Is development a solution for the future?

Introduction

The concept of downshifting or simple living, is a way of life based on the idea that you can live better  by working less, earning less, consumming less and having more time for social relation and manual activities.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_living

Applied to a large scale, this concept can have a strong influence on the economy. It's directly in conflict with the idea of economic growth , because if people consume less, there's less industrial production and so the GNP is decreasing, It creates an economic degrowth.

(still, the word "degrowth" doesn't seem to be spread on the internet, I found it only in translation of french articles)

Degrowth in developed countries

I really think  it's unevitable , just because of the lack of energy.

Can a downshifting in the advanced countries  have a positive influence on developping countries?

"what is the relationship between our wealth and our ability to live as we would like?"  Amartya Sen

This question is really complex and need to consider a lot of points of views and situations which cannot be applied generally. Thereby, I'll try to divide this subject as much as I can so as to be the most possibly precise. Recently, we've seen the big troubles for development that a small NGO as the "Arche de Zoé" can caused, and this is to advertise people about "how we could consider development?" that this article has been written.

First of all, there's different ways of humanitarian;

.We've the "free food" for the poorest (cf "Who does US food Aid benefit?"). It is represented by a lot of direct help, and doesn't have any futur. You assist people until that international media leave the area, and you create a dependence much more dangerous than a drought or a starvation. Is it really the best way to help people touched by civil war or genocide? Certainly for the short-term, but I let you to form your own jugement about it...

.Next, there's the volonteer humanitarian. This last one must to ask you the questions: "Why are YOU doing it? Is the population concerned at the center of the target of your actions? What is your interest to do it?" It is probably as destructor than the first one.

.The third point is a little bit more complicated; it deals with the "professional development". This contains people who has already working or learning about development (at school, in their professional life, or during their retirement). Even if it could look strange to speak of theory whereas the best way to learn about development is through experiences, to my mind, it is essental to have bases to be as responsable as you can, according to your knoledge. Some people are only taking care to the ecologic problems, some others consider that economy is the major point to develop so as to improve the standart of living from the poorest. Both of them are probably in the right way according to their mind, but we're living in a period where economy and ecology have to find some compromises to attend what we call "a sustainable development". Those people are probably the more efficient to help the population concerned, but if you don't mind of statistics, and you try to understand the limits and the real motivation of their actions, you have to ask you the question: why those people are they doing it? Did they ask the necessity to their action to the poorests, or is it just a question of well consiousness? How could they pretend helping people whereas they don't weight the bad and the good engendered by their actions ? Is it for free or are you making money on their back? Is it only to combine work and holidays or are you really selfless?

Those 3 kind of humanitarian bring together the whole of the ways to practice what we call "international solidarity". This "vocation" is coming from somewhere. And, according to my small experience of travelling, the main interest of those people is "the travel". Yes they can help efficiencely, yes they can be uninterested and honests, but it doesn't matter the reason why they're where they are: one point is common to all of them; their taste for travelling. That's not too bad because travelling is a way to open your mind and your vision about what happen into the world. Everybody need to open his eyes and have the real experience instead of reading news papers and watching TV. But currently and thanks to the phenomen of globalisation, a new religion is born: the tourism. This last one regroup a lot of practicing, and start to touch the whole of the Earth. That's probably a good thing for what I said before: it helps people to open their eyes, but one more time, it exists differents way of tourism. You've "all inclusives" holidays, backpacking, hitch hacking, camping, responsable tourism, family tourism, eco-tourism... Everybody find his own way to praise the new god of the vacations. Today, it's less expensive to take a menu "all inclusive" in a poor country at the opposite side of the world than spending the whole of your vacations in your "rich and expensive country". That's a fact: the globalisation has reduced the Earth to the size of a village where some people can't move outside of their houses whereas others profit of it. One more principal reason of this new wave is this research of "exotism and adventure". People buy their rate of sensation to the glob trotters so as to feel them alive. Few people admit that they was tourists at the return of their trip. And, if some can do it without problem of conscience, others can't do it and have invented a new reason: humanitarian.

I don't want to split on people who are doing their best to help populations from Darfour or anywhere else in the world, but in the absolute, who is the major responsable of their pain? Isn't it economic? Corruption caused by power? The individualism injected in their society?

