Message-ID: <9704010045.AA28395@lan.vita.org> Date: Mon, 31 Mar 1997 19:45:44 EST From: DEVEL-L Administration <mailto:devel@VITA.ORG> Subject: Your DevelopNet News for April To: mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
mailto:@@@@@ @@@@@@ @@ @@ @@@@@@ @@ @@@@@ @@@@@@
mailto:@@ @@@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@
mailto:@@ @@@ @@@@@@ @@ @@ @@@@@@ @@ @@ @@ @@@@@@
mailto:@@ @@@ @@ @@@@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@
mailto:@@@@@ @@@@@@ @@ @@@@@@ @@@@@@ @@@@@ @@
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
mailto:@@ @@ @@@@@@@ @@@@@@@@ On-Line News and Views on
mailto:@@@ @@ @@ @@
mailto:@@@@@@@ @@@@@@@ @@ Technology Transfer in
mailto:@@ @@@ @@ @@
mailto:@@ @@ @@@@@@@ @@ International Development
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
mailto:@@@@@ @@@@ @@@@@@@@@@@ @@@@ @@ @@@@ @@@@@@@@@@@
mailto:@@@@@@ @@@@ @@@@ @@@@ @@@@ @@@@ @@@@
mailto:@@@@@@@@@@@@ @@@@@@@@@@@ @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ @@@@@@@@@@@
mailto:@@@@ @@@@@@ @@@@ @@@@@@@@@@@@@@ @@@@
mailto:@@@@ @@@@@ @@@@@@@@@@@ @@@@@ @@@@@ @@@@@@@@@@@
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
April 1997 Volume 7, No. 4
IN THIS ISSUE
URBAN WATCH
Big Cities, Heavy Traffic
LITERATURE REVIEWS
Development Ethics
Schools in Eastern Germany
ORGANIZATIONS
International Rivers Network
VITA PROJECTS
Microcredit With Training: Success in Guinea
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Agricultural Biotechnology
Global Knowledge For Development
* * *
DevelopNet News is published monthly by Volunteers in Technical
Assistance (VITA) in Arlington, Virginia, USA. For additional
information, please see the end of this newsletter.
* * *
U r b a n W a t c h
BIG CITIES, HEAVY TRAFFIC
Most big cities are getting bigger day by day. People move into them to
seize advantages of urban life: better jobs, more options for housing,
food, education, friends, and recreation; better conditions for rearing
a family.
Most cities did not originally plan for rapid growth. They now lack
built-in capabilities to cope with congestion; confront rising energy
use per capita; fight air, water, and noise pollution; try to prevent
accidental injuries and fatalities; and deal with the social inequities
found in cities and their outskirts.
Some of the worst problems of modern cities are related to transporta-
tion. City dwellers must travel between home and jobs and must travel to
get food, supplies, health care, and education. As cities grow, older
institutions serve greater areas and many people must go farther for the
services they need. As disposable incomes rise, families often think of
the convenience of having a private auto. When they buy one, as a study
in the U.K. showed, they often travel farther than before and use public
transportation less.
More cars means increased congestion and pollution, and more energy and
local resources used per capita. Indeed, many city dwellers may believe
that life is getting worse rather than better because of congested
motor-vehicle traffic. In Bangkok, Thailand, for example, although
motor-vehicle ownership is low compared to industrialized countries,
congestion is so bad that the average car spends the equivalent of 44
days per year stuck in traffic.
How can these conditions be improved? According to a recent paper by
Christopher Zegras of the International Institute for Energy Conserva-
tion, the two main options for improvement are reducing the need for
urban travel and improving the quality of transportation. But there is
no single, magic cure for urban transportation problems. Cities differ
drastically; they may be compact or sprawling, have mild or harsh cli-
mates, their residents may have widely varying social and economic
status, and housing may be well or poorly located in relation to needed
services.
Reducing travel demand.
