Financing Sustainable Global Futures
This paper discusses a crucial gap to be filled in the financing of the development
of sustainable global futures. A case is made that people who are at the very
fringe of the global people system, those among the most poor, the most
marginalized and the most oppressed, are the carriers of wisdom and ways of
living that enable sustainable nurturing of planet earth. These are the
indigenous people and the oppressed small minority people living tribal ways
close to nature and profoundly respecting nature.
These Grassroots Folk hold the answers to many of the world’s most
pressing issues.
Examples:
A practical example is that during 2003-2005 Psychnet was formed through
the East Asia Oceania Region with non-compromising support out of the UK. This
is a Grassroots Folk based psychosocial emergency response network that was
able to provide crucial interfacing support following the tsunami that hit the
region.
Given the enormity of the problematics facing humanity, with
environmental degradation and societal conflict and collapse, Grassroots Folk
need strategic non-compromising support.
Currently, funding arrangements exclude or compromise their wisdom
Refer Interfacing Alternative and Complementary
Wellbeing Ways For Local Wellness
Many unilateral and multilateral financial processes exist to finance
the global economic juggernaut.
Unilateral and multilateral financial processes also exist to finance
global governance bodies like the UNDP, World Bank, and regional arrangements
such as Asian Development Bank and European Investment Bank. National Aid
bodies around the world like USA’s US Aid and Australia’s AusAid also
fund development. As well, private sector with-profit and non-profit funding of
private sector profit and non-profit action is available. NGO’s cooperate with
the above funding sources.
Typically, all of the above
entities operate within a system based upon the following premises:
·
Experts
from outside the focal context are relied upon on at every step – for
conducting needs assessment, feasibility and impact studies, program design,
program implementation, outcomes assessment and control. Experts diagnose
problems and prescribe their own solutions.
·
Typically,
experienced people and companies from outside the recipient country (and
typically from the donor country) carry out the work, with figures quoted of
between 40% to 90% of the funding returning to the donor country as wages and
profits.
·
Similar
points were made at the’ Aid Business is Good Business’ conference in Melbourne
Australia in the Nineties put on by AusAid and AusTrade where it was
acknowledged that around 75% of aid projects fail because the Aid Program fails
to involve local people. This failure was seen as acceptable because of an
anticipated 7-fold value in follow-on business activity in the recipient
country. Refer:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/03/25/2199059.htm
http://www.aidwatch.org.au/index.php?current=24&display=aw00728&display_item=1
Refer PDF file on the above link titled ‘REPORT: Boomerang Aid – not good enough Minister!’
These assumptions are pervasively
used in and by the dominant world. They are the taken-for-granted ‘how things
are done’.
These ways are pervasively not used by the grassroots folk mentioned above.
Examples:
·
Rather
than experts from outside the focal context being relied upon, the grassroots folk way is to tap
into the local community wisdom and knowings about the local contexts.
·
If
outside experts are used they have cultural interfacing support and have the
experts ways complement and support local way
·
Local
people use local ways to take local action. They know what’s missing in their
wellbeing.
·
Action is
typically holistic with everything inter-connected, inter-dependent and
inter-related
·
Rather
than top down organization with the decision-making prerogatives at the top,
grassroots folk way is local and lateral using mutual help processes in local
networks.
·
Rather
than nature being something that is imposed upon, grassroots folk way is to
respect nature ‘as mother’ and work with and copy nature (bio-mimicry) and
enhance nature at every step guided by a profound intimate knowledge of local
natural phenomena.
·
Rather
than detailed preplanning, the current context guides the unfolding action.
Rather than a fixed agenda there are open themes-based agendas that are guided
by the people’s energy in context.
·
Rather
than policy being determined at a distance, that which works locally is
repeated or adapted – and becomes policy, hence grassroots folk policy is ‘that
which works’.
·
While
Global governance bodies and other entities go through a country’s national
government, for may indigenous and other oppressed people the government under
which they live may be a primary source of their alienation and oppression.
The dominant world way with the
best will in the world can by-pass local resources and capacities, and in the
by-passing undermine, weaken and eliminate local wisdoms.
A model Program drawing upon over 50 years of doctoral-level action
research among Grassroots Folk has been developed to tap into this wisdom. The Program
envisages starting five substantial business enterprises owned by a
humanitarian foundation whereby enterprise dividends provide a sustained
non-compromising fund source for the foundation’s humanitarian action where the
Rollout uses Grassroots Folk Wisdom and Way (refer Government and Facilitating Grassroots
Action ).
The Program adheres to a framework ensuring every aspect of the Program
rollout respects local way and is carried out by local people supported by
outside experienced people who respect the framework (refer Interfacing Alternative and
Complementary Wellbeing Ways For Local Wellness).
Evolving Funding for Grassroots
Folk Action
Perhaps there are people of
discernment from deep within in the dominant world’s private sector financial
world who want to contribute to global futures.
This paper has raised the
possibility of vital action for global wellbeing emerging from grassroots folk.
Well-placed financial people are encouraged to contact the author towards
Financing Global Futures. Non-compromising funding platforms are urgently
needed. The Model Program is a crucial demonstration model Program enacting the
wisdom discussed in this paper.
Interfacing Alternative and
Complementary Wellbeing Ways For Local Wellness