In term of development, we

Anywhere,  tourism isn't the subject of this article even if its relation with humanitarian isn't compatible. If you do some work and that you are not really engaged,         

A world's population decline

Since the begining of our violent adventure of taking on all the world , the human population only increased. Very slowly at first, with the slow improving of agricultural technics, and very quickly since 1850. The human population on earth decreased only two time during history, during the middle age area. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_demography

Since then , the population only increased.
The question is will this situation long? The thing is the actual population increase is possible because we have nearly unlimited energy ressources provided by fossils fuels. By creating fertilizer, we input artificial energy in the natural cycles of plants, especially with Ammonium nitrate. When the amount of fossil fuel available will begin to decrease , in 5 or 10 years, if we've not found an other form of energy to provide to agriculture, the output  will begin to decrease, and so will do the world population at longer term. In fact the world available energy per capita is already decreasing since 1979, because the world population is increasing faster than our energy production.

The Club of Rome had forecast the begining of the population decrease for 2020. It will probably not arrive so quickly , but it will, one day or an other...

Lot of people (in our so called developed world)  are convinced technology will save  humanity. People are convinced the scientists will always found new energies to develop to save us from the "energy crisis". And then mankind will go on another planet when we will have eaten all of this one. maybe. That's what I'll call the optimistics. The only thing is that this people here are not well informed and doesn't know what the "Energy balance" is. It's the basis of thermodynamics. The water engine doesn't creates energy , it's just a way of transporting it. There 's not so much way of producing energy. Here's a list of all the sources of energy we know about

• Nuclear fusion ( the sun, the H bombs, and some test machines called tokamak or z-pinch . The process of "cold fusion" seems to be a joke..) We know how to use it on a destructiv way, but we're still not able to control this reaction to produce energy. If it works it will be  non polluting because it creates only helium , which is fine.
• Nuclear fission, like in nuclear power plants  and lod nuclears bombs like Little boy and Fat man..
• The wind ,the tides, the stream of rivers. They provided energy for us since long with mills. It's old but it still work but it doesn't give much energy. ( calculer 1L de fioul pour 1h de moulin tien..) Now new wind machines are coming , but you don't fly  a plane  with a wind machine aren't you? We've helped mother nature some times by building dams, we've destroyed fertile valleys but it was to provide electricity you know...
• The blood mill , animals and humans , which were massively used during the antiquity period. Nobody   want to go back to that.
• All the energies coming from the captation of the sun light: all the plants , all the animals eating them , so all the so called biofuels like the bresilian E85 and bio diesel from soy or palm trees. All  the solar panels, with improving output, it will be great . I'd love flying a zeppelin covered with solar panels. Not fast but really great like in the 30's and in crimson skyes!! In  Africa (not in Cape town nor in Khartoum maybe , but everywhere else) people use wood for the fire and plants to eat. That's all! They don't have access to  massive energy sources like us.
• What's heating you up? (and eating you down) ? Where you're light coming from? What gives you electricity if you're in China?  With what did you heat your meal last night? With oil , gaz and coal.Even your food can't grow without oil. You're in trouble

I personally think the production peak of oil and gaz and of other natural ressources will also be a peak in the number of human beings and in what we call now development. Without energy it's very difficult to develop. (cf the olduvai theory  http://generationsfutures.chez-alice.fr/petrole/olduvai.htm )

Conclusion
The energy crisis will be the main issue of the 30 next years. Getting rid of our addiction to fossile fuels will probably pass by a difficult process including war and humanitarian disasters. During this period the rich countries will have enough problem to solve on their territories and so wil abandon poor countries to their problems. The thing is :the  more a country is industrially developped the more it will be dificult for it to get rid of the addiction to fossile fuel. The only exception is Sweden , which is already doing as much as possible to get rid of oil and gaz in their economy. At this point it will be an advantage not to be developped.

What we're trying to do here (following one of our teacher's advice), is to keep in mind and try to explain that nothing is as simple as the mainstream media shows it. All political, social and economical problems are a combination of a huge amount of facts, and to underestand the global process you must combine your knowledge on all of the differents aspect of the problem.

