Invasion of the tuk tuks; soft handshakes; barred by the eco-KKK; shoe-tossing and an unlikely place for a charter city: final impressions of Central America

Things that have changed since I roamed Central America as a ‘Sandalista’ in the 1980s:

- Even though the civil wars are long gone, the homicide rates are some of the highest in the world, razor wire is everywhere, and the security brief for Oxfam staff makes it sound like a war zone.

- Cellphones, obviously. A new ritual at the end of meetings with committees of campesino leaders. Everyone gets out their cellphone and starts exchanging numbers with the visitors.

- The global tuk tuk (see pic) – they apparently arrived from India about ten years ago, and have become an essential part of public transport. Viva frugal technology. Has anyone seen any analysis of the global spread of India’s tuk tuk multinationals, Reliance Industries and Bajaj?

Other things haven’t changed, like the fine gradation of handshakes – gnarled, soft peasant hands become firmer among peasant leaders and strong grasps among NGO activists. Or the enormous importance applied to calendar dates – for invasions, laws, the signing of documents, and more soberly, for attacks and assassinations

Then there’s the weird stuff. Being stopped in my tracks by a truly disturbing picket line (see pic) of students that looked like members of some green wing of the KKK. Apparently it is a pre-Easter tradition at Guatemala’s San Carlos University for the kids to dress up like this and stop academics entering the building – after posing for photos, they were happy to make an exception for my seminar, though (some random thoughts on rural change in Latin America and beyond – powerpoint here for Spanish speakers).

And why are Honduran telegraph wires liberally hung with pairs of dilapidated shoes? When I ask if it shows that drugs are on sale, (a story I vaguely remember from somewhere) the local guys laugh and say, no it’s just a fun way to get rid of your old trainers. Really must try it sometime. Needless to say Wikipedia has a whole page on theories of shoe-tossing.

Finally, the sudden realization that I was in Trujillo, a sleepy cobble-stoned town on the Honduran coast that recently hit the global headlines because the government wants to locate the world’s first charter city there. No-one I ask knows much about it, but rumours swirl – that 30 square km has been allocated in the middle of the Garifuna people’s traditional lands; that a local landowner has bought up all the land and stands to make a killing. The charter city has already been declared unconstitutional by one court and is destined for the supreme court. Should it go ahead, it will be in the middle of a drug trafficking zone. Good luck to Nancy Birdsall and her colleagues on the city’s ‘transparency commission’ in keeping a check on all this.  Trujillo is home to the old colonial fort at Santa Barbara, where the US ‘filibustero’ William Walker (infamous in Central America, pretty much forgotten elsewhere apart from one not very good film - see right) was shot by firing squad and buried. Hope the same fate doesn’t await the godfather of the charter cities, economist Paul Romer……

Guatemala v Honduras: comparing prospects for change

[This post is published in Spanish on the 3500 milliones blog]

From Honduras, I went to Guatemala for a couple of days. Didn’t have time to get out into the countryside, which is a real shame since rural Guate has to be one of the most amazing places to visit in Latin America. But a series of conversations with NGOs and academics raised some really interesting contrasts with Honduras. Apologies for these gross generalizations based on such a short visit – feel free to put me straight:

What’s more positive in Guatemala? Compared to Honduras, the legal and institutional panorama feels much more promising – the Peace Accords of 1996 that brought an end to Guatemala’s bloody civil war have left a legacy of institutions such as local ‘development committees’ bringing together civil society and local government, with some access to (or at least influence over) spending decisions. Previous governments have passed a Food Security law, and approved a policy (falling short of a law) on ‘integrated rural development’ (IRD, but nothing like the discredited IRD approaches of the 1980s) that has been endorsed by the new president, Otto Perez Molina, despite his position on the right and as a former general. Some activists reckon these laws and ‘invited spaces’ just suck the energy out of social movements and their allies without actually delivering anything, but most people think they exert some traction on government policy and spending priorities, as well as influencing public attitudes on issues such as indigenous rights (Guatemala’s population is majority indigenous, but anti-indigenous prejudice is rife among the white and mestizo elites).

