Radical Solutions?

Before I started a Master's in Development Studies, I was already interested in questions about development and mused frequently about them on this blog. After one-and-a-half semesters of fairly intensive studying and reading, it's interesting to look back at how my understanding and views have changed.

In deleting some emails, I came across a mini-rant (pasted below in italics) I'd sent to my US-based sister about the trade deals with Peru, Panama and Colombia, which were at the time a topic of discussion in both the mainstream and grassroots media there.

These were my thoughts a year ago:

I am on balance a supporter of the FTA for Peru because of the commercial opportunities it offers. However, a rudimentary examination of the existing agreement demonstrates that Peru, Panama and Colombia are being forced to suck eggs in order to get their deals. The US has been using its weight in the bilateral negotiations to impose conditions it can't get through the WTO (esp. with regard to intellectual property). This has little to do with the appropriateness or plausibility of these conditions for the country (US-standard copyright protection in Peru within 3 years, yeah right) but rather with a wider agenda.

I reckon if the US really wants to support development in the Andean countries, it should do the following:

1. offer unilateral tariff reductions on all products for a 10--15 year period (similar to the Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act, but with more certainty)
2. trade partners required to move towards international/WTO standards on labour, environment and intellectual property (i.e. NOT US-level standards for the latter); milestones to be met to ensure continuation of tariff-free access after 5 and 10-year review periods
3. reduce or freeze direct-to-government aid (including export subsidies disguised as aid), but offer technical assistance especially in local government, law enforcement, education, infrastructure development, agricultural productivity, distribution, marketing, etc. Foment partnerships between schools, universities, police departments, public service, small NGOs, churches, etc. Loans available for insfastructure conditional on robust analysis of the viability of the project.
4. trade partners remove or reduce tariffs on all or most non-agricultural products; non-complementary agricultural products to be left alone for the first 5 years
5. investment protections in place but trade partners allowed to place 'development' conditions such as use of local products or technology transfer
6. legalize cocaine, but slap on big import and sales taxes; coca leaves can be imported tariff-free

The last one is only partly in jest. At present, cocaine is one processed, added-value product that is highly profitable and makes its way easily into US markets (despite all attempts at law enforcement). It's also inevitably associated with significant violence and corruption. What needs to happen is the opposite of the historical: developing countries have a chance to produce and market added-value, mainstream products, while drug-related activity is disincentivised through making it uncompetitive. Such an approach would see all the cocaine labs move inside the US, where their activity would be tightly regulated by ATF officers...). Meanwile, Peru, Bolivia, and Colombia would fill US health food stores with a range of coca teas, sweets, oils, and essences. Groups like the FARC, Shining Path (now moprhing into narcotrafficking operations in Peru), paramilitaries lose their funding and much raison d'etre, either disappearing or being forced to become normal political entities.

Many weighty articles and long perambulations through the thickets of economic history, sociology and politics, I've become much better informed, feel more able to engage in debate, but my views are not a million miles away from what they were then.

Overall, I'm even less sure about the net benefit of the US-Peru trade agreement than I was, in part because I've been made aware that the link between overall economic growth and benefit for the majority is even more tenuous than I realised; in part because of gaining a greater understanding of just how one-sided and hypocritical the conditions in the trade agreements are (and how few of them are even about trade).

As I've learnt recently, suggestion 3 above is just a partial version of what's been on the agenda for international donors for a while through the 'good governance' agenda and the OECD's Paris Declaration on aid effectiveness. There's been a commitment to phasing out 'tied aid' (i.e. exports subsidies disguised as aid) and 'technical assistance' is a major buzz phrase in the aid community (along with its sibling 'capability development'). However, this does still seem to suffer from the longstanding high-handedness of development assistance, and mainly be aimed at bureaucratic elites.

If we do care about 'institutions', a nice alternative approach would be for some kind of properly-funded 'adult exchange programme', where the likes of police officers, petty officials, local council members, etc from developing countries could spend a three-month sabbatical in the equivalent department in a rich country -- and vice versa.

Suggestion 6 is of course mostly flippant, but I'd still be interested in people's reaction to it. The drug trade is not a good thing -- but at the end of the day it's just another manifestation of the inexorable market logic that is elsewhere trumpeted as the solution to everyone's problems. It's rarely mentioned even by liberal commentators, but there's little that's more perverse than a social problem in the rich world being tackled by spraying poison all over environmentally fragile land in a much poorer country.

Categories: development, Latin America, trade, cocaine, coca, Peru, Bolivia, Colombia

A Perspective from Inside Burma

The world (as defined by the international media) is now largely 'moving on' from the devastating cyclone Nargis in Burma/Myanmar, but of course reality proceeds at a more sluggish pace.

