Pay
a visit to a developing country previously known as third world or
underdeveloped. During the last two years I have spent time in
Uganda, which fits that definition. Id call it poor: Ugandas per
capita Gross Domestic Product was $331 in 1997, and 70 percent of the
population earned less than $1 a day.
If you spend time talking with politically and socially active
Ugandans, you will find that what they want for their country and
communities is poverty alleviation. Even Ugandan environmental
professionals who ensure that the rivers and lakes still produce
drinking water, or that human waste is neatly confined to sanitary
systems, or that forests are managed sustainably, will tell you what
their country most needs is poverty alleviation. And for poverty
alleviation, you need development.
Development the word raises the hackles of environmentalists
in the US, but it is not a dirty word in Uganda even in environmental
circles. Development is seen as beneficial, whether it comes from small
private investors, transnational corporations, or the World Bank.
Development in Uganda means more houses and hospitals, more and
better tarmacked roads, electricity and drinking water piped to homes,
streetlights, computers and cellphones. Along with these improvements
come water treatment works, power generation stations (a new dam on the
Nile financed by the World Bank being seen as the most affordable
option), a few more manufacturing facilities and concrete all over
the lush green verges to make roads and sidewalks so people dont get
their clothes dirty in the rains. Dont do it! some of us cry.
Uganda is so beautiful in its unspoiled state.
But this is a hard sell to the Ugandans. How can you say to people
who run out of food, have no access to some basic medicines, or who
cannot get a good nights sleep because they are spending their time
cooking, washing or just getting where they need to go, that they
cannot share our luxuries? Who would swap their lives in the suburban
US to go and live in a Ugandan village for more than a few weeks
vacation? Plenty of Ugandans are lining up to go in the other
direction, and permanently.
To build all that development infrastructure, minerals would be
extracted, fossil fuels burned, and trees cut down. As factories pump
out products, they will pump out by-products, just like here, all
adding to the global need for resources.
But the planet cant afford it, you may say, and quite
correctly. Were already cutting down forests and producing carbon
dioxide faster than the Earth can reabsorb it. But people in Uganda
want to develop their country. They are certainly not going to cut back
on resource use. Why should they? Would we notice if they did? Whos
leading the way in cutting back? Us?
Of course we cant cut our use of resources. Thered be a
recession; jobs would be lost; more Americans would slip into poverty.
Would poor Ugandans recognize the US version of poverty? I wonder.
Uganda wants to increase its per capita consumption of natural
resources to alleviate poverty. The UN concurs. And if wise, it will
develop to quote the 1989 Brundtland report that laid the framework
for sustainable development: to meet the needs of the present
generation without compromising the ability of future generations to
meet their own needs. That means wise development; socially just and
environmentally responsible development; for want of a less-hackneyed
term, sustainable development.
But who are we to tell them how to do this?
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