A growing city has the opportunity to plan its growth. Looking at some
of the great cities of the developing world, we may ask whether
Surabaya, Indonesia, and Manila, Philippines, will be able to implement
transportation policies that improve living conditions. An adequate
plan should reduce the demand for distance travel. One approach builds
small, commercial areas or shopping strips within walking distance of
apartment complexes or other housing. This "mixed land-use model" can
reduce car trips and the problems caused by deserted central business
districts at night.
How can congestion be reduced in a city's busy center? Discouraging the
use of cars in congested areas has been tried in several places. One
variation, called "road pricing" or "full-cost pricing," is to charge
car drivers for the costs of congestion, pollution, road maintenance,
and health care. Since 1975, Singapore has used this approach to reduce
congestion and stimulate the use of public transportation at moderate
cost. Some cities in Norway have also implemented road pricing;
Santiago, Chile, and some member countries of the Organisation for Econ-
omic Cooperation and Development also are developing the idea. Some
cities banish cars from central areas, impose annual fees for admission,
or raise fuel taxes. All of these remedies work in certain areas. But
many of them also penalize the poor, who can ill afford the new fees and
taxes for the privilege of driving to work. The San Francisco
(California) Bay Bridge Congestion Pricing Project plans to offer
rebates to residents below a particular income level under an electrical
utility billing program. Although the use of financial assessments may
recover some of the costs of congestion and pollution, the evidence for
success in reducing these public hazards is not clear.
With effective planning, Curitiba, Brazil, has developed industrial and
residential sites close to existing main roads. At the same time the
region developed efficient public mass transportation on these roads.
The results? Although Curitiba has one car for every three people, the
gasoline use per capita is 25% lower than that of eight comparable
Brazilian cities and more than 70% of all commuters travel by bus. Other
ideas successful in particular places include mixing housing and job
locations in the same area, and planning residential areas for high-
density occupation. In the U.K., motorized travel demand falls sharply
as density exceeds 50 people per hectare. These arrangements encourage
bicycling and walking. But they require integrated planning across an
entire metropolitan region.
More efficient transport
Evidently, the planning of land use and regulation of traffic are effec-
tive because they reduce the needs for travel. Another approach to prob-
lems of urban transportation is to improve the quality of travel by not
relying on the private auto. The alternatives include bus, light rail,
subway, walking and cycling. And, even if private cars must be relied
upon, pollution can be reduced by using cleaner fuels or modernizing or
retiring those vehicles that pollute the most.
Zegras urges that developing countries plan for a variety of transporta-
tion methods rather than invest in a future that relies primarily on the
automobile. Mass transit should be a priority, stressing buses, light
rail, surface rail, and subway. Competition among transportation provid-
ers should be encouraged through privatization; however, policy makers
must ensure that the competition in the private sector does not produce
negative social effects.
Pedestrian and bicycle traffic should be encouraged, not only by provid-
ing footpaths and bicycle lanes, but by making the purchase of bicycles
more affordable to the poor. Parking areas for cycles are needed at job
sites and at mass-transport stations.
Citizens must understand that pollution of the environment by motor
vehicles is dangerously unhealthful and costly. Pollution can be reduced
through the use of cleaner fuels, especially nonleaded fuels, which
still are not favored in many places. By 1983, 90% of all new cars in
Brazil ran on alcohol, although the program is now endangered by alcohol
shortages and poor road and car maintenance. Electric vehicles do not
significantly pollute the environment, but their mass production and use
would not affect congestion and anyway are not an economic option now.
Vehicle-inspection programs can weed out old cars that are heavy pollut-
ers. Budapest, Hungary, removed 2,000 fuel-inefficient, old-model cars
by paying their owners with mass-transportation passes. In many parts of
Asia that heavily rely on two-wheeled motor vehicles, conversion of two-
cycle to four-cycle engines would reduce pollution, as would installa-
tion of catalytic converters. Both changes would pay for themselves in
fuel economy.
