REPORT #453 December 2001
THE RULES OF ACHIEVING SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AND SOCIAL ECONOMIC PROGRESS


Produced by the Belize Development Trust

( commentary by Ray Auxillou, Trustee, Belize Development Issues )

"The implication is that the social process of generating technologies may itself be as important as the physical properties of technology itself, if the goal is truly sustainable development rather than just demonstrating technical feasibility. What then are some of the ways that technology can be generated through sustainable social processes?"

That last paragraph, sort of covered it, but was very academically obtuse and obviously written for World Bank types and Universities. In a nutshell:

"You cannot get sustainable development, unless people do it themselves!"

You can help teach them to organize, you can offer some technical expertise, but you cannot make the decisions, right or wrong, for them. That immediately kills the development project.

Essentially, that is what is wrong with the current one party owns the government parliamentary system we use in the Caribbean. It is doomed to failure, pre-ordained by history and experience, because the one party makes all decisions for everybody else. Never has worked and cannot succeed now! There is no magic bullet! People have to be empowered and possibly financed to do it for themselves. In government and agriculture, or anything else.

You Peter, could teach your village of Xaibe to organize, but whether or not they would organize and create local economic success depends on their own emotional and physical participation in the process. You, nor the government cannot do it for them and have it long term succeed.

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