There were interesting divergences in analyses of the new government, with some (including big aid donors, apparently) seeing it as a step forward because, for all its right wing views, it brings a military discipline and a willingness to face down Guatemala’s overweening private sector – a fiscal reform passed in the government’s first two months, closing down some tax loopholes, seems to bear that out. Guatemala might just be on the way to acquiring an effective state of sorts, although once the honeymoon wears off, my bet would be on it returning to incompetent/corrupt business as usual (the finance minister resigned while I was there after opposition attacks on the fiscal reform).

The legacy of the Peace Accords is linked to a second point – there seems to be lots of appetite for engagement at municipal level, from both state and social movements, whereas in Honduras, the peasant movement seems to feel that only the national state is worth engaging with. Currently, one area of real energy is a semi-spontaneous series of ‘popular consultations’ at local level on mining and big hydro projects involving hundreds of thousands of people across the social spectrum in rural areas (not just campesinos), and an overwhelming vote against the big projects. The protest votes are often supported by local mayors. The process is not legally binding, but it is galvanizing opposition in the countryside.

The subnational focus has also softened the polarizing rhetoric on expropriating/redistributing land by adopting a ‘territorial’ focus in the discussions on IRD that includes water, indigenous rights, ecosystem services and talks in general terms of the ‘democratization of land’. This reportedly makes it much easier to talk to different groups than the over-riding emphasis on land redistribution that dominates (and polarizes) debates in Honduras.

What was similar between the two countries? The rural-urban divide seemed just as great, with peasant movements showing little interest in finding allies in the cities, and a lot of urban prejudice against the peasants. There are few signs of the peasant movement and its NGO allies adapting its language or tactics to build bridges with the cities (about half of the population and rising), e.g. by focusing on urban food prices as well as farmgate prices for small producers.

What’s worse in Guatemala is the additional component of racism, although interestingly, ILO Convention 169 (on indigenous rights) seems to have had some influence in terms of attitudes and policies, as well as promoting indigenous assemblies that have become an important source of social organization. The Convention was drafted by an old Guatemala hand, Roger Plant, so he should be happy (but probably isn’t – meeting a happy human rights activist is about as likely as a farmer telling you they’ve had a good year………)

Is blood and sacrifice enough? The Honduran peasant movement’s model of change

[This post is published in Spanish on the 3500 milliones blog]

I spent three days last week trying to understand the peasant (campesino) movement in Honduras. It was the perfect field trip in many ways, split between a flying visit to the Bajo Aguan region up on the lush Northern coast, site of the most intense land struggles in recent years, and a series of back-to-back debates with NGOs, academics and movement leaders back in the capital, Tegucigalpa.

The ‘asentamientos’ of peasant squatters were extraordinary. Some were rebuilding among the wreckage of their former homes,

credit: Esteban Melendez

destroyed by landlords’ bulldozers a few months ago. Elsewhere hundreds of families were living under blue plastic sheets (right) in the middle of a huge African Palm plantation (the biofuels boom has come to the Bajo Aguan, bigtime). Another felt like some kind of social movement utopia – 600 highly organized families, with land all neatly parcelled out, plots set aside for schools, health posts and churches (evangelical and catholic), poultry and fish projects and plans for much more. It reminded me of Brazil’s MST even down to the red banner welcoming visitors (see below).

What emerged in a series of conversations held under trees or on rough wooden benches under tin-roofed shelters was an all-too familiar picture of Latin American land struggles. A cycle of invasion, eviction, targeted repression of leaders, interminable lawsuits and negotiations with untrustworthy government officials. But in the Bajo Aguan it’s got particularly nasty in the last few years – dozens of assassinations or deaths during evictions, a lot of blood spilt, all turning the region into a cause celebre in Honduras and beyond. Unlike most of Latin America, Honduras retains a majority rural population, with some two million small farmers, so what happens in the Bajo Aguan really matters.

The focus of my questions was the change strategies of the peasant movement and its supporters, and I have to say I found it pretty depressing. The campesinos seem resigned to isolation and betrayal, abandoned by the state, unable to get credit or technical assistance, and subject to the attacks of their opponents. ‘There’s no law, we are abandoned’ said one, and yet they cling to legal process as one of their few strategies, despite repeated evidence of the corruption and incompetence of the courts. The heavy presence of drug traffickers in the region adds to the problems by further undermining the rule of law – peasant leaders say the going rate for an assassination is about $1,000.

