I came across a very interesting post by Stewart Brand of the Long Now Foundation where he covers the impact of urban growth being the saviour of the world. Urbanisation he points out has had some radically unexpected impacts including lifting out large tracts of the population into a financially better off, sustainable and improved global citizen. Growth shoots in the developing world are watered by the increasing rural urban migration flows and the abandoned farmsteads have reverted to natural growth with forests and wildlife once more taking over un-cultivated and un-farmed land helping nature recover its balance.
Microfinance as a socially acceptable tool is a definite yes but is it effective and does it actually help the poor it claims to release form the trap of penury into independence? This is a question that we need to ask at this stage.
Microfinance relies not only upon the poorer and weaker sections banding together to rescue themselves it also relies on the poorer and the weaker applying social pressure to engender compliance. Statistics show that it is largely in the developing nations that large scale resource utilisation has jumped upwards in the last decade with increasing global growth and trade. The direct linkages between becoming consumers and suppliers rather than depending on grants and loans to manage the economy is a major change that is yet to be fully mapped.
As Yasmin Siddiqi Principal Water Resources Specialist, Sustainable Development and Climate Change Department points out in her blog: 'More than one-third of the world’s 303 million hectares irrigated area is served by groundwater, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization. Of this, over 70% is in Asia, and India consumes the largest amount of groundwater, over a quarter of the global total. Pumping groundwater is hugely energy-intensive – Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan annually pump about 210–250 km3 of groundwater, consuming almost 70 billion kilowatts per hour annually, close to $4 billion. There are also climate impacts, such as in India, where lifting water for irrigation alone can contribute up to 6% of total national greenhouse gas emissions.' Development is a change paradigm and the means for improving life chances for people who are under resourced and under reached. Finance alone is not a change agent but a resource which can help enable but not meet human needs fully.
The focus of all intervention is enabling others. It is this approach that generates self help groups to support each other, improvise strategies and come up with innovative and often path breaking change models that help lift large portions of society out of the vicious cycle of despondency and lack of growth that they have been caught in. Financing for Development
Offered by the World Bank as an online MOOC It is interesting to see the number of participants on this course . The list of participants appear to be quite widespread with a good proportion from the Asian and African regions. It will be interesting to see what the final world map will show when everyone has logged on and mapped themselves. |
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