% in 2008. However, with estimates of a poverty rate just below 16% in 2015, there is still some way to go. Moreover, the proportion of undernourished has not decreased at the same rate as income poverty and has even stal ed in many regions.

A major factor underlying the relative success of poverty eradication is the economic growth experienced in many developing countries. Perhaps not surprisingly, this growth has been accompanied by an increase in greenhouse gas emissions. Thus, emissions from developing countries more than doubled from 1990 to 2008. In 2009, when the economic crisis hit, emission levels in developing countries slowed down. The total level of greenhouse gas emissions in developing countries in 2009 became, however, nevertheless larger than the total level of emissions from developed countries. Stil , the per capita level of emissions remains far higher (more than a factor 3) in developed countries.

Another problem, also related to climate change, is decreasing forest areas. Forest areas in Asia increased from 2000 to 2010, but continue to decrease in Africa and South America, resulting in a worldwide net loss. Hence, climate change threatens to counteract poverty eradication, while the mitigation of climate change conflicts with economic growth in poor countries. In the latter case, the wealthy countries have accepted not to burden the poor countries, but in the former case, the adverse effects of climate change on poverty eradication seem to have been accepted. It is this mismatch that we wish to focus on.

II. UNFCCC: MITIGATION, ADAPTATION AND COMPENSATION

Since 1992, the UNFCCC has facilitated international negotiations and discussions on climate change. It is through the UNFCCC that the 195 member countries agree on and define the global priorities and objectives for the climate, which the member countries subsequently are required to implement in national policies. Since the establishment of the UNFCCC in 1992, the main objective of the international climate negotiations has been to limit the average global temperature increase and the resulting climate change.

UNFCCC’s main focus has thus initial y been on the mitigation of climate change.

In the early 1990s, climate scientists claimed – despite limited scientific evidence – that the experienced global temperature rise was probably associated with an increase in the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. On this basis, UNFCCC member countries formulated and signed the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, which committed all wealthy countries to stabilizing and reducing their greenhouse gas emissions to approx. 5% below the 1990 level during the first “commitment period” 2008-2012. The poor countries were not included in the Kyoto Protocol:

The Kyoto Protocol was structured on the principles of the Convention. It only binds developed countries because it recognizes that they are largely responsible for the current high levels of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere, which are the result of more than 150 years of industrial activity. The Kyoto Protocol places a 24

Climate Change and Compensation

heavier burden on developed nations under its central principle: that of “common but differentiated responsibility.” (UNFCCC 2011)

In 2007, the al eged cause of global temperature rises was reinforced to the world’s population. In the wake of an unusual y high number of serious weather-related disasters and an almost unbroken series of heat records year after year, the IPCC published a report firmly stating that climate change is largely due to increased concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere caused by human activity (IPCC 2007; UNFCCC

2011). Furthermore, the IPCC report stated that the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is most likely directly linked to the average global temperature on Earth, as the concentration of greenhouse gases has increased steadily along with the average global temperature since the time of the Industrial Revolution.

Thus, the main objective of the international climate negotiations within UNFCCC

framework is continual y to limit countries’ emissions of greenhouse gases in an effort to limit climate change: “At the very heart of the response to climate change lies the need to reduce emissions .” (UNFCCC 2011)

Previously, the question of adapting to climate change was not high on the UNFCCC list of priorities. However, during the international climate meeting COP 16 in Cancun in 2010, the UNFCCC member countries signed the CAF (Cancun Adaptation Framework), which committed each member country to the prioritization of adaptation to climate change so that it received equal importance alongside the mitigation of climate change. According to the UNFCCC’s website, this new focus on adaptation is a result of the serious consequences that climate change has already had for the world’s population, as well as the need to prevent some of the serious effects on human life which climate change is predicted to have in the future: “Adaptation to the adverse effects of climate change is vital in order to reduce the impacts of climate change that are happening now and increase resilience to future impacts.” (UNFCCC 2011)

Furthermore, recognizing once again their larger responsibility and the fact that many developing countries are vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change, the UNFCCC’s wealthy member countries have through the CAF committed themselves to supporting developing countries in their adaptation to climate change. This support includes funding, technology transfer and capacity building (UNFCCC 2011).

Since 2008, the world’s poor countries, led by the Philippine government as well as a number of government officials from several African countries, have tried to raise the issue of compensation in the UNFCCC framework (UNFCCC 2008; Climate-Justice Now 2010). At COP 16 in Cancun in 2010, a work program on approaches to addressing loss and damage from climate change in particularly vulnerable developing countries was launched, but so far little progress has been made. Ironical y, the Philippines recently became victim of a major disaster caused by an unusual y powerful typhoon. However, even though this led to an intense focus on the issue of compensation at the latest COP

(19 in Poland), the prospect of an agreement in this matter looks bleaker than ever.

Karsten Klint Jensen & Tine Bech Flanagan

25

III. THE ETHICS OF CLIMATE CHANGE

Our point of departure is a very elementary and widely accepted moral principle:4

(1) You should not do something for your own benefit if it harms another person.

A corol ary to this principle is:

(2) Whenever you cause harm (by doing something for your own benefit), you should normal y compensate the victim.

John Broome (2008; 2012) and Paul Baer (2006), to name a few, consider this principle to be applicable to anthropogenic climate change, and so do we. The idea is that greenhouse gas emissions will cause large scale harm in the future; as a matter of fact, such harm is already occurring on quite a large scale, as il ustrated by the estimates of the WHO (2005). Broome (2012) points out a number of conditions for the principles to apply to climate change: The harm is the result of acts, not omissions, and these acts are (in most cases) done with harm as the foreseeable consequence; the harm is serious; we (i.e. the rich) normal y make emissions for the benefit of ourselves, and we could easily reduce our emissions. We (the rich) harm each other, but since this harm is reciprocal, we could not plausibly say that we are doing an injustice to each other. But the harm we (the rich) inflict on the poor is not reciprocal. The small reciprocal harm done by the poor is not plausibly an injustice to the rich. Hence, Broome concludes, the rich do an injustice to the poor.

Moreover, this injustice is not compensated. It might be said that we compensate future generations, at least to some extent, because they are likely to be better off than we. But to the extent we deprive them from important environmental goods, economic growth may not count as compensation for the injustice. And clearly, the future and the present poor are not even compensated in this way.

There are, however, some complications when applying the principle to climate change. One concerns uncertainty, in that we do not know for sure the exact harm that greenhouse gas emissions will cause in the future. It is quite certain that greenhouse gas emissions result in an increased greenhouse effect, while it is also relatively certain that this leads to global warming. However, it is more uncertain how much the temperature will rise for a given scenario of current and future emission levels. It is also uncertain how the climate will react, and how changes in the climate will affect people in the future.

The latter also depends on how people in the future are able to cope with climate change.

However, it is very likely that continued emissions will have dramatic effects on the climate, and that this further is very likely to severely affect people in the future. Hence, it is more precise to say that greenhouse gas emissions cause (severe) risk of future harm. However, we believe that authors like the above-mentioned are well aware of this complication, and that they just use ‘harm’ as a shorthand for the more precise ‘risk of harm’ or better ‘very likely harm.’

4] Quoted from Broome 2008, 69.

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Climate Change and Compensation

Another complication is the Non-identity Problem (Parfit 1984). This is relevant for climate change if we consider the choice between two overall strategies such as ”doing nothing” or ”reducing greenhouse gas emissions considerably.” Since this choice is very likely to make a huge difference on peoples’ lives, it can be considered a Different People Choice, i.e. the choice affects the identity of future people, such that the people that come into existence in the two alternatives will be different people. According to the normal understanding of ”harm,” i.e. being made worse off than one otherwise would have been, choosing to ”do nothing” will not harm future people, since if the alternative strategy is chosen instead, these particular people will never come into existence. Many authors do not mention the Non-Identity Problem when they speak about harm resulting from anthropogenic climate change. But what they may mean by ”harm” could be something like ”the people living in one scenario are overall worse off than the people living in the other scenario.”5

A further complication is connected to the causal link between acts and harm. In the case of climate change, this link is long and winding. Multiple causal factors underlie the ultimate harmful effects of climate change. However, though the causal complex here probably is more complex than for many other phenomena, multi-causality and uncertainty about the exact structure of the causal complex is not unusual. Dealing with a set of correlations, there are statistical methods to estimate the contribution of individual factors in the creation of an outcome. The WHO’s estimate quoted above exemplifies this.

Whereas Broome (2008; 2012) is mostly concerned with reducing greenhouse gas emissions to mitigate climate change, Baer (2006) deals with adaption, more precisely the duty to provide financial aid to the poor in support of their adaption to climate change. This can be seen as ex ante compensation now for envisaged future harm. We want to deal with the issue of ex post compensation of materialized harm,6 and in particular, we consider it necessary to highlight the relation between principles (1) and (2). Within the UNFCCC, developed countries have accepted a duty to mitigate climate change for the sake of future generations through reductions in emissions, to prioritize adaptation as another means of reducing the risk of harm from climate change, and further to commit to supporting vulnerable developing countries with adaptation measures. However, although the need to compensate vulnerable countries is recognized in principle, developed countries have been more reluctant to commit themselves to action in this case. This seemingly fails to draw the consequences of (2) which are implied by (1).

Meyer and Roser (2011), Caney (2005) and Mil er (2009) all discuss the issue of compensation. However, they all discuss it in the context of determining a fair way of 5] This is what Parfit (1984) cal s “an impersonal view.” Broome (2004) takes the view. Lukas Meyer (2003) has framed a threshold notion of harm: A person brought to exist with a welfare level below the threshold is harmed.

6] Baer (2006) explicitly talks about “adaptation,” but he uses the language of “liability” and “compensation.” It is not entirely clear how he distinguishes between adaptation and compensation, if he considers this distinction important at al .

Karsten Klint Jensen & Tine Bech Flanagan

27

al ocating the costs of mitigating and adapting to climate change. This leads them to assume that there is some justified or fair level of present emissions, so that only if this level is exceeded will compensation be relevant. But from the fact that there is an issue about the fair al ocation of costs, or the fair al ocation of emission permits within the international y agreed objective of reducing emissions, it does not fol ow that the resulting level of emissions is fair or justified in itself. If emissions (for the benefit of the emitter) lead to uncompensated harm, they are simply unjust. In other words, presently no level of avoidable, uncompensated emissions can be justified (or at least no emissions above the per capita level in developing countries). Broome (2012) is perhaps the first to clearly recognize this.7

Meyer and Roser (2011), Caney (2005), and Mil er (2009) discuss compensation in terms of the so-cal ed Pol uter Pays Principle. They are mostly concerned with compensation for historical emissions. Thereby, they seem to imply that historical emissions are the most important cause of climate change and that the present generation cannot be held responsible for the actions of their predecessors. For instance, Caney (2005, 127) writes: It is, for example, widely recognized that there have been high levels of carbon dioxide emissions for the last 200 years, dating back to the industrial revolution in Western Europe.

Apart from the fact that our focus is on present emissions, this seems to overestimate the importance of historical emissions with regards to present harm .

Looking at the historical data, greenhouse gas emissions only began to increase steeply in the 1950s, with the climate being apparently largely unaffected up until then . At least the IPCC (2007) dates the anthropogenic temperature rise to approx. the mid-1950s. The WHO (2005) appears to date the first damage from climate change to the mid-1970s. Hence, we suggest the hypothesis that anthropogenic climate change only began to cause harm around the mid-1970s. However, if this goes back to the increased levels of emissions starting in the 1950s, then it is largely the current generation’s emissions that have been harmful.

The role of preceding generations is thus mainly that they exhausted the earth’s capacity to absorb greenhouse gasses without harmful effects and thereby brought about a situation whereby greenhouse gas emissions suddenly started to be harmful.

This might be considered a historical injustice. Developed countries can be said to have been compensated to some extent through their economic growth, whereas developing countries have not been similarly compensated. But this injustice is not our concern in this paper.

Another problem for compensation raised in the literature is the Non-Identity Problem.

Victims of climate change might be said not to be harmed, if they owe their existence to past generations’ policies. However, if we look at harm from present emissions, then 7] Broome himself takes this observation to be most important for private individuals. We believe it is also important for governments.

28

Climate Change and Compensation

even though there is some delay between emissions and harmful effects, the Non-Identity Problem is largely irrelevant. Moreover, as we stress in the next section, even though the Non-Identity Problem applies to harm in the distant future, it is not considered relevant when considering whether or not to mitigate.

A final problem raised in the literature is ignorance. The first question is whether ignorance about unintended adverse side-effects of an act exempts from paying compensation. In some cases of pol ution at least, it clearly does not. However, at least from 1990 onwards, putting forward ignorance as an argument for not paying compensation is out of the question. Hence, ignorance at best only exempts for the harm caused before 1990, which is likely to be the least serious.

Hence, the problems raised for compensation do not target compensation for present harm from present emissions, something which Mil er (2009, 137) and Caney (2005, 135) at least appear to concede to.

IV. TWO ARGUMENTS FOR WEALTHY COUNTRIES COMMITTING THEMSELVES TO

COMPENSATION

Intuitively, it seems more evident that causing harm for your own benefit is wrong and cal s for compensation than to say the same about causing risk of harm. Nevertheless, developed countries appear to accept the latter, but not the former. We shall therefore attempt to show that this is ethical y incoherent.

Consider the fol owing principle:

(3) If it is an injustice to cause risk of a specific harm occurring in the future, then in a relevantly similar context it is also an injustice to cause this harm now.

We consider this principle to be obvious. This is so, even if the risk is that the harm may occur more times in the future than now. If we assume that it is an injustice to do something for your own benefit that harms another person, then, according to (2), you should normal y compensate the victim for the injustice.

The Kyoto Protocol recognizes that “developed countries […] are largely responsible for the current high levels of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere, which are the result of more than 150 years of industrial activity” (UNFCCC 2011). We take this to imply that developed countries, because of their current high levels of emissions (as of 1997), accept that they have largely caused climate change, and therefore, if these current levels of emissions are not reduced, the developed countries will be the major cause of increased risk of harm in the future.

Next, we claim that being the major cause of increased risk of harm from climate change in the future is an injustice. This fol ows from principle (1), together with the discussion in the previous paragraph (and the qualification that the risk of harm from climate change counts as harm as we maintain in the previous section). Most people appear to accept this as the starting point of ethical consideration concerning climate Karsten Klint Jensen & Tine Bech Flanagan

29

change. Applying principle (3), we then reach the obvious conclusion that it is an injustice to cause (similar) harm from climate change now.

Next comes the question of whether this is a “normal” case that requires compensation. The multi-causal nature of the harm does not appear to make the case abnormal. Moreover, the Non-identity Problem can largely be ignored because the effects of the acts which possibly affect the identity of people only materialize with some delay.

Hence, the harm in question to be compensated is harm in the ordinary sense. Other things equal, this may imply a stronger and more convincing obligation to compensate than to mitigate, where the harm in question is not defined in the ordinary sense.

It appears that the wealthy countries accept the premises of liability for climate change, but seemingly fail to act accordingly in practice. At least many wealthy countries have, through previous climate agreements in the UNFCCC, accepted that climate change is causing damage, and that the wealthy countries bear the greatest share of the blame, and thereby the greatest responsibility for climate change, as they currently emit the largest per capita amount of greenhouse gases, and there exists a causal link between greenhouse gas emission and climate change. Stil , the wealthy countries do not wish to discuss the issue of compensation for the damages and losses which climate change has caused.

One possible objection could be that, while the principle of common but differentiated responsibility applies to the cases of mitigation and adaptation, it does not necessarily apply to the case of compensation. After al , developing countries are themselves contributing to the harm through their own emissions and lack of adaptation. Another objection could be that developing countries are in a better position to deal with compensation within their own territories. However, in both cases, it is not clear why there should be a difference between the cases of mitigation/adaptation and compensation. So the objection appears arbitrary.

As compared with the present generation’s relation to future generations, where the injustice is clear, the relation between developed and developing countries within the present generation is more complex. It is not only developed countries which are emitting greenhouse gases, but also developing countries, and the harm not only fal s on developing countries, but also on developed countries themselves. But as we pointed out earlier, at least to the extent that their per capita emissions exceed the per capita level of developing countries, the developed countries do unjust harm to developing countries.

Moreover, when it comes to the injustice by causing increased risk of harm in the future, the contribution of developing countries is not considered to require action.

We now present another argument, which is not based directly on compensation, but rather on being in a position to accept an obligation. Consider a different principle: (4) If there is moral reason to reduce the risk of some specific harm in the future, then in a relevantly similar context there is also moral reason to address this harm if it materializes now.

30

Climate Change and Compensation

By “address” we mean rectifying the situation and restoring the victim, as far as possible, to the same level of welfare as before the harm occurred. We also believe this principle to be fairly obvious. The fact that a harm is serious seems to be a necessary condition for having reason to reduce the risk of it occurring. But if a harm is serious, there is certainly reason to address it when it occurs. It seems to be a defining characteristic of serious harm that it induces an obligation to do something about it. It is hard to understand how potential harm can be serious if it can simply be ignored.8

Consider an example. If there is reason to reduce the risk of harm from car accidents in the future, then there is also reason to address harm from car accidents happening now.

It would seem very strange to claim that there is strong reason to reduce the risk of harm from accidents on the roads, but at the same time claim that if a car accident happens now, there is no reason to do anything for the victim, or only reason to do a little. This is so, even if the risk in question over time in the long term may involve more accidents than are occurring this year.

As the example shows, the obligations apply to everyone in a relevant position. Each individual has responsibility for reducing the risk of harm from traffic. But a government also has responsibility for coordinating action through laws and other means, and for running agencies such as the traffic police, etc. The case is similar for actual harm: anyone who encounters a car accident is obliged to help, although there are also professionals in hospitals, ambulances, etc. Hence, the obligations are a matter of your position vis-à-vis the risk or the harm. Some might object that we may not be responsible for outcomes we do not ourselves bring about. But the argument only applies, if the reason to reduce risk is accepted.

How to address death or other situations that cannot real y be rectified is of course a complicated problem which we cannot do justice to in the present context. Since we are primarily concerned with compensation in the context of climate change, we assume that in practice, most compensation will have to be of a financial nature. Hence, we refer to the principles used by courts and the insurance industry on how to compensate for harm in general, and death in particular. Thus, we imagine that compensation could be managed by an international system of insurance, paid by developed countries.

If we apply principle (4) on climate change, we get the fol owing argument. From the fact that (many) developed countries have committed themselves to the Kyoto Protocol, we infer:

(5) There is moral reason for developed countries to reduce the risk of future harm from Climate Change.

With the help of principle (4), it then fol ows that:

(6) There is moral reason for developed countries to address the harms derived from Climate Change.

8] Deserved harm, if there is such a thing, may be an exception. So we take “harm” to mean unde-served harm.

Karsten Klint Jensen & Tine Bech Flanagan

31

The developed countries are seemingly reluctant to accept this conclusion, while accepting the first premise and not giving any reason to reject the second (i.e. principle (4)). Since (many) developed countries, at least in principle, have accepted a commitment to support adaptation, i.e. a sort of ex ante compensation for future harm, we believe two paral el arguments based on what fol ows from this commitment could be made.

V. DISCUSSION

Climate change is a reality with serious consequences which tend to harm people in poor countries most. Mitigating climate change represents a cost, which takes resources away from the present generation. In this case, wealthy countries have accepted the commitment to bear the costs. This means that, within the goal of the overall reduction of emissions, economic growth is permitted in developing countries. When it comes to compensation for actual harm in poor countries, developed countries are reluctant to accept a similar commitment. There is no serious effort on their part to address the harms from climate change that threatens to prolong and aggravate severe poverty. We have presented two arguments intended to show that this difference in attitude is, from a moral point of view, incoherent.

Acknowledgements

The paper has benefited from the support of the European Science Foundation (ESF) under the framework of the Research Networking Programme ENRI – Rights to a Green Future.

An ancestor of this paper was presented at the ENRI-network’s workshop in Graz September 2012. We are grateful to the audience and not least the commentators Anja Karnein, Alexandra Sauer and Alexa Zel entin for many critical comments, which led us to rethink the argument. We should like to thank Sébastien Duyck and not least Dominic Roser for very useful suggestions in this regard. We should also like to thank Martin Peterson and Christian Seidel for helpful discussions.

kkj@ifro.ku.dk

tinebech@gmail.com

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Broome, J. 2004. Weighing Lives. Oxford University Press.