I asked about the alliances they had built up or were planning, and again, the tone was pessimistic. ‘We are alone. The landlords, military and police are all together and the state does nothing.’ The peasant leaders saw little chance of building alliances at local level with, say, municipal officials, or the Churches. Their preferred allies are NGOs and international bodies. And the movement itself is horribly fractured, with a long history of splits and leaders being bought off by the government or big landlords.

Their change strategy is built on sacrifice: ‘We’re not here [on the land] because they want us to be, but because of the blood that’s been spilt.’ Some hope that the deposed former president Manuel Zelaya will do well with his new Libre party in the 2013 elections, and that the ‘correlation of forces’ will shift in the peasants’ favour.

It’s easy for me to say, but this all seems too defeatist. There must be fractions of social and political elites more open to alliances, even short-term tactical ones. Churches, both catholic and evangelical (I met some very active evangelical pastors among the activists in Bajo Aguan), industrialists standing to benefit from a less impoverished domestic market, those worried about Honduras’ extraordinary levels of social violence (it is one of the murder capitals of the world).

'Welcome brothers to land liberated by the Unified Peasants' Movement'

But to connect with these groups would require deep changes to both tactics and language. Reaching out to other sectors means offering a vision of a better Honduras, going beyond the grim litany of ‘denuncias’ of human rights violations (horrendous though they undoubtedly are) and ‘demandas’ for a long shopping list of state interventions.

We talked to one middle class restaurateur in Tegucigalpa who has set up a ‘Restaurants Against Hunger’ movement and wants to start ‘Honduras deliciosa’, a campaign to ‘buy Honduran’, with lots of attention to issues of malnutrition and poverty. She’s no leftie, and the peasant movement would struggle to work with her, but surely it is possible to find some common ground? Naive? A coffee growers’ leader recalled that it was this shift to a positive frame that enabled the coffee growers to win serious concessions about 10 years ago, as part of a Honduran Make Trade Fair campaign. He also pointed out that it is far easier to get buy in from political leaders on a range of support to small farmers – credit, help with marketing, technical assistance etc – than to persuade them to sign up for land redistribution, and yet land is the dominant issue raised by the peasant movement.

Any thoughts of alliance building have been complicated by Honduras’ 2009 coup and the subsequent ‘resistencia’ in favour of deposed president Zelaya. Campesino activists, convinced Zelaya was their last best hope, arrived in Tegucigalpa and led the resistance that ultimately allowed Zelaya to return to Honduran politics (though not yet to the presidency). That earned them wider recognition, but the coup polarized politics still further, triggering yet more splits in the peasant movement and among some of them, a refusal to talk to anyone seen as a ‘golpista’ (which seems to include almost anyone in a position of influence).

As for the model of change, all this made me think of Jonathan Fox’s work on ‘transitions to accountability’ in Mexico. Fox found that progress depended on a cycle of conflict and cooperation – a conflict would break out, and then a more progressive section of local state officials would talk to more approachable protest leaders and a period of reform would ensue. When those reforms ran out of steam, or new issues emerged, conflict would reemerge and the whole cycle would start again in a process of ‘interaction between the thickening of civil society and state reformist initiatives’ (see diagram, below). In Honduras, unless something extraordinary happens in the elections and their aftermath, it’s easy to see the conflict half of the cycle, but there are few signs of cooperation and resolution.

What can NGOs do in a political downturn? Ideas from Central America

I spent last week in Central America, where in the 1980s, I got my political education in South and particularly Central America, hopping as a journo and writer between revolutionary Sandinistas in Nicaragua and guerrilla fighters in El Salvador.  So this week’s posts will mainly be a download and reflection on that visit.

First, I took my ‘how change happens’ roadshow to Honduras, and a meeting of Oxfam’s Central America, Mexico and Caribbean (Camexca) team. Returning to the region after such a long gap, I was struck by the political sophistication on display – a deep feeling for ‘power analysis’, and instinctive grasp of the expansions and contractions of ‘political space’, and the cycles of conflict and cooperation that characterize so many processes of social change. I realized that a lot of what I’m doing on how change happens involves systematizing that ‘feeling for power’ for non-latinos.

But these days, those political talents are confronted with huge challenges in Camexca. Progressive actors face an extended political downturn, in which access to influencing is getting steadily harder:

- Drug trafficking and organized crime have contaminated the region, expanding into the vacuum left by corrupt and inept governments. Honduras, which used to be a safe (if dull) backwater, has become one of the murder capitals of the world – in several countries, the death toll is higher than during the civil wars of the 1980s.

