International Development CommitteeWritten evidence submitted by Maya Fehling
The Banana Queendom or:
How I learned to stop worrying and love the goals
Once upon a time there was a country called “The Queendom of Banana”. The country consisted of one single huge mountain, with its highest point at the centre of the queendom and which slowly leveled out towards the borders. On the top of the mountain was a beautiful palace from where a wise queen ruled over her people. All she wanted was for everybody to be happy.
The queen and her people loved bananas: bananas for breakfast, lunch and dinner. People had enough with one banana a day because bananas happened to be very large. Most people worked in the banana business. The queen ensured that the people enjoyed their work that women and men lived together in respect and friendship, and that children were always playing and laughing and learning. The people in return loved their queen, loved their country and of course they loved bananas. All in all it was a country that one would truly desire to live in… so it would seem.
One day, a mountaineer arrived at the palace whose goal it was to climb all mountains ever built. The curious queen invited him to listen to his wonderful stories. For the first time the queen heard that far away, in the lowlands of her queendom, the people were not always happy, some people even were hungry and children sometimes sick and miserable. Her majesty became very sad and immediately she wanted to change the situation. She thought about it day and night, talked to the wisest men and women of the royal court and finally came up with an idea.1
“I will send out the best highlanders to assure the wellbeing of the lowlanders. For this endeavor I have devised 12 goals. Please scribe, note:
I decree that my representatives will ensure that…
1.
2.
3.
4.
The Queen made a brief pause because the writer needed to change the tablet of stone. It should be noted that at that time paper had not yet been invented and so everything had to be set in stone. Her majesty continued, “
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
The Queen cleared her throat and the scribe stopped chiseling. He was now on to his third tablet. She paused and raised a hand for effect: “I declare these 12 goals to be known henceforth as “Her Bananic Majesty’s Dream Goals”. The royal court erupted into a cheering applause. The queen was very pleased and smiled happily as she sat down.
The royal scribe took the three tablets of stone up to the queen’s throne so she could inspect his work. But three tablets are not easily carried and the third tablet slipped out of his hand, fell on the marble floor and shattered into a thousand pieces.
The ovation suddenly died. Her Majesty lost her smile for a few moments and stared at the trembling chiseller. Then the wise queen began to talk calmly: “Well, I guess 12 goals are too “heavy” for a start. Let’s begin with only eight of “Her Bananic Majesty’s Dream Goals”.2 The four others can follow later. “ The scribe sighed in relief and the court continued the applause.
“Your Majesty!” one of her ministers raised his voice, “may I ask until when “Her Bananic Majesty’s Dream Goals” should be fulfilled?”
“Good question, minister”, said the queen, “let’s say within a year, maximum 15 months”.3
“Another question, my lady!” yelled a second minister, “which goal is the most important? Which one should we prioritise?”
The queen thought for a moment and then concluded “All my goals are equally important.4 Enough talking now.5 Let’s get started!”
And so, eight of the queendom’s wisest and most courageous men and women were selected and made ready for the trip. After all preparations were complete, the group of heroes finally embarked upon their important mission. They were sent off by a big crowd of cheering highlanders. The queen was greatly moved to see such public commitment for the good cause and she waved enthusiastically after her Magnificent Eight.
The task force traveled down the mountain with camels, lamas and horses packed with the three two tablets of stone and lots of bananas… ready to do good. After a few days travel the eight sat down together and discussed their next steps. The majority argued to split up and give each person the responsible for a single goal.
They broke the two tablets into eight pieces, and whilst blindfolded, they each chose a goal. The one that picked Goal 1 hence was responsible to ensure enough bananas, said “Since I have Goal 1 I will need to take all bananas with me, to make sure none of the lowlanders is left hungry.” The highlander who picked Goal 3 argued, “No, I have to take at least half of them since I have to make sure that all the womenfolk get enough bananas.” Then, the one who had Goal 6 interjected, “Well, in order to test whether people are allergic to bananas, I need to take some too!” and so everybody started to argue and claim their right to take the largest portion of the bananas. Until one woman had an idea: “Our queen did not want to prioritise, so we shouldn’t either. Everybody gets the same amount of bananas. If one of us runs out of bananas he or she will need to go back and get more.6 Our majesty is wise and will understand.” Everybody agreed that this seemed to be the best idea. The next morning everybody took his or her share of bananas. They wished each other luck and split up, each traveling in a separate direction.