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(accessed February 15, 2013)

Public Reason 5 (2): 33-40

© 2013 by Public Reason

Heavy Fog and Smog in Beijing: A Watershed towards a

Green Future

Li Jianjun

China agricultural University

Abstract. The heavy fog and smog in Beijing lets citizens and policy makers reflect on the moral and political ramifications of the rapid economic growth, and determine a strong policy towards a green future. This paper first investigates the serious impact of the fog and smog, and the response of citizens and municipality, then discusses the possible causes of this disastrous fog and smog, and reflects on why and how developing countries like China should accommodate a green future. In discussing the case of heavy fog and smog in Beijing, I aim to show that disastrous environmental incidents related to the rapid economic growth are beneficial to the sustainable development of developing countries like China, and the urge to survive and to live a good life will drive people to take the common requirements and interests of the social community, including future generations, into moral consideration, and guarantee the possibility of a green future, regardless of the possible huge costs.

Key words: developing countries, the right to breathe clean air, sustainable development, smog, green future.

As a developing country, China holds 22 percent of the world’s population but only 7 percent of the fresh water and cropland, and absolutely it is imperative that China promotes its economic growth and industrialization rapidly in order to meet the basic need of its citizens. However, economic growth and industrialization have suddenly confronted China with disastrous environmental hazards, such as the heavy fog and smog, which endangers citizens' health and needs for future development. This is one of the most serious chal enges for developing countries like China. In response to intractable environmental disaster, most of Chinese start to reflect on the rationality of rapid economic growth from the moral and political perspective, and China government has to turn its development track towards the green future regardless of huge cost. In this paper, I will first investigate the extent of fog and smog in Beijing, and the response of citizens and municipality. Then I will discuss possible causes of the disastrous fog and smog, reflect on why and how developing countries like China should accommodate a green future through recourse to the case of heavy fog and smog in Beijing.

I. THE HEAVY FOG AND SMOG IN BEIJING

During the period from January to March, 2013, Beijing, the capital of China, was engulfed by heavy fog and smog for an extended period of time: air pol ution reduced the visibility on roads, and caused mil ions of citizen difficulty in breathing and a surge in respiratory il nesses, exacerbated asthma, heart problems, hospital visits, particularly among children and the elderly. The city’s Emergency Medical Center received 535

patients with respiratory diseases during the second week of January, 54 percent more 34

Heavy Fog and Smog in Beijing: A Watershed towards a Green Future than the same period in the previous year. The lingering smog has inspired a new term: “Beijing Cough” (CNTV 2013).

This was the worst and longest air pol ution Beijing experienced in recent history, wherein many flights were cancel ed or delayed, highways were closed and hospitals were crowded with patients seeking respiratory treatment. The situation was as serious that Beijing municipal administrators and environmental protection agencies vowed to improve the air quality and take immediate measures, including shutting down high-pol uting factories and banning a certain number of vehicles from the roads.

There are several highlights during the period of the heavy fog and smog attacked on Beijing, which indicate some trends of social development in China.

Firstly, after having experienced these disastrous incidents regarding air pol ution, citizens realized the significance of having the capacity to breathe clean air, and started to call for the right to breathe – which is a fundamental requirement for every living being, current human beings as well as future generations. The citizens appealed to the government to work hard to guarantee their rights to breathe, and asked for strong protections against air pol ution that is detrimental to all people’s health. Most Chinese people first realized the real implication of an old saying “breathing the same air, with common fate,” which describes the character of a social community with high solidarity, and emphasizes the individual's responsibility towards the whole social community. As Ma Yun, a Chinese famous entrepreneur in E-Business, said in distressed mood: “Beijing’s fog and smog make me very happy because nobody can enjoy special air.” Clean air is a common good which every person breathe equal y, and concerns the right of all humans to walk outside and breathe in air that won't choke them or make them sick. If the air is pol uted, every person, whether rich or poor, official or civilian, and present or future generation, are not immune or could not avoid harm.

Secondly, the public and decision makers started to become suspicious of the rationality of rapid economic growth, and questioned the moral and political ramifications. The intensive outbreak of suffering caused by the fog and smog in Beijing in the successive 3 months, made that almost all citizens, including rural residents, became the victims of rampant pol ution, which endangered all persons' fundamental conditions for a good life. As such the citizens and decision makers wanted to know what happened, and some people started to wonder whether it is moral y and political y justified to simply pursue a rapid economic growth in the name of development while disregarding the burden on ecological environment of a developing country as China. Natural y, the rapid economic growth created an impressive development story in China, which made that most Chinese citizens now have a prosperous life with luxuries such as cars, and Chinese leaders proudly announce that China has made great progress on the issue of human rights by lifting hundreds of mil ions of people out of poverty. However, can these achievements be justified when they come hand in hand with huge environmental costs? The fearsome impact of air pol ution makes that Chinese people rethink the relationship between self and others, including future generations, and between human and nature, especial y the Li Jianjun

35

tension between economic development and environmental pol ution, and reflect on the cost of rapid economic growth.

Thirdly, a fantastic event happened during these disasters gave an even more dramatic twist to the story. When most citizens hid themselves in their houses or offices in order to avoid the open air a wacky Chinese multimil ionaire and environmentalist, Chen Guangbiao, took to the Beijing streets which were covered in thick gray haze, and handed out to passers-by yel ow and green cans of smog-free, non-carcinogenic air, which his company developed. How sad and dreadful! I would like to see it as a metaphor for the tragedy of a human civilization. If we do not take action as soon as possible in dealing with climate change, air pol ution, water pol ution and other environmental hazards, soon all our efforts will be such as the yel ow and green cans handed out by Chen: only a drop in the bucket, to no avail for saving humankind.

Based on the above observations, I predict that the heavy fog and smog in Beijing is a watershed towards a green future for Beijing because it creates a deep awareness with Chinese government and citizens of the significance of clean air, and other environmental disasters. Chinese people now realize that they have an urgent duty and moral responsibility towards others, a social community and future generations.

II. WHY CHINA SHOULD ACCOMMODATE A GREEN FUTURE

In order to ensure the right to breathe and deal with the heavy fog and smog in Beijing, the first step is to find the causes of these incidents. Experts attributed the disaster to a combination of excessive emission and the absence of wind which caused the pol uted air to be trapped in Beijing. Thus Beijing administrators introduced stricter automobile regulations in February, and announced that about 200 companies found to be emitting hazardous gases would be closed within the year, with some 1,200 scheduled for closure by 2015.

The question that is in need of answering is: could these measures effectively clean the air and be smoothly extended? After al , these will cause the costs of living to rise, and for some people to lose their job, and thus will run counter to the interests of some citizens.

Moreover, they are just some temporal measures which cannot fundamental y solve the problem. Maybe it will give rise to more critical questions, such as poverty-related issues, the decay of local economies, even cause protests in other regions. It is a disputed ethical issue, even though these measures had positive results in Beijing, because these could make some industries or companies emitting hazardous gases to move to other regions or cities, or even fragile rural communities. Clearly, there is no ethical justification for these policies. It rather resembles the case of developed countries transferring their pol uting industries to developing countries.

What would be a legitimate alternative? In order to answer this question, we must reconstruct the fundamental causes of these ecological disasters. On my view, the cause of the fog and smog in Beijing is a narrow-minded and unsustainable idea of development, 36

Heavy Fog and Smog in Beijing: A Watershed towards a Green Future which affirms everything that is “very fast,” “very new,” and “very big” in economic terms and that of urban development, but disregard ecological and social costs. This concept of development became an image of the good life, and functioned as a standard of modernization. To a certain extent, this idea functioned as the driving force that guided China in surpassing Japan, and become the second biggest economy in the past few years.

Certainly, the achievements in industrialization and capitalism have been a huge triumph because they not only stimulate mass production, but also create a huge consumer society in which the dominant values are making money and satisfying one's luxury interests, without taking other social consequences, like hazardous gases emission and natural resource exhaustion, into consideration. It is clear that the development slogan of “very fast,” “very new,” and “very big” did not only bring Chinese fresh flowers and fine wines, but also ecological dangers such as pol uted air and water. For example, when China’s gross national income per capita as of 2011 reached $4,940, rendering it just into the upper middle income group, China’s per capita carbon dioxide output levels go beyond the levels for that group (Miura, 2013). As a consequence, when Chinese people strove for economic development and were enchanted by the economic miracles, the disastrous fog and smog suddenly shocked and awoke them.

Perhaps it is important to remember the warnings of Friedrich Von Engels: Let us not, however, flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human victories over nature. For each such victory nature takes its revenge on us. Each victory, it is true, in the first place brings about the results we expected, but in the second and third places it has quite different, unforeseen effects which only too often cancel the first. The people, who, in Mesopotamia, Greece, Asia Minor and elsewhere, destroyed the forests to obtain cultivable land, never dreamed that by removing along with the forests the col ecting centers and reservoirs of moisture they were laying the basis for the present forlorn state of those countries. When the Italians of the Alps used up the pine forests on the southern slopes, so careful y cherished on the northern slopes, they had no inkling that by doing so they were cutting at the roots of the dairy industry in their region; they had still less inkling that they were thereby depriving their mountain springs of water for the greater part of the year, and making it possible for them to pour still more furious torrents on the plains during the rainy seasons.

[. .]Thus at every step we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside nature – but that we, with flesh, blood and brain, belong to nature, and exist in its midst, and that all our mastery of it consists in the fact that we have the advantage over all other creatures of being able to learn its laws and apply them correctly. (Von Engels 1934[1876]) It is clear that the viewpoint of sustainability or pragmatist ethics, is incompatible with this development strategy as the cause of Beijing’s heavy fog and smog, because one-dimensional economic growth would seriously endanger the basic interests and rights of citizens while it simultaneously increases national wealth, for example, the right to breathe is impeded on and the requirements of a leading a good life are violated.

Reducing air pol ution is now a most pressing issue, but it is very unlikely that the problem of hazardous air pol ution will be solved under the current perspective on development.

Li Jianjun

37

For instance, after Beijing administrators stipulated traffic restriction by license plate supervision, the rich would buy more cars in order to maintain their luxurious standard of living, so the effect of the toxic gas reduction measures would be largely canceled out by the increase in the number of automobiles, as well as the relocation of factories. Under the current concept of development, no policy or measure would solve the problems without exacerbating social inequality.

As Mr. Chen Guangbiao told Reuters, “I want to tell mayors, county chiefs and heads of big companies: Don‘t just chase GDP growth, don’t chase the biggest profits at the expense of our children and grandchildren, and at the cost of sacrificing our ecological environment.” (Jones 2013) If Chinese leaders don’t want to drink air from a can, they should listen. As the heavy fog and smog has shown, after years of heady growth, China faces some fundamental chal enges, especial y in development of a sustainable economy and in satisfying the citizens’ urgent needs for a good life. Without a doubt, any Chinese development strategy of pursuing unrestrained GDP growth is detrimental to interests of the present generation and that of the future, and such a policy is il egitimate and not tolerated by Chinese citizens. Instead of such a development policy, China should aim for long-term sustainable development and steer towards the green future.

III. HOW TO TURN TOWARDS THE GREEN FUTURE

Beijing and China's possibility for a green future depends on solving the “green paradox” (van Someren and van Someren-Wang 2012). On the one hand, the rapid economic growth has become a necessity to satisfy the needs and fulfill expectations for a good life of the large majority citizens; on the other hand, it also had tremendous detrimental ecological and social effects, such as heavy fog and smog in Beijing. On my view, China should pay more attention on the environmental costs and uncertainties of rapid economic growth, and embrace an idea of slower but better growth, respect the excel ent traditional civilization including its historical experience and lifestyle, rethink the idea “small is beautiful” – which maybe would rather presuppose a community model with low carbon but high harmony, and then gradual y lead to a new development agenda aimed at a green, sustainable, recycling and low carbon society which would “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to their own needs” (WECD 1987). But this implies a real psychological transformation and ideological revolution.

Firstly, this transformation needs a community consciousness which believes that all members are stakeholders of some common goods, and that anyone who acts selfishly will endanger the interests and health of al . In terms of the Beijing or China example, these common goods at least should include fresh air, pure water and pol ution-free land. So for the sake of ourselves and others, we should have a moral duty or obligation to reduce those projects which potential y or directly harm these common goods, even if it could slow down economic growth and constrain our interest in luxury. If we could 38

Heavy Fog and Smog in Beijing: A Watershed towards a Green Future cultivate such community consciousness, maybe we will find a promising solution that would contribute to consider the interests of future generations in dealing with crises of current societies and satisfying the needs of the present. Perhaps the development of the present generation is not in conflict with the rights to a green future. But it depends on the fol owing hypotheses: there are some common interests between the present and future generation in some extent, and we could be able to identify them. If this is possible, we could find a workable path to protect the interests of future generations, by implementing the fundamental interests and rights of the present, such as the right to breathing in fresh air, and assist more and more developing countries in acting in light of a green future.

After al , for all countries, satisfying the needs and interests of the current generation is a top priority.

Secondly, we should transcend narrow economic development ideas which only seek rapid economic growth but disregard the green future. In the last two thousands of years, China kept its sustainable prosperous development as a great social community by fol owing the dominant idea of “the harmony between nature and human”, which however faded into the background with the encounter with Western expansion, the industrial revolution, the insularity of the Qing government etc. It is a pity that modern Chinese misunderstood and denied their precious cultural heritage, and roughly embraced an anthropocentric idea of development in the wake of shattering of the Celestial Empire dream and pursuing for Western powers. Perhaps, Chinese traditional cultural resources may contribute to this transcendence of the old economic growth model. First of al , Confucianism emphasized the significance of “benevolence” or “humanity” (仁，ren or jen), and the way to practice benevolence (忠恕之道，the principle of chung and shu), that is “Do not do to others what you do not wish yourself.” and “Do to others what you wish yourself.” (FungYu-lan 1948). According to Confucianism, the fundamental prerequisite of benevolence “consists in loving or caring for others” and involves “constraining yourself and restoring rite or social relationship,” the ideal or the ultimate good is to attain the harmony of the holistic life system or community which includes everything between heaven and earth including human beings, animals and so on. If every person could constrain his or her desire for luxury and positively participate in the holistic life system or community, many disasters like pol uted air and poisonous food would be averted.

Secondly, Taoism revered nature and insisted that human beings should obey the law of nature and do not overuse natural resources. Thirdly, Buddhism asks humans to concern about the future generation and not to harm life, in light of the reincarnation hypothesis.

In general, I believe that we could find some inspiration in dealing with air pol ution and climate change through the creative transforming for Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism and other traditional culture resources, and thus transcend current considerations and steer towards a green future.

Final y, in order to do so, strong political will and action is necessary. In this respect, Chinese government seems to show great resolve. “We will upgrade the country's economic development model to enable people to enjoy clean air, and safe drinking Li Jianjun

39

water and food" (Zhu 2013), Premier Li Keqiang said at a news conference on March 17, 2013, where he vowed to make an "iron fist" (Bushe 2013) to tackle the pol ution in China, and expressed that China government would take more vigorous efforts to clean up such pol ution by phasing out old factories and creating a new development model, and shouldn't pursue economic growth at the expense of the environment because such growth won't satisfy the people. Then, what is a development and growth that would satisfies the people? Would it include the appeals from disadvantaged groups, and the interests of future generations? How to implement this ambition? Undoubtedly, all these questions would chal enge traditional development ideas, and decide China’s pathway and direction towards a green future and sustainable development. So, Chinese government should pay attention to possible risks and uncertainties of the various development plans in a precautionary way, and assess their longer-term consequences for the present and future generations as soon as possible, intentional y introducing new ideology and social system which takes full account of the requirements of sustainable development and right claims of present generation in its development strategy decision, especial y for fresh air, pure water and rural landscape, and clarifies its obligation or respons.

IV. CONCLUSION

As is clear from continuous recent environmental incidents, such as hazardous air pol ution, the transformation of China’s economic development model has become a matter of urgency. Firstly, these disastrous environmental incidents let the current generations rethink the rationality of pure economic growth, and pay more attention to the environmental costs of current development. Secondly, terrible air pol ution experiences introduced reflections on the right to breathe and call for the government of developing countries like China to take their duty or responsibility in guaranteeing some requirements and some basic goods for humanity, including future generations. Thirdly, if the government could not take strong proper measures to turn towards a sustainable development model in order to completely prevent these environmental hazards such as heavy fog and smog in Beijing, the socio-economical sustainable development will encounter great chal enges. So I believe that seriously and equal y considering the requirements of the current generation is not in conflict with the interests of future generation. In my opinion, there is not necessary a conflict between the development of the present generation and rights towards a green future. However, developing countries like China should intentional y introduce some inspired ideology and social systems (which include traditional civilizational resources), take full account of sustainable living requirements and rights claims of present generation (especial y for fresh air, pure water, and rural landscape), and clarify their obligations towards others and the future.

40

Heavy Fog and Smog in Beijing: A Watershed towards a Green Future

Acknowledgements

I wish to acknowledge, with gratitude, that Dascha During Katerina was instrumental in revising my paper and eliminating grammar, spel ing etc. errors. I also like to thank prof.

Marcus Duwell very much for his generous invitation to me for the ARC-ESF Workshop: Developing Countries and Duties towards the future in Louvain.

REFERENCES

Bushe, Marissa. 2013. For China, the Future is Green? http://www.edelman.com/post/for-china-the-future-is-green/ (accessed July 9, 2013)

CNTV. 2013. Heavy Smog Shrouds Beijing. http://www.china.org.cn/video/2013-01/24/

content_27781528.htm (accessed January 24, 2013)

Jones, Terril Yue. 2013. Chinese Mil ionaire Fights Pollution with Thin Air. http://mobile.

reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSBRE90T0LM20130130

(accessed

January 30, 2013)

Miura, Yuji. 2013. China urgently needs to transform economic development model. http://ajw.

asahi.com/article/views/opinion/AJ201303230033 (accessed March 23, 2013)

Van Someren, Taco C., and Shuhua van Someren-Wang. 2012. Green China: Sustainable Growth

in East and West. Springer.

Von Engels, Friedrich. 1934[1876]. The Part played by Labor in the Transition from Ape to Man. Translated by Clemens Dutt. Progress Publishers, Moscow. http://marxists.anu.edu.au/archive/marx/

works/1876/part-played-labour/index.htm#nature (accessed January 24, 2013) World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED). 1987. Our Common Future (Brundtland Report). http://conspect.nl/pdf/Our_Common_Future-Brundtland_

Report_1987.pdf (accessed January 24, 2013)

Yu-Lan, Fung. 1948. A Short History of Chinese Philosophy. Edited by Derk Bodde. The Macmil an Company.

Zhu, Jin. 2013. Promise of iron fist against pol ution. http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/

china/2013npc/2013-03/18/content_16314997.htm (accessed march 23, 2013)

Public Reason 5 (2): 41-60

© 2013 by Public Reason

The Right to Development of Developing Countries: An

Argument against Environmental Protection?

Thierry Ngosso1

Catholic University of Louvain

Abstract. This paper assesses the problem of the possible tension between development and environmental protection, especial y for developing countries. Some leaders of these countries like Jacob Zuma claim for example that poor countries should only join the fight against climate change if it does not compromise their economic development, thus suggesting that environmental protection is more often than not an obstacle to economic development. I argue that this argument is if not misleading, at least incomplete because it does not take the diversity of environmental protection seriously and reduces development to economic development. In fact, some aspects of environmental protection may clearly clash with some kinds of economic development. In that line, when countries are still very poor, their economic development should take priority over some ecological-friendly policies. But this is only one side of the truth. The other side of the truth is that some ecological y-friendly policies can also make poor countries richer, more democratic and fairer.

Key words: developing countries, economic development, human development, environment, Dutch disease.

Future generations have the right to a safe environment2. This right imposes on current generations the moral obligation to protect nature. This can be done in various ways: mitigating climate change, setting up national parks, limiting natural resource exploitation, etc. (Gosseries, 1998). If this right is legitimate, the moral obligation that it imposes on current generations in poor countries may clash with their human right to development where development is understood as improvement in living conditions.

This may happen when development is measured in terms of growth. For example, if growth implies production, and if production implies pol ution, reducing pol ution as an obligation towards future generations will also limit production and therefore undermine poor countries’ right to development as growth. Viewed like this, ecological y-friendly policies would be economical y prejudicial and detrimental to the worse-off. However, not only do ecological y-friendly policies undermine development if it is understood as production or growth, but they also clash with human development measured in terms of human rights protection. For example, in the name of the protection of nature, it happens that indigenous people are kicked off their lands to enable national parks to be created or healthy food becomes inaccessible for the poorest by increasing environmental standards.

1] I thank A. Gosseries, Y. Vanderborght, G. Ngende, T. Meijers and one peer reviewer for their comments and suggestions. Some of the ideas of this paper have been presented in seminars in Aarhus and Leuven. I thank the audiences of these events for their comments.

2] For further information on how to protect future generations, see Science and Environmental Health Network and The International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School, 2008.

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The Right to Development of Developing Countries:

An Argument against Environmental Protection?

From this perspective, ecological y-friendly policies can exacerbate inequalities and violate the human rights of poor people.

