|
Saturday, August 06, 2005
Oledan: Framing development
By Radzini Oledan
Slice of Life
'. . poverty is about more than just a lack of income and thus extend to include deprivation with respect to other aspects of well being such as health and education.'
WHAT are the development targets such as the International Development Targets and the Millennium Development Goals for? What is the role of public administration in the crystallization of this international development framework?
The Millennium Development Goal (MDG) is a global consensus that stresses the objective of development to end global poverty set within seven quantifiable goals, against which the performance of local governments, donors and international development agencies can be measured.
This represents the radical shift from a traditional paradigm, which regards development as a mechanism that would inevitably and aggressively destroy the culture of peoples in the world.
Over the decades, development agencies and donors have offered several frameworks, consisting of goals and targets in which development efforts should revolve- from the promotion of economic growth to the paradigm of growth with equity, efforts shifted in the 1980's towards the meeting of basic needs. In the early part of the 1990's, the rhetoric of sustainable development took over.
The International Development Targets were first adopted by the OECD in 1996, and have been taken up enthusiastically by the New Labor government in Britain and many international development agencies. In September 2000, the UN Millennium Summit endorsed the approach by setting its own Millennium Development Goals, which again put the elimination of poverty at the heart of the international development agenda.
The global consensus is accompanied by a bold new set of targets where global poverty, along with universal primary education, removal of gender disparities in schooling, universal access to reproductive health care, specific reduction in infant, child and maternal mortality rates and reversal in the loss of environment resources are envisioned to be halved by 2015.
Development frameworks shape the development path taken by communities. Often, it explains the cycle of either progress or underdevelopment in the areas.
The Davao City experience in mainstreaming women and children concerns features how the strong collaboration between the government and child focused non-government groups could ensure that the disadvantaged groups are given priority in the local development process.
This is relatively a new definition of governance and politico administrative system and in the whole country, coming from a collective hang-up of government's unresponsiveness to the realities on the ground, this could prove to be an experience in partnership.
As a comprehensive and measurable set of indicators, the International Development Targets and the successor MDG have established themselves as a major force in current development practice. They help to define a set of priorities to be followed within these activities.
Divided into three fields - economic well-being, social development and environmental sustainability and regeneration, they collectively represent a set of goals for poverty reduction, embodying a multi-dimensional conception of poverty.
The targets demonstrate that in the current development practice, poverty is about more than just a lack of income and thus extend to include deprivation with respect to other aspects of well being such as health and education.
These are the development challenges and efforts of the city which could be replicated by other local governments and even cities in Asia. Its ingredients are a mixture of strong political will, active assertion of civil society groups and a development framework which embraces those in the grassroots as partners in governance.
(August 6, 2005 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
Join the Sun.Star message board.Click here. |
|
[return to top]
[home]
[network page]
|
LOCAL NEWS
BUSINESS
OPINION
SPORTS
LIFESTYLE
FEATURE
SUPERBALITA
WEEKEND
|