Recently I've been forwarded a couple of updates from a development practitioner working for an international NGO inside Burma and trying to assist the relief effort. The observations from this practitioner -- who we'll call 'John' -- provide a perspective that is different from the potted reports on the news wires. At times they read a little like an except from Catch-22.

In the first communique several weeks ago, 'John' described sitting in frustration in a comfortable hotel in Rangoon. All foreigners were restricted from visiting the affected areas in the Irawaddy delta, able only to blindly funnel aid through in the hope that it would reach the right people. The NGOs in the country were having proposals approved and were receiving funds, but were unable to obtain any detailed information from the affected areas or deploy staff skilled in programme logistics.

Meanwhile, great effort was going into restoring the ornamental parks of the capital to their former prettiness. Cranes, heavy machinery and workers toiled each day to repair the damage. At the same time, the principal waterways of the capital were still contaminated by rotting corposes, which were pushed away from the banks with long bamboo poles in the hope that they would float out to sea. It was too late for indentification, and John speculated that perhaps his 'host' didn't want to count the numbers dead, or couldn't spare the equipment for digging mass graves -- tied up as it was in the important task of park restoration.

Three weeks later, John forwarded another update. He had finally made it to the delta (six weeks late) and was endeavouring to take stock of the situation. What he found was a little different from the picture painted in the international media.

He said it was clear that many people had died needlessly, the Burmese regime cared little for the people, and there was a need for targeted humanitarian intervention.

Yet, as far as he could see, the local people had largely got on with the task of struggling through and rebuilding. In Bogale (one of the worst hit areas), by the time he arrived things seemed quite normal, the streets were clean, and all business were open.

Perhaps through no fault of the NGOs and the donors, the aid was late, and in many cases inappropriate. Post-hurricane, the 'experts' had worried about the risk of water-borne disease. International NGOs had arranged for airdrops of expensive water-purification kits, and a 747 had been chartered to bring in 15,000 50-litre plastic buckets. Yet this has turned out to be far less of an issue than predicted. Burmese village houses have guttering made of a split bamboo pole down which water runs into large clay pots (cheaper than and superior to the imported plastic buckets). Being monsoon season, there was plenty of clean drinking water and the rains were washing away parasites and mosquito eggs, meaning there wasn't much risk of water-borne disease or malaria.

Another practitioner with a food aid programme had returned from outlying villages where they had been distributing 'Kitchen Sets', complete with pots, pans, forks and spoons. He reported that people in the villages were quite mystified, having no idea what a spoon was used for.

The NGOs and development practitioners were left scratching their heads. Donor agencies had flooded the country with money and expensive equipment intended for an emergency which had largely passed and which in some cases was effectively useless. John wondered how much the donors really cared, given the overriding western agenda to open Burma up, and the opportunity to pump in money and people that the hurricane had offered.

On the other hand, the generals of the Burmese regime had seen this coming. Given their overriding interest in maintaining control of the country, their initial move of restricting the movement of aid workers, and ensuring they had little information about conditions in the hurricane-affected areas, made perfect logical sense.

It's About the Governance

The establishment of a commission to lead the reconstruction of eathquake areas of southern Peru hit its first bureaucratic snags almost straight away.

Prior to the Peruvian congress approving the creation of the independent body dubbed 'Forsur', the presidents of two of the three affected regions voiced their objections. President of Ica Romulo Triveño and Huancavelica's Federico Salas argued that Forsur was against the spirit of decentalization policies, and that reconstruction should be managed by regional governments.

Others expressed unease that the business members of the executive council of Forsur would not be considered public servants, and that Forsur would be able to contract directly for goods and services, bypassing normal tendering processes. This, said La Republica, was to 'confuse the emergency stage - - when such a measure is justified -- and reconstruction, which is assessed over three to four years'

At least one blogger also raised concerns about the reconstruction 'tsar', businessman Julio Favre, who sounds something like a Peruvian Bob Jones. Some past quotes:

'If I had to choose between giving work to 60o and saving 4 herons, I'd choose giving work to 600'

'It was really Marxist front organisations that were behind the protest' (speaking about a march against corruption led by Lima's archbishop).

Regarding the reconstruction project, Favre --who will receive no direct remuneration for his role -- said that 'if we follow all the bureaucratic processes we'll be starting the construction in two years, and we want to [finish] it in one year'.

In eventually approving the creation of Forsur on Tuesday evening, Congress struck a compromise. It agreed that Forsur will be able to contract directly for the removal of rubble and rehabilitation of basic infrastructure such as water and drainage, while other, non-emergency contracting will be carried out transparently through an 'abbreviated purchasing mechanism'. The directorship of the independent body will comprise three regional presidents, four provincial mayors, six ministers, and four businessman. It will be based in Ica.