According to the World Resources Institute, more people will live in
cities by 2025 than occupied the whole planet ten years ago. Recent
experience points to the urgent need for planning during urban growth,
the formal integration of many different policy-setting agencies,
reducing procrastination, and establishing clear lines of authority.
Some concerned international organizations are European Federation for
Transport and the Environment (Brussels), Institute for Transportation
and Development Policy (New York, New York), International Institute for
Energy Conservation (Washington, D.C.), and Sustainable Transport Action
Network for Asia & the Pacific (Kuala Lumpur).
[Article prepared by R. R. Ronkin <mailto:rronkin@vita.org>. Based mainly on
Christopher Zegras, 1996, "Urban Transportation." In World Resources
1996-1997. Washington, D.C.: World Resources Institute. URL <http://www
.wri.org/wri/wr-96-97/tp_txt1.html>. We thank Zegras for helpful
comments.]
L i t e r a t u r e R e v i e w s
DEVELOPMENT ETHICS
Des Gasper, 1996. "Culture and Development Ethics: Needs, Women's
Rights, and Western Theories." Development and Change, volume 27, no. 4
(October), pages 627-661.
Right at the beginning, Gasper (Institute of Social Studies, The Hague)
asks, "Can development ethics avoid presuming that European cultures
have universal validity and yet also avoid treating every distinct cul-
ture a sacrosanct and beyond criticism?" He agrees that it is useful to
blend universalist ethics (often called Basic Human Needs) while allow-
ing for local traditions and choices. He then develops these concepts,
with current women's rights issues as an example.
Gasper reviews current thinking on development ethics and proposes a
three-stage approach to theorizing on it. The stages: (1) realizing that
economic theories or appeals to autonomy, rights, and freedoms are not
enough; (2) analyzing and relating the different principles, and build-
ing alternatives; and (3) carrying the results "back to the worlds of
practice and compromise," which may begin with seeking areas of agree-
ment between conflicting approaches. He asks, for example, do some peo-
ple prefer short, literacy-free lives? And what should be the develop-
ers' response to them? He provides an extensive bibliography.
SCHOOLS IN EASTERN GERMANY
Heinrich Mintrop, 1996. "Teachers and Changing Authority Patterns in
Eastern German Schools." Comparative Education Review, volume 40, no. 4
(November), pages 358-376.
Mintrop (Stanford University, California) describes schools in general
as technically simple but socially complex organizations, shaped by
relationships among students, teachers, parents, and educational
"authorities." When eastern Germany's communist regime began to liber-
alize in 1989, social change in the schools shifted from grassroots
action to top-down management by state authority. "State and corporate
managers and attorneys, mainly from the west, set out to institute new
legal principles and directives." The new eastern federal states passed
comprehensive school laws which changed the job of the teacher from
following a prescribed syllabus to taking a much more free hand in the
control of course content. But the close personal relationships between
teachers and students, and between teachers and parents, deteriorated as
the system became more hierarchic and authoritarian.
Teachers now complain that parents have too much power and, in general,
they rate as "much worse" the areas of parents, officials, student
needs, student behavior, and discipline measures. Mintrop concludes that
the teachers' desire for change flows less from perception of problems
than from issues of autonomy and control. Although teachers' attitudes
appear to have become more negative (except in their relationships with
students) teachers switched vocations less than in most other sectors of
the economy. When the party regime collapsed, so did many party-
sponsored extracurricular activities and their loss is strongly felt.
O r g a n i z a t i o n s
INTERNATIONAL RIVERS NETWORK
The network is committed to halting the construction of destructive
river development projects and to promote sound river management options
worldwide. Membership is informal and open to all interested and like-
minded individuals and nongovernmental organizatons.
