Governance for Poverty Eradication and Sustainable Development: Issues in Development Cooperation

• Author: Naresh Singh
• Pages: 471-496

Governance for Poverty Eradication and Sustainable Development 471

GovernanCe for Poverty

eradiCation and SuStainable

develoPMent: iSSueS in develoPMent

CooPeration1

NARESH SINGH

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

IntroductionIntroduction

IntroductionIntroduction

Introduction

Most countries of the world have adopted the goals of poverty eradication

and sustainable development as stated in their official documents. For

instance, CIDAs Sustainable Development Strategy 2001-2003 states that: “the

purpose of Canada’s official development assistance is to support sustainable

development in developing countries, in order to reduce poverty and to

contribute to a more secure, equitable and prosperous world”; DFIDs White

Paper “sets out the Government’s policies to achieve the sustainable development

of this planet. It is first, and most importantly, about the single greatest challenge

which the world faces – eliminating poverty”; policy statement by the DAC

confirms the commitment “to reducing poverty in all its dimensions and to

achieving the seven International Development Goals” (developmentgoals.org/

Poverty); and World Development Report 2000/2001: Attacking Poverty follows

two other World Development Reports on poverty, in 1980 and 1990. These

objectives of poverty reduction and sustainable development will be measured

against the MDGs which “call for reducing the proportion of people living on

less than $1 a day to half the 1990 level by 2015-from 29 per cent of all people

in low and middle income economies to 14.5 per cent” (developmentgoals.org/

poverty). The goals have been commonly accepted by 147 states as a framework

for measuring development progress.

Countries have also recognised governance as a central factor in contributing

to progress and in helping achieve these goals. To illustrate, the OECD confirms

that:

good, effective public governance helps to strengthen democracy and human

rights, promote economic prosperity and social cohesion, reduce poverty,

enhance environmental protection and the sustainable use of natural

472 STATE, ECONOMY AND SOCIETY

resources, and deepen confidence in government and public administration

[and that] . . . governance and development go hand in hand. Without good

governance structures, developing countries cannot hope to compete efficiently

in global markets.

The World Bank recognises local governance and national governance as two of

the main areas of application of empowerment principles (access to information,

inclusion and participation, accountability and local organisation capacity)

which go in hand in hand with poverty reduction objectives.

What remains to be seen, however, is the policy programmatic and

operational linkages between governance as broadly defined and the goals of

poverty reduction and sustainable development. Such linkages have not been

clearly articulated. For example, the distinction between constitutive and

distributive governance which is necessary for appropriate emphasis if goals

are to be translated into reality. Moreover, many still support governance as an

end in itself and, while this may be appropriate in many circumstances, for

development cooperation, governance as a means to poverty reduction and

sustainable development is much more amenable to support. By using the single

concept of sustainable livelihoods to reflect the twin goals of poverty reduction

and sustainable development, this paper makes the case for linking governance

to the desired development goals, and suggests practical steps for doing so.

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The evolution of sustainable livelihoods (SL) as a key concept of development

confirms the beginning of a new era in international development cooperation

by stressing that development simply does not work for people unless it is

conceived and realised by them. Gone are the days when development was a

top-down affair, organised by government institutions for the people. So are the

days when poverty eradication was viewed in terms of redistribution of public

resources to meet anticipated needs of the poorer segments of society. SL implies

concepts as ownership and empowerment, both associated with a bottom-up

approach, where access to resources and incentives to action have replaced the

redistributive needs approach of the past. This remarkable shift in development

thinking, which may be described as a silent revolution, has still to be fully

operationalised by multilateral and bilateral agencies. Their action does not

always match their rhetoric. By focusing on how governance relates to the

realisation of sustainable livelihoods, this paper tries to indicate what can be

done to ensure that SL does not merely remains a rhetorical device.

The idea of sustainable livelihoods was first introduced by the Brundtland

Commission on Environment and Development as an approach to enhancing