- Tightly knit elites run the show, carving up the wealth and refusing to pay tax or contemplate redistribution.

- The liberation theologians of the 1980s have been largely eclipsed by a conservative backlash (Opus Dei and co), leading to a counterattack on sexual and reproductive rights. The rapidly expanding evangelical churches have so far failed to become significant political players.

And the progressive movement seems increasingly marginalised from power. As one veteran Oxfam worker lamented, ‘In the 80s, we built utopias here. Now they are being constructed elsewhere, so what should Oxfam be doing in Camexca?’ More generally, how should progressive NGOs respond to such a deep political downturn? I can see at least four options, and am genuinely uncertain over which offer the best path – probably depends on context.

1. Cut your losses, leave the region in search of new utopias and more promising opportunities elsewhere. But how do you square that with our commitment to partners and poor people or with the essentially long-term (and unpredictable) nature of most progressive change?

2. Since short term wins are unlikely, dig in for the long term by concentrating on shaping enduring attitudes and beliefs, e.g. working with new partners (youth movement, school curricula, churches, media – others involved in that area) and identifying where future movements for change are going to emerge from (urban slums, migrants and Diaspora, other?). But how do you fund this kind of thing?

3. Become more nimble in identifying and exploiting divisions and differences within elites, forming coalitions and alliances, finding common ground, and seizing windows of opportunity, however fleeting. The Oxfamistas felt we have a lot of experience in dealing with states in this nuanced way, both at national and local levels, but much less on the private sector and churches, which we still tend to see as homogeneous (and usually unsympathetic, at best).

4. Pursue a defensive strategy, trying to minimise the reversal of past gains on say, women’s rights or agrarian reform. Stay faithful to our traditional partners, helping them weather the downturn. It may even be easier to construct broad alliances to stop bad stuff happening than to push new demands. I can’t remember the reference, but the conversation reminded me of the psychology experiments that show that if you give volunteers a cup for a few days and then ask them to set a price for selling it to you, the average price they name works out about double that offered if you ask them how much they are prepared to pay for an identical cup that they have not previously ‘owned’, and the result is remarkably uniform across different countries. A bird in the hand really is worth two in the bush.

And to what extent do these options reflect the choices for progressive social movements in Europe in the current downturn, I wonder?

World Water Day in pics; tobacco as development issue; history of $1 a day; India acts on overpriced drugs; BAe in Tanzania; Zinisha: Links I liked

Lovely collection of readers photos on the Guardian site to commemorate world water day. Lots more on the day here and from Oxfam’s West Africa essential services guy here.

Another hitherto ‘northern’ issue that development agencies are going to have to start taking seriously – tobacco. ‘Tobacco use killed almost 6 million people last year and was the top cause of death in China, the world’s biggest cigarette market. Four of every five deaths were in low- and middle-income countries. Tobacco-related deaths almost tripled in the past decade amid a 17 percent jump in cigarette production and increased affordability of the cancer-causing products in low-income nations.’

The history of the $1 a day poverty line, and some of its critics concerns, c/o the BBC News magazine. [h/t Development Impact]

India joins the small band of countries prepared to issue compulsory licenses to reduce the costs of life-saving medicines, but the pressure from the EU and others is intense.

Sigh. Every silver lining has a cloud. Ben Taylor argues that BAe’s decision to pay up £29.5m to the Tanzanian government as part of a settlement with the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) that brought to an end the SFO’s investigation into a sale in 2002 of a $40m (£25m) military radar to the Tanzanian government will prevent corrupt pols being brought to justice and is bad aid in terms of its avowed educational purpose.

Anyone know anything about Zidisha (left)? The website seems to offer something like like Grameen Bank meets GiveDirectly and calls itself ‘The first peer-to-peer microlending service to offer direct interaction between lenders and borrowers across the international wealth divide’. According to our in-house finance guru Alan Doran ‘Two new features are competitive bidding on interest rates to lower costs, and direct internet contact between borrower and lenders. But look carefully – borrowers are experienced people with credit histories.’ Update: Reader Dave Algoso reviews their model here.

He can rap, he can dance, but should Jim Yong Kim be the next President of the World Bank?

