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No Site development and survival in the XXI century.

- No development and survival in the XXI century .. FORUM

TPSIPOL: RED 15/05/2004 DEMOCRATIC

DESCO

NO DEVELOPMENT AND SURVIVAL IN THE XXI CENTURY Oswaldo de Rivero
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http: / / groups.yahoo.com/group/eleccion/message/17898

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If one examines the Human Development Report and World Bank reports for the period 1975 - 2003, ie 28 years, over 124 countries called "developing", where live most of humanity, it is found that:
That in 69 countries, average per capita income over those 28 years not only did not grow, but was "zero", and was also negative in many of them. That
additional 37 other countries average per capita income only increased 1%, and in all cases less than 3%. That is totally insufficient to overcome poverty.
That only 4 countries: Chile, Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia recorded an average growth of per capita income of 4%, which is almost minimorum minimum necessary to begin to overcome poverty.

Finally, we note that in these 28 years, only 4 countries: South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and China grew at a sustained average per capita income of around 6% and 7%, ie sufficient to win the poverty of its population.
Moreover, in all reports on the World Social Situation of the UN and others, shows that social inequality increased in all developing countries and the tissue social development of many African, Asian and Latin American has begun to disintegrate. In fact, there are now more than 55 armed groups and more than 33 civil wars in poor countries.

development then is the exception and not the rule development!
Development has been one of the most persistent myths of the second half of the twentieth century. Theorists, experts and politicians have been convinced that economic and social development is a process inherent in all nation-states, it is only necessary to apply the theories and the right policies and poor countries begin to create wealth to become corporation with high levels of life, as they have now only the 24 industrialized capitalist democracies. For half a century, more than 124 countries have experimented with different ideologies and economic systems and social development looking like "El Dorado", but development has proved as elusive as that chimera of the conquerors.

The origin of the myth of development draws on the ideology of progress of our Western civilization, ideology that originated in the Enlightenment, but was later driven loudly by the industrial revolution. In fact, with the industrial revolution was born the conviction that any society can create science, technology and industry, and thus progress without limits. Thus, rural societies to industrial societies can progress and eventually become post-industrial societies sapiens knowledge-intensive and perpetual welfare.

Within this ideology of happiness through material progress since the late eighteenth century, Adam Smith described the steps needed to achieve the wealth of nations. Explaining how the hunter-gatherer societies could evolve into pastoral and agricultural companies, ending up as manufacturing and commercial companies. Karl Marx, another major ideologue of the pursuit of happiness of humanity through material progress, also thought that the material progress of humanity is making the transition from feudalism to capitalism, and then by the transition from capitalism to communism, thus ending the history and perpetual happiness is born . The neoliberal Francis Fukuyama agrees with Marx's idea, when you consider that today the story has ended with the triumph of global capitalism.

One of the great modern proponents of the myth of development was Professor Walter Rostow of MIT, who in 1960 fascinated all technocrats with his famous work on the stages of economic growth. According to Rostov, countries evolve a traditional society to build and launch phases, reaching the final stage of high mass consumption, which is nothing other than development. Ecology does not count for anything in this process is another raw material consumed in the march towards progress and happiness. After Rostov, all technocrats were convinced that we can achieve development. Only had to know how to apply the theories and the right policies, creating value, build, launch and mass consumption. It was able to reproduce as quickly as possible the process of historical development of Europe and the U.S.. Since then we have seen many 'offs', but few cases of national development. It said 20 years ago that Brazil was on takeoff, which was one of the future world powers, then a few years ago, were fashionable Mexico and India. Then came the fashion for 'emerging' countries of Asia, but today, fashion is only the rise of China, a country of 1200 million people, where only 150 million people living in cities of the coast have a standard of living to be consumers in the global economy.

The truth is that in the last 30 years, only two small countries, South Korea and Taiwan have moved out of agriculture into technologically advanced industrial societies, overcoming the widespread poverty and raising living standards to create a majority middle class, but with democratic standards, cultural, scientific and social well below Europe and the United States. Other two provinces, Hong Kong and Singapore, have also approached the living standards of the developed capitalist democracies are not true nation-states but small city-state.