Over the following weeks and months every one of the eight highlanders tried at length to fulfill his or her Majesty Dream Goal. But after about six months, despite their efforts, they all returned to the highlands earlier than planned without having fulfilled their goals. Nobody dared to enter the palace alone to bring the bad news, so they waited until the last one had arrived. The last of the not-so-magnificent eight was the highlander responsible for Goal 8 who looked utterly miserable.
“Wonderful!” cried Her Majesty as her group of “heroes” entered the palace yard, “so the lowlands can’t be so badly off after all since you have all been able to come back before the deadline!” But on seeing their faces, she realised that they hadn’t been successful. The eight looked at their feet, chewed on fingernails or stared out of the window. “What went wrong?” she asked. Nobody said anything. Nobody felt accountable.7
“What happened with “Her Bananic Majesty’s Dream Goal” number one? It can’t be that difficult to distribute bananas, can it?!”
“Why me first?” murmured the highlander whose task was to deal with Goal 1, “I thought there was no prioritisation…”
“I can’t hear you. Speak up. What went wrong?” asked the queen.
“Well…” the man stepped forward, “Since I had only a limited amount of bananas, I thought I’d start with making sure that at least half of the people in the lowlands had enough to eat. So I only stopped in every second village I passed in order to be as fair as possible.8 But the word spread so quickly: whenever I didn’t stop with my horses and camels in a village, people would run to the next village, so they would receive some bananas. Sadly the ones left behind in the other village were the weakest who could not run to the next village where I stopped and distributed bananas.9 Nonetheless, I was hoping that those that did get some bananas brought them back to their home village.10 What I learned was that different people needed different amounts of bananas per day. Some actually need more than one banana to get to the same satiety level than someone for which one banana was enough.11 After about 6 months I ran out of bananas and had to come back.”
“Hmmmm…” said the queen, listening and trying to understand the problem. “Growing bananas is easy to teach! What happened to my second Dream Goal?”
A woman moved forward. She took a deep breath and said “Ma’am, I tried my best. I started training small groups of people how to grow bananas. They were all very smart and ambitious and all soon were able to grow beautifully shaped bananas with tasty flesh, a good weight, a rich smell, a beautiful…” The queen interrupted the woman, “Yes, yes, that sounds great, so what was the issue?”
The woman stuttered a bit and continued with a lowered voice, “Well… after they had grown the bananas they did not know what to do next. They were of course able to pick a banana from the plant and eat it themselves, but they did not know how to properly harvest the whole field so it could be transported to others. They cut them the wrong way, harvested the bananas too late so they turned bad before they reached the villages and did not know what to do with the plant afterwards to ensure the next season of bananas. And all this… was because I had not taught them about these steps. I just focused on the basics, the primary steps without looking forward.12 I failed, my queen.” The women looked to the floor and stepped back into the line of the eight “wise” highlanders.
The queen sighed and continued listening to the next woman responsible for teaching especially women how to grow bananas.
“My queen, I obviously had very similar problems with the third goal. Besides, I realised that despite your principles that men and women are able to do and to become everything, I noticed differences in the choices of men and women. Whereas the men were often working in the plantation and organising them, women tended to stay home with the children.13 So women were not coming to my training sessions because they were preoccupied at home and the men could not take their places because they did not know how.”
“Hmmm…” grumbled the queen again, before listening to the highlander responsible for the children to be playing and happy.
“I actually did pretty well, my majesty.” Said the man confidently. “All the children I found got a banana from me until I ran out of bananas and had to come back.”
