Sustainable Development; the dilemma of the developing countries.
(Posted on the ArabInfo Mall of Bibliotheca Alexandrina on 23/02/06)

Sustainable Development; the dilemma of the developing countries. Hundreds and hundreds of argues and discussions took place in hundreds of conferences, seminars, workshops, enormous local, regional and international gatherings and the change is still limited. Critics say not much has changed, we saw world leaders and international figures giving high quality speeches from their esteemed perches to make poverty a history, to achieve the target of saving about 12,000 people a day is also a massive step in the right direction and the challenge in 2006 is to do the same for other 37,000 people who today, and every day, will die, needlessly, from entirely preventable causes and the majority of these numbers are in Africa.

Lets have a quick glance to the following snap shots from the other side were the white collars guys sitting in their wealthy perches and what they are saying;
“At the end of May 2005, Europe agreed to double its aid by 2010 – with 15 countries promising that by 2015 they would give 0.7 per cent of their national income in aid. Then in June the G7 finance ministers agreed to cancel 100 per cent of the debts owed to multilateral bodies like the IMF; 18 countries would benefit initially, rising to 38 countries later.”
“The summit at Gleneagles set the seal on all that, and promised to implement 50 of the Africa Commission’s 90 recommendations. It doubled annual levels of aid. It endorsed the debt deal to write off the debts owed to the IMF, World Bank, and African Development Bank to those 56 poorest countries. It conceded, for the first time, that rich nations must not use aid, debt or trade deals to force African economies to liberalise. And it called for a timetable to end rich countries’ trade-distorting agricultural subsidies.”
“Kofi Annan and his economic adviser Professor Jeffrey Sachs, hailed a major breakthrough. But many aid agencies were surprisingly churlish, complaining that the debt deal was insufficient or that the aid was double-counted, though the bald fact is that the amount paid out in 2010 will be double what it was in 2004. One lobby group, locked in confrontational mode, went so far as to call the Gleneagles deal “a disaster for the world’s poor”.”
“September 2005 brought the UN Summit. It was supposed to focus on the world’s progress towards the Millennium Development Goals to halve world poverty by 2015. But it got diverted into debates about UN reform, in which the US seemed most concerned about settling old scores over the UN’s lack of enthusiasm for its war in Iraq. The summit did some good things. It reversed the old convention that one state could not intervene in the affairs of another – genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity are all now legitimate grounds for intervention. It also set up a new Peace building Commission to do more on conflict-prevention and to make post-conflict aid work more effective. It established a more effective Human Rights Council, with double the old budget. It set up a $150 million standing fund to respond to crises like Niger. And 66 countries committed themselves to international levies – including environmentally-friendly taxes on air travel – to boost aid flows.”
But on the big issue of reviving the world’s flagging progress towards the Millennium Development Goals it was a huge disappointment.
“Trade was the disappointment of 2005. The Doha round of world trade talks was supposed to be designed to be a ‘development’ round. But the final deal did not live up to the fine words on trade from the G8 leaders at Gleneagles. A date of 2013 was fixed for an end to agricultural export subsidies. Some flexibility was given to poor nations to protect their small farmers from outside competition. There was some progress on preventing the abuse of food aid as a disguised form of dumping, and a few nominal concessions on cotton. But the idea of more aid to help Africa develop its capacity to trade has not been backed with much money. And on the key issue of other trade-distorting subsidies – 95 per cent of the total – the meeting ran away from making a decision.”
More than two thirds of the world’s population is in the south of our world; but where are their voices; where are they in the glorious international gatherings; where are the voices of the coming generations whom will face all of these?

I think the solution is not going to happen by raising the aids, not from the wealthy parts of our world; the solution is by our hands and we the ones whom should take the initiative and not just to wait and respond; the nations of the third world must wake up and make their initiative and I see from my point of view the efforts towards sustainable development will not achieve its historical goals before all the leaders, the ruling regimes and the nations in the third world countries believe and implement the following:

1- The loyal and honest believe in the “ownership concept” towards their countries.
2- Transparency at all levels.
3- Freedom of expression.
4- Opening the space to the younger generations and supporting them.
5- Work tirelessly towards the excellence of implementing qualified education systems.
6- Gender equality.
7- Working tirelessly to prevent leadership and civil conflicts.
8- Democratic systems.

And for the big guys with white collars sitting their on the wealthy perches if you really want support efforts towards sustainable development why don’t you work tirelessly to wards;

1- Fair trade.
2- Release debts away from the developing countries.
3- Gathering the international efforts to prevent civil conflicts.
4- Support developing countries to improve their health and education systems.
5- Free labour transfer.
6- Free access to knowledge and information.
7- Standing against the black markets of weapons.

At the end of my long comment I would like to say the words of Henry Miller he mentioned in the Books of My Life.

“In this age, which believes that there is a short cut to everything, the greatest lesson to be learned is that the most difficult way is, in the long run, the easiest."


Abdallah Sobeih
Alexandria - Egypt