For these reasons, developing countries could argue that they are not concerned with intergenerational obligations when these are linked to strong environmental protection because they are too poor. In other terms, they could say that their right to development should always win when it clashes with future generations’ rights to a safe environment.

This argument can even be strengthened by some considerations about duties towards future generations. For example, poor countries could say that they are still on Rawls’s accumulation phase, during which they have no duty to preserve a safe environment for future generations (Rawls 1971). This argumentative stance leads me to ask the fol owing question: is the right to development a legitimate excuse against the environmental obligations of poor countries towards future generations? I will advance two claims. First, development is unachieved where nature remains unprotected. We should take different aspects of development and diverse approaches of environmental protection seriously. If some may clash, others go hand in hand. Second, some environmental-virtuous policies may be good both for economic and human development. Development can benefit from ecological y-friendly policies. Poverty cannot stand as a general excuse for environmental laxity at least because poor countries and the poor in general are always the primary victims of environmental laxity. The development of poor countries remains unachieved whenever nature is not protected.

To address these issues, this paper will be divided in three sections. Section I defines and justifies the right of poor countries to development. Section II examines cases where some considerations for development clash with some aspects of the protection of the environment. Section III deals with cases where human and economic development can benefit from some aspects of environmental protection.

I. ASSESSING POOR COUNTRIES’ RIGHT TO DEVELOPMENT

Development means improving people’s well-being. Well-being incorporates both primary goods and fundamental human rights. For poor countries, the human right to development implies the right to improve the material living conditions of their citizens (economic development) and the right to improve the protection of their human rights (human development). An authentic approach to development necessarily combines these two aspects.

Let us first consider development as improvement in material living conditions.

The right of poor countries to development is usual y expressed in terms of economic development as a fight against poverty. Development can be viewed as the right of these countries if not to become rich, at least to emerge from poverty. This interpretation of development is clearly endorsed by many international conventions.

In the preamble of the Declaration of Human Right to Development of 1986, development is defined as

Thierry Ngosso

43

a comprehensive economic, social, cultural and political process, which aims at the constant improvement in the wel -being of the entire population and of all individuals on the basis of their active, free and meaningful participation in development and in the fair distribution of benefits resulting therefrom.

The way development supposes a constant improvement in well-being also appears in Article 1(1) that stipulates:

States have the right and the duty to formulate appropriate national development policies that aim at the constant improvement in the wel -being of the entire population and of all individuals, on the basis of their active, free and meaningful participation in development and their fair distribution of the benefits resulting therefrom.

What emerges from these international instruments is primarily the idea that development is understood as a continuous improvement in living conditions. For economists, the improvement in living conditions covers material living conditions.

Development goes hand in hand with growth and with the increase in people’s income.

That is why, for economists, economic growth is the vector par excel ence of development.

Economists use GDP or GNP as instruments to measure the welfare of a country. In most countries, the poverty level is indexed to growth. Economists then consider that when a country has a sufficient level of economic growth, this al ows a reduction in unemployment and poverty. In the absence of significant growth, job destruction also leads to an increase in poverty. That is why economic development implies the fight against poverty. When the income or the GDP or GNP is below a certain threshold, countries are recognized as poor. Fighting against poverty is therefore intrinsical y linked to development.

There is no doubt that poor countries should fight against poverty. Poverty, or deprivation of basic needs, is moral y wrong. First, poverty undermines economic survival insofar as it deprives poor people of essential needs for their biological lives. Poverty means lack of food, water and social security, exposure to diseases, inability to access health care, and so on. In this sense, poverty is simply a human drama (Singer 1972) and poor countries have to fight it. Second, poverty also undermines social survival as it makes poor people and states more vulnerable to corruption or exploitation. In this sense, poverty is simply a social evil. Third, poverty undermines political involvement since it leads poor people and states to be regarded respectively as second-class citizens or countries.

Poverty means lacking a voice and making political participation impossible both inside countries and at the global level. It strongly undermines people’s self-esteem. In this sense, poverty is incompatible with the setting up of a just society (Rawls 1971; Pogge 2008).

When someone is poor, development should necessarily mean an improvement in living conditions. Nobody would dispute the idea that it is legitimate for those who live below the poverty line to substantial y improve their living conditions. This is particularly true for poor individuals and for poor states. As argued by Lars Löfquist “ people who face very low living standards because of circumstances beyond their control have a right to some improvement.” (Löfquist 2011, 252)

44

The Right to Development of Developing Countries:

An Argument against Environmental Protection?

However, if it is legitimate for these reasons to fight against poverty and if the UN

instruments are right to include the improvement in material living conditions as an important part of development, one can wonder about the term “continuous” which is linked to the improvement in material conditions, especial y if development is considered as a human right. It is problematic to consider the right to development as the right to a never-ending improvement in material living conditions. The main reason is that this approach of the right to economic development is built on a conception of development which is if not erroneous, at least partial. This conception is the mark of a liberal and productive economy long emphasized in Western societies. More and more economists agree today that economic development cannot simply be measured in terms of economic growth. The natural resources that feed this model of development are being gradual y depleted. Some economists even argue that economic development should go hand in hand with degrowth today when necessary if we are to ensure the durability of the planet, or the durability of the human race (Georgescu-Roegen 1979; Kal is 2011). Development is therefore not necessarily linked with growth.

Another reason why economic development should not be considered as a continuous improvement in material living conditions comes from the fact that the improvement in well-being does not only cover material living conditions, but also fundamental rights and both may clash. Improving material conditions of life is legitimate but not enough to satisfy the well-being of individuals or states. This means that economic growth is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for development. Well-being is certainly impossible unless people have basic needs or primary goods. However, if people have basic needs and comfortable income, but lack fundamental rights, there are good reasons to believe that their development is only partial. If development was reducible to a continuous improvement in primary goods, it could be detrimental to the protection of many other rights. Therefore, development implies not only economic growth but also human improvement. With this in mind, some economists like Amartya Sen (1999) argue for human development. In Development as freedom, he proposes the Human Development Index (HDI) as another instrument to measure development of states. This HDI takes into account, beyond the increase in people’s incomes, the ways their choices are expanded and their fundamental rights protected. The work of Amartya Sen is so important that the HDI has become an instrument that is used by UN agencies to assess the level of development of countries. Some UN documents endorse this interpretation of development. Article 1 stipulates:

The right to development is an inalienable human right by virtue of which every human person and all peoples are entitled to participate in person and to contribute to economic, social, cultural and political development, in which all the human rights and fundamental freedoms can be ful y realized and benefit from this development.

In addition, the United Nation Program for Development (UNPD) says that one of the main aims of development

Thierry Ngosso

45

is to expand the range of choices available to people, that can make development more democratic and participatory. These choices should include opportunities for access to income and employment, education and health care and a clean environment without danger. The individual must also have the opportunity to participate ful y in community decisions and to enjoy human, economic and political freedoms.

The right of poor countries to development is also justified if we consider development as a fight against the deprivation of basic freedom and as the improvement in human rights protection that also includes respect for the sovereignty of poor countries.

First, freedom is a fundamental right because it is part of human dignity. There is no development where human dignity is ignored. The preamble of the UN Declaration of Human Rights stipulates that human beings are born free and equal. Second, freedom is useful to social inclusion because it al ows the recognition of the equality of all and the legitimate struggle against inequality and all forms of discrimination. Third, freedom is a necessary condition for democracy and as such is a factor of political inclusion. Fourth, as Amartya Sen rightly put it, freedom is both a means and an end of development and social justice (Sen 1979). We therefore have good reasons to promote freedom and to fight all forms of deprivation of basic freedom as a condition of development.

If we look at development as the improvement in human rights protection of poor countries, economic development should be limited or completed by human development. In this perspective, the human right to economic development, claimed most of the time by the leaders of poor countries, should not be considered as an absolute right. It should be limited when necessary to some other fundamental rights. That is why, since the right to development should be limited like all the other rights by some other considerations, it must therefore be interpreted not as a right to a continuous improvement in living conditions and well-being, but a right to a sufficientarian improvement in well-being. Economic development is only moral y relevant if it leads to sustainable growth (Brundtland 1987) or degrowth. As Löfquist rightly puts it:

There is no need to claim that we have a right to an ever-increasing improvement. It is enough to claim that every person should have a right to reach a certain minimum level of well-being; an idea that is more in line with the Declaration of 1948, which stresses that we only have a right to an adequate standard of living. (Löfquist 2011, 259) The right to development of poor countries is a right to fight against basic needs deprivation (poverty) and to fight against the deprivation of basic freedoms. Poor states therefore have the moral obligation to improve the living conditions of their citizens and to improve the protection of their fundamental rights. While performing these duties, poor countries could be confronted with demanding environmental constraints and face some dilemmas. On one hand, when development is associated with sufficientarian economic growth, the tension with environmental protection will stem from the opportunity cost for the poor and loss of competitive advantage for poor nations. Since significant economic growth for poor countries requires an increase in the minimum energy consumption, 46

The Right to Development of Developing Countries:

An Argument against Environmental Protection?

and since increasing energy consumption means an increasing use of natural resources and increasing pol ution, reducing pol ution will also reduce energy and access to natural resources, and this could affect the fight against poverty. And in a context of international competition, reducing energy consumption and therefore pol ution for poor countries may become suicidal for economic development. On the other hand, when development is associated with an improvement in basic freedoms, protecting nature may exacerbate inequalities between rich and poor. Encouraging ecological y-friendly policies in poor states that lead to organic food or national conservation, will certainly be good for the protection of nature, but may increase inequality in terms of accessibility to organic food and violate poor people’s fundamental rights by kicking them off their lands. In these circumstances, development may appear to be incompatible with environmental protection. Is it possible to solve these dilemmas in poor states? Is development truly incompatible with intergenerational duties to protect nature?

II. DOES DEVELOPMENT REALLY CLASH WITH STRONG ENVIRONMENTAL

PROTECTION?

Based on the Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis, some scholars have argued that economic development always clashes with the protection of nature when countries are still very poor. (Soumyananda 2004) But we should be careful about the relationship between poverty and environmental protection. If we consider development as a fight against poverty, the relationship between poverty and the environment can go in both directions. We can look at the impact of the poor on the environment. It seems, then, that a context of poverty is unfavorable for environmental protection either because of the level of poverty of the poor or because of their level of education. When people or countries are extremely poor, environmental awareness always remains weaker than the struggle for economic growth. This is also part of the Environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis. We can also look at the impact of the environment on the poor. Even if it is evident that poor people and states are the first victims of a lack of environmental protection, it is not always true that they are the first to benefit from demanding environmental standards. Since this relationship appears more complex than expected, let us assess it by asking two questions.

The first question can be formulated as fol ows: given that economic growth is very difficult today without a significant use of fossil fuels responsible for most greenhouse gas emissions, can we say that in order to produce in large quantities as part of the right to economic growth, developing countries must necessarily pol ute too much? The Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis seems to support the idea that the economic development of poor countries cannot be compatible with strong environmental protection when they are still very poor. According to this hypothesis, in the medium term, economic growth necessarily clashes with environmental protection. But, in the long-term, once the country has reached a certain level of economic sufficiency, development in its human aspect for example become very difficult without strong Thierry Ngosso

47

ecological concern. Therefore, for very poor countries, sustainable growth will seriously clash with environmental protection. Producing will be synonymous with pol uting. This hypothesis is an adaptation of the work of Kuznets in “Economic Growth and Income Inequality” to environmental issues. For Simon Kuznets, when countries are very poor, they prioritize investments in infrastructure and natural capital. It is only when they have reached a sufficient level of economic development that investment in human capital, or what we may call human development, becomes the priority instead of infrastructure or natural capital (Kuznets 1955).

The role of inequality in Simon Kuznets’s hypothesis is that of the environment in the Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis. In a context of scarce economic resources, countries invest as a priority in everything that can bring growth. In this context, poor countries have few resources to devote both to satisfying the basic needs of people and at the same time protecting the environment. Protecting the environment can be costly at two levels. If protecting nature means saving an ecosystem or a rare animal species, and if doing so will need public funding, it would be difficult to explain prioritizing the ecosystem or a river while people are still starving. A good example of this is Lake Chad3.

We simply cannot use scarce financial resources to protect rare species or ecosystems instead of addressing basic human needs - except if we consider non-human beings as moral persons - the fight against poverty in poor countries certainly clashes with the fight for environmental protection.In an indirect way, protecting nature may imply limiting access to natural resources. But natural resources represent an important – if not the unique – source of funds for some developing countries. Not using or sel ing trees will certainly be good for the environment, but bad for poor people and countries.

The example of the Congo Basin, the second most important forest reserve in the world, il ustrates that tension. It plays a role in regulating pol ution by absorbing greenhouse gases. But it also represents an important economic opportunity for the poor countries, because of the fiscal resources provided by timber companies which exploit the forest.

Protecting the Congo Basin, by ending the exploitation of its trees, would mean giving up an important source of funds in countries that do not already have enough. Since it would be unacceptable to let people starve or neglect their care when countries could sell trees to satisfy these critical needs, the fight against poverty will once again face high non-compliance with demanding environmental standards.

To explain why in poor countries ecological concern can only be secondary in the fight against the imperative of poverty, some additional arguments can be marshal ed 3] The example of Lake Chad is quite instructive in this regard. Lake Chad is essential to twenty mil ion people from Chad, Cameroon, Nigeria and Niger, which are adjacent to it. If it disappears, the consequences wil be dramatic at the environmental and economic level. To save Lake Chad, several mil ion dol ars are needed. Even if they could benefit later, these poor countries surrounding Lake Chad currently have few financial resources to devote the same amount to the environmental emergency that the disappearance of Lake Chad represents and to the basic needs in terms of the education and health of their poorest populations.

48

The Right to Development of Developing Countries:

An Argument against Environmental Protection?

here. The first refers to psychology and connects ecological awareness with the level of poverty. When basic needs of poor people or states are not met, then all other considerations are secondary4. Therefore, we can deduce the empirical claim that the desire for some economic growth that will fill basic needs will always be stronger than environmental awareness in poor countries. The second relates environmental awareness to education. Environmental awareness is general y proportional to people’s educational level. The more educated people are, the better they are aware of the risks of environmental degradation5. The argument of the correlation between environmental awareness and education level is similar to the correlation between the level of education of women and the number of children in family planning policies. It is not always true, but more often than not, well educated women general y have fewer children. Thus, education can play an important role in the emergence of an ecological conscience, partly necessary for environmental protection. However, education itself requires substantial financial resources in terms of infrastructure and recruitment of qualified staff. But these resources are already insufficient in poor countries. Poor countries are trapped by the egg and chicken syndrome. The lack of financial resources prevents states from educating all their citizens, and it impacts the ecological awareness of individuals negatively and leads poor countries to have lax environmental policies. Therefore where the level of education is also low, because of the lack of financial resources, it will be difficult to educate people and to protect nature at the same time.

When we look careful y at the Environmental Kuznets curve assumptions, those who argue for it do not say that development necessarily clashes with environmental protection, but simply argue that in a context of severe poverty, as is the case for most developing countries, it is almost impossible to fight against poverty and protect the environment at the same time. As part of production, pol ution becomes a necessary condition of the survival of the poor. Poor countries simply cannot give the same priority to environmental y virtuous policies and those promoting economic growth. They necessarily sacrifice the former to the latter.

Another worry concerns international competition that may affect the desire of poor countries to protect nature. The idea that strong environmental protection would be economical y suicidal emerges, as we can see, from the failure of the recent international 4] In Poor Economics. A radical rethinking of the way to fight global poverty, Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo thinks otherwise. They show how poor people may be concerned by some other needs when they do not have enough to eat or are preoccupied with their health. But saying that someone in Morocco who does not have enough to eat but buys a television may be controversial. First, if he can buy a television, it means that he necessarily has enough to buy his food, since food is cheaper than television. Second, if someone can buy a television, it means that he has the choice between sacrificing maybe his food for a period to improve his leisure. Leisure is also part of wel -being. But, in extreme poverty, it is quite impossible to buy a television or even to have a choice between less food in the short term and leisure in the long term. When in extreme poverty, people cannot prioritize their needs.

5] This is not always true. For example, we know that rich countries are responsible for the most significant part of anthropogenic emissions and therefore pol ute more than poor countries.

Thierry Ngosso

49

climate conferences. Being environmental y virtuous, many think in poor countries, will lead them not to be economical y competitive in the absence of a global agreement.

Poor countries need investors to generate growth and to fight against poverty. That is why, in most poor countries, it is estimated that economic competitiveness necessarily goes together with lax environmental laws, since the poor countries that tried to be environmental y virtuous would face competition from other less virtuous poor countries.

And this will be detrimental both to economic growth and for environmental protection.

The issue of competition impacting significantly on the competitiveness of states is even more crucial for the environment since nature is a shared resource. A state which tries to be environmental y virtuous will suffer from the harmful consequences on nature of non-virtuous states as wel . In this regard, a poor and environmental y virtuous country will face a double jeopardy: losing ground on economic competitiveness vis-à-vis the others states, but also sharing the burden of adverse effects of a damaged environment.

Therefore, we can acknowledge that international economic competition has made the situation more complex for poor countries. Poor countries wishing real y to protect the environment are exposed to the risk of unfair competition, both among themselves and between them and developed countries. It is extremely difficult or quite impossible in that context for poor countries to deal with strong environmental protection.

But, if what has been said is true, this would lead to some normative impasses. One would probably be to justify an absolute right for poor countries to pol ute as much as the rich on the grounds that their poverty is moral y unacceptable. Since development is the reduction of poverty, then all that can be done to achieve this aim will be legitimate.

In other words, the end justifies the means. This point of view appears to be highly problematic, as Mil er (2008) rightly pointed out. However, if the right to development cannot always justify a right to pol ute, at least because poor countries should mitigate climate change or limit exploitation of some natural resources as part of their moral obligations towards future generations, or because this can seriously jeopardize life on the planet and compromise their own development, does that mean they should give up their right to some economic growth? Can we reduce this tension?

There are at least two possible ways to reduce these tensions that cannot be solved completely and to show that, even for poor countries, legitimate aspiration for economic growth should not necessarily be opposed to environmental protection. First, in a normative sense, the tension can be reduced if we distinguish between subsistence pol ution and luxury pol ution, as Henry Shue (1993) suggests and considers that subsistence pol ution is indispensable for economic development. Subsistence pol ution symbolizes the inevitable degradation of nature for survival needs. These are inescapable emissions without which human life will degrade dramatical y. Not all negative consequences for nature or on future generations constitute a wrongful harm. (Gosseries 2004, 43) Environmental degradation is not necessarily problematic as not all inequalities are necessarily unjust. Even if some emissions negatively impact nature, they are not necessarily harmful when they are essential to every person’s life. Subsistence emissions 50

The Right to Development of Developing Countries:

An Argument against Environmental Protection?

are emissions poor countries cannot simply do without. On the other side, luxury emissions are those which are not indispensable to the individual’s survival, those that could be reduced without endangering significantly their standard of living or without fal ing under the threshold level. The former are essential and therefore compatible with economic growth and the second are not essential and are therefore incompatible with sustainable economic growth. With this distinction in mind, the right to development of poor countries that leads to a certain economic growth up to a threshold of sufficiency could go hand in hand with some environmental laxity. Since not all environmental laxity is moral y problematic, the normative tension between economic development and nature protection can be reduced. However, the problem with Shue’s normative distinction between subsistence and luxury emission is that it is very difficult to establish. It seems difficult to reduce or to solve this type of tension by using an imprecise device, even if one understands its moral sense.

Second, this tension can also be resolved if we can find a fair deal or a just agreement between rich and poor countries. We must think of a compromise between rich and poor countries if we don’t want international economic competition to be detrimental to poor countries which cannot simply push up their environmental awareness since they need foreign investments to increase economic growth and well-being. This is legitimate.

Knowing this, the most important effort for the protection of the environment must come specifical y from rich countries, not from poor ones. Since the environment is common property, at least when it comes to the atmosphere, there is a need for shared responsibility to protect the environment. Rich countries must take the largest share. Rich countries have the moral obligation to significantly reduce their emissions, implement economic degrowth and fund initiatives that will help poor countries to use more and cleaner energy in order to emerge from poverty. Henry Shue makes a relevant claim when he says: The need to reduce emissions, not merely to stabilize them at an already historical y high level, is only part of the bad news for the industrial countries. The other part is that the CO2 emission of most countries that contain a large percentage of the human population will be rising for some time. I believe that the emissions from these poor, economical y less-developed countries also ought to rise insofar as this rise is necessary to provide a minimal y decent standard of living for their now impoverished people. This is, of course, already a (very weak) judgment about what is fair: namely, that those living in desperate poverty ought not to be required to restrain their emissions, thereby remaining in poverty, in order that those living in luxury should not have to restrain their emissions. Anyone who cannot see that it would be unfair to require sacrifices will not find anything else said in this article convincing, because I rely throughout on a common sense of elementary fairness.