“Well done,” acknowledged the queen in her most supportive manner, “but were the children playing and did they look happy?”
“Not really” said the man honestly and in a less confident tone, “M’lady, it has been a while since I was a child and I do not remember what made me happy back then. The only thing I could think of was to give them bananas, isn’t that all we need to become happy? Unfortunately it did not always work. I don’t know why they continued crying, especially the babies.”
The queen said nothing and waited for next of the eight to talk about Goal 5.
“Majesty, what my predecessor did not mention was that there are a lot of children in the lowlands. Probably it’s easier to be pregnant, as you don’t have to climb up and down all the time and so there are many more pregnant women in the lower regions.14 And as mentioned before children cry and many children mean many crying children and crying children make mothers unhappy and many crying children make many mothers unhappy and many…”
“Ok, ok! Enough! I understand.” Interrupted the queen in a rather irritated tone of voice, “Next! What about people allergic to bananas?”
A small highlander raised his voice: “Dearest queen, banana allergy is a real problem in the lower-lying lands. Fortunately we have good treatment for this kind of disease but we should not forget chronic intolerance to bananas or constipation as serious queendom’s health problems.15 But above all there are not enough people to do the tests for allergies, or to give the treatment and the people don’t know that they should get checked and where to go.16
“It seems that you think my Majesty Dream Goal 6 is no good?!” asked the queen.
All eyes lay on this small man who was trying to make his point: “No! It is definitely a great goal but maybe we need one goal that covers it all… like Goal 11 you had already planned so that everybody feels healthy.”17
“Yes, well, that one got smashed into pieces…but thanks for reminding me.” Said the queen while briefly drawing a fierce scowl at her royal scribe, who was intently studying the end of his chisel.
“Number seven, the banana trees! What is your excu… I mean, what do you have to say?” asked the queen, now visibly annoyed.
The “hero” who had picked Goal 7 spoke up: “My queen, I think the trees are treated well. There were minor issues that I could easily solve.18 I came back early because I did not know what else to do.”
“Great! The first piece of good news!” the queen’s voice now regained a little of her enthusiasm, “What about the final goal, any transportation issues?”
“My lady, I’m the worst of all. I don’t have any good reason for having failed… Right at the start I lost my little tablet of stone with the goal written on it. And so for nearly six months I was trying to find it, because I could not remember exactly what I was supposed to do and by when.19 On top of this, I didn’t do anything with the delicious bananas I brought and in the end they all went rotten.” On hearing of such a senseless waste of bananas, the other seven highlanders all started insulting the man responsible for Goal 8.20
“That’s enough! My “Her Bananic Majesty’s Dream Goals” have become “Her Majesty’s Nightmare Goals”! You are the wisest and most courageous men and women of the highlands. If not you then who in this queendom could have helped the lowlands? You should have stayed together instead of splitting up for your tasks. It could have solved many of your problems instantaneously.21 Eight heads will better find a solution than only one.”
The eight highlanders nodded in silence, admiring their wise and just queen.
At that moment, the guards brought in a man, explaining that he was a farmer who wanted to give back something that belonged to the queen.
Without being asked, the man took the floor: “Sorry to interrupt your meeting. I’m just a farmer from the lowlands, but I found this in my plantation. I think it belongs to one of you”, he looked at the eight highlanders still standing in line. The elderly man held up the stone piece for goal number eight. “It looked quite important with this old fashioned writing style and the Your Majesty’s seal on it. I heard about the goals and since there are only eight of them22 I thought I’d better bring this back to you.”
The face of the man who was responsible for Her Majesty’s Dream Goal Eight blushed in embarrassment.
“Thank you,” said the queen, still amazed by this courageous and outgoing old man, “you can give it to me.” The farmer walked to the queen, handed over the little stone tablet and added, “Maybe next time you should write it on banana leaves so it’s not so heavy to carry around”. The farmer turned and wanted to leave the hall. “Wait!” said the queen. The elderly man stopped and turned back to face her.
