Development assistance: spiritual-and moral-dimensions - spiritual side of economic development

UN Chronicle, Spring, 1999 by Alfredo Sfeir-Younis

The World Bank's Special Representative to the United Nations

Understanding the role that spirituality plays in economic development is the most important challenge facing humanity today. This is because the language of development and its practice have centred mainly on the material aspects of individual well-being and societal welfare. Most people expect that material and non-material related problems, such as production, availability, consumption and disposal, can be solved in the material world. However, the persistence of fundamental problems - poverty, drug abuse, crime - facing countries around the world today would suggest just the opposite; i.e., the most effective and sustainable solutions, it seems, are embodied in the non-material realm of people's lives.

Development results from a process of complex and diverse choices, some made individually and others collectively, either within the confines of organized groups or entrusted to Governments - schools/health centres, national security. The quality of the development process and its results depend on those choices which, in turn, are directly rooted in the values and the belief system we identify with. In the social context, we often resort to political parties or trade unions to whom we entrust many collective choices based on these values. In many instances, however, we do not see the immediate results of our private or collective decisions. No matter how sophisticated the process is, we may not see its full impact on others, for example, air pollution that destroys the planet's ozone layer.

Given the billions of poor people and the major environmental destruction taking place in the world today, many of us are deeply disappointed by the legacy these choices are leaving behind - a legacy of both immediate and non-immediate outcomes, over space and time. Again, this legacy mirrors the values and beliefs that laid the ground for those choices.

It is clear that for too long we allowed economic and financial values to solve development problems. Certainly, these values have an important contribution to make, particularly in the efficient creation of material wealth, by making an economy materially better off. There is no doubt that this is something we know how to do well. However, we now know that making an economy better off is not a guarantee for making a community or a society better off, as society's well-being requires much more than the creation, consumption and distribution of material goods and services. This dichotomy between increasing material wealth and the ability to improve people's welfare - a much broader objective - has brought about a new consensus: in order to attain the core objectives of a human-centred development assistance framework, an approach is needed that goes far beyond a concern for economic and financial values.

The time has come to ask ourselves about dimensions which would facilitate the unfolding development of a unique paradigm for the betterment of societies, not only the economies, and thus redefine the nature and scope of development assistance.

Again, nobody should doubt the contribution that economic values make, as "scarcity" (the basis for economic values) is the key to the architecture of development assistance. Today, good economics is identified with well-functioning markets; and, correspondingly, the "laws of the market" determine fundamental decisions which, with perfect information and pure competitiveness, some argue, would maximize both individual and societal welfare. It is here, within the context of globalization, that "free trade", "liberalization", "privatization" and "let the market work" are advocated. But the reality is that the laws of the market have not guaranteed the attainment of social goals.

These are the called "market failures", like the degradation of natural resources such as water, air, biodiversity, oceans, and the ozone layer. Such failures arise from inadequate policies, lack of information, the wrong objectives and misguided decision-making. In all cases, private gains do not translate in improvements in collective welfare.

We must design development assistance programmes that go far beyond economic constraints. This is already beginning to happen as a result of a number of trends: the increased role of civil society; the need for democracy and participation; and the need to develop new forms of collective action and decision-making. In addition, through choices leaders make, these programmes must address major moral imperatives and embrace spiritual and holistic values. It is here where spirituality - the inner encounter with the soul and with who we are - and development meet, where the new paradigm must have, as a point of departure, the person, with its inner dimensions rather than its material world.

The next millennium comes at a time when our civilization faces many contradictions that are unacceptable. One is the abundance of material goods, including food, while the largest number of people on this Earth - in relative and absolute terms - are poor and include millions of malnourished children. This civilization knows how to produce material welfare but fails to distribute adequately what has been produced. Another contradiction is related to technological change, which advances at an incredible pace but in a system where technologies either are not available to those in need or threaten to destroy the fundamental pillars of our civilization, such as the more sophisticated weapons for mass destruction. Furthermore, we enjoy prosperity but we are incapable of having everlasting peace. We have experienced major advances in health care, but there are more than 500,000 women in the world who die every year of pre- or post-natal complications because they do not have access to basic health care. These contradictions are compounded by serious moral dilemmas. Let me illustrate some important moral dilemmas facing development choices.