The Illusion of Progress

Unsustainable Development in International Law and Policy

Alexander Gillespie

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781136533617
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sciences biologiques
• Subtopic: Écologie

Is 'sustainable development' a charade sold to an increasingly misled public? This book presents a wide-ranging, penetrating critique of sustainability and what it actually means. The author argues that despite the rhetoric of socially and environmentally sustainable development and the ever-increasing number of legislative environmental policies, the real issues such as consumption, population growth and equity are either sidestepped or manipulated in international policy and law. Analyzing the main areas of concern - economic growth, market structure, trade, aid, debt, security and sovereignty - he shows that the entire development structure and the underpinnings of the debate are leading down quite a different path to that intended by sustainability.

1 Development

DOI: 10.4324/9781849776226-1

The Idea of Development

In his inauguration speech before Congress in 1949, President Truman defined one of the largest of the world problems as ‘underdeveloped areas’. Consequently it was assumed that all the peoples of the Earth were to move along the same track and aspire to only one goal – development. President Truman said the road to development was to be where ‘greater production’ was the ‘the key to prosperity and peace’. Truman then outlined a programme of technical assistance designed to ‘relieve the sufferings of these peoples’ through ‘industrial activities’ and a ‘higher standard of living’.¹

Before his speech had finished he had already introduced a whole new paradigm in thinking: that societies of Southern countries are not necessarily as valuable in their choice of social arrangements. Traditions, hierarchies and foreign habits – the whole texture of societies – were to be dissolved, homogenized and improved through the application of Western models and by mimicking the ‘American way of life’ in an economically liberal international system.²

Of course, ‘development’ is neither a new, nor an American idea. It is part of a process that is as old as history itself. However, since the Enlightenment the pursuit of ‘development’ and the quest for modernity, imbued with ideals of anthropocentricism,³ technology and industrialization – all wrapped in distinctive economic and political structures – has been pursued with a global vigour.⁴ Moreover, since 1945 the speed of this process by which can societies can emerge purified, both modern and affluent, has accelerated yet again.⁵

The Right to Development

The ‘right to development’ is widely recognized as part of international law.⁶ However, this concept was conceived long before its recognition in international law. For example, in 1944, the International Labour Organization (ILO) stated in its Philadelphia Declaration that ‘all human beings … have the right to pursue their material well being … in conditions of freedom and dignity, or economic security and equal opportunity’.⁷

Four years later, Article 25 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognized that:

‘Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old-age, or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.’⁸

Similar objectives were reiterated in 1966⁹ and 1974.¹⁰ These aspirations were also evident in the United Nations designations of ‘Development Decades’. In 1986, the ‘right’ to development was expressly recognized in the Declaration on the Right to Development.¹¹

It is important to realize that a number of countries (such as the United States) refused to accept this right to development. This was because it was seen, essentially, as a socialist objective. This problem reflected the difficulty that raged throughout the Cold War period, where the critiques were not over development per se, but over ideology. That is, while some argued for Keynesian or more free market models, others adopted pro-Marxist critiques. This latter critique did not disagree with the goals of the development process (that the poor countries would come to economically emulate the rich countries). What it did disagree with related to questions of the social and political control of the development process. In this regard, the method (but not the goal) of development was crucial. Accordingly, the debate became entangled in the politics of the time, with ideals like the Right to Development being linked to principles such as a New International Economic Order¹² which was strongly linked to a distinct socialist agenda. Accordingly, more social rights, like the rights to food and housing, could not be acknowledged by all members of the global community until after the fall of Communism. After this event these rights could be interpreted in the light of the market rubric, as opposed to a socialist one.