“Is it true that my people in the lower lands are unhappy and don’t have enough bananas to eat?” asked the queen.
“Yes my lady, it is true that some of us don’t have enough to eat. While walking up the mountain I saw that highlanders have different lives and often more of many things and they look healthier than people in the lowlands. However we are not always unhappy. Our families and communities have strong bonds and we share what we have.23 And what is happiness anyway? I can imagine that the great view over the country from the top of the mountain can make one happy, however for someone living in the lowlands it might be dreadful having to climb up and down all the time.”
“You said you have heard about my goals. Do you think the goals can help you?”
“We are thankful for sending help, but I wonder why you didn’t ask us people from the lowlands what our problems and needs are. I will be honest with you, what we need is not charity but friends. I do think that these goals can be helpful24…but…”, the lowlander took a deep breath, “we have many people in the lower lands, many more than in the highlands. We struggle to produce enough bananas for all of us. However it’s not just about having enough bananas to eat. It is much more complex than that. In particular it seems important to me to make sure that those who are the worst off get especially well looked after25, that the environment and the waste problems are addressed26, and that people are more healthy and happy.” The queen sent a sharp glance at the scribe who was now looking up at the ceiling whistling innocently.
“Yes, we had thought about that,” said the queen “ and we will deal with those concerns from now on. What do you actually mean by “waste’ my friend?”
“Majesty, when you eat a banana, have you ever asked what happens to the peels afterwards?” The queen hesitated and answered “well, they go into the bin, don’t they?”
“Yes”, answered the old man, “but from the bin they go to the pile and from the pile they slowly slide to the lower lands. In the lowlands we also pile our banana peels but they go nowhere and dissolve on their own after a while. The banana peels coming down the mountain however lie around so that many people slip on them and get hurt.”27
The queen stared at him, shocked and embarrassed at the same time. She realised that all those years she had not thought about what happened to the banana peels once the delicious flesh was eaten. This wise woman realised that not knowing about it did not mean that she was not responsible for the consequences. As queen she should have known. She yelled, almost-screamed “From now on we will stop eating bananas!”
There was a sudden silence. The whole royal court, no, the whole country seemed to hold its breath in fear that the oddly-shaped fruit would suddenly be banned.
The farmer from the lowlands remained calm. “No need for such a reaction… and it would likely not be possible to shut down all plantations at the same time. Think about all the workers you would make unemployed and all the necessary energy you get from this rich fruit”. “We in the lowlands love bananas as much as you do, so it would be an unnecessary punishment for all of us. But we have to find a way that we have fewer banana skins and that they don’t slide all down to the lower regions.”
The queen thought for a moment, “OK, we can keep on eating bananas but we have to find a solution!” and a huge wave of relief swept through the country.
“Yes, my lady. We will. In fact, once in the lowlands, before you brought us the delicious banana, we used to grow a traditional fruit called “apple”. The fruit has a much nicer design than the banana!” The hero farmer held up a round red apple that he had brought with him as he was still growing these ancient fruits in his own garden, “and what remain once eaten, called apple cores, do not slide!”28 Suspiciously, the ministers, the guards and the queen herself stared at the unknown food.
Our tale is nearly over, and it can be revealed that, the highlanders would quickly fall in love with the innovative ideas of the hero and soon the country would have two rainbow flags: one with the half peeled banana and the other one with a “bitten apple” on it.
“Why don’t you stay and become my advisor… and teach my scribe how to write on leaves instead of stone?” she shot another hard stare at her current royal secretary.
“My lady,” started the old farmer, “I love my queen, but I also love the lowlands and my garden. If I did stay here I would not be of much use: I could not advise you on problems in the lowlands because I would be in the highlands. But I am happy to come up the mountain every now and then with my friends so we can discuss progress and challenges with your dream goals.”
“OUR Dream Goals!” emphasised the queen.
“Yes of course. OUR dream goals.” Repeated the highlander with a smile.
