Posts by Brooks Keene
Greening Aid: Expanding the Concept of Do No Harm
Published June 05, 2009 @ 01:52PM PT
Running a series this week by Brooks Keene looking at the intersection between aid and the environment, focusing on whether aid interventions are truly sustainable. Brooks previously worked as a development policy consultant in Kenya, and now works for a US-based NGO.
For previous posts in the series, see here.
Expanding the Concept of Do No Harm
Okay back to you people working on the non-fundamental issues like saving people from malaria. We love you guys too, but you still need to ask yourself some questions. First why aren’t you working on something important?!? Just kidding, I like messing with you, and I’m not a big fan of malaria either.
The question you still need to ask yourself at a minimum is, “Am I causing harm on the fundamentals - things like sunlight, water, air and fertile topsoil?” If you can’t answer no with absolute certainty, then back to the drawing board. If you did answer no, good for you. You get an added bonus if you didn’t create carbon that will eventually drown the Seychelles.
The United States drained a ton of swamps to get rid of malaria. That doesn’t mean it was a good idea in the long run or that we had any idea what we were doing. Our default should be to conservatism in its best sense: If it’s working and you don’t have all the information, then don’t mess with it.
Greening Aid: New Approaches, New Priorities
Published June 04, 2009 @ 04:52PM PT
Running a series this week by Brooks Keene looking at the intersection between aid and the environment, focusing on whether aid interventions are truly sustainable. Brooks previously worked as a development policy consultant in Kenya, and now works for a US-based NGO.
For previous posts in the series, see here.
New Approaches, New Priorities
What would a magical new framework - for making aid more environmentally sustainable - look like?
My idea is that it should go something like this. When thinking about a program for a new area, you first ask yourself what the fundamental problems are. Are there problems with sustainable water, soil, air or sunlight? If there are, that’s something fundamental you could work on.
Yes, I realize I just cut out most disease prevention, emergency relief and economic development work. It’s okay if you want to work on something non-fundamental as long as you’re fully aware that you’re dropping the ball and dooming humanity to the depths of hell.
I’m just kidding, but you do need to be aware and we’ll get to why.
Greening Aid: Aid Worker, Question Thyself
Published June 03, 2009 @ 07:36PM PT
Running a series this week by Brooks Keene looking at the intersection between aid and the environment, focusing on whether aid interventions are truly sustainable. Brooks previously worked as a development policy consultant in Kenya, and now works for a US-based NGO.
For previous posts in the series, see here.
Aid Worker, Question Thyself
How do aid organizations bridge the gap between our rhetoric about sustainability and our actions in a more substantial way? We need a framework for our thinking that will let us dodge our own cultural proclivities. I think there are three basic cultural barriers keeping us from making progress.
First, though the majority of aid workers work in their own country, the organizations themselves and usually senior management are, for the most part, from “the West.” This makes aid organizations subject to the “culture of life.” Death, or at least death at the wrong time, is the enemy that we are trying to save everyone from.
The focus then becomes on immediate short-term needs of individuals versus needs for a healthy society in the long run. You’re less likely to accept short term costs for long term gains.
Second, I suspect that, though we’ve worked hard to exorcise it, there’s still a lurking thought that everyone should live like us or at least be able to if they want. Aren’t our lives great? Well…sort of. The fun of playing Guitar Hero (Metallica edition) notwithstanding, a lot of our technologies and “advancements” are also killing society as we know it.
Greening Aid: Short Term Benefits, Long Term Costs
Published June 02, 2009 @ 05:13PM PT
Running a series this week by Brooks Keene looking at the intersection between aid and the environment, focusing on whether aid interventions are truly sustainable. Brooks previously worked as a development policy consultant in Kenya, and now works for a US-based NGO.
For previous posts in the series, see here.
Short Term Benefits, Long Term Costs
While environmental groups were substantively ignored for a long time (yes, I’m talking to you Senator Inhofe), aid organizations made and are still making environmental mistakes.
For instance, I visited the Millennium Village Project in Sauri, Kenya. While I think they have a worthwhile experiment going on, they were also promoting fertilizers and pesticides as part of trying to help create a “green revolution” for Africa. Green in this case certainly refers to the color of plants because use of inputs like these is far from environmentally friendly.
In the short term, we get more food with less work. In the long term, we kill the earthworms that make new soil for us and leach chemicals into our streams and water tables, reducing fish populations (another kind of food) and hurting humans who drink the water.
Greening Aid: Sustainable, Or Not So Much
Published June 01, 2009 @ 12:48PM PT
Running a series this week by Brooks Keene looking at the intersection between aid and the environment, focusing on whether aid interventions are truly sustainable. Brooks previously worked as a development policy consultant in Kenya, and now works for a US-based NGO.
Sustainable, Or Not So Much
I’ve been increasingly thinking that aid organizations (here I mean both humanitarian and development organizations) have a very uneasy relationship with the concept of sustainability. We throw the word around everywhere. It’s almost become a necessary placeholder in grant proposals as in, “The project will provide sustainable access to safe drinking water for 200 households.”
By this, if they even think about it, aid agencies often mean that what they are doing will continue after they leave. And yet, there’s a slow and painful transformation taking place as humanitarian agencies begin to grasp the foundational meanings of the word.
