NEW WORLD BANK MODEL FOR DEVELOPMENT MORE HOLISTIC. Dagens Nyheter (Sweden, pp.1, 11) notes that the World Bank has had to endure much criticism lately, notably on environment, debt an poverty issues-which is paradoxical given its current objective of halving the number of poor by 2015. Many at the Bank have dedicated their lives to work in developing countries and find the criticism unfair. "We are open to debate our activities, but when there are demands to shut down the Spring Meetings, I am no longer game", Mats Karlsson, Vice President for External Affairs, and former State Secretary for Development in Sweden, is quoted as saying. "Should the developing country delegations not be allowed to meet donors? Should we not debate and push forward the front line of development?"
The Bank's development agenda is beginning to look like a classic Nordic model for development, says the story, concluding that while technical advice was believed to suffice in the 1950s and 1960s, and a strong focus on market economy in the 1980s and early 1990s, the new model for development is decidedly more holistic and includes ownership, good governance and good policy environments.
In a separate story, the Dagens Nyheter also quotes World Bank Managing Director Sven Sandström as saying, "My ideas about development have evolved with the institution-from a focus on projects to a more comprehensive approach. Good governance and local ownership is vital...While there was some naïveté in the early years concerning Russian privatization, development is now back on the right track. In other countries that have started over, like Nigeria, development work is challenging, but very exciting."
Growth, health and education and social security nets are the current pillars of development, Karlsson adds. The social sector now accounts for a quarter of the World Bank's lending, to be compared with five per cent in the 1980s.
That has won praise from politically moderate critics, notes the IHT, noting that the institutions, however, can never hope to assuage their more radical critics, who see globalization as a basic cause of poverty while the two lenders see the trend as a basically positive force that with some redirection can be of greater benefit to people in poor countries. The news comes as Le Figaro (France) reports that the Bank and the Fund say the industrialized countries must open up their markets, notably in agriculture, to the poor countries.
Meanwhile, an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal (p.A27) written by Albert Hunt says that making fun of this week's World Bank protesters is easy. But while the protester-stated goal of shutting down the meetings failed, the protesters had an impact. When the sessions ended, there was much talk about reducing both poverty and income inequality. There was a specific commitment to devote more attention and resources to the fight against AIDS in underdeveloped countries. That's not a bad achievement for a mixture of ragamuffins and demagogues, writes Hunt. The focus on world poverty and income disparity is welcome.
For all the gains that globalization has produced in East Asia, Latin America, and elsewhere, progress has been troublesomely uneven. Over the past two decades, income in the world's riches countries has soared while income in the poorest nations has plummeted. "The rich nations ought to be doing more for the poor," says Robert McNamara, the head of the World Bank from 1968 to 1981.
Further, Donald Lambro writes in the Washington Times (p.A16) that the anti-capitalism protesters who demonstrated in Washington this week for "global justice" and a grab bag of other leftist, radical causes had at least one thing in common: a profound ignorance of how the free market works and who benefits from it.
Alexander Cockburn writes in the Los Angeles Times (p.B11) that some of the demonstrators have been grumbling about press coverage, suggesting that they had failed in their efforts to close the World Bank/IMF talks down. Cockburn says that their indignation is misplaced, and they are missing the full extent of their triumph, namely that they have managed to place their issues squarely on the national, and even global, political agenda.