Shalom Evolution of Sustainability

1. ShalomEvolution of Sustainability Raineer Chu Matul APU October 2012

2. Development and sustainability • Before moving forward, we want to discuss at the onset, what our parameters of development are. • Development is tied up very deeply with the idea of sustainability.

3. Evolution • The term “sustainability” has evolved over the years, acquiring additional meanings along the way. • the term has grown as follows:

4. Financial sustainability • At the beginning, the idea of sustainability meant only financial sustainability, which, in the context of a micro-loan, looked merely at whether or not the poor borrower could repay his loan. • Will the business or livelihood we have set up for the poor succeed, meaning survive on its own after we leave? • The question was a good one because the world was tired of dole outs. • It was wasting money and, in the meantime, it was also creating dependency on the beneficiaries.

5. Access to capital • Financial sustainability is based on the assumption that the principal need of the poor is access to capital and capital had to be provided which produced enterprise rather than dependency following the model in the affluent countries.

6. Microfinance reach only top poor • But we know that not all the poor need loans or capital. • Perhaps, only 10% of the poor do (90% need jobs or employment). • Today, microfinance can only service the bankable poor and cannot reach the largest segment of the poor – the poorest of the poor, because the poorest of the poor do not have anything to invest the capital in. • The poorest of the poor will only take the money and eat it or use it to buy medicines (50% of the default in loans among the poor is due to sickness whether in their immediate family or in their extended family).

7. Ecological sustainability. • In time, sustainability also came to mean ecological sustainability, that is, whether it promotes ecological balance or destroys the environment. • The Amazon River area has many cases of unregulated businesses polluting or destroying the precious flora and fauna. • Big businesses have also wittingly or unwittingly gotten involved in mining and logging in countries like Burma and China, with devastating results on the environment. • China has surpassed the USA already in carbon emission.

8. Green Revolution • The Nobel Laureate Norman Borlaug’s green revolution that staved off worldwide famine (Masagana 99 of Marcos’s time in the Philippines) has ravaged many country-sides by over use of pesticides and depletion of the aquifers.  • India has documented proof of increased cases of cancer in places that have experienced tremendous success in rice production.

9. The Future children • Sustainability has to be generational, as well. The natural environment will be tomorrow’s resources.

10. Economic Sustainability • Sustainability has also come to mean, in the recent years, economic sustainability, in reaction to the apparently wide and unjustified gap in the growth and prosperity of the micro-finance NGO’s/service providers versus their partners/beneficiaries/poor. • By and large, it is the service provider that has developed, grown rich and the poor have remained perpetual borrowers. • If the goal of microfinance is to build enterprises which help alleviate poverty, their success is, at best, dubious. • Most of these poor clients are still poor, without any significant changes in terms of their economic standing and mobility.

11. Empowering • In some cases, to solve this irritation, NGOs have sought to transfer the power to lend over to the poor so that now the poor own the service provider, the poor now own the capital. • Are microfinance groups willing to sell equity to their so-called partners, the poor? • The microfinance industry is a vital link between the banks and the poor. • Most banks have no window for retailing loans, which are very expensive and difficult to maintain. • The expertise belongs to the microfinance. There should be no misunderstanding here, microfinance is vital to the national economy, helps and can help the poor directly. • But there is wide latitude for improvement.

12. Targeting the poorest of the poor • Merely focusing on repayment rate can backfire on the microfinance. • Its real interest of 47% per annum is very high. • This must be coupled with effective indicators of upward mobility among its borrowers. • Hyderabad has the largest microfinance (SKS) in India and the 5th largest in the world and its index for success can be a model for the rest of the microfinance. • It specifically targets poor women (women being the most oppressed among the poor in India). • An independent audit team ensures that before the loan is released, the borrower is really poor and the recipient really is a woman.

13. MFI NGO criticized • The MFI NGO evaluates its performance based on both repayment (industry standard is 97%) and the social and economic status of the borrower compared to her status before the loan.  • Today, most microfinance only monitor repayment. • Many are being subjected to scrutiny now, and regulations may be tightened. • Most microfinance are non-stock, non-profit organizations, exempt from taxes. • This could change soon, as more evidence surface showing that these entities are raking huge profits at the expense of the poor.

14. Gender sustainability. • There are studies too that call for gender sustainability especially as it affects poor women and children. • The WHO studies show that most of the food in the world is produced by women laborers. • The World Bank report shows a disproportionate percentage of work performed by women (including childbirth, house chores, care giving for children, and even when the man loses his job, the woman who takes over will not find a diminution of her usual burden at home. • Worse, the husband continues to decide on how to spend the money which the wife is earning).  • Women continue to suffer discrimination. It is a happy surprise that in newly developing economies, the new prosperity is opening up opportunities mainly for women (in call-centers and other back office jobs) and is providing a way out for women from their oppressive cultures.

