International development
Whereas the latter, at its most basic, denotes simply the idea of change through time, international development has come to refer to a distinct field of practice, industry, and research; the subject of university courses and professional categorisations.
It remains closely related to the set of institutions—especially the Bretton Woods Institutions—that arose after the Second World War with a focus on economic growth, alleviating poverty, and improving living conditions in previously colonised countries.
[5] Yet, some scholars have argued that the MDGs lack the critical perspectives required to alleviate poverty and structures of inequality, reflected in the serious lags to achieving numerous other goals.
[10] The new global development agenda places a greater emphasis on collective action, combining the efforts of multiple stakeholders to increase the sustainability of the goals.
This emphasis on sustainability has also led to more cross-sector partnerships, and combined international efforts across areas of environmental, social, cultural, political, and economic development.
Each goal uses indicators based on statistical series collected and maintained by respected organisations in each relevant field (usually the UN agency responsible but also the OECD, IMF and World Bank) The MDGs have catalysed a significant amount of action, including new initiatives such as Millennium Promise.
It is a good example of how the focus today is on sustainable development in these countries; education gives people the skills required to keep themselves out of poverty.
[15] While these two forms of international support seek to alleviate some of the problems associated with a lack of development, they are most often short term fixes – they are not necessarily long-term solutions.
Poverty reduction rejects this notion, consisting instead of direct budget support for social welfare programs that create macroeconomic stability leading to an increase in economic growth.
While some define poverty primarily in economic terms, others consider social and political arrangements also to be intrinsic – often manifested in a lack of dignity.
Such organisations often make it a goal and to help reduce these divides by encouraging co-operation amongst the Global South and other practices and policies that can accomplish this.
This has led to efforts to design project planning and organizational development methods, such as participatory rural appraisal, which are accessible to non-literate people.
The concept of something being appropriate is concerned with ensuring that a development project or programme is of the correct scale and technical level, and is culturally and socially suitable for its beneficiaries.
This should not be confused with ensuring something is low-technology, cheap or basic – a project is appropriate if it is acceptable to its recipients and owners, economically affordable and sustainable in the context in which it is executed.
Rights-based approach combines many different concepts of international development, such as capacity building, human rights, participation, and sustainability.
In development, this is the provision of water and sanitation (toilets, bathing facilities, a healthy environment) of sufficient quantity and quality to supply an acceptable standard of living.
Some of those more relevant to international development projects include rights associated with gender equality, justice, employment, social welfare and culture.
Goals 1–6 are in direct correlation with the status of women in the communities of problem countries such as The Democratic Republic of Congo, Sub-Saharan Africa and many of the developing nations.
An unhealthy mother simply cannot bear a healthy child, let alone nurse a sickly one back to health, without access to adequate nutrition.
The approach and subsequent practical framework is credited to Robert Chambers, who, writing from the mid-1980s and onward, was interested in fostering efficiency in development cooperation.
The core concepts include: taking a holistic view, building on community and individual strengths, focusing on linking both macro and micro-level thinking, sustainability, and maintaining a dynamic and ever-evolving framework.
The 2006 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded jointly to Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank, which he founded, for their work in providing microcredit to the poor.
The latter term allows for greater specificity, for instance in differentiating between lower-middle and upper-middle-income countries, but it has the downside of overemphasising the economic aspects of development at the expense of social, political and cultural rights and freedoms.
[50] More specifically, it has been suggested that 'the theory and practice of development is inherently technocratic, and remains rooted in the high modernist period of political thought that existed in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War'.
[39] It has been argued that this era was launched on January 20, 1949, when Harry S. Truman made these remarks in his inaugural address[56] We must embark on a bold new program for making the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress available for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped areas.
The launch of the Marshall Plan was another important step in setting the agenda for international development, combining humanitarian goals with the creation of a political and economic bloc in Europe that was allied to the U.S.
[57] The changes in the 'developed' world's approach to international development were further necessitated by the gradual collapse of Western Europe's empires over the next decades; now independent ex-colonies no longer received support in return for their subordinate role.
[58] In the 1970s and early 1980s, the modernists at the World Bank and IMF adopted the neoliberal ideas of economists such as Milton Friedman or Béla Balassa, which were implemented in the form of structural adjustment programs,[59] while their opponents were promoting various 'bottom-up' approaches, ranging from civil disobedience and critical consciousness to appropriate technology and Rapid Rural Appraisal.
[63][64] The Cold War had ended, capitalism had become the dominant mode of social organization, and UN statistics showed that living standards around the world had improved over the past 40 years.
[65] Nevertheless, a large portion of the world's population were still living in poverty, their governments were crippled by debt and concerns about the environmental impact of globalization were rising.