Maya Fehling, MD, DTM&H
Acknowledgement
Thanks to Colin Begg, Sanj Aaron Karat and Ronny Fehling for their corrections and great comments.
October 2012
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1 The involvement of developing countries in the creation process of the MDGs was very limited.(1) “Only 22% of the world's national parliaments formally discussed the MDGs”.(2)
2 The list of MDGs: a “Faustian bargain”, a consensus at the costs of “major sacrifice”.(3)
3 The MDG time frame of 15 years is too short to address development and see progress. Additionally it is missing intermediate milestones and targets.(4-6)
4 MDGs are not presenting “a convergence of understanding about development, its actionable priorities or modes of address; nor about which arenas and what levels are most urgent, or would provide the largest and/or fastest improvement in human well-being”.(7)
5 The “bulk of aid agency annual reports and development effectiveness assessments portray the MDGs as key aid objectives, with no discussion of their limitations” and are hence ignoring the complexity of development.(8)
6 The “MDG costing exercises […] have created the false impression that enhanced financial assistance, hence renewed aid commitments to fund MDGs, was enough to help reach the ambitious targets.”(5)
7 The “lack of effective leadership” or lack of “clear accountability relationships” is as a major constraint to achieve the goals.(6, 38, 42, 43)
8 MDG1 is ethically questionable: “Should the other 50 per cent be expected to wait […] before they are addressed?”(9); it seems “immoral to address only half of the people living in extreme poverty and not all”.(10)
9 MDGs put too much weight on moving “an individual from below to above the absolute poverty line, while it places zero value on growth that increases income of those who still remain below the poverty line”.(11)
10 “[…] trickle-down seldom reaches beyond the middle class.”(12)
11 Poverty line of 1$/day is “absurdly low” and does not cover even a quarter of the food requirement.(13)
12 MDG2 lead to a “so-called policy myopia” neglecting secondary and post-secondary education”.(9,62, 72,73)
13 MDG3 is too narrow to capture the breadth of gender equality and woman empowerment.(1, 7, 14, 15)
14 No clarification for the issue of abortion was noted and no “fertility regulation indicator”.(16, 17)
15 MDGs under-recognise “non-communicable”(18) and “chronic diseases”(19-21), “mental health”(22, 23), “disabilities”(1, 24).
16 Health MDGs are encouraging vertical programs and miss the “importance of effective health systems”.(20)
17 A health goal express as an “end” would rather be “freedom from illness”.(25)
18 To reduce “slum dwellers by only 7-9% by 2020 is not ambitious enough.(1, 9, 26, 27)
19 MDG8 is the “least explicit targets”. It “lacks quantitative and time bound benchmarks” in targets and indicators.(3, 8, 9, 28-30)
20 “Gaps in goals could have contributed to under-investment in areas that are key to realisation of the MDGs” overall development vision.”(30)
21 “A common, cross-sectoral vision of development was not the basis [of the] formulation” of the framework resulting in fragmentation, incoherence, and gaps.(30)
22 MGDs are critiqued as being too narrow and “meeting basic needs” rather than including “participation, equality, and empowerment”.(31)
23 MDGs have been (mis)interpreted as being too much of an “one-size-fits-all”(32) approach which makes it easy for donors to justify policies exclusively focused on MDG targets and not on “specific needs of a particular country”(33).
24 A survey of more than 100 Southern NGOs from 27 countries showed that 75% considered the MDGs were “a good thing”.(34)
25 One of the “biggest omissions” of the MDGs is in fact inequality/inequity.(1, 9, 30, 35-45)
26 The MDG framework places too “little emphasis on environmental issues”.(46)
27 MDGs have too little emphasis on “climate change” which likely will “affect poor people more than others”.(47)
28 MDGs lack further specifications of MDG8 such as “capturing new sources of financing”, “change in the policy environment”, include “indigenous knowledge” and “aid effectiveness reforms to enhance ownership by developing countries”.(28)