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Editorial, volume 2, number 1, 1991
As preparations for the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) reach completion, one fifth of the world's population is estimated to be living in absolute poverty. A vast and increasing number of people, especially those living in low-income countries crippled with debt servicing repayments, are less able than ever before to participate in their national economies on terms which guarantee them a just and secure livelihood. The lives of poor women and men have, in effect, been mortgaged to an uncertain future.
Sound and sustainable development can be built only on the more equitable control, distribution, and use of the world's natural resources. The structure of contemporary North-South economic relations is widely recognised to be not simply unjust, but also self-defeating. The depletion of natural resources in the South relates directly to an imbalance in global trading relations, in many cases introduced centuries ago, which means that today's commodity prices do not truly reflect their environmental and social costs. Far-reaching policy reforms will be required if Northern economies are to be restructured to reflect such costs; and if governments worldwide are to implement effective programmes for the responsible management of resources. How will governments and private investors be held accountable to the aspirations of poor people?
To the landless peasant farmer in Bangladesh or the migrant slum-dweller in Mexico City, economic development and ecological conservation measures may seem to be at odds. `Greening the environment' can sound like little more than a well-meaning slogan which in practice will entail more constraints on those whose margins for choice are already desperately limited. For the poor to be involved in global as well as local decisions concerning the management of resources, new models for the participation of their representative organisations will be required. In this respect, development NGOs have a particular responsibility to bear. They too must find practical ways to become more accountable to the concerns and aspirations of those who are excluded from the mainstream of policy-making and whose immediate survival and future well-being are at stake. Projects at the grassroots level cannot in themselves bring about major changes in policy. However, they do enable the people and NGOs involved to see specific ways in which `environment and development' come together on an agenda for a just social order. The development of mechanisms to ensure that the interests of the poorest are effectively expressed is fundamental to the creation of the civil society of which NGOs form a part.
In this issue of Development in Practice, we present contributions which explore various facets of the debate about environment and development. Patricia Feeney opens the discussion by examining the ways in which macro-economic constraints interact with the implementation of policies which will genuinely meet the joint goals of environmental protection and respect for human rights in this case the rights of indigenous peoples and the landless poor in Brazil. Melissa Leach adopts a gender perspective to explore the issue of access to and use of natural resources: critical of strands of current thinking which have posited a special relationship between women and the environment, she takes apart the notion of `community' and explores the social relations governing the opportunities available to women and men, and the choices they make, concerning the use of resources. In doing so, she identifies some of the issues to be considered in the design, assessment, and monitoring of environmental development programmes if they are to benefit women as well as men. In practice, as Linda Hitchcox demonstrates, the opportunity to undertake detailed participative assessment at the design stage of a project, and throughout implementation, may be more limited. In a site-study conducted after the event, she describes the way in which a large-scale water project in Vietnam affected the lives of women and men, in the context of a policy which has shifted emphasis away from the production collective to the household, and has sharply reduced the State-funded facilities that used to benefit women particularly.
In response to items which appeared in the most recent issue of Development in Practice (Volume 1, Number 3), Stephen Thomas returns to the question of NGO collaboration in Mozambique with government emergency and development programmes; and Ben Watkins presents a methodology for evaluating food-aid projects from the perspective of the recipient country.
We always welcome feedback from readers on any of the items in current or previous issues, as well as general comments on Development in Practice itself.
Deborah Eade
Oxfam (United Kingdom and Ireland)
January 1992
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