I’m in Boston and should really be going off to teach a weekend course on How Change Happens at Brandeis University, but I can’t drag myself away from watching Jim Yong Kim on youtube. Kim, a Korean American health expert and currently president of the prestigious Dartmouth College, is Washington’s nomination for the next head of the World Bank, a choice presumably intended to wrongfoot critics of the US’ traditional stranglehold on the nomination (because a) he was born in South Korea and b) he knows a lot about development). The critics are unimpressed: Kevin Gallagher explains why Colombia’s José Antonio Ocampo is better qualified for the job and Lant Pritchett does the same for Nigeria’s Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. They’re both pretty convincing.

On the other hand, and talking of nifty footwork, I bet neither Ocampo or Okonjo-Iweala has performed Thriller on stage – watch this to two minutes in to see ‘the only Ivy League president who can dance’ (admittedly, not a very high bar….).  [h/t Global Dashboard]

He can also rap, or at least is willing to give it a go in public (three minutes in)

Not only that but he is not Larry Summers. The man clearly has a lot going for him.

OK, I really must go to work now (more to follow on the Brandeis seminar – really interesting group of students)

Campaigners can still learn from the Abolition of Slavery: guest post by Max Lawson

Max Lawson, Oxfam’s head of advocacy, reflects on what today’s campaigners on the Robin Hood Tax (or pretty much anything else) can learn from the anti-slavery movement

A global industry, dominated by the UK, providing a third of our GDP. An industry that purchases politicians, and is deeply rooted in the establishment. An industry, formerly revered, now facing public condemnation for impunity and excess.

The year- not 2012, but 1780. The industry, not banking but slavery. The campaign, not for a Robin Hood Tax, but to abolish the slave trade. An amazing story of the mother of all campaigns.

Like many developing countries today, Britain in the late 18th century was a country waking up. Huge structural and economic changes were upsetting the old order. For the first time, many ordinary people could read and write. Thanks to new printing and transport technology a rash of new newspapers took just 3 days to reach Glasgow from London. News of parliament, politics and the wider world were accessible for the first time. Revolutions in France and America were seeing the birth of human rights. The anti-slavery campaign was at the heart of these changes, a product of this ferment, but also purposefully using these changes to advance its cause. Started by a small group of Quakers (as indeed was Oxfam) in a room above a printing shop in the heart of the City of London, the campaign at its peak submitted 519 petitions from around the country signed by 400,000 people. In cities like Manchester an incredible one in three people signed the petition- ordinary people, often with very tough lives themselves, taking a stand.

The abolitionists seem to have invented every modern campaign technique. There were no photographs of the horrors of slavery, so they printed hundreds of copies of the now infamous diagram (below) of the slave ship and its human cargo and distributed them in public places all over Britain. They had Josiah Wedgewood design a broach with the immortal phrase, ‘Am I not a Man and a Brother?’, which no fashionable lady could be seen without. 

The campaign crossed classes, from aristocrats to mill workers. They started the first boycott, even before Ireland and Captain Charles Boycott had given us the word. Half a million people gave up sugar in their tea, so as not to partake of ‘that blood-sweetened beverage’. The demand for ‘fair trade’ sugar from India rapidly increased. They had an insider strategy, with Wilberforce their champion in Parliament, complemented by an outsider strategy of unprecedented public outcry.  They were attacked by well-resourced lobbyists who predicted the instant destruction of the British economy with a zeal the British Bankers’ Association would envy.  

The cast of characters is riveting. Olaudah Equiano, the freed slave, whose book about his experiences was read by tens of thousands as he toured the country.  He was kidnapped and returned to slavery, only to escape. Thomas Clarkson, the leader of the campaign, who travelled tens of thousands of miles on horseback for 50 years collecting evidence of the trade and encouraging support. In cities like Bristol that were dominated by slave money he was almost killed on more than one occasion. Elizabeth Heyrick, whose call for ‘immediate, not gradual abolition’ brought renewed fire and radicalism to the campaign in the final years.  

They suffered many setbacks and reversals. The task they faced was huge. Slavery and the money made from it underpinned huge parts of the UK economy. Even the Church of England owned a number of slave estates.  Slavery was as normal as eating meat today. The government crackdown on radicalism and Jacobinism that followed the French Revolution and the patriotic fervour of the Napoleonic war set the campaign back ten years. From the first meeting of the committee to the abolition of the slave trade took twenty years. Full abolition took a further thirty.

