Exploitation in the name of development

BENCHWARMER

Ramon S. Dacawi

BAGUIO CITY -- Twenty years back, the world’s leaders came out of that summit in Rio de Janeiro with a freshly minted term - “sustainable development”. The jargon was supposed to be our guide in exploiting the earth’s resources, not to the point of their depletion but to ensure their availability for use by the future generations of human, animal and plant kind.

Twenty years after the Rio pact was inked, we hardly took off the ground. The dismal reality of unsustainable development is all over. Notwithstanding  billions of fund resources sourced and spent in the name of “sustainable development”, not only by governments but those who now call themselves “civil society”. What we have here is a classic disunity between theory and practice, a plethora of slogans crying out for action.  

 From “sustaining development”, we have shifted our battle cry, this time to “mitigating” global warming or climate change. What we have is an endless exercise in tagging and labeling to justify requests for institutional fund support that, like resources supposedly for “sustainable development”, are going to administrative expenses and trips to international conferences to sustain and enrich our language on such issues of the day.

 What we have here is a legion of wordsmiths calling themselves “development workers” and who establish a perception for a need for their services, from developing their own processes and language of “development” to imposing these on the indigent, indigenous and rural communities who are supposed to be beneficiaries of the fund grants accessed through their agencies – be these government or non-government organizations who now call themselves “civil society”.

 There’s a term for this “art” (if you can call it that) of creating a need for one’s expertise as a “development worker”. It’s termed “erythrogenesis”, fellow Baguio boy, Prof. Alex Brillantes told me. It’s akin to the ability to create a problem that the creator can and will solve, thereby providing the opportunity for people to see how talented the problem creator is for solving the problem he had triggered.   

In a forum in 1997 in Chiangmai, I heard the terms “civil society” and “benchmarking” repeatedly in the discussions. Unable to suppress my ignorance of development language, I asked whether, in the same token, it would be apt to classify those in government as belonging to the “uncivil society”.

In that conference, I learned another term from fellow delegate, Thai Prof. Opart Panya.  In Thailand, he told me, development workers from the West working in Asia are sometimes called “development tourists.”

The issue of language or jargon complicating or blocking development is found in that alcoholic product endorsement on television by world boxing champion Manny Pacquiao, he who exemplifies the truism that “ it’s better to give than to receive”.  The boxing icon reads and orders from the menu “roasted mountain legumes” to go as finger food (pulutan) in his drinking session with billiards ace Efren “Bata” Reyes and other friends.

 Unlike listeners of development jargon being dished out by conference resource speakers, television viewers need not strain for the meaning of the three-word combination. It comes out swift and clear, solid and telling as any three-punch combination from Pacquiao when his order comes and is viewed – a dish of roasted peanuts. A legume native among the Incas and other indigenous peoples of the mountains of South America.    

 There’s also valid suspicion that some fund requests and allocations for projects are being kept under wraps, even while those benefitting from these grants proclaim democratic and community participation in decision-making and implementation of activities to justify the funding.

 Worse, some existing programs have been used, without the knowledge and consent of the owners or implementers of the same, as bases for fund requests. After the release of the grants, not a single cent goes to the programs, the concepts of which were stolen and used to strengthen chances of funding grant approval.

Recently, scuttlebutts have it that a group trying to corner a substantial amount of fund grant for “climate change mitigation” from an international development organization was silently tapping two prestigious universities as would-be implementing partners, yet wary that the plan – and the funding details – would be leaked to the communities where these educational institutions are serving.

In some cases, the endorsement signatures of respected leaders of a community are tapped to heighten the integrity of fund grant applications. Once the grant is released, however, the leaders, whose names carried weight in the fund approval, are no longer updated on how the fund is being used.

In some programs covered by fund grants, community members are tapped as audience in seminars where they are allowed to contribute an idea or two that will be incorporated in the so-called “terminal report” on the success of the project. The “terminal report”, prepared in development language that people in the “beneficiary community” can’t understand, will be submitted by the ”implementing NGO” to the funding institution as proof of the project’s success.    

We need to simplify and demystify the language of development if we are truly committed to help villages get closer to what they should be as “success stories”, be it in “sustainable development”, “climate change mitigation”, “gender sensitivity” or whatever thrusts of the day are imposed on us by the developed nations of the West or the North.      

Failure to do so smacks of cultural insensitivity, if not outright arrogance and exploitation of the misery of the poor and disadvantaged for the development of the development worker or consultant  who gets paid preparing reports only he can understand and attending conferences  as “development tourists” on behalf of their “beneficiary communities” or, worse, “clients” without the latter’s knowledge and consent. (e-mail: mondaxbench@yahoo.com for comments).