Examination of Witnesses (Questions 240-241)
MR PETER
HARDSTAFF AND
MR TIM
JONES
5 MAY 2006
Q240 Ms Barlow: Is this something
you have brought up with DFID? If so, what was their response?
Mr Hardstaff: This is something
that we are bringing up with DFID, yes. We did ask for a meeting
with the Secretary of State at the start of this year and that
has been turned down. We are currently trying to organise a seminar
with DFID where we want to bring over for a second time an expert
in public water provision from Brazil and hopefully one from Uganda.
We want to start creating this dialogue with DFID about a process
in which the public sector can work. We started this last year.
It was notable that although we had written this stuff down, we
had written down examples of successful public systems, that had
not sunk in. When we asked an expert, Antonio Miranda, to come
and talk to DFID—we arranged a meeting—about Porto
Alegre as an example, it was almost a revelation: "We have
not heard about this." I remember thinking we have written
it down, but there is nothing like face to face contact. That
is part of our job, to persuade DFID that this can work. We are
trying to engage with DFID on that very issue, that there are
successful public sector ways of providing water. This can work.
As yet, I do not think the dialogue has reached a point where
DFID are saying, "Yes, we believe we need to do something
different". There is still a bit of resistance institutionally.
Q241 Ms Barlow: Moving back to economic
growth, we have heard in previous sessions that there is a need
to concentrate on environmental issues, particularly climate change
and global warming, while still continuing development. We had
slightly different evidence earlier today in terms of growth but
your focus has always been very much on poverty reduction rather
than the environment. I would like to briefly go into what the
goals are that you want to see in terms of poverty reduction.
Mr Hardstaff: WDM does not see
poverty reduction completely in the abstract, in a way that it
does not involve environmental sustainability. On the plus side,
DFID has produced materials emphasising the fact that the poorest
people are often critically dependent on environmental resources.
If you degrade or destroy those environmental resources you will
increase poverty. Poverty reduction or improving people's quality
of life is where WDM is coming from. We do not equate that with
economic growth necessarily. It is fair to say that WDM like most,
if not all, other development organisations has engaged in a pretty
superficial debate with DFID, the UK government and the World
Bank about growth. We are as guilty as anyone of talking solely
about growth and we have engaged in this discourse about the policies
that will achieve growth. Obviously, we have a very different
conception of what are the best policies to achieve growth. On
that basis, we have criticised trade liberalisation, for example.
Our objective is improvement in the quality of life for the poorest
people in the world. How you get that is a critical issue. Where
we take issue with the conventional view of development is around
the pursuit of growth as an end in itself, the pursuit of export
led development as an end in itself. That is why, in our submission
to DFID, we highlighted those issues and we were suggesting that
there needs to be a rethink. That not only comes from our experience
simply looking at issues around growth. To put it bluntly, even
on traditional models of industrial development, you do not get
rich by exporting low value agricultural products. That is not
a route to development and therefore the idea that agriculture
is the only thing that poor countries should be interested in,
for example in the trade round, is utter fallacy. That comes from
a traditional way of looking at development. Ally that to sustainability,
to what improves the lives of the poor, and you get a much more
complex analysis which also questions traditional views around
development, around issues like export led development and using
GDP as a measure of success. The UNDP recently did some work on
analysing the relationship between GDP growth and poverty reduction.
It is possible to have growth in GDP with very little impact on
poverty.
Chairman: We are going to have to curtail
the session at this point because the Prime Minister has his ten
minutes of weekly abuse so thank you very much for coming. It
has been a very useful session and if we have any further questions
we will contact you.
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