At a time when only one in ten men could vote, actions like petitions and boycotts allowed ordinary people, particularly women, to show support for abolition.  Women were at the forefront of the campaign throughout, and were consistently more radical than the men.  The majority of the slaves in the field were women too, worked to death, and unable to have children due to the brutality of their treatment. This was genocide – of over 2 million slaves shipped to the West Indies, at the time of abolition only 670,000 remained.

But this story is not just about indefatigable and remorseless campaigners. It is mainly a story of extraordinary bravery by the slaves themselves who, faced by unimaginable cruelty, rose up against their oppressors.  To punish revolts, slaves were slowly burnt alive from the feet up, a practice not seen since the middle ages.  In the case of Haiti, the victorious rebellion led by Toussaint L’Ouverture (right) created a Vietnam –style war that bankrupted France and led to the deaths of 45,000 of the 89,000 strong British Army in the West Indies, dragged into the archetypal unwinnable war.  In many ways Haiti is still paying for that defiance. Haiti’s revolution more than anything hastened the end of slavery, as it hit at the economic heart of the sugar industry, which in size and influence was very similar to that of oil today.

The parallels with our main export, investment banking, tax avoidance and harmful financial alchemy are unavoidable.  But political leadership is far less in evidence today. Whereas David Cameron is prepared to break with the EU to defend the financial services industry, William Pitt took a more radical view in favour of abolishing the slave trade:

‘How Sir! Is this enormous evil ever to be eradicated, if every nation is thus prudentially to wait until the concurrence of all the world have been obtained?….There is no nation in Europe that has, on the one hand, plunged so deeply into this guilt as Great Britain, or that is so likely, on the other, to be looked up to as an example’.

Has that loss of vision, courage and radicalism also afflicted NGOs? When I first started at Oxfam ten years ago, I was privy to a tense debate between two of my bosses over campaign strategy.  Green about the ears I kept very quiet in the corner as they hammered it out. In the end one said to the other with disdain- ‘the trouble is, X, if this were the campaign against slavery you would have Oxfam campaigning for more comfortable boats’.

I think we have come a long way since then, not least in taking on the might of the financial sector in fighting for a Robin Hood Tax. But we must constantly ask ourselves whether we are living up to the radicalism and moral memory of those amazing abolitionists.

(This blog was inspired by rereading ‘Bury the Chains’ by Adam Hothschild, which should be essential reading for all those campaigning for social justice.  His book about the systematic pillage of the Congo by Belgium, ‘King Leopold’s Ghost’ is also brilliant.)

What should a European Voice on Development actually say?

Had a slightly frustrating session (but they’re often the most productive) at ODI recently on the next-but-one (2013) European Report on Development, which will be on the post-2015 debate, aka what comes after the MDGs (ODI’s doing lots on this).

My frustration sprang from the contrast between the avowed mission of the ERD – to open up a space for a European Voice on development, presumably to counterbalance overwhelming US dominance, and their plans for the report, which gave me little sense of distinctive European-ness, in terms of lessons from Europe’s own experience, whether historic or current, a different way of seeing the world, or the areas in which other parts of the world might see Europe as naturally credible - quality universal health and education maybe, sound economic management – not so much.

So here are a few thoughts for what a distinctive ERD might contain:

A European approach: how about focusing much more on the political economy of development, rather than an economic report which just berates leaders for not adopting all those ‘first best’ policies that economists love to recommend? For example, how about looking at post-2015 in terms of what kinds of reforms are most feasible in a downturn? Aid is highly likely to fall over the next decade or so, and the austerians are likely to remain dominant, so it seems pretty pointless to ask for more aid money. But economic shocks in the past have led to lots of other interesting reforms – re-regulation, new forms of revenue raising etc. Why not start there?

What’s going on in our neighbourhood? Europe is within a few miles of one of the most exciting development stories of recent years – the Arab Spring. What did it tell us about development? (e.g. if you have a rapidly improving university system, but no jobs for young people plus lots of corruption, watch out). Or about how the aid system reacts to sudden shocks and windows of opportunity? (by ignoring them, in general). Could we get away from the planner’s paradise of the MDGs and discuss complexity and emergent, unpredictable changes and how the international community and aid system respond?