Any strategy of maintaining affluence for some people by keeping other people at or below subsistence is, I take it, patently unfair because so extraordinarily unequal – intolerably unequal. (Shue 1993, 42)

To summarize, it should be said that economic growth clashes with environmental concern in developing countries, even if the distinction between subsistence pol ution and luxury pol ution can reduce that tension at a normative level. And being ecological y Thierry Ngosso

51

virtuous may lead to economic suicide for developing countries. International agreements on climate change, for example, must take seriously the fact that fairness moral y obliges rich countries to take the lion’s share and help poor countries to find alternative means to enjoy a sufficientarian economic growth. Economic development as sustainable development appears to be compatible with subsistence pol ution, but not with luxury pol ution. Since developing countries have the right to economic growth, they also have the right to pol ute. But their right to pol ute would be limited to what is necessary to emerge from poverty insofar as they are being helped by rich countries. But this conclusion must be relativized at least because poor people and poor countries are the most vulnerable to failure to protect nature. This leads us to the second question.

The second question can be formulated as fol ows: given that the poor are the primary victims of environmental degradation, can we say that strong environmental demands necessarily benefit them? Many facts show that the poor are the first to suffer from a lack of environmental protection. For example, it is in areas where poor and vulnerable people live that states tend to be less demanding in terms of compliance with demanding environmental standards. Most of the time, when companies are looking for sites to dump toxic waste, it is to those inhabited mostly by the poor and vulnerable they look first.

That is what happened with the Probo Koala case6 in which many toxic chemicals were dumped in poor neighborhoods of Abidjan in 2006 by the Dutch company Trafigura Beheer BV (Denoiseux 2010). One could also mention the case of Nedlog Technology Group Inc. Of Arvada, Colorada who in 1980 offered $ 25 mil ion to the President of Sierra Leone Shiaka Stevens to be al owed to fly toxic waste from the USA into his country (Richards 1980). Exporting hazards to developing countries has been part of the Western multinational agenda (Shue, 1981). When the environment deteriorates sharply, the fate of the poor is worse than the rich. On the other hand, even when all of a given population is seriously affected by environmental degradation, it appears that the poor have fewer financial resources than the rich to deal with the situation, either for access to care, or to leave an uninhabitable area, as happened in Fukushima. Even when an entire population is affected by the consequences of a lack of strong environmental protection, there would still be unequal access to health care, housing, etc. between rich and poor. And this is not good for development understood as human development. It seems therefore as if development will remain unachieved without protection of environment. Development is not achieved when the focus lies merely on economic development and where human development is neglected and vice versa. Given the foregoing hypothesis, one may think that protecting the environment so strongly will primarily benefit the poor. However, this is not always the case. Contrary to what one may think, many cases show that strong environmental protection worsens the purchasing power of the poor while increasing inequality. Two examples are sufficient to il ustrate that: the Conservation Refugees issue and that of organic food.

6] See Riendeau 2012.

52

The Right to Development of Developing Countries:

An Argument against Environmental Protection?

If strong protection of the environment, on the one hand, means creating great national parks, it may violate the fundamental rights of indigenous peoples. Protecting nature can indeed strongly destabilize the lifestyle of some populations. This is what happened recently in Kenya, where in order to combat abusive and uncontrol ed logging in the Mau forest, government authorities decided to deport everyone, against their wil , including the Ogiek communities who had been living there for centuries (Calas 2009). This type of attitude of the Kenyan government has led to the phenomenon of Conservation Refugees, forceful y highlighted in recent years by Mark Dowie in Conservation Refugees: The Hundred-Year Conflict between Global Conservation and Native Peoples (2009). The Conservation Refugees are native or indigenous, poor and vulnerable people forcibly displaced by their own governments, without any financial compensation, in order to create areas of conservation, biodiversity reserves or national parks. Their number is now estimated at more than 14 mil ion in Africa alone. But if these projects to protect nature may have the appearance of being environmental y virtuous, it is clear that the consequences are harmful and unfair to poor and indigenous populations whose human rights are ignored in favor of economic interests, or as Mark Dowie said to serve the whims of some apparently pro-environmental Western civil society. Although one might imagine that national reserves can earn foreign exchange through tourism, thus contributing to economic development of a country and thus reducing inequalities, it seems clear that these examples are typical cases where strict environmental policies are not favorable to the most vulnerable people and their fundamental rights. If a pro-environmental policy, on the other hand concerns the implementation of environmental standards in terms of organic food, it may also serve to increase inequalities and lower the purchasing power of the poor. It is today the case with organic food, high quality food and less pol uted to the extent that some toxic chemicals are not used to produce it and therefore better than non-organic food for well-being and health. But if this food is less pol uted than its non-organic counterpart, it is also more expensive and therefore more inaccessible to the poor. Protecting the environment that way can lead to less pol uted food, but may worsen the situation of the poor.

If the poor are the first to suffer from environmental degradation, they are not necessarily also the first to benefit from pro-environmental policies. So when we think about the relationship between the environment, poverty and inequality, it is important to note that even if a substantial degradation of the environment is always detrimental to the poor, this does not mean that every strict pro-environmental policy will automatical y be favorable to them. In this sense, a pro-environmental policy that would make development possible must not worsen the economic situation of the poor, or increase inequality, unless increasing inequality would benefit the worst-off (Rawls 1971). An example of this type of pro-environmental policies that directly benefit the poor while decreasing inequalities is the Green Belt Movement initiative of Wangari Maathaï, a movement that is strongly involved in reforestation in Kenya while at the same time al owing many women to be Thierry Ngosso

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employed. It was thanks to this initiative that Wangari Maathaï won the Nobel Peace Prize.On the whole, protecting the environment can have two opposite impacts on the poor: if it is synonymous with reducing pol ution and neutralizing its harmful consequences, then it can be good for the poor. If it stands for the establishment of national parks or building standards for the production of organic food then the risk of increasing inequality and poverty may be even greater. Therefore, it is essential, whenever possible, to favor environmental policies that improve the situation of the most vulnerable and poor.

Without this constant attention to the plight of the most disadvantaged in the choice of certain ways of protecting environment, development in human as well as economic aspects would simply be unachieved and will necessarily clashes with ecological concerns.

For development to be completely possible in a pro-environmental context, protecting nature should always adapt to the fight against poverty and to the protection of basic freedoms.

To summarize, the tension between development and environmental protection comes more often than not from the fact that we do not make a clear distinction between two approaches of development (economic and human) and do not take the diversity of the way of protecting the nature seriously. More often than not, African leaders talk of economic development and not of human development. When they talk of environmental protection, they do not make a clear distinction between reducing pol ution and reducing the exploitation of their natural resources. If it is true that some conceptions of development may clash with some aspect of environmental protection, it is also true that other approaches of development cannot be achieved without ecological-friendly policies.

III. CAN DEVELOPMENT BENEFIT FROM DEMANDING ENVIRONMENTAL STANDARDS?

One question to ask is whether strengthening environmental policies can avoid worsening the plight of the poor, another whether it can substantial y improve it. If development and environment can col ide in many ways in developing countries, we must not forget that the protection of the environment can also be a real opportunity to improve both the economic growth and fair institutions. In that perspective, the right to development can become an argument in favor of demanding environmental standards, especial y in many developing countries which are poor economical y but rich in natural resources. Hence this question: knowing that the political system has a greater impact on economic growth than the natural resources of a country, can any strong environmental protection that would consist in a poor country in restricting access to its natural resources improve the quality of the political system and then be beneficial for economic and human development?

To explore this possibility, it is important to use the idea of the paradox of plenty, better known under the terms of either the “resource curse” or the “Dutch disease.” According to this paradox, countries with significant natural resources are curiously often those who 54

The Right to Development of Developing Countries:

An Argument against Environmental Protection?

are least competitive and poorer in economic terms, and political y the most unstable and authoritarian. If the example of the Netherlands who gave their name to this syndrome attests to the fact that this empirical hypothesis may in part be true in rich countries too, it is the poor countries which are most exposed to this reality. The case of the Democratic Republic of Congo is by far the most chal enging. Although one of the richest countries in natural resources, it remains economical y one of the poorest countries in the world and, in human terms, one of the countries where human rights are the most violated.

This resource curse hypothesis shows how strong some aspects of environmental protection would be both beneficial to the environment, political institutions and economic growth. For this to happen, there must be a strong link between some aspects of environmental protection and limitation of access to natural resources, and between this limitation and the political system, and final y between the political system and economic growth. Let us examine each of these links.

First, what about the link between protecting the environment and limiting access to natural resources? Protecting nature, as we have said, can have many aspects (Gosseries 2008). One of them is limiting access to natural resources. If the exploitation of natural resources that contributes to our survival is inevitable, excessive exploitation of natural resources can in turn become a threat to our survival. Hans Jonas (1990) has shown the danger for humanity of the negative impact on the environment and the abusive exploitation of natural resources. This danger is twofold. On one hand, the exploitation of certain resources causes an immediate impact on the environment. For example, extensive use of trees or wood not only deprives the world of essential oxygen through the transformation of CO2, but also contributes to the degradation of soils. On the other hand, exploiting natural resources may indirectly impact environment in a worse way. This is the case for most fossil fuels, especial y oil. The use of oil generates significant greenhouse gas emissions that are the main threat to the ozone layer and primarily responsible for global warming that threatens the planet. Many experts (King 2005) therefore believe that strong environmental policies require reducing our dependence on natural resources and limiting the exploitation and consumption of oil and trees. So there is a clear link between environmental protection and limitation of access to natural resources. In other words, using less oil means emitting less greenhouse gases into the atmosphere; using less logging means increasing the capacity to absorb greenhouses gases. In both cases, limiting our adverse impact on nature to what is necessary for a sustainable economy is necessarily good for the environment.

Second, what about the link between limiting access to natural resources and political institutions? To explain this relationship, one might ask the fol owing question: how can we understand that such countries as Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Saudi Arabia and Angola, very rich in natural resources, are far poorer than countries such as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong or Singapore extremely poor in natural resources? For Mehlum Halvor, Karl Moene and Ragnar Torvik (2006), the answer lies in the quality of political institutions. They show that nations rich in natural resources have a different Thierry Ngosso

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fate depending on whether their political institutions use or redistribute resource rents for those who produce wealth or in favor of what they call unproductive grabbers: The distinction we make is between producers friendly institutions, where rent-seeking and production are complementary activities, and grabber friendly institutions, where rent-seeking and production are competing activities. Grabber friendly institutions therefore easily divert scarce entrepreneurial resources out of production and into unproductive activities as a result of natural abundance. With grabber friendly institutions there are gains from specialization in various sort of unproductive influence activities, while there are extra cost of production activities due to discretionary power and favoritism. Typical feature of grabber friendly institutions are a weak rule of law and a high risk of expropriation, malfunctioning bureaucracy and corruption in the government”. (Mehlum, Moene & Torvik 2006, 2-3)

In countries like Nigeria or Saudi Arabia, the state is simply not democratic or fair.

And that is why, even though they are rich in natural resources, economic and human development is less important than in Japan or Hong Kong. This approach is also shared by many economists such as Humphreys, Sachs and Stiglitz (2007) that emphasize the political foundations of the paradox of plenty (Wright & Czelusta 2004).

Third, what about the link between democracy, fair institutions and economic growth? Jeffrey Sachs asserts that countries which are victims of the resource curse are those where the economy is mostly based on funds from natural resources and are de facto unable to be funded through taxes. In recal ing the assumption that the political system is more crucial for development than natural resources, he shows the combination of two factors that will necessarily have positive effects if a country reduces its dependence vis-

à-vis natural resources. To escape the curse, a poor country needs to diversify its sources of income. In other words, it must cease to derive most of its revenue from oil and mining resources or forestry. Indeed, in most countries that have very few natural resources, it is through taxation that states fund public policies. In countries rich in natural resources, the state will tend to count on its natural resources to fund public policies and will not have a direct interest in taxing people. This will have at least two adverse consequences.

First, citizens, when they have no tax burden or only a light one, are less concerned about the management of their contributions. The second is that those who benefit significantly from oil and mining revenues, including government leaders, will try at all cost to maintain their privileges which will lead to neutralizing any attempt to chal enge their practices. To maintain their privileges, governments of rent-seeking states tend then to strengthen the armed forces in order to maintain their own populations in poverty and dependence. It is in partly why, as Wantchekon shows (2000), these countries rich in natural resources are general y also the most authoritarian ones.

On the other side, countries poor in natural resources will be forced to rely on taxes paid by the labor of their citizens, and this will necessarily introduce a new type of relationship between citizens and leaders. In this context, provisional y restricting access to natural resources will force the state to raise taxes and thus depend on its citizens and not on its resources. This has two potential positive consequences. First, at the economic 56

The Right to Development of Developing Countries:

An Argument against Environmental Protection?

level, the state will increase economic growth by diversifying its economy. It will therefore escape the economic difficulties faced by states which rely primarily on natural resources.

A high dependence on natural resources usual y leads to a lack of attention to other sectors of the economy, making it less competitive. This attitude can affect the exchange rate between currencies and depreciate the competitiveness of a state in the international market. This is what happened with the Netherlands as opposed to Norway. But a state that depends only on its natural resources and does not diversify its economy will also be more vulnerable to instability and volatility of the international prices of natural resources. On the political side, raising tax will encourage more transparency and democracy. In fact, by raising taxes, the state will depend on its citizens who will suddenly be more vigilant about how their taxes are being used. By shifting the dependence from natural resources to citizens, this will also change the relationship between rulers and citizens. The rulers will be forced to demonstrate accountability on the way money is spent and this will compel them to be transparent, but they will also need the adherence of citizens and this will foster the emergence of democracy. This is how economic and human development could benefit from strong protection of the environment.

To strengthen this argument, we can also mention what Amartya Sen said about the impact of political institutions in economic growth. In his famous book Poverty and Famine, Sen argues that fair and democratic political institutions are more important for the development of a country than its natural resources, a fact well-il ustrated by what happened with famines in Bengal. Famines were not caused by a lack of food, but by the fact that people did not have equal access to some basic capabilities. A context of abundance can be beneficial to all only if there are fair and democratic institutions that can ensure the just distribution of income. In this sense, economic development primarily depends on the just and democratic character of the institutions and is secondary to other resources.

What emerges from these different links is that the development of poor countries can benefit from some ecological y-friendly policies. If a poor country restricts its access to natural resources, it strongly protects the environment either by stopping the exploitation of trees that help regulate pol ution or by stopping the exploitation of oil that helps reduce pol ution. By reducing logging and oil exploitation, it would be obliged to diversify its economy and to count on taxes paid by citizens. Being less dependent on its resources will be good for economy and being more dependent on its citizens will increase transparency and democracy. Democratic management of natural resources will be used optimal y and distributed fairly. It is only in that context that environmental virtuous policies will contribute both to the fight against the deprivation in terms of basic needs and rights.

IV. CONCLUSION

This paper defends three claims. First, the right to development of poor countries should be understood as the right to fight against poverty through sustainable economic Thierry Ngosso

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growth (economic development) and to fight for the protection of basic freedoms through the establishment of just and democratic institutions (human development).

In the words of Amartya Sen, people who live in material abundance but who lack basic freedoms cannot be considered developed (Sen 1999). Second, the right to development of poor countries can clash with strong environmental standards if we do not take the diversity of the protection of nature and different approaches of development seriously.

Third, unlike the poor countries leaders’ argument against strong environmental policies which is only partial y right, the other part of the truth is that the right to development of poor countries can be strengthened by environmental considerations. The limitation of access to natural resources can positively impact on the type of regime and contribute to economic and human development. Therefore, even if it actual y happens that the right to development in poor countries may justify non-compliance with stringent environmental standards when they endanger the lives of the poor and violate the human rights of the most vulnerable, we must never forget that on closer inspection, strong environmental protection could make poor countries richer, democratic, and fairer.

ngossothierry@yahoo.fr

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© 2013 by Public Reason

Unlocking Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) with

Development Inspiration from the South

Alobwede John Ngome

Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Abstract. The panacea for socio-economic development in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is enshrined in the development model of the South. Developing nations have the responsibility to opt for their specific development interests. Development, as dictated by the west over the years through International Financial Institutions has not delivered socio-economic progress in SSA. Current development politics in SSA demands fresh thinking and the consideration of development inspiration from the South, notably the development experience of China, Brazil and others. Using the theory of the developmental state, I will argue that given the current record of development thinking from the North, imposed on SSA over the years, development philosophy from the South is best suited to unleash socio-economic progress in SSA, through technological transfers, but also because the southern approach is context specific. My remarks will elaborate on the theme of south-south development. SSA is endowed with abundant natural resources. What is needed to make development happen is technology, an educated workforce, capital and a strong state bureaucracy that sets the development vision and oversees the development agenda.

Key Words: development, Sub-Saharan Africa, development thinking from the north, developed nations, developing countries, international financial institutions, nation state.

The solution for the development lapses in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) does not lay in blaming the West for the current socio-economic dilemma and global self marginalization of SA in the global economy. Rather, for SSA to shape its own future development, the region has to rethink the development models inherited after colonization and imposed by the North. Shafaeddin (2008, 1) postulates that we have been witnessing two contradictory developments in the world economy and international policy during the recent decades. On one hand, the need for sophisticated trade and industrial policies has increased; on the other hand, economic philosophy has changed against government intervention in the economy.

The development ideology forced on SSA over the years is enshrined in the neoliberal development thinking of the North, articulated by and through the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO. The Northern brand of development as dictated over the years advocates non-state intervention in development politics, coupled with good governance, competition driven by free markets, private property, international integration through trade liberalization and the free mobility of capital as institutional drivers of development.

Nevertheless, many developed nations such as the USA, UK, France, Finland, Germany, Japan, and Korea did not use liberal policies towards foreign investment before they became highly developed (Chang 2003, 1). The Neoliberal model has encouraged increasing financial savings in most of SSA, economic stability through low inflation as well as the improvement of the productivity of inputs such as labor. This has not yielded the needed development in most of SSA. Development has either stal ed or worsened.

62

Unlocking Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) with Development Inspiration from the South I. PROBLEM STATEMENT

It is currently al eged that a handful of SSA countries have registered measured economic growth. However, this is not translating into the desired socio-economic development. People’s lives and living conditions have not improved. A critical scrutiny of the Northern-dictated development model unearths the fact that, this model of development imposed privatization schemes that have been counterproductive and a mitigated economic failure in most of SSA. Financial liberalization has general y reduced the practice of saving on the continent; compulsory trade liberalization has resulted in deindustrialization and impeded job creation. Empirical y, it is obvious that the development formula of the North imposed on the South, a category to which SSA belongs has birthed rising poverty, mounting inequality and low growth.

The minority argument for pro-poor growth that argues for more aid to drive development in SSA, less government involvement in development issues, capital controls, the so cal ed trade preferences for poor countries, hinges on the flawed assumption that the foregoing measures are vital to eliminate poverty, reduce inequality and enhance growth. This flawed Northern development philosophy, imposed on SSA and most of the global South as “a development model,” heralds the need for SSA to explore a development path that will deliver the desired socio-economic development, thus the need to revisit the Southern model of development.

The current development reality and record of SSA therefore entails and necessitates a re-examination of the actual development state of affairs as well as the northern development model forced on SSA nations by the IMF and the World Bank through structural programs. SSA doesn’t have a development model of its own however; SSA has much in common with a number of emerging economies such as China, Brazil, India, and the Tiger Economies1. SSA certainly has pertinent development lessons to draw from more advanced nations in the South, to improve development and the socio-economic situation in SSA. The crisis of social development is visibly so pervasive in SSA that, it is often characterized by critics as a development wasteland, associated with poverty2.

II. MAKING THE CASE FOR DEVELOPMENT INSPIRATION FROM THE SOUTH

Socio-economic development can best be catalyzed in SSA with development inspiration from the South. The development agenda dictated by the West, and imposed on Africa over the years has failed to take into consideration the specific contexts of various African countries. The West has been practicing “a one-size-fits-al ” approach to development. This has stal ed development across the African continent. Geography 1] For the economic success story of the tiger economies, see Young 2013. Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, and Singapore are depicted as tiger economies because they registered rapid economic growth that improved the living conditions of their citizens.

2] For development in African countries, see Adesina 2007.

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and resources matter in development thinking. It is more difficult for development to take root, and blossom in landlocked African countries such as Chad and the Central African Republic, as opposed to coastal countries such as Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea and Nigeria. Thus, geography and other country-specific realities must be taken into consideration in development planning. Imposing a single formula on every African country, has produced mixed results and unintended consequences. Most importantly, development has to be nurtured from within African societies, as has been the case in China and other emerging economies, not parachuted from abroad. Th e development model imposed on Africa by the West, that have breed corruption and stal ed development over the years are precooked in the West and designed to stifle development. African states need to frame their own development strategies that reflect the African context, to drive development. African states need to fashion an alternative development agenda that will nurture development across Africa (Col ier 2007, 5).

