DEVELOPMENT AS IF EQUITY MATTERED

The Greater Caribbean This Week

Norman Girvan

“Consultation doesn’t mean giving us three hours to comment on a poverty reduction programme that took national planners three years to prepare”, a leader of one of the Caribbean’s indigenous communities told an international conference on Public Policy, Natural Resources and Equity in Georgetown, Guyana last week.

Participants had come from different parts of the region and the developing world to develop strategies for the sustainable use of natural resources in a manner that is equitable to all stakeholders.

Equity is a political notion: it is concerned with justice, access to political processes and “fair and conscionable enjoyment” of the benefits of a nation’s resources, taking account of the needs of others to come. The point was made by Angela Cropper, chair of the Cropper Foundation and also of the Iwokrama Trust, two of the Conference sponsors.

Development projects often have inequitable consequences that planners never anticipated. Dams constructed as part of the Senegal River Basin Project in West Africa which ended up reducing the availability of land and water to several local communities. Planners, said a consultant to the World Conservation Union, should go beyond the aggregate balance sheet approach in measuring costs and benefits by identifying the risks and benefits to specific groups. And Governments should review the legal and institutional framework—in this case land tenure arrangements and water law—to ensure that the rights of local farmers are protected.

The Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) enshrined in the WTO agreement can also result in inequities. Ecuador has protested the patenting, by a U.S. pharmaceutical company, of Ayahuasca—a drink with medicinal properties that for centuries has been used by Amazon Indians in religious ceremonies. Thailand’s right to claim benefits for the traditional knowledge of its healers and herbalists, which are recognised under the Convention on Biological Diversity, are also being contested by the U.S.

Trevor Spencer of Trinidad and Tobago, who prepared this case study, called for the international community to inveigh against the “legally sanctioned exploitation” of the biological resources of developing countries by establishing a balance between the protection of IPR’s and the legitimate rights of the community at large. Negotiators at the upcoming WTO Ministerial Meeting in Qatar, please take note.

Above all, equity requires that the voices of local people and of indigenous communities be heard. The Iwokrama International Centre for Rain Forest Conservation and Development, for example, incorporates the indigenous Amerindian communities living in the forest in the determination and the planning of the Sustainable Utilisation Area. The SUA comprises 50 percent of the 370,000 hectares in the Iwokrama Forest which has been donated to an international trust by the Government of Guyana, the other 50 percent being a Wilderness Preserve.

Community leaders attending the conference participated in the formulation of a Protocol to guide the further work of the Centre in the management of the Forest, ensuring that the Conference ended on a practical note. Conference participants also agreed on how they will continue networking with the aim of promoting development as if equity mattered, pursuing both national and international initiatives from the bottom up. In a region where good news is often in short supply, they left this activity with a sense of hope for the future.

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