Clearly the advise are : always search to know deeper to get closer to the truth. You will never be aware of the real total truth, but you can get close to it. Always push the analysis.

This ideas have been explained by the french author Edgar Morin, in his theory of "complex thinking"

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Morin

As one of our teacher said : polution is a good indicator of development. Meaning that polution is part of the "industrial globalization process" so  it's a good thing. In the same way we usually use GNP as a development indicator. In fact GNP increases at first when the quality of life is increasing, but it still increases when their's more roadcrash and more deseases because this creates economical activities. So  GNP can increase while human suffering is increasing.

Human development indicator has been created to compensate this lack of information. It takes into account the education level and life expectancy, so it gives a better idea of what the living conditions are in a country.

The rising of the biofuel industry and the increase of demand for diversified food in China is creating a global increase of food prices all over the world. The first victims of this increase are poor people, for which food is the main expense. An other problem is that ferilizer are mainly made out of oil, so the increase on oil price will continue to boost the increase of food price.

There's also a problem with the developed countries eating to much meat which has a bad energy output. ( you need more land and water to feed a cow than to grow crops.)

But this increase on food price can also have a positive effect because it will bring more monney to the farmers in the rural areas, which are considered as the poorest area in most countries. In Europe, food will recover it's real value that it had in our grandparents time.

The increase on food prices is already lowering the purchasing power in many countries in Africa. (cf: courier international n°888 "trés cher nourriture"). So, because of us consuming too much and having the monney to pay for it, the price of food on the world market is increasing and poor people can't afford it any more.

Consequences on development

A decline in world food production, while population is still increasing, would create a famine, especially in poor countries. To prevent this from happen, each country should prepare to be able to produce enough food for his people. French agronome René Dumont was already alarmist on this question in the 1980's, he had a long term view compared to the rest of the world politics and economists. Globalisation, providing nearly everything everywhere, doesn't prepare poor countries to this issue. It  just drags them into dependance to foreign supply and prevent local peasant production.

Sending free food to Africa, even if it really saves peoples, mainly contribut to disrupt the local market and prevent the local production from being sold (because food is coming for free, nobody's going to pay for it). So the farmers stop planting in their fields, and the year after the hunger situation is even worst, and needed more food aid.It's a vicious cycle where food aid is increasing global hunger instead of decreasing it. For exemple "last august, in a move that shocked observers, CARE, one of the world's largest humanitarian organizations, rejected $45 milion in US food aid, shining a spotlight on a practice the group says may hurt starving populations more than helping them." (quote from the newspaper "In these time" chicago, published in France by Courrier international 08/11/07),

In these article , the author explain that US food aid is more usefull for the US agri business and the shipping industry than for the poor people.

http://www.care.org/

(http://www.thehungersite.com : is this kind of action really improving the situation?)

We've just started writing on this blog , so it's just a draft and all the articles will be completed as time passes on...

In Europe and the USA, the mainstream trend is to consider that the Third world's problems come from a lack of development.

So in a nutshell, we created International development , which means bringing economic Growth to the Third world to solve their problems.

For us it means, sending free food to Africa, doing student project like "we build a school in Mali", building factories in Peru...

Those kinds of actions are considered as useful and necessary by our population and our governement. But in fact there are real deep misfunctions in the way international development has been made, even if it comes from generous thoughts.

• Our main goal is to study and to gather together all the critics that can be made on the way international development is leaded, and the effects it has produced since the fifties.

• Our secondary goal is to analyse if a better way to help the third world is concievable; instead of going there and trying to change their way of living. Wouldn't it be more simple to reduce our standart of living, to change the way of life of European and American citizens? ( what we call voluntary simplicity , or "Décroissance" in french , which doesn't have any translation in English.)

Some articles will be very serious and other will be half jocking. We bet you can make the difference between them!

On tuesday 14.11.07 we went to a conference\debate presented by Serge Latouche, an economy teacher. He was presenting the concepts of voluntary simplicity and the problems of development and growth. It was interesting, we filmed it and will probably put some part of the video on the blog some day.

http://www.ville-bessancourt.fr/content/heading12031/content46282.html