Lecture:   Sustainable development: self-interest or self-help?

Speaker:   Professor Gordon Copeland

Time:   7.30

Venue:   Lecture Hall  3

In 1998 the Nobel Prize was awarded to Amartya Sen for his work on welfare economics. This marked a watershed in the history of the development movement, and a coming of age for those who advocate ‘economics as if people mattered’.

Nearly a decade later, how far have we come in developing smaller-scale models that counterbalance the interests of the multinationals? Is better financial targeting of local communities a viable alternative to the debt burden of the last decades?

Increasing transnational flows of information, goods, people and capital pose new challenges for developing countries. One of the positive effects of globalisation, however, is the growing awareness of the differences between developed and developing countries. Professor Copeland argues that the established tradition of multilateral agencies in managing international aid is now being called into question. Concerned citizens in the so-called ‘First World’ have a growing mistrust of the uses to which official development aid is put.  

Consequently we have witnessed in recent years the blossoming of alternative international cooperation networks, which manage their own public and private resources. The proliferation of Development Non Governmental Organisations (DNGOs) is one manifestation of this phenomenon.

Such organisations can have a significant effect on the consumption patterns of industrialised societies. The fair trade initiative has spread as a way of circumventing the multitude of intermediaries in South-North business.  At the same time, we are seeing a growing role for the private sector in the financing of development. This manifests itself at various levels, from the use of new products such as ethical funds, to new financial tools such as micro credits.

Professor Copeland will outline the challenges for the development NGOs in relation to these phenomena. He sees a greater role for development partnerships and a significant shift away from the top-down agenda of North against South. He predicts the growth of new alliances as the economic influence of what was once the ‘Third World’ asserts itself.

Professor Copeland is currently Regius Professor of Economic Theory at the University of Dar-es-Salaam. He is the author of numerous publications including most recently Africa: Sleeping Giant and Village Globalism: Thoughts and Actions. His other interests include Organic Citrus Farming and drumming. He is married with three children.