Where does Europe have credibility? Asking a range of developing country thinkers would be the place to start, but my short list of possible would include welfare systems; conflict prevention through integration; getting (relatively) serious on climate change; food (UK excepted); much better cinema than Hollywood; Social democracy/welfare capitalism, social contract etc.

Then of course, a European Voice could concentrate on improving Europe’s own developmental impact, e.g. by reducing its greenhouse gas emissions, reforming financial markets, dropping counterproductive biofuels mandates, CAP reform, or stopping using trade negotiations to inhibit tech transfer. Don’t hold your breath on that one, but even if they did devote the ERD to it, would it really have much impact? (after all, look how little has been achieved by 30 years of research and criticism of the Common Agricultural Policy).

This all matters because I think the ERD’s underlying proposition is sound. Europe’s voice needs to be louder, but I see little evidence that the reports have found that voice yet. They began in 2009, and have covered fragility in Africa (2009), social protection (2010). Snappy title award goes to this year’s report, ‘”Effective natural resource management for inclusive and sustainable growth in the context of increased scarcity and climate change: what role for the public and private sector?”. My impression is that they are more ‘me too’ exercises than distinctive contributions, but feel free to set me straight – which ERDs have you heard of or used in your work?

What have we learned from trying to help poor farmers use markets better?

After some pretty rarified policy wonkery on agriculture and development last week, Erinch Sahan, an Oxfam private sector adviser, summarizes what we have learned from our work in the field  (for once, the right expression). And no, there doesn’t appear to be much obvious overlap with the topics covered in the earlier posts, but I think it’s there if you dig a bit.

Like most NGOs, Oxfam has lots of ‘livelihoods programmes’ that try and find ways to use markets to improve people’s incomes and economic security. Usually, this is around agriculture, as we see the huge potential in smallholder farming. Recently, we’ve been trying to capture the underlying philosophy behind this work. By ‘we’, I mean a bunch of livelihoods advisers, led by markets guru David Bright. I’m not sure there’s a definitive set of interventions that constitute an ‘Oxfam approach’ to ‘gendered market and enterprise development’ (sorry), but we have found that our philosophy doesn’t fit neatly with the standard models floating around in this field, such as value-chains, sustainable livelihoods and making markets work for the poor (M4P). This is because, at its heart, Oxfam programmes are sceptical about getting just any kind of economic growth. We’ve seen that this can leave the poorest behind and fail to address inequality between men and women. However, triggering the right economic opportunities for poor people is tricky and the approach can look very different in different contexts. So having said all of that, here’s where we’ve got to on an alternative:

1. Intervene to rebalance power in favour of poor producers, particularly women

Sounds good, but how can it be done?

a) Support producer organisations. Ok, there are probably as many bad examples of collectives, co-operatives and other producer organisations as good ones, with most excluding women, but let’s not throw out the baby with the bathwater here. Collective market action is a great way to get to the volume of production you need to interest buyers, and also means you have the power to get better deals on inputs and services. There is a plethora of research on this and we wrote a book that attempts to describe what good ones look like, as well as running a research project on women’s collective action.

b) Support specialised enterprises that help smallholders trade. We love smallholders here at Oxfam and think that businesses that try to help them are just as super. If we can create a business that goes and finds different market options for smallholders, we’ll support this business with financing, training, information, machinery or whatever is needed to make it viable. These businesses can also provide services to ensure women and other marginalised smallholders can access markets and help them get their product quality right. All this can really empower smallholders to choose the best deal, rather than take whatever is on offer. Sometimes money can be made by doing these things, but the enterprise must be focused on being an intermediary for smallholders. It’s even better when smallholders themselves own these enterprises.

c) Give direct support to allow the poorest to make a start. Especially to small businesses that are creating jobs and market opportunities for poor people. This can be a crèche so women are freed to participate in business or sometimes it’s providing finance, such as match funding for a harvesting or processing machine. Where possible, we want the business, business partners, markets or the local government to provide support for these things, but where these fail, we are willing to step in to get things going. However, the end goal is always to create a business that can stand on its own feet. The challenge is doing it sustainably, so the asset (e.g. easily repairable machinery) is used to generate a revenue stream, rather than being left to go rusty.

