Saturday, July 15, 2017

"Development" Gone Awry


When and how does economic development become veiled colonialism?

Unfortunately, it appears that some of the world's so-called development projects, sponsored by allegedly beneficent intergovernmental agencies, actually promote exploitation and dispossession:
Jessica Huseman (July 14, 2017). The Breakthrough: How an ICIJ Reporter Dug Up the World Bank’s Best Kept Secret. ProPublica, https://www.propublica.org/podcast/item/the-breakthrough-how-an-icij-reporter-dug-up-world-banks-best-kept-secret?utm_source=pardot&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailynewsletter

It was all part of what Sasha had been told was the World Bank’s biggest secret: Around 2009, the bank had stopped requiring governments to fill out detailed forms with a census of how many people were being displaced and what was being done to help them. Instead, it allowed governments to say that some people might be displaced, and that details on relocation would be worked out later. Often, the World Bank offered no clear plan to help displaced communities at all. Using extensive data analysis and on-location reporting, Sasha and his team published a series that spans three continents and details how 3.4 million people were forced from their land by World Bank projects.
If you want to understand how "development" is transformed into a form of neocolonialism, please read take a look at these highly accessible accounts and/or read more at my book (Crisis Communications, Liberal Democracy, and Ecological Sustainability):

Gregory Palast. (2001, April 29). IMF's four steps to damnation. The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/business/2001/apr/29/business.mbas 

John Perkins. Confessions of an Economic Hitman (video below)




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