The truth is that after 50 years of all kinds of models of development, income per capita of nearly 100 countries "called" developing "is less than in 1975. Today the population of the developing world is nearing 5 billion, and more 4 billion live with 1, 2 or 3 dollars a day. Earlier this century, the world is not nothing but a poor world.

Instead of a development process of poor countries, what we are witnessing is a process of national economic infeasibility, and we are witnessing the collapse of many of these viable national economies in Africa, Asia and Latin America and its transformation into real entities ungovernable chaotic, full of crime, violence and civil war.

The origin of this process of non-national development and unfeasible due mainly to structural factors, cultural, ideological and ecological.
1. A structural factor is the non-development desproletarización production. Today the technological revolution has the effect of using less labor per unit produced and industrial services. The great proletarian smokestack cities are disappearing and give way to smaller factories full of software and automation coupled with the outsourcing providers that produce temporary work and fewer workers. The services and manufacturing, through automation and computer, are workers and eliminating bureaucracy. Today, the economy can grow without necessarily creating more jobs.
2. Another factor for the non-structural is the dematerialization of production. This means that today is used less raw material for manufactured industrial unit. The industrial economy is emancipated from its dependence on natural resources. In a book of classical economics believes that countries endowed with natural resources are rich. This is not true today. Switzerland, a country that has no natural resources and only has 6 million people, exports more than Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, that is, more than all the MERCOSUR. What is it about Switzerland? Simply put, human resources, export gray matter contained in the very high technological content of their articles and the high efficiency of its services, rather than raw materials and low-technology manufactures exported by most of MERCOSUR.

During this century the world will become a dual planetary society. On the one hand, there will be a minority of people and countries devoted to intellectual activities dematerialized, creators and inventors of technology and services, the other, there will be a majority of poor people and countries who still live in their physical strength and resource exports natural. No chance to develop.

3. Another factor not linked to the previous development, is the settlement of a scientific culture in the ill-called developing countries. Societies of Latin America, Africa and much of Asia (excluding South Korea, Taiwan, China and Singapore) are in reality almost no companies that employ the scientific and technological research in their production. Do not feed on natural science research, biological, chemical, physical, biochemical and mathematics. Almost the entire speech acedémico in these countries is historical, legal, sociological, economic, artistic, literary. What is right, but this just is not reached to the development of a modern society, characterized by main scientific and technological research. In these societies is preferred to the log point, the rhetoric of the experiment, the deduction to induction, belief rather than doubt. They almost no scientific discourse. Consequently, there is no innovation or invention. Without an educational revolution that promotes curiosity and scientific research, never go out of underdevelopment and national non-viability is its status in the XXI century.

4. There is also an ideological factor that prevents international development: the global false liberalism practiced by developed countries and even richer by the IMF. In fact, this false liberalism does not allow the free movement of all factors of production. The capital flows freely, especially speculative. But labor and technology, two critical factors for poor countries, are not free, are protected by stringent immigration regimes and intellectual property. Moreover, this false liberalism allows rich countries subsidize their agriculture with over $ 200 billion annually. However, nothing better illustrates the global false liberalism that IMF intervention against the free market for global investors to save the financial crises in Mexico, Asia, Brazil, Russia and Argentina. This rescue of the global Golfingers speculative and risky investments made, is totally against the laws of free market because it already has an effective means to punish reckless investors: bankruptcy. The IMF bailout is nothing in practice, but a sort of global financial populism.

5. Finally, there are ecological factors against the development. Today the global model of urban development is, we might call the California model, which is a gargantuan sprawl and even chaos that devours millions of tons of water, fossil energy, is highly polluting, destroying agricultural land while demand millions tons of food. This model is already present in Mexico, Lima, Sao Paulo, Rio, Shanghai Bogota, Lagos, Dhaka, Karachi, Manila, Adbijan and in almost all countries, developing misnamed today, and begins to produce a lack of secure access urban poor to adequate amounts of water, food and energy.

In 2020 the world will be an urbanized planet, ecologically something new from the Neolithic. The population of poor countries will nearly double, to reach about 6 billion and is almost entirely urban. More than 30 to 40 poorest megacities of more than 10 million, and about 500 more one million is spread across the planet following the California model, causing enormous physical and social imbalance between urban and vital resources like water, energy and food, and thereby creating major social and political turmoil.