d) Change the rules of the game. That means helping poor people gain a voice with their governments or in how a company operates. It could mean setting up the right forum for them to talk or getting people to speak collectively, so the many small voices become one bigger voice. It could be about building coalitions with those who share their interests (including local businesses). It could be as simple as having somewhere to resolve contract disputes between a company and a farmer or working to ensure women can take higher value roles beyond the low or unpaid roles customarily considered ‘women’s work’. Here’s an example from Colombia.

e) Build on catalytic events. It’s as much about the when as the how. We do this by being opportunistic and jumping in when something big has happened to shake things up. That can be a new government that is changing the regulatory landscape, a major new investor who’s challenging existing monopolies or even a natural disaster that means much of the local economy is being rebuilt. These are situations where we can take the ‘market systems approach’ (see below) and look for ways to shift the balance of power in favour of small producers

f) Ask the question at every opportunity, how is this empowering women? The focus needs to be on women right from the very beginning (starting with research on the roles women play in the market and the home).

2. Look at the whole market-system

The points above are key to our livelihoods programmes, but how do you choose where or how to intervene? We do this by putting on a market-systems lens. We’re most like M4P in this respect and least like value-chains (which essentially focus on connecting producers to buyers). By market-systems I mean spending time to understand all the things that surround poor producers and their enterprises, including government, infrastructure, and hidden forces such as cultural beliefs and practices. It’s about identifying and ‘unlocking’ hidden problems that cause the whole market-system to fail for poor people. An example is providing finance for remote, rural and women-owned enterprises. We also try and work out who is going to ‘drive’ that new service or change the policy or grow the trade in the system when we withdraw. We often have to help out to pilot the new service or prove the benefit of changing the policy etc. 

3. Also intervene outside the market system

Poor people don’t only interact with the market system but also with their household system and the eco-system. Women in particular are heavily constrained by what happens in their homes as well as the market and everyone can be held back when nature stops cooperating (e.g. soils becoming infertile or rivers running out of water). Often, we intervene in all three systems. For instance, a programme may try to free women up from onerous chores at home (intervention in the household system, such as installing local water standpipes to avoid a 2 hour daily walk), while helping a new producer-owned business get off the ground (intervention in the market system, such as helping locals demand a new road), and also teaching new ways of conducting sustainable agriculture (intervention in the eco-system, such as knowing how to adapt to heavy but infrequent rain). We’ve found that intervening in one system alone while ignoring the others can be ineffective.

4. Intervening directly where facilitating is not an option

If we find a way to play a direct role to help poor people, we’re happy to play that role. This could mean giving cows to women with absolutely no other assets so they can get on the ‘first rung’ of the economy to produce, consume and sell small amounts of milk. But what we can do on our own is always going to be a drop in the ocean, so we search for ways to get those already in the system to play this role. This could be a local bank lending people money so they can buy their own cow, or a local company who’ll benefit from the improved productivity agreeing to provide farmers with training. However, too many of the people we want to help are too poor for those in the system to bother doing business with them. And where we can’t find a way to get markets to work for the poorest, we’re open to intervening directly. This may be as simple as paying for analysis to show how women producers are key to a business. This is probably where we disagree most with the M4P crowd (we agree strongly on the systems stuff).

These are just snippets of things we’ve noticed in the programmes we like best. Feel free to comment/add your own.

What to do about Syria? How about declaring its oil and arms contracts illegitimate? Neat idea from CGD

What to do about Syria? The inventive wonks at CGD think they have a neat answer:

“The main financial and legal centres of the world should declare that any contracts signed after today by a regime which has been designated illegitimate will be regarded as odious, and will not be enforceable in their jurisdictions.”

CGD’s proposal uses the location in US and UK of international financial centres and the courts that enforce international contracts, including for Syria’s oil and arms trade, to get round the UN sanctions bottleneck and raise costs for the Syrian regime. “It would stoke internal opposition, and reduce odious debts for a future Syrian government.”

Smart sanctions indeed. There’s also a two page briefing and CGD’s Kim Elliott explains all in a 4 minute video:

For those wondering how research institutions and think tanks can respond better to shocks, rather than just grind out their research plans and lists of recommendations, whether anyone in power is listening or not, CGD is not a bad place to start (but yes, it helps if you have core funding and so don’t have to spend your whole time chasing research grants, and CGD has that luxury).