From: dean@vexcel.com (Dean Alaska)
Subject: Re: Let's have another look at it . . .
Organization: VEXCEL Corporation, Boulder CO
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 19:29:47 GMT

In article <727514033snx@tillage.DIALix.oz.au> gil@tillage.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick) writes:
>
>In article <1993Jan19.163304.18582@vexcel.com> dean@vexcel.com writes:
>
> > There are a couple of problems.  While the farmers affected by the GR
> > did not ask for it, their leaders and elites did in many cases.  How
> > is the process to be changed when such people request this kind of
> > aid, whether or not they are propped up puppets?  A
> > related problem is that the US lifestyle is now seen as so glamorous
> > in many areas that they are asking for it, though they may not know
> > what they are actually asking for.  How do you suggest that these
> > problems be dealt with?
>
>I think you had previously answered this question yourself, in your
>post on the World Bank as it affected Morocco. The funds are clearly
>channeled to selected social groups who meet the lending criteria, and
>it is they who get the nod *from overseas* to proceed. The propping up
>of "puppets" is surely, albiet in good faith, to protect investments.
>
>The problem now is that people who have been dislocated from their own
>traditions and made redundant by technology, have nothing else to do
>than sit around watching TV (if they are not chopping down forests
>trying to make a go of it). To them, especially when they are also
>denied an education much less material prospects, anyone parading
>their wealth as Americans do so ostentatiously might well be seen as
>glamorous.
>
>Of course you get the occasional young buck, driving around in a
>clapped out cadillac, wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses as there
>are here in Australia as well. But the hub of the community, with its
>time taken up raising children, building schools, getting health care
>and sanitation facilities installed, are *very much* focussed on the
>local scene and simply do not have the energy left to be worrying
>about Uncle Sam.

Some places, they are occasional, and sometimes they are more common.
In any case, we have described the dynamics, but how to deal with them
is still the problem.  If local people are doing what you describe in
your last paragraph, then it seems they still have an opportunity to
choose what direction they wish to go.  In some cases, that is not so.
In the case of Ladakh thet I previously have mentioned, diversion of
scarce water to industry in an arid climate has removed the opportunity
to preserve local agriculture.  Some of the communities have withered
though others farther from the roads persist. But the roads do continue
to get built.
>
>There are other related matters concerning risk assessment, and the
>development of other types of employment which is where I depart from
>Jacobs' analysis. Horticulture, and Agricultural and Environmental
>Science, as well as the Arts and other cultural activities are being
>developed here in Australia, not necessarily to provide people with no
>hope of employment with skills appropriate to industrially "productive"
>work, but to channel their energy into helping to restore our natural
>ecosystem and build a better quality of life anyway.
>
>There is all that farmland out on our wheatbelt cleared barely thirty
>years ago and now being abandoned as marginal, which needs trees to
>be planted on, landscaped and restored, and turned where suitable to a
>high quality mixed "subsistence" economy. That has already begun here,
>not by government planning but by local people giving away residential
>land in their towns, and young energetic families with a reasonable
>level of savings seeing an opportunity and taking up the offer.
>
>That is how the Ord River Scheme was returned to being a successful
>and profitable area, long after the governments who had lost so much
>money developing it had abandoned it as one of the most embarrassing
>white elephants in Australia's history. You see, intelligent people
>who roll their sleeves up and get on with the job turn it around,
>provided they are recognised and encouraged *without* government
>funding from the tax base, or foreign loans.

Reminds me of a program in the US in which power was provided to a 
Navajo reservation via solar panels.  The locals were trained to
install and maintain the equipment.  Local benefit and local
employment that fit in with their desired lifestyle.

In some cases, good programs like these are in a race with World
Bank or government programs that effectively remove such opportunities.

I think we are in agreement of the value of these types of programs
but they seem to be the exception when compared with the other 
programs we have described.  As such it is one side of the coin.
The other side is to try and stop the harmful plans from
continuing to do their damage.
>
>I wonder whether McGowen has considered the idea of economic growth
>built around environmental and cultural heritage rehabilitation yet
>as a necessary plank in his political platform, while I think of it?
>
>Might be an idea to step on it.
>
>Gil


-- 
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	Dean Myerson     (aka dingo in boulder)     dean@vexcel.com
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