If the urban population continues to increase in poverty, without access to safe water, food and energy, there will be more poverty and instability caused by the formidable urban demographic pressure on these three critical resources. The urban population explosion made a kind of looting of agricultural land, exacerbating food insecurity. The low water or contaminated water in underdeveloped cities produced numerous epidemics will become endemic. The population in search of firewood destroy forests, which will cause soil erosion and increase food shortage (poor countries live hundreds of food aid, as do many of you today.)
With urban population explosion, without food security, energy and water, development prospects will evaporate completely. Without water, a country will not have food, no school work with malnourished children, no manufacturer can have high productivity without adequate Energy and water supply. No family can live a healthy and active life without food, water and energy. Poverty, disease and unemployment will be perpetuated, crime will worsen and the social fabric would disintegrate to turn the country urbanized poverty in an ungovernable chaotic entity.
In parts of Africa and Asia earthquake of violence does not cease to burst. In Latin America, and many countries have fallen prey to epidemics of gun violence and terror, some still in others it has stopped but there is no guarantee that the epidemic of violence not return, because the social turbulence does not cease in the region, is now the region with the highest rate of crime in the world. The story is not over as Francis Fukuyama said. It only started full of surprises, terrorism and social and political turmoil.

Today is indispensable for a country not feasible to make a scientific revolution in education, increase investment in scientific and technological research, out of the exclusivity of raw materials, more technology-intensive production and leave the unskilled labor. At the same time, it is necessary to balance social physical and stabilizing the growth of the urban population while increasing water security, food security and energy security non-polluting alternative energies. All politicians should unite around a pact for survival to achieve these objectives. Otherwise, the so-called poor megacities in the developing world will be true hell of crime and political turbulence.

have to be realistic, to abandon the quest for El Dorado, California imitation of the model, because it is ecologically unsustainable infinanciable ... Imagine 5 billion in the developing world, using 4 billion credit card as Californians consumed, releasing into the atmosphere 7 tons of gases per capita per year, with one or two cars and expanding constantly cities. The terrestrial biosphere would soon destroy ... Would have to buy another planet.

Towards a new global ethic

To overcome this situation has come to start a new global ethic. The great challenge of the century is unethical, and it is another to change current patterns of consumption that are polluting the air, water, creating deforestation, desertification, destroying biodiversity, climate change and appropriating amorally rights of future generations to enjoy and live in an ecologically sound and viable.

Today he tries This type of globalization is nothing that transmit the unsustainable consumption patterns of about one billion consumers in rich countries about 5 billion people in developing countries. All this culture to spread more and more unsustainable material consumption does not really make sense. It is a predator and materialistic madness is perhaps the largest ethical problem that will face humanity.
Today, the production of goods and services (GNP) can not continue using ecology as a raw material but should reflect the environmental cost. Definitely need to be asked that can not be counted as wealth creation, GDP growth implies reheating the atmosphere, destroy biodiversity, destroying forests, creating water shortages, polluting the air, rivers, seas and create toxic waste dumps. Fortunately there are now as researchers seeking a new calculation than the GNP. A new index to measure the wealth of nations, ie an index that removes environmental losses and costs of water and air pollution or consumption of nonrenewable natural resources of the concept of economic growth. The GNP is growing but the planet does not grow. This measure is absurd and the ethical task ahead is to replace it.

also a new global ethic should be skeptical of spending on scientific and technological progress which have no connection with the urgent needs of humanity now has. In the last thirty years much of the scientific and technological activities, such as pilot activities in space expeditions to the solar system, creating a costly space station and other activities of the science of particles absorb enormous financial resources , apart from the deplorable living conditions that exist here on earth.

For example, with so many resources spent recently in Mars exploration, we should ask whether there is more hunger on this planet than on Earth and if it is unethical for a moratorium exploration of the solar system to spend such enormous resources to eradicate hunger, water scarcity or develop renewable energy on our planet.
science and technology should be reoriented ethically to meet the urgent needs of humanity. Convince scientists and researchers to guide with an ethical sense the current scientific research and technological development should also be a major achievement of a new global ethic for the twenty-first century.

* Ambassador of Peru to the UN.