The economic advancement of China, Brazil, Singapore and other nations of the South has been driven by the development thinking of the South. This brand of development does not concur with the widely propagated neoliberal version of development, imposed on developing nations.

The specific case of China and of similar emerging economies has made it vividly clear that socio-economic development as witnessed in most emerging economies is driven by diversified industrialization and the creation of an export oriented economy.

Chinese products are exported to every continent on the globe. Institutional measures that ensure stable growth, less attention to inflation, the promotion of strategic investments financed by state development banks, food security assurances, checking the growth of the financial sector, the acquisition and development of strategic technology, backed by a strong nation state, together constitute the driver of development in most emerging economies. SSA can draw development inspiration from the aforementioned development experiments. The foregoing factors will be explored in some detail in the corpus of this paper.

It is fundamental to underscore the fact that, while the development experiments in China and elsewhere have delivered growth and improved welfare by creating an emerging middle class by lifting bil ions out of poverty especial y in China, the protection of the natural environment has not received the deserved attention. Critics equal y debunk the development view from the South for breeding corruption and authoritarianism, underlining the failure of some state directed growth strategies and low levels of employment.

Mapping out a bright development future for SSA involves revisiting the trade liberalization dictum as a vital first step. The claim by the West that developing countries that are objecting to free agreements and liberal investment agreements are making “a futile attempt to grow,” questioning how such nations think they can succeed in economic development without the “tried and tested” means of trade and free investment is a fundamental y misguided view (Chang 2003, 1).

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Unlocking Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) with Development Inspiration from the South In col aboration with Western based institutions such as the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO, the developed world has consistently pushed for, and encouraged trade liberalization in SSA in various contexts. The consistent doctrine for privatization and market liberalization, embedded in various Structural Adjustment arrangements, has managed to open up the economies of SSA for superior products from the developed world while, shutting out and exceedingly regulating and limiting the access of product from SSA into Western markets, through stringent market conditionality. To put it succinctly, the doctrine of trade liberalization in SSA has not strengthened, but has rather muffled trade flows from SSA to the North and generated unintended and undesired consequences in terms of development. There is need for SSA economies to strive to reverse this trend in order to boost the trade sector.

An analysis of the development history of developed nations such as the United Kingdom, the USA, France, Finland, Germany, Japan, Korea and Taiwan reveals that they did not use liberal policies towards foreign investment, before they became highly developed (Chang 2003, 1).

Trade liberalization as imposed on SSA by the West, has undercut and impeded capitalism from flourishing in SSA over the years. Although capitalism clearly has a down side in terms of wealth distribution, it remains the most efficient method for creating wealth. SSA has to understandably aspire for the gains of capitalism, to enable development to see the light of day in the region. Debunking the myth of free trade and trade liberalization through a historical analogy, Chang (2003, 1) makes the case for “an urgent need for thoroughly rethinking some key conventional wisdom in the debate on trade policy and more broadly on globalization.”

In similitude with other emerging economies, SSA nations need to promote and shield infant industries that cannot compete with well established industries in the West.

A close analysis of the history of capitalism “reveals that when developing themselves, today’s developed countries did not practice free trade. Rather they promoted their national industries through tariffs, subsidies and other measures” (Chang 2003, 1).

In a sense, the philosophy that drives the Washington Consensus trade strategy as dictated by international financial institutions through structural and structural adjustment programmes, that push for universal trade liberalization in SSA and the global South, a vision that equal y governs the GATT and WTO rules, is not conducive to the industrialization and development of developing countries (Shafaeddin 2008, 1).

Protectionism was consistently used in the West to breed and nurture socio-economic and industrial development. SSA nations must aspire for up-to-date industrial technology and devise various strategies to protect infant and nascent strategic industries.

Today’s developing countries need to be able to impose much higher rates of tariff than those used by the now developed countries in the past, if they are to provide the same degree of protection to their industries as the ones accorded to the now developed countries industries in the past (Chang 2003,13).

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III. SUGGESTED DEVELOPMENT ROADMAP

Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) represents a credible instrument to curb the spread of poverty and to propel growth and development in SSA. Underscoring the possible reasons why FDI is not flowing into SSA as it normal y should, Moyo (2009) points out that Africa is well suited to receive huge amounts of FDI given that, its labors costs are relatively low, its investments opportunities are significantly high and as home to some of the poorest countries in the world, “Africa should be FDI’s natural suitor.” Moyo, however, admits that investors are faced with a significant number of hurdles. Impediments include dilapidated infrastructure, bad roads and telecommunications. Most importantly, the poor quality of infrastructure and energy crisis render the production of services and goods steep, especial y when transport cost are factored in, thus the preference to produce in Asia (Moyo 2009, 100).

SSA can attract substantial amounts of FDI in the form of investment by improving its road network, infrastructure and energy security. Development is impossible without energy security. Whatever the mix in the years ahead, energy and its chal enges will be defining for our future (Yergin 2012, 8).

The attraction of FDI in SSA, to improve investment and development must be matched with less dependence on other forms of foreign aid that tend to stifle development.

Moyo (2009, 29) asserts that in the last four decades, a handful of developing nations have experienced phenomenal economic growth. Many Asian countries in this category, she argues, have grown by almost 10 percent GDP per year, surpassing the growth rates of leading industrialized economies, and significantly reducing poverty. Yet, aid-dependent SSA countries have simply failed to generate consistent economic growth and have even regressed.

It is difficult to curb the spread of poverty without adequate socio-economic improvement and growth. Consequently, SSA has to aggressively push for growth similar to China, Brazil and others to curb the spread of poverty. Growth itself can only be nurtured with trade. In the long-run “growth is the strongest single determinant of poverty rates. If our objective is to reduce and ultimately eliminate poverty, there is no instrument more reliable for achieving this than sustained long-term growth in per-capita GDP. Countries that have the best anti-poverty records, are those that have grown rapidly” (Dani 1998, 1).

Considering the view of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) on the human development outcomes of the current global trading regime, reforms are needed to make global trade more inclusive and susceptible to benefit SSA nations. This will enable trade to become an instrument for enhancing human development and reducing poverty in SSA (Dani 1998, 4).

The consistent flow of foreign direct investments and the regulated flow of finances into SSA economies can serve as a driver of socio-economic development. Empirical evidence is indicative of massive capital flight from SSA to the west. The governments of SSA have to take measures to check massive South-North liquidity flows. Better stil , 66

Unlocking Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) with Development Inspiration from the South SSA nation need to push for the release and repatriation of huge amounts of capital held in private bank accounts in Switzerland and around Europe, to finance socio-economic development in SSA. The integration of SSA nations into the global economy will further enable regular and regulated capital flows to SSA countries. Capital flows to SSA countries have clear and important benefits. The benefits are especial y clear for foreign direct investment, which is not only more stable but also brings technological knowhow and access to markets. Other external flows also have important positive micro-economic effects such as lowering the cost of capital for creditworthy firms. At the macroeconomic level, foreign capital flows can complement domestic savings, leading to higher investment and growth.(Jones 1998, 1).

It is fundamental to underscore the fact that for socio-economic development to take root and blossom in SSA, these nations must be able to regulate capital flows into the SSA region and exercise control and manage over their currencies. The Communate France Afrique (CFA) that includes Cameroon, Chad, Ivory Coast, and other former French colonies in SSA all use the CFA francs as currency. These nations have no command over their currency. Their currency is managed and regulated by the French treasury, to suit the economic interest of France at the detriment of SSA nations. SSA nations need to aspire for control over their own currencies, to best manage the currency to favor socio-economic development in SSA.

To shield SSA nations from volatile capital flows, there is need to regulate interim currency flows into SSA economies:

Large surges of short-term potential y revisable capital flows to developing countries can also have very negative effects. These surges pose complex policy dilemmas for macroeconomic management, as they can initial y push key micro-economic variables such as exchange rates and prices of assets like property and shares, away from what could be considered their long-term equilibrium. These flows pose the risk of very sharp reversals. If these reversals lead to currency or financial crisis, they can result in very serious losses of output, investment and employment as well as increase in poverty. (Jones 1998, 1)

Revamping industrialization and the manufacturing capacity of SSA countries will serve as a catalyst for socio-economic development. The development recipe and the industrialization formula imposed on SSA by the IMF and the World Bank, as well as the trade practices of the WTO have proven sterile in advancing industrialization and triggering development in SSA. If development is the ultimate objective to integrate SSA into the global economy, what is relevant is a reassessment of the currently dominant economic philosophy and the international rules which govern trade and development. Such rules facilitate globalization but they are not particularly conducive to industrialization and development of developing countries (Shafaeddin 2008, 1).

Tangible socio-economic development is impossible in SSA without diversified industrialization. Although the neoliberal model clearly has its shortcomings, the global market outreach of China is clearly indicative of the power of the market and the Alobwede John Ngome

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positives contribution of diversified industrialization to development. SSA nations need to “accelerate the shift of factors of production from agriculture to manufacturing and to services with a focus on manufactured goods” (Imbs and Wacziarg 2003, 2).

Diversifying industrialization in SSA to propel socio-economic development demands well deserved investments. The need for industrial policy has increased dramatical y because the international market has become increasingly more concerted given that international trade, technology and global production are increasingly dominated by transnational corporations. Technological changes have accelerated and production has become very knowledge intensive (Shafaeddin 2008, 2). This heralds the need for more South-South cooperation in the area of technology transfers, from success cases such as China, India, Brazil and Singapore.

SSA is geographical y diversified thus, industrial and trade practices need to be context specific enough to generate the desired socio-economic development. The one-size-fits all and top-down trade and industrial policies imposed on SSA over the years by international institutions has simply not delivered and heralds the urgent need to rethink and reshape the industrial and trade agenda in SSA, bearing in mind that a sound trade policy is a tool for development.

SSA is heavily self-marginalized in the global economy as a result of its industrialization, trade and development lapses. Technological change, international trade and industrial production are vital components of globalization that are dominated by Western actors, especial y powerful multinational firms, with global tentacles that dominate the economic landscape of SSA. The prominence of Western transnational firms in the economic space of SSA nations limits the prospects of SSA nations from entering the global market to compete with firm rooted international firms thus, the need to develop the industrial sector in SSA cannot be over emphasized here. SSA economies must aspire to acquire relevant technology, market information and distribution channels by partnering with other countries of the South such as China and Brazil. It is paramount for SSA nations to network and col aborate in economic, technological and industrial matters with well advanced Chinese, Indian and Brazilian firms, to obtain cheaper sources of inputs, technology, intermediate products and distribution channels (Best 1990, 260).

By col aborating with Chinese, Indian, Brazilian and South African firms, SSA firms will benefit from shared research and development activities that are lacking in SSA, marketing, distribution, production facilities, input procurement as well as product development and design abroad especial y in more advanced developing nations, without necessarily investing abroad for such activities (Best 1990, 259-62 and Porter 1990, 54).

For inclusive development to happen in SSA, appropriate steps have to be taken to reverse social policy failure and to accelerate social cohesion in the entire region. Social policy and cohesion have been a clear failure in SSA in the past several decades. Social deprivation and exclusion have been a major source or resentment, disgruntlement and instability that have been detrimental to development. The impact of wide-spread 68

Unlocking Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) with Development Inspiration from the South deprivation and social development crisis are evident in the rising number of state implosions and genocidal conflict in some SSA nations (Adesina 2007, 40).

Unlocking development in SSA entails the nurturing of robust African states that will guide and sustain the development vision. Development cannot take root or flourish in the weakest, dysfunctional, and failed states of SSA. The current global financial crisis has revealed only too vividly that development matters, and the guarantee for economic prosperity cannot be left in the hands of markets alone. A strong state bureaucracy is vital to set the vision and ensure socio-economic development in SSA and the welfare of the people. The retreat of most SSA states from the social delivery of social services such as education, healthcare, infrastructure, energy, human security and social protection, has grossly undermined the relevance and legitimacy of most SSA states in the eyes of the most deprived and impoverished Sub-Saharan Africans. There is a nexus between the retrenchment and deficit of the capacity of most states in SSA for adequate social provision and the effective management of statehood. As a matter of fact, the relationship between a functional state and its citizens is a web of obligations and privileges because, the citizen’s stake in a polity is affected by the extent to which the state is seen to be responsive to the needs of citizens (Adesina 2007, 40).

The improvement of social policy-based engagement in SSA states will improve the legitimacy and credibility of African states, and strengthen the states and the state-citizen contract and diminish the proportion in which the “coercive face” of the state is being perceived as the sole and prevailing area of interaction and communication with citizens.

This will curb instances of disgruntled and excluded citizens trying to topple the state and the ensuing conflict. Development is only possible in a context of stability. Social policy refers to the col ective public efforts at affecting and protecting the social well-being of the people within a given territory. Beyond immediate protection from social destitution, social policy might cover education, food security, health care provision, sanitation, and guarantee some measure of labor market protection (Adesina 2007, 1).

The current global crisis and others before it have clearly underlined the relevance of a strong state bureaucracy in strategical y steering the development agenda in turbulent economic times, to sustain the trade and industrial sector in a bid to generate growth and recovery. The historical picture is clear: when they were trying to catch up with the frontier economies, the now developed countries used interventionist trade and industrial policies in order to promote their infant industries during the catch-up periods (Chang 2003, 14).

The current global crisis further justifies the relevance of a strong state to strategize for recovery and growth. SSA nations need to craft strong states to generate and manage steady growth in turbulent economic times.

The fragility of most SSA states marked by the persistence of instability, war and the absence of a functioning state (failed states), that upholds the rule of law, order and justice constitutes a hurdle to socio-economic development. Investment can best take place in a context of accountability and a functional judiciary. Most of the states in SSA Alobwede John Ngome

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are poor, weak and subordinate, with most of the people in them poorer, weaker, and more subordinate (Clapham 1996, 3).

The essence of strong states and leadership in SSA should therefore be geared towards ensuring the survival and prosperity of the state by pushing for development to improve the socio-economic plight of the people, rather than the survival of the rulers who tend to epitomize the state. In the majority of SSA nations, rulers seek to ensure their personal survival by seeking the survival and indeed strengthening their states. They best protect their own security enhancing and preserving the power of the states which they rule. The defense of statehood becomes a strategy for their personal survival (Clapham 1996, 5).

Empirical enquiry on the survival of the state in SSA, heralds the need to incorporate the discussion on good governance and government reform in the examination of the state. Governance reform in SSA has been characterized by state col apse in some cases.

Therefore, the democratization process has produced very mixed results across SSA. For development to take root and blossom in SSA, SSA nations must make a conscious effort in “crafting inclusionary constitutions with sufficient checks and balances, strengthening formal institutions of governments, parliaments, party systems, electoral rules, courts, the rule of law, local authorities and promoting human rights” (Bangura 2000, 551).

Development will flourish or fail in SSA, depending on the way the rule of governance relates to policy interventions in shaping and/or constraining the choices of development actors and development outcomes. SSA nations will have to intensify efforts to uphold and defend human rights. This should include most inclusive human rights to more specific group rights by minorities, to the possibility of making claims against human rights violation in court and in the public sphere the fear of persecution from the public sphere as a cradle for the consolidation of democracy in SSA (Englund 2000, 579).

The state-development nexus warrants a brief examination of the theory and role of the developmental state within the framework of the development debate in SSA.

The theory of the developmental state posits that the state has the responsibility and role to facilitate economic growth and development in the nation. In a sense, to nurture industrial and economic development there is need for vibrant pro-development policies put in place by the state bureaucracy. As hinted already, the current economic times have revealed only too vividly that markets alone cannot guarantee that national economies in SSA will thrive. Strong governments and bureaucracies are vital in their own right for economic survival.

According to Woo-Cuming3 the theory of the developmental state provides the explanation for the East Asian industrialization. The development story of the Chinese and Tiger economies reveals that strategic politics drives the economy. In the framework of a developmental state, the nation states of SSA as a whole have to provide and set the vision for development by providing and al ocating adequate resources, providing 3] This argument is made by Woo-Cuming, in Bolesta 2007, 4.

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Unlocking Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) with Development Inspiration from the South leadership as well as the capacity to bring about positive economic transformation within a given lapse of time. The relevance of a national development plans in SSA; alongside a regional development vision in SSA cannot be over emphasized.

During the past several years, the economic vision implemented in most SSA states has largely been dictated by the IMF and other external actors, with various states having very little or no say in the development agenda. This is unlike the case in Asian countries. In the case of China and the Tiger economies the state sets and supervises the development vision. In SSA the state has the responsibility to device and kick start a vibrant development vision and infrastructure, which is state managed but market oriented. This vividly depicts the vision of the developmental state. The notion of a developmental state is succinctly defined by Johnson who observes that “it is shorthand for the seamless web of political, bureaucratic, and moneyed influences that structures economic life” (1984, 6).4

To put in place a functional national and regional development architecture, capable of meeting and addressing the regional and domestic socio-economic needs of various SSA states, the governments of SSA as a whole will have to put in place a common economic space and an economic system that does not only supports state investment, but equal y al ows for private investments and business ownership with state guidance, as is the case in China and elsewhere. Thus, the states should be instrumental is framing the economic vision, a kind of planned liberal economy as Bolesta5 (2007, 108-109), expounds:

A developmental state is often conceptual y positioned between liberal open economic model and the central-planned model. The theory of developmental state is not entirely capitalist or socialist although it is capitalist driven. The developmental state is based on combinations of positive advantages, private business and the positive role of government.

Economic development in SSA requires SSA states to be able to create and guarantee appropriate conditions for development. Successful conditions therefore require SSA nations to put in place the necessary tools to deal with the burden of infrastructure development to breed development and improve the lives of their peoples. The states of SSA must not be mere guardians of certain freedoms. They equal y have the moral obligation to ensure the welfare of their people through socio-economic development.

The developmental state theory has been debunked for endorsing state intervention in economic matters however; it is delivering successful y in China. If well replicated in SSA, it could improve the development story of SSA as a whole. Massive government intervention to keep various economies afloat during the ongoing economic meltdown, justifies state intervention in a nation’s economic development only too wel .

SSA nations are not ful y independent; political independence without the liberty to shape their own economic future is not complete independence. As a matter of fact, SSA 4] Johnson 1984 focuses on the process of industrialization in Japan.

5] In his article Bolesta defends the merits of a development state.

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states are firmly grafted to various European states and firmly gripped by the lingering shadow of the colonial syndrome. Development and financial politics in most of SSA is cooked in the metropolitan capitals of former colonial masters, who control and regulate their currencies. Development in SSA is only possible if SSA nations have command over their currency. Most SSA states are extensions of European states. The politics practiced in these countries, especial y in the former colonies, are decided and dictated from the metropolitan capitals of former colonizing nations in Europe. This raises the fundamental question if such imported and imposed measures take into consideration the actual development needs and context of the nation. Breaking with the colonial umbilical cord would unleash and nurture context specific development, if the appropriate policy space is created. Putting in place an adequate policy space in Africa and, the break with the colonial connection are not enough in themselves to deliver context specific development.

There is need for enhanced accountability, by the leadership of various African states, through a clear separation of powers between the Executive, Legislative and Judiciary branches of power. An independent, depoliticized and functioning judiciary will ensure accountability. Some baby steps are already being made in that direction by some African states such as Cameroon, where several government ministers with a rent-seeking attitude, are tired and jailed. Added to the foregoing, there is need to enforce and empower the civil society, various NGOs and religious authorities to serve as watchdogs for transparent and inclusive development, driven by accountability. Most importantly, African countries must create an attractive investment climate to lure foreign investment. Continent-wide economic growth won’t accelerate unless African governments improve conditions for investment (Moyo 2009, 101).

The policy space of SSA and many developing nations has shrunk as a result of the dominant view of the orthodoxy, reflected in the conditionalities imposed by international financial institutions and bilateral donors, as well as in the GATT and WTO rules recently propagated by the “Washington Consensus.” In a sense, universal trade liberalization and import substitution measures implemented by developing SSA nations are a clear fiasco that has taken a huge toll on development (Shafaeddin 2008, 2).

South-South technology transfers and partnerships between China and SSA, coupled with efforts at diversified industrialization represent good prospects for development in SSA. Technology is key for socio-economic development. SSA is clearly lagging behind in technology. The acquisition of appropriate technology through south-south technology transfer will lead to large-scale industrialization and diversified production. This will wane SSA nations off the production of primary products that are detrimental to development in SSA but advantageous to industrialization in the developed world.