Once the problem of which interpretation prism to adopt exited from the international arena, the right to development became much easier to embrace than before. Accordingly, the ‘right to development [a]s a universal and inalienable right and [as an] integral part of fundamental human rights’ could be reiterated by the vast majority of countries in conferences such as the 1993 Vienna Conference on Human Rights,¹³ and the Cairo Conference on Population and Development.¹⁴ From this point, specific rights within the general rubric of the right to development, such as the ‘right of everyone to have access to safe and nutritional food, consistent with the right to adequate food and the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger’¹⁵ have been reaffirmed by most members of the global community. Likewise, the ‘goals of ensuring adequate shelter for all and making human settlements safer, healthier and more livable, equitable, sustainable and productive’ were endorsed by the international community in 1996.¹⁶

The Failure of the Conventional Development Process

In 1949 the World Bank set off on the first of its missions to Colombia. Upon the return of the 14 experts, the prognosis was given that ‘the vicious circle … can only be broken seriously through a global relaunching of the whole economy’.¹⁷ This view incorporated the generic hope of allowing Southern countries to leap-frog to the economic position of Northern countries by giving them Northern style projects in Southern settings.

However, by 1969 the Pearson Commission on Development noted that ‘there was a weariness’ with the issue of development and a search for new directions was required.¹⁸ This problem has become greatly inflated since the 1970s as the list of development project failures has generally grown.¹⁹ This overall failure has been recognized in environmental, social and economic terms. As the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) stated in 1987:

‘On the development side, in terms of absolute numbers there are more hungry people in the world than ever before, and their number is increasing. So are the numbers who cannot read or write, the numbers without safe water or safe and sound homes and the numbers short on wood-fuel with which to cook and warm themselves. The gap between rich and poor nations is widening – not shrinking, and there is little prospect, given present trends and institutional arrangements, that this will be reversed.’²⁰

These trends continued throughout the 1990s, during which time the overall quality of human life for many deteriorated to a point of ‘crisis’ where the ‘practical minimum’ for ‘civilization’ in some countries was missing.²¹ These claims are supported by the fact that by 1996 around 1.3 billion people in the world were living in absolute poverty, and this number is increasing by 25 million per year. Over 120 million people are officially unemployed.²² More than 800 million people do not have enough food to meet their basic nutritional needs. Fifty thousand people die daily because of poor shelter, polluted water and bad sanitation. As many as 82 countries are classified as low-income, food deficit, in which up to 12 million children die annually.²³ This figure corresponds with the fact that in 1999 more than 80 developing countries were worse off economically than they were 10 years previously. In 70 developing countries, their level of income is less than was reached in the 1970s. In 19 developing countries, per capita income is less than it was in 1960. Such imbalances are not only restricted to Southern countries. Indeed, deep pockets of extreme poverty (of between 7 and 17 per cent of the population) exist within many Northern countries as well.²⁴

Quite simply, as the poor are getting poorer, the rich are getting richer in both national and international settings. For example, the assets of the world's 358 billionaires exceed the combined annual incomes of countries accounting for 45 per cent of the Earth's people. Even more remarkably, it appears that the combined wealth of the 10 richest people on the planet could significantly reduce (if not eliminate) global poverty. Overall, the richest 20 per cent of the world's population were 30 times better off than the poorest 20 per cent in 1960, but by 1997 they were 74 times wealthier.²⁵

This is not to suggest that all base indicators of human progress are negative. Distinct progress in terms of overall increasing life expectancy, falling fertility rates and increasing literacy may be noted. The above figures mask the problem that such base threats to human well-being are not (directly) universally felt. Rather, they remain concentrated (and often increasing) within specific countries, and often specific areas within countries.²⁶ Nevertheless, despite these differences, the overall problem remains that although some ‘progress’ has been made, this inching forward has been, as James Wolfensohn suggested in early 2000: ‘painfully slow and uneven. Much remains to be done and future prospects do not look bright.’ Accordingly, ‘These figures call into question the way we have been doing development and forces us to rethink.’²⁷ This necessity to ‘rethink’ development was earlier noted in 1994 by the International Commission on Peace and Food which commented:

‘Until now development has been largely a haphazard, subconscious or half sub-conscious process of trial and error experimentation, an application of partial strategies, a confusing mixture of productive and counter-productive initiatives, an unscientific and often superstitious clinging to half-truths or old-truths that no longer have any relevance.’²⁸

Thus, as Elizabeth Dowdeswell, the former Executive Director of United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) stated, ‘development understood in terms of the values on which the current paradigm is based [environmental destruction, poverty, injustice] is a dead end road...