Exploitation in the name of development

BENCHWARMER

Ramon S. Dacawi

(The environmental issue - like other development issues -  has become a milking cow of sorts for some local, national and international “development workers”, be they in government or  in the private sector. In trying to make sense of this so-called “Environment Month”,  we retrieve a previous column piece on this fractured culture of development.):

Twenty one 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 one years after the Rio pact was inked, we hardly took off the ground. The dismal reality of unsustainable development is all over. This is the reality on the ground, 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. Like resources supposedly for “sustainable development”, much of these funds are going to administrative expenses, including 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”. They are those who establish a perception for a need for their services, from their developing their own processes and their own  language of “development” and then 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 called  “erythrogenesis”, fellow Baguio boy, Prof. Alex Brillantes told me. It’s all about  the ability to create a problem that the creator can and will solve, thereby providing the opportunity to show people how talented the problem creator is for solving the problem he had deliberately triggered.   

In a forum in 1997 in Chiangmai, I heard the terms “civil society” and “benchmarking” repeatedly in the discussions. “Civil society”, I was told, refers to those who were previously called, plain and simple, “non-government organizations”. 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 the “uncivil society”.

In that conference, I learned another term from fellow delegate, Thai Prof. OpartPanya.  In Thailand, he told me, development workers from the West working in Asia are sometimes called “development tourists.” They are in the Third World as tourists in the guise of development work.  

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. It’s supposed to be “peanuts”, plain and simple, as television viewers immediately see. They need not strain for the meaning of the three-word combination, unlike those mouthed by “development workers”.   

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 being 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. Sadly, this is the reality on the ground, imposed by the “developed” nations and  perpetuated by “development workers” for their own development, in collusion with consultants who get paid for telling the “beneficiary communities” what they already know, but in a language they don’t understand. (e-mail: mondaxbench@yahoo.com for comments).