SSA is self marginalized in terms of developing or acquiring appropriate and up-to-date technology. There are prospects to swop vital resources with technology. Better stil , technology could be acquired through south-south cooperation, notably from China, Brazil, India and others. Firms in SSA are bound to remain less competitive because they run high investment risks at the nascent stage of investments when new technologies 72

Unlocking Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) with Development Inspiration from the South emerge, this render the existing process obsolete or simply putting the existing products out of the market, thus the need to cooperate with more advanced nations such as China for technology transfers. The Chinese have clearly indicated that their interest and presence in Africa is to do business (infrastructure for resources). Chinese interest is not to directly influence, mould or dominate African politics. Unlike Europe that directly shapes the development politics of Africa, by influencing political processes and, overtly backing some dictators who cling onto power, to protect Western interest. The Chinese approach Africa as partners, as another “developing country” to do business with, not to dictate to. However, the Africa-China partnership has to be well monitored, to avoid Chinese dominance. Critical voices are growing within Africa, raising awareness to monitor and consistently scrutinize the Sino-African partnership, to ensure that the China-Africa partnership remains equal and mutual y beneficial.

New technologies are mostly possessed by rich and powerful transnational companies. The barriers set to bar newcomers and infant industries such as those in SSA from acquiring strategic technologies are huge. To get around the technological huddle to development, SSA nations must aspire to acquire and create new technological partnerships that will ensure the transfer of the required technology to boost development in SSA. The development of technology has become increasingly sophisticated, more specialized and subject to constant change. That implies that the production of various goods and services has become increasingly knowledge-intensive, skil s have become more specialized and firm-specific and the period of learning has become longer (Lundvall 2004).

As already hinted on, financial regulation is vital for socio-economic development and macroeconomic stability in SSA. By the same token, a culture of transparency and accountability is an essential ingredient to nurture financial transparency. This has to be coupled with efforts at gender equality, and the empowerment of women. There is empirical evidence that empowering women economical y can serve as a catalyst for socio-economic development and thus improve on the welfare of the family. If women undertake economic activities and earn as much as men, they will improve the living standards of the family and better provide for the needs of the family. The chauvinistic dogma in SSA that the woman’s place is in the home impedes development and the empowerment of women. Such gender and ideological barriers should be pul ed down through gender equality and the economic empowerment of women all over SSA. This entails a revisit of current gender politics. Development politics should equal y integrate climate issues as well as the politics of sustainable development.

Land grabbing is a significant threat to development and the sustainable management of land, water and other natural resources in SSA. China and other emerging economies undertook land reforms and land distribution to avoid food crisis. Food crisis undercuts socio-economic development efforts. Furthermore it is detrimental to a healthy workforce and can trigger instability and political upheaval, that can sap development efforts. The growing trend of land grabbing currently unfolding in SSA therefore represents a major setback to development efforts and threatens the sustainable management of finite Alobwede John Ngome

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and forest resources because it leads to water, resource and forest grabbing. SSA holds 70 percent of arable land global y. Land grabbing refers to the unregulated large-scale purchase or leasing of farm lands over very long periods such as a hundred years. These lands are often depicted as “idle lands” that are underutilized and uncultivated in land-rich developing regions .The ongoing wide scale land grabbing in SSA by foreign governments, rich individuals and powerful transnational companies for mining, ethanol and food production for their local populations is perceived by foreign investors as “the next golden commodity“. Critics, such as Jacques Diouf, describe this trend as neocolonialism. 6

Drawing from the development trend of China and India, food security is perceived as a driver of socio-economic development. Food security guarantees a healthy work force. China, India and the Gulf states feature prominently in the ongoing land grab game in SSA, to produce food for their local populations as a way of ensuring food security. This is counterproductive to food security and development efforts in SSA where thousands go to bed hungry every night. Low food prices are advantageous to workers because they then spend less on food and are left with income to improve on their welfare.

The 2007-2008 global food crises forced an estimated 100 mil ion people in SSA beneath the poverty belt. The grain crisis pushed up food prices al over SSA. The United States claims that food scarcity and high food prices are provoked by the rapidly growing middle class in China and India, estimated at 650 mil ion people. However, it is reported that 65 to 75 percent of the global increase in food prices is provoked by the conversion of “crop for fuel” (i.e. biofuels)7. Land grabbing epitomized a major impediment to socio-economic development in SSA. It should be reversed to unlock development, unleash food security and guarantee the sustainable management of resources that are critical to development. “Africa is already awake to the land grabbing reality,” writes Khadija Sharife (2009), “but it is hard to stand your ground when it is being sold from right under your feet.”

Tangible development can only see the light of day in SSA if the grabbing of land, water, forest and other vital resources that can catalyze development is halted. Usurping vast chunks of land in SSA is neocolonialism by extra-African forces, is to exploit SSA’s resources and to stall its very development. This could be reversed through transparent and improved land management all over SSA. The Pan African Conference of 1900 was convened amongst other things to “protest against the stealing of lands in the colonies.”

Similarly, the First Pan African Congress of February 1919, convened by Dr. Du Bois in Paris, demanded that “the land in the colonies must be reserved, with its natural resources for the natives.” Equal y, the 3rd Pan African Congress of 1923, emphasized on “the right 6] Jacques Diouf is currently the Director General of the Food and Agricultural Organization. His views on land grabs in Sub-Saharan Africa are documented in the publications of the FAO that can be consulted on the web pages of the WT. Available from http://www.fao.org; accessed April 10, 2013.

7] Although the US claims that food prices have been forced up by the dramatic rise of the middle class in China and India, a leaked confidential report by Don Mitchel , a senior World Bank analyst, clearly concludes that food scarcity and mounting prices are caused by the conversion of crop into biofuel.

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Unlocking Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) with Development Inspiration from the South of black peoples to speak for themselves to their respective governments and the right to land and its produce” (Tajudeen Abdul-Raheen 1996, 2-5).

Development decisions, opportunities and the gains generated from the current limited development are the preserve of the political y connected. The development endeavor has to be inclusive to involve the entire populace as should be the fruits of development. SSA societies are ridden with inequality. All across SSA, those that are connected to power are rich and well-to-do. A situation of massive wealth juxtaposed with a scenario of extreme poverty, misery and destitution. The class dichotomy in SSA, produced by capitalism, has fanned the sentiments of inequality and injustice continent-wide over the years and perpetual y eroded the credibility and social liaison between the elite and the masses.

Pushing for equality demands the reversal and curbing of the prospects for excessive self-enrichment by a few individuals at the expense of a vulnerable and deprived multitude.

Such measures will improve the legitimacy of SSA states and diminish the probability of conflict triggered by disgruntlement, political adversary and/or the declining legitimacy and credibility of the state, as was the case in Sierra Leone, Rwanda and elsewhere and currently in the Central African Republic, where discontent about state leadership and failed domestic policy constitutes a catalysts for undermining the state and thus instability.

Jimi O. Adesina (2007) assert that, “development requires the removal of major sources of unfreedom: poverty as well as tyranny, poor economic opportunities as well as systemic social deprivation, neglect of public facilities as well as intolerance or over-activity of repressive states” (Adesina 2007, 41 and Sen 1999, 3).

In order for tangible socio-economic development to take root and blossom in SSA, it is paramount to push for, and accelerate the economic and political integration as well as the amalgamation of road and other infrastructure similarly to integrated Europe. SSA has registered sporadic development here and there. South Africa and Zimbabwe were associated with development in Southern Africa in the 1980s. South Africa, Botswana, Equatorial Guinea are today cited to have made good development progress, due in part to the transparent management of oil resources in Equatorial Guinea and diamonds proceeds in Botswana and economic improvement in South Africa, although problems persist.The mitigated results registered over the years as SSA attempts to integrate economical y, political y and make efforts to integrate energy and road infrastructure similarly to the EU, remain a major chal enge and constitute a major barrier to development.

Various SSA nations are endowed with natural, energy and human resources that a few geographical y disfavoured nations are natural y deprived of. SSA nations with limited or no resources can only develop by sharing in the resources of neighbouring nations that are resource rich. Poor and landlocked nations such as Malawi and desert and non-coastal, desert nations such as Chad and the Central African Republic will only register socio-economic development through infrastructure sharing, along with practical economic and political integration of the region. With exception of the Democratic Alobwede John Ngome

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Republic of the Congo and a few others, SSA nations are relatively small in size, with fragmented infrastructure and relatively small markets. A well integrated SSA represents a substantial regional market that in themselves could catalyze industrialization in the long run. Through the actual regional integration of SSA, the small states and small markets and fragmented infrastructure and resource endowment, combine to inform the regional approach to development in SSA (Adesina 2007, 8). The lack of regional unity in SSA is a colonial legacy that has a negative fal out on regional development and regional integration efforts.

Development cannot bloom in conflict devastated settings as is the experience in some SSA nations. SSA is a theatre of repeated outbreaks of armed conflict. Armed conflict and development do not cohabit. Most Conflicts are a manifestation of the absence of national unity. Development has thus suffered in SSA due to the absence of national unity in most SSA nation states. Fragmented state systems undercut development efforts and breed national and regional instability. Divisive ethnic politics and rivalry playing out in SSA today were colonial constructs to control African populations. Diverse and transnational ethnic arrangements have enduring negative fal out on development in contemporary SSA states. Enduring ethnic differences in Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda and other SSA states is detrimental to national development, unity, stability, and peaceful cohabitation. Thus, our concern and deep-sited preoccupation about national unity as a panacea for nation building and a driver of development is well founded.

The role of the military in SSA as an instrument of oppression and a shield to sustain various dictatorships needs to be reviewed and adapted to that of a stabilizing force and an incubator of technology. The military in advanced economies such as the United States of America generates up-to-date and innovative technology on a regular basis that is channel ed for socio-economic development as well as in the civilian sector. Enormous resources are spent to sustain various military architectures in SSA. North-South military cooperation should incorporate technological transfer and the appropriation of the role of the military in SSA as a vector of development and a producer of technology for socio-economic development.

A critical assessment of the neoliberal development strategy, articulated by the IMF

and enshrined in the development view of the North, has gotten SSA nations perpetual y indebted and trapped in a vicious circle of debt servicing and repayments. The Northern neoliberal strategy has destroyed the prospects of development in the entire region.

Resources that are supposed to be channel ed for development are rather used for debt payment as Stiglitz elucidates:

Well think of yourself now as a poor African country and some company in your country has borrowed 100 mil ion dol ars from a US bank and they have to pay 18-20

percent interest, which is not unusual. So what does the government have to do? It has to put 100 mil ion dol ars in reserves, one hundred mil ion dol ars that could be spent to build schools, to build clinics, and to do lots of other things. (2002, 118) 76

Unlocking Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) with Development Inspiration from the South Fostering development in SSA therefore necessitates a revisit of the current development model and bringing to a gradual close the enduring practice and impact of borrowing from the World Bank and thus evading the negative fal out of this trend on development in SSA. China, Brazil and Tiger economies did not make the economic leap with funds borrowed from the IMF or the World Bank. The way forward for SSA is to explore opportunities for alternative sources of funding that are less constraining.

Concerned about the potential negative fal out of IMF and World Bank funding on its socio-economic development, Angola recently declined IMF money for a Chinese loan.

Other SSA nations should fol ow in those footsteps. In a sense, the developmental benefits of aid deserve to be reviewed as wel , given the mounting evidence that it is the South that indirectly finances development in the north.

IV. CONCLUSIONS

The Northern view of development that has been dictated to SSA countries bilateral y, and articulated through the IMF, World Bank, WTO and enshrined in the structural adjustment packages, has failed to deliver the much needed socio-economic development. On the contrary, development has stal ed in most of SSA. Development strategy in SSA has to be context specific, for it to deliver, and devoid of the current one-size-fits all approach dictated by the west.

SSA can best develop, by drawing from Chinese development inspiration, as a case in point of development thinking in the South. Such development must prioritize the acquisition of vital technologies, diversified industrialization, the beefing up of human resource capacity and incorporate respect for the environment, sustainable development, sustainable resource management, and the economic empowerment of women as comprehensive aspects of development through complementary development strategies that advance all of the several facets of development simultaneously. The northern development model does not emphasize on technological improvement and education as indispensible catalysts for development in SSA and the global south. This paper accentuates the need to intensify South-South technological transfers as well as the training of engineers to enhance human knowhow in various sectors.

By focusing exclusively on trade liberalization, privatization and deregulation as instruments “to promote development” in SSA and the South, policymakers have ignored important elements that could drive development in SSA. Instead of privatization, competition is required for an efficient market economy that will determine long-term economic success in SSA. The compulsive focus on inflation, that constituted the background for the Washington Consensus, as a central macroeconomic “malady,” has led to the crafting and implementation of macroeconomic policies that are not the most conducive for long-term economic growth in SSA. This has detracted attention from key sources of macro-instability such as a weak financial sector (Stiglits 1998, 5).

alobwedej@yahoo.com

Alobwede John Ngome

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REFERENCES

Adesina, Jimi O. 2007. Social Policy in Sub-Saharan African Context: In Search of Inclusive Development. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmil an.

African Development Bank. 2011. Bul etin: Improving Statistics for Food Security, Sustainable Agriculture, and Rural Development: Action Plan for Africa. 2011-2015. Bul etin No.

10: 1-10.

Bolesta, Andrzey. 2007. China as a Developmental State. Montenegrin Journal of Economics 3

(5): 105-111.

Best, M. H. 1990. The New Competition, Institutions of Industrial Restructuring. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Bul ard, Nicola, Walden Bello and Kamal Malhotra.1998. Taming the Tigers: Focus on the Global South. Bangkok : Zed Books.

Clapham, Christopher.1996. Africa and the International System: The Politics of State Survival. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Col ier, Paul. 2007. The Bottom Bil ion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and what can be done about it. New York: Oxford University Press.

Chang, Ha-Joon.2003. Kicking Away the Ladder, The “Real” History of Free Trade. London Anthem Press .

——— . 2008 . Foreign Investment Regulation in Historical Perspective, Lessons for the proposed WTO Investment Agreement. Institute for New Technologies, United Nations University.

Griffith-Jones, Stephany. 1991. How to protect Developing Countries from Volatility of Capital Flows. London: Zed Books.

Imbs, Jean, and Romain Wacziarg. American Economic Review, 93 (1): 63-86.

Johnson, Chalmers.1984. Introduction: The Idea of Industrial Policy. In T he Industrial Policy Debate, edited by Johnson Chalmers. San Francisco: Institute for Contemporary Studies.

———. 1984. MITI and the Japanese Miracle. Stanford University Press.

Khadija, Sharife . 2009. Africa’s New “Resource Curse”?. Pan-African Voices for Freedom and Justice 459: 11-20.

Lundval , B.2004. Why the New Economy is a learning Economy. Danish Research Unit for Industrial Dynamics, Working Paper No. 04-01.

Leonardo, Vil alon, and Huxtable Phil ip, eds.1988. African state at a Critical Juncture, Between Disintegration and Reconfiguration, London. Lynne Rienner Publishers .

Moyo, Dambisa. 2009. Dead Aid, Why Aid is not working and how there is a better way for Africa. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Maddison, Angus. 2001. The World Economy, A Mil ennial Perspective. Paris: OECD

Publications.

Porter, M. 1990. Comparative Advantage of Nations. London: Macmil an.

Rodrick, Dani. 1998. The New Global Economy and Developing Countries: Making Openness Work. Washington, DC: Overseas Development Council.

— — —. 2001. The Global Governance of Trade as if Development Real y Matters. Cambridge: Harvard University, Kennedy School of Government.

Shafaeddin , Mehdi. 2008. Is Industrial Policy Relevant in the 21st Century? . Pinang: Third World Network Jutaprint.

Stiglitz, Joseph. 2002. Globalization and its Discontents. London: Penguin Press.

— — —. 1998. More Investment and Broader Goals. Moving Towards the Post-Washington Consensus. WIDER Annual Lecture. Helsinki: UNU-WIDER.

Stubbs, Richard. 2005. Rethinking Asia’s Economic Miracle: The Political Economy of War, Prosperity and Crisis. New York: Palgrave Macmil an.

Tajudeen, Abdul-Rahee, ed. 1998. Pan Africanism, Politics, Economy and Social Change in the Twenty-first Century. London: Pluto Press.

United Nations Development Program. 2007. Human Development Report. November 27: 925. http://www . globalissues .org/articles/26/poverty-facts /statistics .html .

(accessed January, 19, 2014) .

Yergin, Danniel. 2011. The Quest, Energy Security and the Remaking of the Modern World.

Penguin Press.

Public Reason 5 (2): 79-94

© 2013 by Public Reason

The end of development?

Reflections on the Unsustainability of the Current

Development Paradigm and a Quest for an African Alternative

Professor Sirkku K. Hellsten

University of Dar es Salaam and University of Helsinki

Abstract. The article argues that the currently dominating, Western-originated individualistic and materialistic concept of development as ‘progress’ has created an evident confusion between ‘values and facts,’ ‘ideologies/ideals and practices,’ ‘ends and means’ in the current development thinking and practice. Instead of realizing such humanistic ideas as human flourishing and holistic wel -being, current development agenda focuses on economic growth and producing ‘better business environments.’ Since this model for development has gradual y been globalized, any alternative patters of conceptualizing development and setting alternative ideals for it have efficiently been disparaged. However, if we take the unsustainability of this model seriously and care for the survival of human kind, we need to look for new and alternative directions for development. In this we can learn from the developmental values of other cultures. This article introduces some exploratory thoughts on what African philosophy could offer to the debate on global development.

Key words: individualism, communitarianism, human wel -being, development, African philosophy.

Environmental degeneration, the devastating consequences of climate change as well as the deepening worldwide economic crisis altogether call us to reconsider the sustainability of the current concept of development, and to seriously ponder what kind of world we want to live in and to leave for the next generations. If we continue to think of development as incessant economic growth that will provide more goods and commodities to relentlessly growing population of the earth, the survival of the human species – as well as that of our whole planet - may be threatened. Therefore, if we want to secure decent living conditions for the future generations we need to urgently consider alternative approaches to development.

The paper argues that the currently dominating, Western-originated individualistic and materialistic concept of development as ‘progress’ has, through naturalistic fal acy, made us see the means of development as its ultimate goals. The paper shows that there is an evident confusion between ‘values and facts,’ ‘ideologies/ideals and practices,’

‘ends and means’ in the current development thinking and practice. Instead of realizing such humanistic ideas as human flourishing and holistic wel -being, current development agenda focuses on economic growth and producing ‘better business environments.’ In relation to international development cooperation, however, at least at the policy level, the Western partners still refer to the values and ideals of equality, human value and rights. This rhetoric is used even though in practice global cooperation is for the most part based on 80

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Machiavel ian pragmatist political realism and on the requirements of the invisible hands of the markets.

This duplicitous attitude is partly due to our misunderstanding the deep logical errors built-in the currently dominating neoliberal model of development. This model presents facts as values – setting aside any meta-ethical ideals. In practice development has resulted in ‘exclusive (rather than inclusive) growth’; in competition and clashes over scarce resources; in social and political tensions leading to instability and conflicts in various parts of the world. It is also contributing to the increasing consumerism, environmental y hazardous practices of industrialization and commercial agriculture, over-production of waste, and irresponsible use of rapidly diminishing natural resources.1

Since this model for development has gradual y been globalized, any alternative patters of conceptualizing development and setting alternative ideals for it have efficiently been disparaged. However, if we take the current chal enges to the survival of human kind seriously, we need to look for new directions for development: we need to learn from the developmental values of other cultures. In this article I introduce some exploratory thoughts on what African philosophy could offer to the debate.

I. GLOBALIZATION OF THE WESTERN CONCEPT OF DEVELOPMENT: CONSUMERIST CULTURE, FREE MARKET ECONOMY, AND ENVIRONMENTAL

DESTRUCTION

The concept of development that we use today (at international forums and development cooperation) has clearly Western origins.2 Western countries have efficiently, through colonization (often termed as modernization and sometimes camouflaged also as ‘civilization missions’), international trade, economic liberalism and most recently international development cooperation, set their own unsustainable life styles as models and ideals for the rest of the world. The capitalist system, which is combined with European style political processes and institutions, has been set as the ultimate goal for the so-cal ed ‘less developed’ or ‘developing’ countries. This model has become the global ideology that creates continuously new needs, wants, and higher desired standards of living for the West as well as for ‘the rest.’ As post-development critique has very aptly exemplified, the Western development paradigm has set a hierarchical agenda for international development cooperation by categorizing countries and nations according to their ‘level 1] See for example Assadourian 2012, UNDP 2011, 2013; UNDPSD 2012, UNICEF 2013, UNSCHLPS 2012, World Bank 2004, 2011, World Watch Institute 2012, 2013.

