Conditionality transformed?
This week International Financial Institutions found themselves at the centre of protests by activists against economic globalisation. Two thousand people marched in the streets of Prague against IMF policies perceived to be discriminatory and unfair to workers in developing countries. But a paper by Africa researcher John Pender, he shows the free market ideologues of the eighties have long since given way to a new breed of World Bankers who have more in common with the crusties than they realise.
There has been a dramatic shift in World Bank economic thinking during the 1990's, primarily due to the negative experience of discredited policy prescriptions. This shift has gone so far as to revise the bank's view of what constitutes development. From a conception of development based on the primacy of economic growth, the World Bank has moved to embrace a conception which relativises economic growth and puts the emphasis on poverty reduction.
In the eighties the World Bank imposed a policy of 'conditionality' on countries it lent money to. The loans were conditional on the recipients implementing free market policies, which rolled back the state and liberalised the economy. But the experience of the failure of this approach (African living standards suffered a two per cent annual decrease after a decade of WB advice) led the new President of the Bank, James Wolfensohn to move away from conditionality. External imposition of policy was renounced and a new framework based on the principles of partnership and collaboration with non-governmental organisations holds sway.
In 1999 Wolfensohn launched the Comprehensive Development Framework. The approach of the CDF is to go beyond traditional economics to address the issue of development in a holistic fashion, that is, in multiple areas of society, not just simple economic indicators. The irony of the CDF is that in one breath the external imposition of conditionality on poor countries is renounced. But in the next, a huge raft of policies prescribed by NGOs and western governments takes its place. Never have the world's poorest countries been so overwhelmed by the policy priorities and prescriptions of the West.
The reorganisation of the World Bank under the liberal-minded US economics professor James Wolfensohn has led the Bank to adopt 'a world free of poverty' as its slogan. Radicals like Nigel Harris now work for the World Bank, promoting programmes of poverty reduction. The World Bank's Development Report (August 2000) argues that 'Global action can empower poor people and poor countries in national and global forums'. This is in effect an appeal to NGOs to lobby and protest outside the World Bank. The Bank promises 'open, regular dialogue with civil society organisations, particularly those representing poor people'. The Bank supports 'ongoing global coalitions of poor people so that they may inform global debates'. To the barricades, charity workers!
'From "structural adjustment" to "Comprehensive Development Framework": Conditionality transformed?' was given at the African Studies Association of the UK's Biennial Conference at Trinity College, Cambridge, 12 September 2000
European Car Free Day
As environmental transport organisations line up to tell us that driving is the most irresponsible mode of transport, every one else is getting back to some sense of normality, as the petrol starts to flow again, writes Austin Williams. The spontaneous support for the petrol protests of the last few weeks shows that motoring, for all its sense of cocooning the driver from the wider world, is one of the biggest social activities in Britain. Twenty-five million people drive, not just as individuals, but as part of a consensual whole. We drive for work, pleasure and thrills, and most of us have become all-too aware that the country is reliant on the car's efficient and convenient mobility.
Last year, Paris closed down 40 miles of roads and, says the Environmental Transport Association, 'people simply couldn't believe how tranquil their cities could be without cars'. Any tourist, who experienced the blockades in August, when nearly the entire network of French roads was closed down, might give you a different story. On the day, Car Freedom turned out to be a damp squib of top-down fakery, compared to the real life event that was the petrol blockade.
Britain, did not actually sign up to Europe's Car Free Day - that would have been too decisive. Instead it delegated that decision down to local authorities, and at least 10 councils took up the offer. The London Borough of Merton pledged to grass over the road outside the school and hold a nursery on it. In Deal, Kent, the train operator promised to take the opportunity for a public relations coup and Connex the Cat handed out goodie bags to local children, (although it is rumoured that the stunt was severely delayed due of lack of available staff). Deal's mayor said 'We decided to challenge Deal residents, for one day, to travel to work without their car'. It seems as if everyone was expected to take up the council's offer you can't refuse. Ken Livingstone, mayor of London says, 'The GLA hopes that support for regular and widespread activities on specific Car-Free days, in which areas of London are closed to most traffic, will grow'.
London Transport recently revealed that, compared with the same time last year, over one million more commuters were travelling on the underground every week. That's one million more people who have to suffer the sweaty and frustrating indignity of the rush hour tube. Already 85 per cent of the population travel by public transport: victims of lack of choice. A car- free day - effectively banning one of the most convenient modes of transport - can only reduce that choice still further. Obviously, the consequential take-up of public transport by erstwhile motorists will gratify the transport statisticians of the GLA, but it is only when a tube train bursts its seams that they may realise that they are operating to the extremes of carrying capacity.
The events of recent weeks shows that the country, whether we like it or not, for the time being, is reliant on the petrol engine. This is not because of selfishness or ignorance on the part of the driver, but because often it is the most efficient, comfortable and convenient way of getting from A to B, and then to C. The chaos caused by the disruption to this transport flow during the petrol protests has shown us two things. Firstly that, curtailing the use of the car - by legislation or by picket - has devastating consequences for the transport flow of the country. Secondly, that the public provision of alternative modes of transport is woefully inadequate.
However, while public transport networks are falling apart, lobby groups continue to identify cars and car drivers as a symbol of transport overload. Unfortunately, by playing off one mode of transport against another, the consensual trust on our roads is gradually being undermined and the demands for infrastructural improvements are being lost. In blaming one mode of transport, the real result of the much-vaunted 'integrated' transport strategy is terminal fragmentation. Such is the background to Car-Free day. The truth of the situation is that we need massive infrastructural improvements in all forms of transport. A goodie bag from a sweaty rail executive in a cat suit is not enough.
Austin Williams is director of the Transport Research Group
Oil profiteers
'I will not sit back and watch the decline of the UK oil industry and gas industry under the impact of a low world oil price', said UK Trade Secretary Peter Mandelson in 1998. Last week Prime Minister Blair brought the oil executives into Downing Street for a wigging over their not-so-clandestine organisation of the oil blockade that brought the country to a standstill. Easy when their numbers are all in your filofax, like 'Beyond Petroleum' executive Nick Butler, a long-standing New Labour supporter in the Fabian Society, Shell Chairman Mark Moody- Stuart, also chair of the government's Renewable Energy Taskforce, Shell company secretary Jyoti Munsiff, a member of the government's Sustainable Development Education Panel, BP group managing director Bryan Sanderson chair of the government's Learning and Skills Panel. -- James Heartfield
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