This still didn't satisfy Ica president Triveño, who is planning to present a consitutional claim against the creation of Forsur on the grounds that it replicates the functions of an already-created regional organisation.

Bureaucratic tangles aside, what is happening on the ground to assist people who lost their homes and possessions in the quake?

-- The government will allocate 23 million soles ($7 million USD) to supply warm clothing, food and water for the victims of the quake. This will be managed by the United Nations World Food Programme, which will be in charge of acquiring, packing and delivering the supplies

-- 400 emergency wawa wasis (creches) will be established in the affected zones to look aftter 4,000 children between the ages of three months and four years.

-- Venezuela has sent 200 prefabricated emergency houses, and Chile 100 more

Minister of Labor Susana Pinilla announced that the Construyendo Peru programme, in which people affected by the quake are being temporarily employed to clear up the rubble, is likely to be extended from 8,000 to 12,000 jobs

-- but the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders say there are still 'dozens' of small rural communities that have not received any aid, 10 days after the quake, and people are sleeping outside without any shelter and barely any food or water

On With the Reconstruction

The rubble is still being cleared, and 41 bodies haven't yet been found, but plans for reconstruction in the parts of southern Peru hit by last week's earthquake are underway.

On Monday the 20th, Peruvian president Alan Garcia indicated that he would propose the establishment of an independent body charged with leading the reconstruction. He said it would be led by a an "irreprochable person of great industry and decisiveness" who would "movilize all sectors to reconstruct the affected zone".

On Friday 24th, Garcia confirmed that businessman Julio Favre would be the designated leader, working through a committe including local mayors, regional presidents, as well as relevant businesses and their technicians and architects.

The vision as elaborated by the Peruvian president appeared to be one not just of reconstruction but of modernization and transformation. He suggested that as well as erecting properly-designed buildings and infrastructure, the project would double-lane the Ica-Lima highway, and make operational the previously unused port of Pisco.

By Saturday 25,Favre, already denominated the reconstruction "tsar" had put together his project team to lead Forsur (Fondo para la Reconstrucción del Sur), and local reporters accompanied him and Pisco mayor to inspect an area of terrain to the south of the city where it was intended the rebuilding would start.

President Garcia announced that Forsur would have available a budget of 260 million soles ($85 million USD), and would also construct housing for 'one or two thousand people'.

After the Earthquake

Amidst the inevitable chaos, neglect of people living off the beaten track, and one or two engregious incidents of corrupt behaviour, Peru appeared to do a relatively effective job of responding to last week's earthquake

Two days after the tremor, on Saturday the 18th, local news sources reported a general sense of panic and desperation in Pisco and Ica, where people were living in improvised shelters made from sticks and sheets of plastic.

There was also widespread insecurity. As was seen in New Orleans, actual criminal acts mixed with desperate quake victims looting ruins and breaking into empty shops to find food and supplies, heightening the sense of lawlessness . There were reports of organised attacks on convoys bringing emergency help to the area, and when trucks arrived most were set upon with desperation by people who were ravenous for food and water.

In response, the government increased the number of military units in the Pisco area from 400 to 1,000, sending army, navy and air force units in addition to more than 2,000 police. The Minister of Defense, Allan Wagner, reported that by Saturday morning the assaults on vehicles bringing aid had been 'neutralized'. But reports of looting still drifted in.

On Sunday 19th, Peru's civil defence agency Indeci announced that 503 people were dead, 1,042 injured, and 33,939 families had suffered damaged or destroyed homes. The agency also reported that 2,800 tonnes of clothing, food, shelter, and other goods had been delivered. Statistics varied: the regional president of Ica, Rómulo Triveño, claimed that 45,000 homes had been damaged or destroyed in Ica alone, affecting 253,000 people .

Seventy-two hours after the earthquake, electricity and water were being restored, though this was a slow task in the areas of Pisco and Ica most affected by the quake. In Pisco, where less than 10% of the city had electricity, emergency and medical operations were being powered by generators.

Other Peruvian regions and municipalities rushed to organise aid, and the National Stadium in Lima was the designated centre for collection of donated goods. Thousands of limeños headed to the stadium to give clothing, tinned food and useful equipment, while at least 500 volunteers worked round the clock to collect and pack the donations.

The Peruvian earthquake was also a popular international cause, and offers of help flooded in. In addition to the countries that had already given help, by Monday Mexico, Ecuador, Panama, Brazil and Italy had also dispatched aid. Chile sent further assistance, while Argentina set up an 'air bridge' to Pisco. The Mormon church (with 430,000 Peruvian members) promised a 747 loaded with supplies from Salt Lake City while the Pope himself sent $200,000.

