(DP) A philosophical approach to sustainability part 4

Part 4: what the Civil Society should do?

To conclude my personal path through the philosophical approach to sustainability, I’ll try to complete the painting with the last missing part: the civil society.

First of all I don’t like the tags, since it has any sense in many cases, and as we’ve learned in the development perspectives class it could be even misleading, thus I don’t want to categorize the civil society with some defined groups, I’ve just chosen some stakeholders that I would to analyze here.

I would start from the Religious organizations since these had a huge impact (and power) on our society:

nowadays it becomes broad organizations that could influence political establishment and civil society too; in some countries the governments (mainly the non-secular) are investing large sums of money in the promotion of religion and in others, despite having a large share of their population living below the poverty line, spend their resources on worship centers, which in many cases have a better infrastructure than the homes where people live [1].

Do they use this amount of power (and flux of money) in the right way?

Do all the values that they spread are really taking in account from the “leaders” of these associations?

I understand that this topic could flow even in a ethic discussion, and it’s not my intention now to fire it, in the other hand I would to let the reader reflect on this issues and do its own opinion on that.

As writer of this blog I would give my contribution as well: I think that the religious associations has a great impact, since they push and establish new project (following their own values whatever they are) to aid the people giving them instruction, goods, any else material help; conversely I think that these associations should have clear in mind what are their values, especially who is in the head of those.

What in many cases they had became has nothing to do with the original values of the religions, and has more to do with the political and economic power.

Does this society needs these kind of institutions? Again, (almost the same question that I’ve done for the public sector, in the 3^rd post) could they renounce to some of their power or spread it to relieve some needy populations?

This is a open question that I wonder to myself and I ask to you, and of course I would to ask to them too.

Leaving to the reader these reflections, now I would to move over another important part of civil society: the NGOs.

Nowadays the NGOs are seem to represent the best of private citizens responding to global inequities.  But behind the characteristics inherent to an NGO model of development are lurking several challenges: too many actors, too many chiefs, and too much mission [2].

Thus in many cases the bigger NGOs are playing the role that foundations and bilateral aid agencies have traditionally played. Basically in many cases they are allocating resources or  outsourcing development work to local NGOs and community-based organizations which may have better relationships with the target communities.

Another side of the actual NGOs is that while the prime focus of NGO campaigning has traditionally been on governments and regulators, increasing attention is being paid to private sector behaviour. Similarly, early work that focused on direct service provision in the development sector, and health, safety and environmental pollution issues, has expanded to embrace an even wider range of issues, including human rights, transparency, corruption, and both corporate and global governance [3].

This new trend give me the opportunity for the last thought on these: I really hope that in the near future the NGOs don’t start to “play the game” of private sector and to follow the business flow; adding to that the lack of responsibility and transparency towards society I think it would be some of the crucial issues that could involve the NGOs as the whole.

I’m concerned that the NGOs could become the “Trojan horse” of the modern business economy, losing their consultant/monitoring power that characterize it. I’m not saying that they don’t have to deal with private sector, this is in many cases good and even crucial, but they don’t need to become the leverage to raise fund or to have an access to new (mainly poors) markets to gain new business.

I think that I’ve reached the end of this road, the Development Perspectives; I would really to spend few words to say thanks to our amazing teacher Leda Stott, especially for the brilliant class that we had with her always full of new meanings, to teach us with an incredible passion, and for the precious tips and helpful feedback.

In the end, just to recap what SUSTAINABILITY is, as vision and values I would to show you this figure that should let you think about:

Source: http://www.sustainability.com/

And a video that resume this concept in other words:

Pinche aquí para ver el vídeo

Comments Off on (DP) A philosophical approach to sustainability part 4 / 13 Jan 2012 por Luca Palma
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