15. Women and Land • Land titles are worth special mention. When land or housing programs are awarded to the poor, because of marriage laws, most of the legal control goes to the husband. • There are many philandering husbands in the slums who abandon their families. • Sometimes, these husbands will sell their home to live with the mistress, leaving the wife with nothing. • Laws to protect the wives are being studied now to cover this loophole.

16.  A new perspective on sustainability: human sustainability • Sustainability has also acquired the meaning of political sustainability. • Experts have observed that programs will not endure if there is no freedom. • Human rights now form a vital component of sustainability. • Democracy, suffrage, and free press or media work side by side progress, to sustain gains achieved by that country.

17. Sustainability today • Sustainability has come to mean many things in the last couple of decades, all tending toward a model of holism, something so familiar to many of our pastors and missionaries, that it is amazing, it is not the church that is blazing the way in defining sustainability.

18. We can learn much from the old bestseller, In Search of Excellence • .The book showed that what the best corporations in the world were doing were simply the prescriptions of Proverbs, • to pay the right salary, to be kind to laborers, to pay them on time, to be honest, work hard, etc.

19. Bible defines sustainability • If we were to define sustainability today, it would be found in the Bible: what is guaranteed to work, to last, to endure, and be sustainable, is what is in accordance with God’s word, namely, programs that are just and righteous.

20. Shalom • The final word on sustainability is God’s word, particularly in the concept of the Kingdom. • The world will propose solutions and many will succeed, many more will fail, and each solution will bring about its own set of problems, and yet, what is most important for us and for policy makers worldwide is this, • the only solution that will work and that will endure, is what is fair and just and righteous.

21. Wright, in his book, Evil and the Justice of God • clearly describes the underlying milieu of transformative work in this world – • progress for China must mean also a modicum of freedom and human rights, • fair trade for the WTO means a deep and abiding respect for the environment and concrete steps towards decreasing carbon emission. • What will work is what God has instructed in the bible and encapsulated in the idea of shalom.

22. Peace • Shalom means peace with God, peace with men and peace with nature. • As history has shown, peace cannot be had without justice. • This peace means not only having a quiet place, undisturbed in one’s privacy, with enough food. It means also freedom from oppression and a guarantee of ecological balance that can sustain life for generations to come.

23. Attempts to reach sustainability • Today, we have the whole world trying desperately to approach these ideals in for example, the Millennium Development Goals, that spells out commonly agreed parameters for success for all concerned nations, such as, free primary education for all, elimination of infant mortality, etc.

24. Philippines and women • When it comes to gender equality, the Philippines ranks 3rd worldwide, higher than the USA. • We also have twice the number of women executives than men in the work force today.

25. Gross National Happiness • An even more advance attitude to this concept of shalom is found in the success measure of Bhutan, a country not known to many, lying in the Himalayas, near Tibet and Nepal. • Bhutan is using the Gross National Happiness index instead of the usual Gross National Product (or more precisely, gross domestic product). • Gross National Happiness may sound quirky to some but the concept was developed by experts from the best business schools of America and has a very sound and biblical basis. • Money after all is not the most accurate measure of the success or well being of a nation. • There are other better measures such as freedom, peace, education, jobs, and of course, happiness.

26. Simplistic solutions • Finally, sustainability should look into the problem of simplistic solutions. • There is a pattern of providing simple solutions to what are really complex problems. • Most human or societal problems are complex. • Studies show that for each solution man creates, it has also generated its own new sets of problems.

27. The Nobel Prize winner ElinorOstrom’spaper • entitled • SUSTAINABLE SOCIAL-ECOLOGICAL SYSTEMS: AN IMPOSSIBILITY? • State….

28. Ostrom • Given rapid changes in large-scale human and biophysical processes—carbon emissions, population increase and migrations, overharvesting and pollution leading to loss of species—scientists are worried that many of the social-ecological systems existing today may collapse by the end of the 21st century. • Is this an exaggerated worry? • The thesis I will present is that the negative prognosis will indeed occur in many parts of the world if we do not worry a great deal about these processes and their consequences. ….

29. Ostrom • More important than simply worrying, however, is the development of a strong diagnostic method for analyzing the diversity of processes and the multiplicity of potential social and biophysical solutions that are needed to cope effectively with these varied processes. • Past efforts to impose simple solutions to these complex problems have frequently led to worse outcomes than the problems addressed. • Our need today is building a strong interdisciplinary science of complex, multilevel systems that will enable over time a matching of potential solutions to a careful diagnosis of specific problems embedded in a social-ecological context.

30. Ending • As we examine sustainability again, let’s be reminded that the core of sustainability is shalom and the key to opening shalom is found in the Bible.