But for people off the beaten track, help was slow to arrive. Reporters from La Republica found that in the settlement of El Bosque, just 15 minutes from the centre of Pisco, people complained that after three days they had not yet received any assistance. On the Wari-Liberatadores highway inland from Pisco to Huancavelica, settlements where the majority of dwellings were destroyed had not seen any help by Sunday.

President of the Council of Minister Jorge del Castillo justified the lack of help for outlying areas, saying that it was necessary to 'prioritize the places worst affected by the earthquake'. Some blame could be directed to the authorities for not having better systems of distribution. But people's inability to reach central areas where aid was being distributed, or insecurity about leaving their few remaining belongings for fear of robbery, reflect everyday reality in Peru.

Meanwhile, the government was looking ahead to future issues of reconstruction. Minister of Labor Susan Pinilla announced on Saturday 18 that a programme called Construyendo Peru would be set up to begin reconstruction work. People affected by the quake would be given priority for the 4,000 jobs, the first week's wages paid in advance.

With the need to spend large amounts of aid money quickly, there's always a risk of misappropriation and corruption. Minister del Castillo announced that the government would establish 'mechanisms of transparency' to keep clear account of national and international aid.

Of course, no mechanism can prevent the dishonesty of individuals, as was seen when a Civil Defense employee in the Lima barrio of La Victoria was caught with half a tonne of donated goods that she'd taken home for 'safe keeping'.

In the local media there were many critics of the government response as delayed, disorganized and haphazard. To be fair, some of the defects which exacerbated the quake's effects -- precarious building construction, ancient water and electricity infrastructure, isolation of people in peripheral areas -- are chronic ones that can't be blamed on any one administation.

But the most notable feature was the outpouring of good will and solidarity. Temporarily, the different sectors of Peruvian society -- central and local government, private companies, civil society groups and individuals -- were united at least in the wish to alleviate the suffering of those less fortunate.

If only, as several columnists wrote, that attitude could be sustained past times of crisis.

Categories: earthquake, Peru, Pisco, Lima

Earthquake in Peru

It's always a worrying sign when the death toll rises rapidly. The first news I heard about the 7.9 Richter scale Peruvian earthquake was several hours after the event, and already early news reports of deaths in single figures had blown out to 330 in later reports. It now looks as though the death toll will be around 500, while an estimated 17,000 people have been left homeless.

Worst hit were the towns of Ica,Pisco, Chinca and Cañete, three--five hours to the southeast of Lima. The majority of casualties appear to have occurred when buildings simply collapsed on top of their occupants.

It's worth checking out this video clip (click to play, audio in spanish) to get some idea of just how badly Pisco has been damaged. The piles of rubble make it look like a particularly war-torn part of Chechnya. Reports say that between 60 to 80 percent of the city has been destroyed. The Guardian has a good summary of events, and some geological background to the quake.

Injured people are being ferried by 'air bridge' to Lima hospitals, and aid and supplies are coming in from the government, Red Cross and private companies. International agencies have already given or offered $40 million of aid. Chile was one of the first countries to assist, sending a Hercules transport plane, while Spanish and Bolivian rescuers helped to look for survivors, and Colombia was reported to have discpatched a ship with supplies to the port of Pisco. Peruvian president Alan Garcia, never one to miss an opportunity to make a wider political point, said that "this gesture shows the brotherly relations of Peru and Chile despite differences over the maritime border".

Sadly, there have also been numerous reports of criminal gangs taking advantage of the darkness in Chincha and Ica to loot and attack houses. It is thought that prisoners that escaped from the Tambo de Mora penal facility during the earthquake may be responsible for some of the criminal activity. Frightened citizens rang TV and radio stations describing armed gangs roaming the streets. President Garcia has announced that he will send an additional 600 police to the affected areas.

Supplies including water, food, medicine and tents have been dribbling in along damaged highways. TV cameras -- always efficiently deployed -- showed people in Pisco living a post-apocalypse reality, huddled on dark streets in blankets and improvising communal meals. But they were still better off than those in isolated rural areas, who were reported to still be with out assistance, 48 hours after the quake.

As terrible a tragedy as this, perhaps the real story is that a complete catastrophe was only just avoided. In Lima, buildings wobbled and swayed, leaving residents shaken but largely unharmed. The city has close to 10 million people, many in dense concentrations of poorly-constructed brick, plaster and concrete. Had the quake been centred a bit further to the north, the results woud have been scarcely imaginable.

Categories: earthquake, Peru, Pisco, Lima