What is sustainable development?

Let's face it: we as a world have messed up in so many ways. Our ancestors whether they were the oppressors or the oppressed (or some mixture of the two) have left us a mess to clean up and the fault lines get less clear every year. Colonization in its purist form ended nearly 51 years ago for Burkina. International aid has taken many forms since then, some more successful than others. Philosophies both internal and external to Burkina have fluctuated. But, we are still begging for answers. What is sustainable development?

Sustainability to many is a buzzword, but if you can get past the glossy shine of present day political spin there is an important essence. The idea is looking beyond the initial spoils and looking toward longevity. The idea is leaving behind stopgap improvisations for lasting solutions. Putting a band aid over an infected wound will not heal it or cure the infection. Sustainability would be providing the care and preventing the wound from happening in the future with local renewable resources. Now, isn't that a fancy idea?

But seriously what is sustainable development? As a Peace Corps Volunteer I am here with the best intentions (and as a race/gender studies minor hopefully with enough cynicism). The true value of Peace Corps service in my opinion is the unequivocal grass roots/first person daily presence in communities affected by development. We are (mostly) unskilled workers (often) fresh out of college given 3 goals of which two are focused on cultural/experiential exchange. We are the ones in village that despite our obvious differences are somewhat accepted as a sort of adoptive child. We aren't like normal NGO workers who spend most of their day in an office looking at projects on paper and show up to do supervisions where people will make unused equipment look useful, unsavory uses of financial resources seem scarce and further need coupled with community motivation seem abundant only to drop this exaggeration of reality as soon as the supervisor leaves. I realize this is an extremely skeptical picture that I am painting, but it happens at some level at every supervisory meeting.

I would love to tell you that every cent of your tax-deductable donations to any given NGO is going toward a sustainable cost-efficient community driven project. But, the reality is that your donation is likely in part aiding a project that is at least accepted by a community and either sustainable (with continued foreign aid) or temporary with some lasting benefits. Some money is misappropiated, some money is used for a project that doesn't have strong community involvement and most money is not being put into projects with a feasible goal of being sustainable with local resources. To find a solution to a single problem that would meet the definition of sustainability that I am suggesting takes more on the ground community involvement than most NGOs are able to provide and more time than most grass roots volunteers are willing/able to provide.

Despite seeing clinicians eating Plumpy Nut (a nutrient rich product given by NGOs to malnourrished babies), seeing machinery that is poorly maintained or misused, seeing people treat foreign aid as a disposable gift or seeing aid money used for personal purchases being in Peace Corps (believe it or not) has still given me some hope. All of these issues are realities across the world and not specific to Burkina, but having seen the issues that sustainable development faces I think I will be less likely to blindly participate in practices that perpetuate a problematic system without trying to seek better methods and results.

I can see that--like most things in this world--the success of development is not a black/white issue. Nearly every project has some benefit to its community and surely every project has at least one ethical problem. Anything that sounds too good to be true likely isn't (at least not completely). Problems can be anything from families not being able to afford soap for hand washing and therefore not using the information they are given to local community based groups using large sums of money for personal gain. But, is that surprising when you take into account the "post"-colonial, impoverished rural setting of these projects?

Things I have seen work inside a Peace Corps setting have been small, sustained explorations of health topics with individuals or small groups. I've seen the incorporation of simple changes such as planting a moring a tree in an existing garden or adding information to an already programmed health service. Little self-contained activities like this can make small accumulating impacts in the lives of people with real problems while keeping ethical issues to a minimum. Unfortunately the number of people interested in donating their time and the number of aid dollars/resources available for such projects are limited.

Development is still a big experiment and I can't pretend to have all the answers. I don't mean to be discouraging, but I do intend to honestly raise the question that is on the mind of many if not all volunteers. Like I've said before if there was an easy solution I wouldn't be here right now.

At least we can take comfort in knowing that there are thousands of people seeing the realities of development and hopefully contemplating changes. I think that is in the least a startling contrast to even 50 years ago.
Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone from Airtel Burkina Faso.