2] Traditional y the Western scientific, economic and political discourses on ‘development’ refer to a change or transition from ‘worse to a better state of affairs’ (from poverty to higher living standards; from authoritarianism to democracy; from primitive ways of life to civilized and progressive culture; from bar-tering, or centralized or to free markets and economic growth). The direction towards more and better is a linear process based on the assumption of everlasting growth and perpetual y expanding consumption.

See Escobar 1985, 132-145, Esteva Sachs 2001, Shuurman 2000, Subramanian et al. 2002.

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of development’3. Esteva and Sachs (2001) argue that ‘underdevelopment’ began on January 20, 1949 when American President Harry S. Truman at the end of the World War II took office and gave a speech in which he promoted ”a bold new programme for making benefits of our (the USA) scientific advances and industrial progress available for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped areas” of the world.4 The realization of this new ”programme of development” was to help the so cal ed ”underdeveloped” (people, areas, nations, cultures) to escape their ‘undignified’ condition and to reach the model offered by the (already) developed West with the help of its science, technology, economy and ideology.

In many aspects, the current development agenda has not changed that much from the earlier colonial agenda that set out ‘civilization missions’ to ‘primitive countries’

forcing these to adopt the models of European political, educational and social institutions and to adapt to the European life styles. This approach has set as the core indicators of development to be the measurements economic growth, GNP, and productive business environment. General y the wealthier the nation, the higher it is placed in international indices that categorize the nations according to their ‘level of development.’ Even the more comprehensive statistics on human well-being tend to include indicators that assess industrial progress, production capacity, and purchasing power. All these indicators calculate how close the ‘underdeveloped’ of the world has reach in its quest to achieve the model set by the Western political, economic, technological, scientific and cultural practices. (Esteva 1992, 2-4, Escobar 1985, 132-45, Nustad 2001, Sachs 1992, 7-19, and Shuurman 2000)

Contemporary development thinking is then founded on instrumental economic values and empirical facts related to the laws of supply and demand. This has led to a pattern of development planning that does not make a clear distinction between its descriptive and normative elements; for its ideals and practices. What the Western development partners have promoted as desirable development is actual y the historical development their own nations. The Western socio-politico-economic model has been set as an ideal for the rest of the world. However, as we move forward in our history, the goal posts keep on 3] More in detail on the post-development and post-colonial critique of the Western concept of development see Escobar 1985, Moyo 2011, Nustad 2001, Nyerere 1967, Rodney 2001, Rist 2002, Sachs 1992, Senghor 1964, Schuurman 2000, Subramaniam 2002.

4] In the same speech Truman noted that old imperialism has no place in the programme of development that is based on the concepts of democratic fair dealing. According to the post-development critique this speech made two bil ion people in the world at once become ‘underdeveloped.’ In a manner of speak-ing al these people ceased being what they were, in al their diversity. Instead, they were transmogrified into an inverted mirror of others’ reality: a mirror that belittles them and sends them off to the end of the queue, a mirror that reshapes their identity by homogenizing them and classifying them – economical y, scientifical y, political y and cultural y. (Esteva 2001, 7) At this same instance the concept of ‘democratic fair dealing’ per se become as a part of the model of development that integrated market capitalism with the individualistic values of liberal democracy. (Esteva 2001, 7)

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changing and moving ahead – remaining always just little beyond the reach of the rest: the less developed nations.

This approach to development is logical y faulty as it is based on G.E. Moore’s naturalistic fal acy that deduces ought from is; values from facts. However, as David Hume already pointed out from what is we have no clear moral justification to derive what ought to be. There is no moral justification to claim that the Western history provides the best development model for the rest of the world. In fact, as many of the Western countries are themselves at present struggling economical y, and starting to feel and see the consequences of climate change and environmental degeneration, they feel lost in their attempts to find the rights direction forward. There is a feel that some change is needed, but there are no alternatives at sight to turn to. However, there is a need for the world to look beyond historical contexts and open our minds for different, ‘unconventional’ ways to think about development.5 If we fail to do that, the danger is that development turns from ‘innovative progress’ easily into determinism that lets us believe that whatever (bad) might and will happen in any case as it is all out of our control.

When economic growth is the main goal, rationalist self-interest becomes accepted if not desired feature of human behavior. Already, political and business elites across the world work together to further enrich themselves – but this is ‘al owed’ if not ‘protected’

by the hope that there is a ‘trigger effect’ that produces some grumbles of goods and income also to those others, and maybe in the end also something for the poorest. When other idealistic values are stripped from developmental practice, we have a modern day’s version of Adam Smith’s and Bernard Mandevil e’s ”greed is good” –thesis. In his classic work The Wealth of Nations (1776) Adam Smith argues that individual’s rational profit maximization creates more to share between al . Bernard Mandevil e (1670-1733) noted in his satirical work The Fable of Bees or the Private Vices and the Public Benefits (1724) that the complex relation between individual virtue, egoistic benefit maximization and the promotion of the common good. Mandevil e emphasized that it is hypocritical to believe ‘that men can be virtuous without any self-denial.’ Instead, the common good of the society in fact requires individual consumption and self-indulgence. This classic liberal thinking is very different from the approach that sees virtuous life as a life that realizes human nature, and is thus, the life we should strive for, as elaborated by philosophers of the Ancient Greek, such as Plato and Aristotle.

However, if markets dictate our desired human characteristics and profit seeking mechanisms we need to work with, equality can never be the ultimate goal of development – and the al eviation of poverty cannot be realized. When development policies, pragmatic politics, and markets forces are set to work together, the results do not benefit the poor.

Instead, those who already have resources and power are in the winning positions.

We can pretend that development cooperation wil , in the long run, eradicate absolute 5] On Naturalistic Fal acy and Hume’s argument on deriving ”ought” from ”is” see for example Flew 1969, 64-69.

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poverty. However, we should seriously consider how this is possible, when presently it is evident that il icit capital flight from many ‘developing countries’ is much higher in volume than incoming development aid. Both the North and the South engage in il egal – and at minimum unethical – practices which contribute to persistent global and local inequality: by providing tax havens and opportunities to laundering dirty money, by al owing il egal trafficking and smuggling (arms, drugs, persons, trophies, natural resources, etc.) to go on. (Shaxson 2011, 20-55) Set the rhetoric aside - there are no serious attempts to control these practices. In fact, all this appears to be beyond any government’s control despite all the knowledge and information we have on all this. Similarly in many parts of the world, the international community continues to give development assistance to the governments which are not ful y legitimate; which engage in bad governance and corruption, and above al , which do not have the well-being of the people as their priority.

While this is in general recognized within the development industry, it is still not openly admitted and dealt with. It is still a taboo to admit that development cooperation is a part of delicate international business negotiations. The West is wil ing to ‘pay’ with its development assistance for working diplomatic relations in order to guarantee its own investments. This is more and more evident in relation to the recent new discoveries of natural resources in Africa and elsewhere.

Ironical y, at the same time, the traditional Western donors are losing their political weight as the new players have joined the game. The Western demand for adoption of liberal democracy and the rule of law is hardly convincing in a situation in which many Western governments themselves are losing their control to the global market forces.

In the North as well as in the South governments are hi-jacket and states captured by business interests of global markets which are creating economic elites that work together across the borders. The elites use political offices to support their profit making. In many poor countries, the governments practice state run capitalism for their private benefit rather than provide for the interests of the citizens. The donor money supports directly the business interests of these elites who assign the public works to their own companies.

This creates situation that is cal ed ”aid curse.” The governments of many poor countries maintain pseudo-democratic models of governance – with the help of their Western development partners. (See Djankov et al. 2005, Shaxson 2011) 6

While the current development model still emphasizes democracy as the most desirable form of governance, it it evident that power is not with the people, but with those who have the economic muscle. The same goes for the so cal ed developing countries which are pressured to use democratic processes for choosing their leadership. The choice is seldom ‘free and fair.’ In fact, in African elections nowadays the standard has 6] I want to clarify that I am not arguing that there were not people and maybe even countries who were not seriously trying to al eviate poverty, narrow the gap between the have’ and have not’s with al the good intentions. I rather claim that the current system that our concept of development is based on does not al ow that despite al the good intentions that we might have had behind the development cooperation and aid. The global system simply leaves humanistic values aside and focuses on neoliberal practices.

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been lowered to free and credible elections. Those elected are usual y those who have the means to manipulate the system and the electorate.

As our model of development is economy based, in many parts of the world multinational companies are today more powerful than many individual governments and states. The two institutions, the state and the market, usual y work together. They are inseparably linked by the development project of modernity and progress. Corporate oligarchs and financial speculators have increasing control on our lives particularly since the public-private partnership promotion has led governments to progressively hand over the production of goods and services to private businesses. Even as ”a welfare agency,” the state cannot work against the markets. Rather it is a complementary institutional device which protects the extension of the markets. After all it needs markets to maintain itself.

(Sachs 1992)

Global capitalism, enterprise and international development cooperation agendas are so closely intertwined with the wider ‘development industry’ that it is difficult to let go the naïve belief of the possibility that endless economic growth with increasing material commodities will in the end narrow the gap between rich and poor. Indeed, it would be self-destructive to do so as the development industry is big business that uses vast amount of money to maintain itself. The sad but evident truth is that, in reality the poorest of the poor have never been of interest to the markets. The majority of people living in affluence (anywhere in the world) would never be wil ing to give up their own comfortable standards of living to equalize the (re)distribution of resources. (See for example Moyo 2011, 13-33, Rodney 2011, Sachs 1992.)7

Instead, as the goalposts for desirable development are set to the rest of the world according to the neoliberal profit maximization, the result is increasing competition on gradual y diminishing natural resources. In this global setting it is increasing that the West which set the standards in the first place, is now struggling to keep up with the rest.

The most recent economic crisis in the West (that started around 2008) is slowly turning the tables around in relation to global markets. Just little earlier the Western ‘developers’

were praising the Asian Tigers for their economic performance and were happy to have new markets to get into. Even the UNDP 2013 Development Report notes that from Brazil to South Africa to India to China, the largest developing countries have become major drivers of the global economy. Today they are not only taking over big parts of the global markets, but also giving loans and assistance not only to the countries in the South (and particularly to those with substantive natural resources) but also to the struggling Western economies. Leaders of the BRICS group, in their recent meeting in Durban (March 2013), already announced that they had agreed to set up a development bank that 7] For example Peter Singer’s classic argument that we should sacrifice our personal comfort to aid the world’s poor as long as in exchange we do not lose anything moral y as or more significant has been debated and rejected several times as being moral y too demanding as people cannot be expected to give up on their personal already achieved wel -being/material standard of living to help others – no matter how much in need these people may be. For the original argument see Singer 1972: 229-243.

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could ultimately chal enge the dominance the Bretton Woods institutions.8 While still in its infancy, this initiative may well be realized in the near future, as the BRICS already together produce some 20 per cent of global GDP. Many African governments/elites and upper middle-classes are now joining in the global market competition with new vigor and with the help of their newly (re)discovered natural resources.9 (See for example UNDP 2011, 2013.)

II. THE ALTERNATIVE CONCEPT OF DEVELOPMENT AS SOCIAL JUSTICE

In the early development thinking also in the West such humanistic values, as solidarity, equity, and freedom were at the core in justifying liberal political order. Now they, however, have been replaced by libertarian emphasis on economic competition on advancing one’s self-interest. The human-centered approach was earlier presented maybe most elaborately by Immanuel Kant. Kant cal ed us to act in a way that we would treat humanity, whether in our own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means but always as an end (see for example Kant 1964). Gradual y, nevertheless, as the history moved on, the more instrumental way thinking shifted the emphasis from human moral agency to more procedural justification of political and economic distribution of powers and goods. When the Western pragmatism spread, the humanistic values were gradual y replaced with mechanistic and rational self-interest. Nevertheless, as relics from the earlier humanist ideals, many Western states still rhetorical y justify their ‘development interventions’ in the name of enhancing universal human rights and advancing global equality. At least recently there have been some efforts to reintroduce humanistic values to development. One of these theoretical efforts has already influenced the statistical tools for measurement of human well-being. This is the Capability Approach introduced by Amartya Sen, and later taken forward by various other scholars. Sen argues well against such indicators as GNP or BNP as suitable measurements for the standards of living. Instead, he emphasizes that we need to focus more on the quality of life. Sen asks us to avoid ”commodity fetishism” in order not to give intrinsic value to material goods and prosperity. Instead we should see human well-being as the ultimate objective of all 8] So far, the BRICS have failed to produce any details on the size or structure of such a bank. The BRICS leaders also agreed to establish a $100bn pool of foreign reserves to “contribute to strengthening the global financial safety net and complement existing international arrangements as an additional line of defense.” But again, there were no details on how this would be structured or implemented. The push to create a bank, was the key theme of the BRICS summit in Durban 2013, which brought together leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The move is seen as a test of whether the club of nations, can develop beyond a loose political grouping.

9] In fact some of the stil poorest and most unequal countries like Mozambique or Angola have the highest economic growth (over 7%), compared to China’s approximately 9 %. Simultaneously the USA and the EU countries varies in average 1.5 -4% And alarmingly the inequality in the Western and Northern highly industrialized countries appears to be increasing. On increasing inequalities in Europe see for example UNICEF 2013.

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development and economic policies. (Sen 1994, 1999; see also Alkire and Santos 2010, Crocker 1992, Nussbaum 1987).

Sen’s views on development as freedom and realization of human functionings and capabilities have added an important dimension to the theory and policy discussion on development. They have also introduced thinking that has been uncharacteristic to the Western concept of development, by arguing that ‘bigger is not always better.’10 Sen’s approach suggests that it is possible to find limits to feasible economic growth while diminishing inequality and al eviating poverty. Thus, for Sen economic growth is still part of the idea of development, though not a goal in itself. Despite its criticism of overly individualized markets, Sen is still highly optimistic that humanistic values and the quest for economic growth and market competition can find a peaceful way to work together.

Thus, Sen is not nearly as critical of the Western neoliberal development paradigms, as for example, the ‘Degrowth’ movement. (Sen 1984, 1999)11 Sen also recognizes the need to bring in humanistic elements to development thinking. Development should be seen as social justice and human flourishing in a teleological sense. We want development because we want the human beings to be able to use and further develop their human capacities, such as their moral agency. Focusing on growth and material commodities alienates humans from their true nature as moral agents, and makes us adopt a linear approach to development which focuses on individuals’ personal benefits and profit maximization.

However, as Gilbert Rist, in The History of Development: from Western Origins to Global Faith noted, in early days development was seen as cyclical process in Aristotelian sense. This was long before the new-liberal paradigm introduced the logical y inconsistent linear understanding of progress and growth as a new paradigm in development thinking.

Aristotle’s cyclic view was descriptive in a sense that it fol owed natural change. The cycles meant that which is born and grows up will also face away and die, in the perpetual serious of new beginnings. This was Aristotle’s solution to the basic question concerning persistence in change and the ceaseless return of the same. (Rist 2002, 31) III. AFRICAN CONTRIBUTION TO A PARADIGM CHANGE IN DEVELOPMENT THINKING

Amartya Sen’s capability approach is working on providing more room for cultural interpretations on the value of development. I suggest that for we should take this opportunity and start exploring futher, what, for example, African philosophy can offer to this debate. Someone may now ask, why particularly an African approach would be 10] Sen has also emphasized that poverty is multidimensional, and in general it is not due of lack of resources, but rather due to lack of access to needed resources. Capabilities approach has been highly influential and capabilities approach has been utilized by the UNDP and by various NGOs. In fact, the capabilities account influenced the creation of HDI in the first place (as an alternative to GNP-type output measurements). The new Multidimensional Poverty Index, based on Sen’s ideas and trying to capture deprivations not captured by income measurements, has been used in HDI calculations since 2010.

11] On Degrowth movement see Assadourian 2012.

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interesting, after al , also the Eastern philosophies rely on holistic approaches which see harmony as their ultimate goal. Thus, let me explain my choice: Africa has been in the center of development discussions and practices for decades, if not centuries. After formal decolonization, Africa has continued to be a battle ground for competition of the Northern ideologies and economic needs. It has also been a testing ground for different development theories from needs-based theories to socialist experiments to the final takeover by neoliberal economic practices. With this mixed bag of social and political models Africa is still divided between the traditional communitarian values and communal practices and the newly adopted profit-making individualism. This mixture with traditional and imported ideals as well as practices - what I have label ed elsewhere as libertarian communitarism – has resulted in aggressive competition on power, violent conflicts, corruption, political manipulation of ethnicity and subnational communal loyalties, nepotism and favoritism, as well as continuing poverty and inequality – all this despite the decades of development aid and col aboration; maybe even because of it.12

The self-interested and extremely wealthy political and economic elites of many Africa countries have learnt how to play with the rules of the markets. They have set aside the traditional values of African communalism, that is, the shared, ‘rock-bottom’ interests of the people, i.e., the common good.13 Even more they have learnt to maintain impunity by appealing to the individualistic concept of that call for the respect for ‘state sovereignty,’

autonomy and individual rights, equal partnership and the principles of ownership.

Besides rhetorical use of individualistic framework, many contemporary African leaders have also learnt to use the imported Western institutions of democracy to maintain their personal powers, structural injustices and poor forms of governance. They have also learnt that any human rights and good governance conditionalities for development aid can and will be sacrificed for the demands of global markets and economic interests.

The Western hypocrisy on preaching human rights but practicing self-interest was heavily attacked by the African liberation movements. Now, however, some of the same African leaders who were there to liberate their nations, are themselves preaching traditional African solidarity values while they have no intention realizing these themselves.

However, while the political practice in many places in Africa today appears to be based on self-interest and personal profit making, the original values for liberation from colonization are still worth looking into as maybe they could guide us an alternative thinking on development. We only need once again distinguish between negative practices and positive values and take a look at their philosophical foundations. As we struggle to de-colonize our minds from the historical indoctrination on what is the best form of political and economic governance, we can learn from the African holistic and communalist world view. This view gave the original foundations to the post-12] On libertarian communitarism see more in detail Hel sten 2008.

13] On African communalist and consensus democracy, as the definition of "rock bottom" interest of the citizens see Wiredu 1997.

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colonial African socialism which was based on such community-centered values as egalitarianism, solidarity and social responsibility. African socialism was introduced as an alternative for individualistic capitalism in many newly independent countries. As an ideology for development, African socialist approach was drawn from communalist values, rather than directly from socialist political theories. Its original goal was to activate the people to work for their communities, rather than care merely for their individual self-interest. African socialism criticized individualistic emphasis on self-interest that can easily lead society into endless competition and greed. Particularly for the fragile, newly independent African states, the individualistic focus on individuals’ rights rather than on social duties was seen to easily lead into social fragmentation and disharmony based on competing interests. Such African philosophers and statesmen as Julius Nyerere and Kwame Nkrumah predicted well what would happen to the African society if it leant too much on individualism. They saw the danger of ethnic conflict, the negligence of the participation of the large rural population, as well as in the lack of interest to improve the well-being of the poorest of the poor. Thus, they wanted to base the development of these newly independent nations on traditional solidarity values. (Nkrumah 1970, Nyerere 1967, 1973, Senghor 1962)14

The original value basis of African communalist socialism never stood the chance of survival. The international community pressured post-colonial states to discontinue their attempts to put these values in practice and adapt to the hegemonic market economy instead. After al the structural adjustments programmes by the Bretton Woods institution and other imported development agents, policies and conditions, that pressured for privatization and open markets made sure there is no room for experimenting with alternative ideologies. We might have diverse views on the success of the practical application of African socialism in the post-colonial states. Nevertheless, we can still maybe agree that its original values stil have moral significance and they are very much in line with the original humanistic values of early Europe. The goals of self-reliance, building non-exploitive ‘moral’ economies with mutual trust, participation and equal membership in communities are good building blocks for any nation at any given time. Similarly, the emphasis on moral responsibility that takes seriously our obligations not only towards our neighbors but also to the humanity per se can better lead towards harmonious co-existence and the protection of future. (See for example Nyerere 1967, 1968) The ideals of African communalist socialism underline hard work by the people.

Economic transactions are necessary, but capitalism should not be let to take over the essentials of human and community centered developmental goals of egalitarian social 14] As many African countries gained independence during the 1960s, some of these newly formed governments rejected the ideas of capitalism in favor of a more afro-centric economic model. Advocates of African socialism claimed that it was not State centered economy of the European socialism, neither was it total y the opposite of capitalism. Instead it was recreation of the solidarity values of socialism in the context of African traditional communalism. Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, Léopold Senghor of Senegal, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, and Sékou Touré of Guinea, were maybe the main architects of African Socialism.

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life. Modernity’s view that there is not real development without capitalist economy and heavy industrialization were questioned already by the first leaders of the post-colonial African nations. African communalism criticized world trade for its exploitive and neo-imperialistic nature that created dependency. They also emphasized the role of the citizens in production of the common good, and solidarity in sharing this good. (Nyerere 1967, 1968, 1973).