At its root, all human activity exists at the pleasure of the natural environment. The bare equation of survival goes something like this: sunlight + water + air + fertile topsoil = life. Of course, if you throw in shelter, air conditioning, a car, hot showers, access to anti-retro viral drugs, Guitar Hero (Metallica edition) and a shovel, then the perks go up from there.
Unfortunately, the list of ingredients gets more complicated as well, including things like silicon, fossil fuels or iron ore and most of the time some things from that original list as well.
All is well and good with the ever-expanding list until your list starts colliding with that first equation. Those foundational ingredients literally pass in and out of our body, and our health and survival is their health and survival. These ingredients need to remain “sustainable. It is when used in this context that the word is its most powerful.
Humanitarian Relief - Sometimes Just a Band-Aid
Published December 21, 2008 @ 05:31AM PT
They'd rather be fishing.
I had the good fortune this weekend to meet up with Michael. Aside from our epic and publicly discussed Settlers of Catan throw-down, (my wife trounced both of us two games in a row), we had a short discussion about the merits of development versus emergency humanitarian work.
Humanitarian work is easy to quantify (e.g. 14,000 people got two meals today), while development can seem more fluffy. I've been thinking about it, and I don't think it's unfair to say that the need for humanitarian relief often comes from poor development such as bad food production models or other root causes like bad governance or injustice.
I've been reluctant to talk about the Middle East because it's such a firebrand topic, but it's one of the most accessible examples I can think of to show that humanitarian relief is too often a temporary band-aid while we tolerate the root causes of the suffering. We can talk about humanitarian access in the occupied Palestinian territories until we're blue in the face, but these are not areas that need humanitarian access outside of the fact that every other kind of access is cut off. I make no judgment on the need that Israelis feel to protect their own security, but they aren't doing themselves any favors--even from a security perspective--by creating a defunct state dependent on international aid next door.
Palestinians are well-educated and live in what would otherwise be a solidly middle income economy. We see lots of video of Hamas fighters training in black face masks, but how many videos do we see of strawberry farmers with their crops rotting in their fields? It's not as exciting, but it might be a helluva lot more important in the long run.
Here's an article from 2007 in the Independent about how Gaza strawberry farmers lack access to their markets to sell. And here's an article from AP about how Israeli Navy restrictions and harassment hurt the Gaza fishing market. The UK's Department for International Development has a series of articles about how lack of access to markets hurts Palestinians as well. Now, I've talked about markets, but you need to factor in other root causes of the need for perpetual humanitarian assistance (access to drinking and irrigation water, ability to buy imported goods such as spare parts for machinery, access to fuel, access to hospitals and drugs...the list goes on; check out the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs excellent PowerPoint presentation for more info and maps on impediments to movement and access).
And there you have it. Quantifiable as it is, humanitarian relief in this case is nothing but a band-aid. It's a case of perpetual hopelessness or--if you like to think about the dolla' dolla' bills--an endless money pit. I could have easily made this blog about how Niger is a constant food aid recipient because they have rampant deforestation, a changing climate, bad agricultural practice and an exploding population, but I figured most Americans can identify more closely with the Middle East case.
The point is, while things like development assistance, institution-building or advocacy might seem like fluffy expenditures compared with humanitarian relief in conflict or disasters, we could often spend money on them forever and only be applying--at best--a temporary fix.
Get the Military Out of Development - Part 2
Published December 16, 2008 @ 09:46AM PT
This follows on my previous post about getting the military out of development.
The best way to build peace?
The New York Times ran an article this week discussing how the U.S. military is using both training of security forces and development assistance to combat terrorism in the Sahel (the article is about Mali). I saw a model of the development assistance type in Niger. There are (at least) two questions that have not been satisfactorily answered as to why this is a good expenditure of U.S. taxpayer money:
- Why are we supporting who we're supporting? It's been clear from the get-go that, from the military training perspective, the U.S. is siding with national governments. While this might be a decent strategy when dealing with Germany or China, the situation gets murkier when dealing with some governments in the developing world. Both Mali and Niger, where similar work is happening, have been dealing with challenges to their stability and legitimacy from Tuareg tribes in the north who feel left out of the social compact. In Niger, this is a lot more serious as the north holds uranium deposits that account for the majority of the country's export earnings (see NY Times article). These are the kinds of things that can lead to government overthrows or coups (both Niger and Mali had coups in the 1990s). The New York Times article on the counter-terrorism work in Mali says that one of the Malian commanders was trained at Fort Benning in Georgia. For a picture of how well this type of training has worked out in the past, check out School of the Americas Watch, an organization that has done extensive research on what Fort Benning graduates have sometimes been up to in the past. Hint: It's sometimes called the "School of Assassins."
- Is any of this actually the best way to curb terrorism? Like I said in my last post, development done for selfish reasons can be problematic. Good development requires trust, and--in my experience--such programs are not necessarily completely forthright about why they do what they do. It's difficult to work with people as partners in their own future when your starting point is, "You're at risk of becoming a terrorist, so we're going to help you reform the curriculum in your Koranic school and get a job while you're at it." Don't get me wrong, some of these programs can have great positive impact, but they carry an in-built booby trap should the reality become clear.
An alternative method? Well, we already have several U.S. government agencies whose specialty is foreign assistance. Why not strengthen them and then let them do their job?