However, even if African communalist liberation ideologies may have been pushed aside, we can revive their values and see how they can bring our current development thinking closer to the humanistic set of values. And to understand the meaning of these values we also try to adapt to a holistic world view that cal s for deeper re-reflection on the meaning of ‘good life’ in the wider context of human existence. I do not suggest that we should replace individualism with col ectivism per se, but I want to argue that since humanism is getting buried under neoliberal pragmatism, we may have to find its core message by looking at the values presented by other cultures. If humanist values were as universal as they are claimed to be, we can find their traces also in other histories. This time African history can show us how there also, in much shorter time the humanistic values were suppressed by neoliberal economic rationalism, and little room is left for realizing development in a manner that sets individuals, communities and the humanity in the center of all these changes that affect us global y.

Thus, if we set to ‘de-colonialize’ our minds from the dominant mechanistic development paradigm, fol owing is what the original African philosophical worldview can offer:

1) Metaphysical y African thought an provide a more holistic view of the world and its inhabitants; on the interconnectedness of past, current and future generations; of nature and human beings, of the whole universe we are all part of. African thought is also inherently more idealistic whilst in the West currency is given to material entities. That gives us better acknowledge our mutual dependence on each other – and our communal nature as human beings. Unlike the atomistic, rationalistic, and individualistic view, it gives us metaphysical foundations also for intergenerational justice. It can be used to logical y justify our moral obligations towards generations to come by respecting the nature – and the continuous cycle of life - around us. 15

2) Epistemological y, in African thought, also knowledge is a product of evolutions and expansion of human wisdom. Scientific knowledge needs to be complemented with ethical wisdom and sagacity which refers also to understanding the context. Thus, if we could admit that truth itself changes in time; and in many sense remains more like an opinion (depending on its presenter and context) than something that can be scientifical y proven as a fact, we would be more open look at alternatives that better fit the prevalent circumstances. At the same time we need to respect the wisdom of those who have more 15] More on African thought as the basis of our moral responsibility and obligations towards future generations in African thought see Behrens 2012, 179-91.

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experience, and those who lived before us. We should learn from the history rather than think that looking back in history is merely reflecting the ‘lower stages’ of development.

Sagacity is not only about the wise men living in vil ages, but learning to turn information into knowledge and seriously engaging in understanding the problems in order to find appropriate solutions. Wisdom is more about learning moral sense and judgment – in that sense, moral agency – than col ecting knowledge. All in al , wise people are not set to fol ow one tradition or another blindly, but to judge the negative and positive elements of different values, traditions, and practices in a manner that better guides us towards the preservation of human beings and humanistic thinking. (See for example Oruka 1981, 1983, Wiredu 1996, 1997, 1998, van der Walt 1997.)

African philosophers state that in relation to knowledge and knowing, the Africans tend to see themselves as close to (or as part of) concrete reality, while the Westerners tend discuss reality in abstract terms as if they were not part of it. This Western position is particularly problematic when Western science tends to present its results as ‘the supreme truths’ which disregard local knowledge, experience and wisdom that might offer solutions better suited to the circumstances. The abstraction from reality is a problem also in political debates on the issues of human security, climate change and environmental destruction. If we adopted African recognition that we all are parts of the nature: what happens to our environment affects our lives directly everywhere; not just a number of the most vulnerable somewhere living in the harshest conditions. If we saw ourselves better in the center of reality, rather than as external observers, we also could perceive future as a continuance of presence, and we would acknowledge better also how each of us; our choices, values, life styles and our patters of thinking are always influences by our history and circumstance. (See van der Walt 1997, 81-82.) The threats to our planet do not happen to someone else, or sometime in the future, but they are happening right now to all of us – due to our actions and inactions. The threat to humanity is wider than concrete environmental consequences; it also diminishes our moral judgment when we are unable or unwil ing to make difficult decision and stand by these decisions.

3) African world view cal s for cultural y and ethical y different, more community oriented social ethics and patterns of life. These ethics are based on values of solidarity and egalitarianism.16 Particularly here we can see the fundamental difference between spiritual and materialistic views of development. As we have discussed, the world as it is constituted today is largely led and guided by western world view according to which materialism is the measure of good life. However, if individuals see themselves as separate from reality, from the objects, they become easily users, whose main agenda is to utilize things (objects) and even other people, for their own personal, short term enjoyment; 16] For those interested in an extended discourse on that, see, for example Leopold Senghor (1964), Julius Nyerere (1968), Placide Tempels (1969), Bennie van der Walt (1997), Polycarp Ikuenobe (2006).

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even if this may neglect the social needs of their communities, or be environmental y detrimental in a longer run.17

Nature is the source that provides us our lives and all we need for living. It also hosts our ancestors as well as our off-spring. Thus, it needs to be respected.18 In short, community gives meaning to individual human beings, as we all are members of various communities; the earth being the community of all these overlapping communities. The mainstay of communalism in traditional African culture, revived by various African liberation philosophers, is the idea that the identity of an individual is never separable from the sociocultural environment, neither from the wider environment and nature – not even from the continuity of generations. The individual is ontological y, cosmological y, spiritual y, and normatively connected to the community, not an atomistic agent who needs to care merely for his or her individual well-being, advantage, wealth and profit.19

IV. CONCLUSION

My aim in this paper has been to take seriously Ghanaian philosopher Kwasi Wiredu’s warning of not mixing values and facts, ideals and practices together – as has been happening in development thinking and practice across the world. The practices and values of both traditions: individualistic and communitarian, are mismatched in the current politics in many parts of Africa and the rest of the world, not only by the African leaders but also by the Western ‘development partners.’ However, if we detach the humanistic moral agenda from political and economic practical ambitions, we can redirect development to have more ‘human face’ and we can find the shared universal values across the cultural boundaries.

One way towards accepting our global responsibility is to revive African post-colonial philosophers’ request to de-colonize our minds. This means deconstructing and reconstructing contemporary political theory and practice; open it to new interpretations.

17] Leopold Senghor is renowned to have expressed the subject-object dichotomy in the Western culture as fol ows: “He [the European] first distinguishes the object from himself. He keeps it at a distance.

He freezes it out of time and, in a way, out of space. He fixes it, he kil s it. With his precision instruments he dissects it in a pitiless factual analysis. As a scientist, yet at the same time prompted by practical considerations, the European makes use of the Other that he has kil ed in this way for his practical ends. He makes a means of it. With a centripetal movement he assimilates it.” Senghor 1964.

18] Literature and studies that focus on African communities, whether within the disciplines of philosophy, anthropology, ethnology or religion, al bring that African societies are communalistic and it is this aspect that punctuates these societies from other so-cal ed modern societies; it is this aspect that underlie their ethics, epistemology, logic, metaphysics, ontology, psychology, notions of punishments, and even language. See for example Ikuenobe 2006, Oruka 1981,1983, Tempels 1969, van der Walt 1997, Wiredu 1996, 1997.

19] The community in African culture and worldview is not a mere conglomeration of individuals but a tight composite of individuals. "We" rather than "I" in African cultures is a transcendental or organic "we" and cannot be reduced to its component parts. It is in this regard the self is indeed the community. The individual self is, by various organic processes, constituted by the community and the community is an organical y fused col ectivity of the individual selves. (Ikuenobe 2006, 56) 92

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The interpretation presented in this paper draws from the traditional African holism that sees that development is a journey towards more harmonic co-existence and (global and local) social justice. Metaphysical and epistemological framework of African worldview asks us not to conceive development as a mono-tract linear activity, but as a process in which we are trying to learn to ‘be more human’ by being more ethical y sensitive to our social circumstances. Its goal can be set in finding harmony, realizing more egalitarian justice, and fulfil ing our obligations to future generations by balancing our rights with duties. This process is cyclic rather than linear. However, it does not have to be based directly on the Aristotelian view that would descriptively see development as a cycle of flourishing, demise and rebirth. If we commit ourselves to set ‘being human’ as the goal of development, we can expand this cycle by using knowledge and moral wisdom of the last generation to deepen the ethical enlightenment of the next generation.

All in al , to secure decent living conditions to the future generations, we need to find a way to bring humanistic values back to the development agenda. We need to abolish final y the division between developing and ‘developed,’ ‘model’ countries. Instead, we ought to acknowledge that we are all developing communities and states that need to look for new direction together if we want to manage the transition from unsustainability to sustainability. In other words, we have to look at the values for development from altogether different perspectives. By separating values from practices, we can see that the goal of development practices should be in finding better ways of ‘being human’ rather than trying to endlessly increase the material well-being and standards of living. Whatever we do, international y or local y, in the name of development, it should lead to lead to securing (political, economic, cultural, environmental) environment in which ethical considerations can make a difference and we can fulfill our common Kantian obligations as autonomous moral agents.

Sirkku.Hel sten@helsinki.fi

REFERENCES

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Hel sten, S.K. 2008. Failing States and Ailing Leadership in African politics in the era of globalization: libertarian communitarianism and the Kenyan Experience. Journal of Global Ethics 4 (2): 155-69.

———. 2010. Empowering the invisible: women, local culture and global human rights protection . Thought and Practice: A Journal of the Philosophical Association of Kenya (PAK) 1 (2): 37-57.

Ikuenobe, P. 2006. Philosophical Perspectives on Communalism and Morality in African Traditions.

Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers.

Mandevil e, B. 1970[1724]. The Fable of the Bees. Middlesex: Penguin Books.

Moyo, D. 2011. How the West was Lost. Fifty years of Economic Fol y - and the Stark Choices Ahead.

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Nkrumah, K. 1970. Consciencism, Philosophy and Ideology for Decolonization and Development with Particular Reference to the African Revolution. London: Panaf Books.

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© 2012 by Public Reason

Book Reviews

Philippe Van Parijs, Just Democracy: The Rawls-Machiavel i Programme, ECPR Press, Colchester, UK, 2011, Pp. ix+174, ISBN 978-1907301148

Just Democracy: The Rawls-Machiavel i Programme is a col ection of essays by the Belgian philosopher Philippe Van Parijs, dedicated to examining the limits of compat-ibility between justice and democracy.

The main normative claim of the book is that, if conflicts between democracy and justice arise, justice should prevail, whereas democracy should be adjusted so as to best serve its goals. In order to show why justice and democracy cannot go together al the way, Van Parijs works with a (Rawlsian) liberal, as wel as solidaristic, conception of social justice as “liberty-constrained maximin” (33), and a delibe rately “thin” (i.e. procedural) definition of democracy – a “combination of majority rule, universal suffrage and free voting” (7).

If justice should trump democracy, the value of the latter is conceived of as instrumental, which explains why efforts should be directed not at maximizing democracy, but at shaping institutions through democratic procedures in order to maximize justice.

The Rawlsian element of the “programme” consists, thus, in a comprehensive theory of justice which advocates improving (in the maximin sense) the situation of the worst off, and ensuring equal respect for fundamental liberties. If Rawls provides the goal (and, hence, the legitimacy of the programme), Machiavel i provides the means, or rather a general method for achieving it. Therefore, the Machiavel ian element refers to a form of “institutional engineering” that entails negotiations and imposing limits within a democratic procedure, so that realistical y defined self-interested agents (“People need to be taken as they are, or can feasibly made to be.” [56]) could be made to work towards more social justice and accept the potential costs of less democracy.

The conjunction of these two views on political philosophy results in a “ruthless consequentialism” (39), which, as the author argues, should not be exempted from a careful screening of its “counterproductive effects.” (60)

Throughout the ten chapters of the book, Van Parijs expands on his main argument, providing the reader with insightful comments, original proposals and fresh examples, which should make one wary of pleading for any “pre-established harmony” (8) between justice and democracy. It is an ambitious intel ectual achievement, which takes the discussion along various dimensions (national, supranational, intergenerational justice, international migrations, linguistic justice). These mirror both the author’s multitude of research interests, and his particular commitment to political philosophy as a “crucial part of the urgent task of thinking what needs to be done to make our societies and our world less unjust than they are, or even simply to avert disaster,” thus very far from an idle game of academics (24).

The first three chapters elaborate on the reasons for which democracy should be seen as lacking intrinsic value. They add conceptual clarifications – such as the contrast between Van Parijs’s view of “real freedom” and Pettit’s “contestatory democracy” – and focus on the pressure that just aims (e.g. opening the borders to ensure fair opportunities for poorer migrant workers) put on existing institutions.

One of the most interesting and convincing discussions is presented in chapter 96

Book Reviews

four, which takes up the chal enge at intergenerational level and conducts a systematic analysis of the requirements and difficulties of justice between age cohorts.

The argument starts from the statistical y-empirical y borne out assumption that current democratic electoral systems may be conducive to some injustice between younger and elderly citizens. Given that they are procedural y designed to voice the preferences of electors, which “power-hungry parties are out to satisfy” (35), and there is a rising trend in the age of the median voters, electoral systems tend to give more weight to the (short-term) interests and preferences of the elderly. As it is often the case, these diverge from those of the younger citizens; moreover, when related to distributive patterns, this divergence generates additional normative tension.

In what fol ows, Van Parijs explores various avenues towards reconciling what is required by justice and what is al owed by democracy. In so doing, he reviews a number of options, and careful y unpacks their implications within the scope of the Rawls-Machiavel i programme. The central proposal consists in giving parents proxy votes for their children. By shifting the focus of voting rights to their relationship with parent-hood, this alternative provides an implicit account of the motivation problem and relates to an intuitive interest-protecting conception of intergenerational obligations. Its aim should be understood as “shifting electoral weight in favour of those whose interests are at risk of being insufficiently taken into consideration” (57). However, putting the programme to test reveals new sets of chal enges for intergenerational justice, such as: the difficulty of maintaining the fairness effect obtained for one generation for the benefit of more remote ones or the connection between voting schemes, procreation incentives, and the welfare of future generations.

The ensuing chapters are dedicated to the electoral reform in Belgium and the institutional design of the European Union. Here again, Van Parijs’s commitment to a solidaristic view on justice and his own concern for linguistic justice are at the forefront of the discussions.

In the Belgian case, two arguments are worth noting. The first refers to the transition from a “power-sharing” to a “border-crossing” system in a political community split up along ethnic and linguistic lines. Such a transition aims to redesign the mechanism of representation, and “reshape political competition and rhetoric, so that these wil consist again in confrontation, not between the interests of mono-ethnic blocs, but between alternative versions of the common good.” (95) The second takes the issue one step further (a “Copernican revolution”), and advocates a combination between a pluri-national democracy and a transnational welfare state, which would al ow Belgium a better representation of its linguistic communities, as wel as a broader electoral accountability of politicians.

In the second case, reconciling the demands of democracy and justice in the European Union starts from balancing efficiency-sensitive considerations with those of “sustainability, diversity and solidarity.” (69) But clarifying what each of the latter could be reasonably taken to mean beyond national borders generates significant difficulties, which Van Parijs examines at length. Applying a conception of solidaristic justice at supranational level implies, in fact, reconstructing a form of solidarity in the context of the single European market, a non-homogeneous population, and a rising trend of labour migration to the more affluent member states. Moreover, a concern for solidarity that is translated into redistributive policies would presuppose a broader notion of representation, which “should be structured along ideological or social rather than eth-

Book Reviews

97

nic or territorial borders” (74), and, equal y, a broader notion of accountability ( demos-cracy), i.e. accountability “to the people of Europe as a whole.”

The EU cases, as wel as the discussion on intergenerational justice in chapter 4

clearly il ustrate the stakes of the philosophical exercise that Philippe Van Parijs proposes to his readers. This is, indeed, a rigorous research doubled by a permanent quest for practical and non-rigid solutions adequate for the near future, and put to test by means of institutional and policy improvement.

The main merit of this approach is, perhaps, the fact that it is intended to enrich the original Rawlsian ‘programme,’ as Van Parijs is wary of taking the “nation state as the self-evident frame of reference” (1). This is of major interest in a context where many problems of political philosophy are now col ective action problems, with complex causality and intricate interdependence between nations and generations. Climate change and governance of natural resources are examples of such problems, where one nation’s policy can have (disastrous) consequences on others (such as third-world countries), or where one generation’s opting out of the chain of obligations could have an irreversible negative impact on the next one.

However, these are not the only dilemmas that col ective action cases bring about, and it would perhaps be interesting to supplement Van Parijs’s insightful discussion with an account of group agency and moral responsibility. In the end, relaxing our assumptions about democracy does not dismiss the question of how to work from a bundle of diverse, conflicting interests, some circumscribed by individual rights, to coherent policies destined to maximizing the prospects of the worst off (not limited to a particular nation or generation), in the name of justice and solidarity.

Having taken up the chal enge of combining Rawls and Machiavel i and extending their original programmes, Just Democracy provides a complex account of the conceptual relationship between global social justice and national/supranational democracy. Throughout the book, the reader can locate many sensitive spots on the justice-democracy map, as wel as weigh the required means of action suggested by the author. In the end, these il ustrate that democracy should not be taken for granted, and that, in its shadow, there is enough room for injustice.

Reviewed by Ileana Dascălu

University of Bucharest

ileana.dascalu83@gmail.com

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Journal of Political and Moral Philosophy

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EISSN 2065-8958

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Document Outline

- Front Cover

- About Public Reason

- Contents

- Real Social Contracts for Sustainability? Philosophical and Political Implications of Social Agreem

- I. A case study on social agreement

- Phase 1 (12-18 months): Providing the ground for participatory watershed development

- Phase 2 (3-4 years): Participatory implementation

- Watershed development and social agreement

- II. Justice between generations

- III. Justice and stability

- IV. Justice and Social Agreement

- References

- Climate Change and Compensation

- I. Background

- II. UNFCCC: mitigation, adaptation and compensation

- III. The ethics of climate change

- IV. Two arguments for wealthy countries committing themselves to compensation

- V. Discussion

- References

- Heavy Fog and Smog in Beijing: A Watershed towards a Green Future

- I. The heavy fog and smog in Beijing

- II. Why China should accommodate a green future

- III. How to turn towards the green future

- IV. Conclusion

- References

- The Right to Development of Developing Countries: An Argument against Environmental Protection?

- I. Assessing poor countries’ right to development

- II. Does development really clash with strong environmental protection?

- III. Can development benefit from demanding environmental standards?

- IV. Conclusion

- References

- Unlocking Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) with Development Inspiration from the South

- I. Problem statement

- II. Making the case for development inspiration from the South

- III. Suggested development roadmap

- IV. Conclusions

- References

- The end of development? Reflections on the Unsustainability of the Current Development Paradigm and

- I. Globalization of the Western concept of development: consumerist culture, free market economy, an

- II. The alternative concept of development as social justice

- III. African contribution to a paradigm change in development thinking

- IV. Conclusion

- References

- Book Reviews

- Submission Information

- Back Cover

- Sirkku K. Hellsten - The End Of Development Reflections on the Unsustainability of the Current Development Paradigm and a Quest for an African Alternative.pdf

- The end of development? Reflections on the Unsustainability of the Current Development Paradigm and

- I. Globalization of the Western concept of development: consumerist culture, free market economy, an

- II. The alternative concept of development as social justice

- III. African contribution to a paradigm change in development thinking

- IV. Conclusion

- References

- Book Reviews

- Philippe Van Parijs, Just Democracy The Rawls–Machiavelli Programme Reviewed by Ileana Dascalu.pdf

- Submission information

- Back Cover

Table of Contents

BOOK REVIEWS

Book Reviews

Book Reviews

Book Reviews

Front Cover

About Public Reason

Contents

Real Social Contracts for Sustainability? Philosophical and Political Implications of Social Agreem

I. A case study on social agreement

Phase 1 (12-18 months): Providing the ground for participatory watershed development

Phase 2 (3-4 years): Participatory implementation

II. Justice between generations

III. Justice and stability

IV. Justice and Social Agreement

References

Climate Change and Compensation

I. Background

II. UNFCCC: mitigation, adaptation and compensation

III. The ethics of climate change

IV. Two arguments for wealthy countries committing themselves to compensation

V. Discussion

Heavy Fog and Smog in Beijing: A Watershed towards a Green Future

II. Why China should accommodate a green future

III. How to turn towards the green future

IV. Conclusion

The Right to Development of Developing Countries: An Argument against Environmental Protection?

II. Does development really clash with strong environmental protection?

III. Can development benefit from demanding environmental standards?

Unlocking Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) with Development Inspiration from the South

I. Problem statement

III. Suggested development roadmap

IV. Conclusions

Submission Information

The end of development? Reflections on the Unsustainability of the Current Development Paradigm and

I. Globalization of the Western concept of development: consumerist culture, free market economy, an

II. The alternative concept of development as social justice

III. African contribution to a paradigm change in development thinking

Philippe Van Parijs, Just Democracy The Rawls–Machiavelli Programme Reviewed by Ileana Dascalu.pdf

Back Cover