Established in 1985 as a volunteer organization, the network has worked
in 36 countries with local communities attempting to influence river
development. Although river pollution and water quality are extremely
important issues, because of its small size and limited resources the
network focuses on promoting alternatives to large-scale structural
interventions in river systems. Such projects represent an outdated
approach to river management that limits public participation in defin-
ing river-management objectives. The organization works to remove the
bias towards large-scale infrastructure by promoting the examination of
alternative river and watershed management options.
The network maintains a library of information on river development and
alternative management options in more than 90 countries, and involving
nearly 1,000 local and regional organizations. To promote the exchange
of information it strives to make whatever information it can obtain
available to any organization requesting it, at no cost if necessary.
Information: International Rivers Network, 1847 Berkeley Way, Berkeley,
California 94703; tel. +1 (510) 848-1155; fax +1 (510) 848-1008; email
mailto:<irnweb@irn.org>; URL <http://www.irn.org>.
V I T A P r o j e c t s
MICROCREDIT WITH TRAINING: SUCCESS IN GUINEA
Mariame Bah owns "Le Golf," a restaurant in the town of Mamou located in
heart of the Republic of Guinea. In 1992 she managed a small rice bar
with assets of $679. With limited access to financing, she was unable to
expand her business. Then she heard about VITA's PRIDE project and
applied for a $150 loan. By repaying her loans on time and building her
credit Bah managed to get a succession of loans which enabled her to
make minor renovations and improvements in her restaurant, increase her
business assets from $679 to $3,775, and increase the number of paid
employees from one to two.
When she had almost finished repaying her third loan Bah decided to
invest $200 and participate in a PRIDE Entrepreneurship Workshop offered
in Mamou. "The workshop opened my eyes to new opportunities in Mamou,"
she declares. With her new knowledge and a new $500 loan from the pro-
ject, Bah opened a video club next to her restaurant. Given her experi-
ence as a trained seamstress, she also organized a small group of women
friends and created an embroidery training center for 19 young girls who
invested $5 a month to learn a new profession. Today, through PRIDE's
financial and training services, Bah successfully manages three activi-
ties with assets totalling over $6,800. She is one of more than 13,000
business people receiving credit and training since VITA's program in
Guinea began to promote the development of viable, small-scale enter-
prises, principally microenterprises.
"Some say that projects which provide financial services should not try
to train their borrowers in business management skills as well" says
Richard Kimball, director of the VITA program. "VITA and PRIDE have gone
against conventional wisdom in this area. We believe that these "On-
Going" training sessions are necessary. Ninety percent of PRIDE's cli-
ents are illiterate and have little formal business experience." The
two-hour mandatory training sessions are intended to provide the "social
glue" between borrower and agent that keeps the borrowers loyal to the
program and to improve their management skills so that they can better
utilize the money they have borrowed."
VITA's micro-credit program in Guinea has already extended $3 million in
loans, all of which have been reimbursed or are being paid off on sched-
ule. The program has developed new financial and nonfinancial offerings
and has largely completed the transition to Guinean management. In addi-
tion, it has been an innovator in bringing training to poor people in
rural areas. It probably already trains more people, more hours per
week, than any training institution in Guinea. Many loan recipients say
that the project's training is worth more than its credit.
Kimball adds: "The project has adapted the workshop to Guinean condi-
tions by adding modules on dealing with corruption. It has trained a
team of Guinean facilitators to organize and conduct the workshop,
prints the workshop manuals locally to cut production costs, and has
developed the workshop in three of Guinea's indigenous languages, using
pictures and games rather than written materials for the nonliterate
participants. The local language versions are accessible to the 80-90%
of Guineans who cannot participate in French." PRIDE started in 1991
under a five-year cooperative agreement with the U.S. Agency for Inter-
national Development.
Information: Mohammad Shah <mailto:mshah@vita.org>.
A n n o u n c e m e n t s
AGRICULTURAL BIOTECHNOLOGY
>From 28 to 30 April, the Agricultural Biotechnology for Sustainable Pro-
ductivity Project of the U.S. Agency for International Development will
hold a conference on "Agricultural Biotechnology for a Better World," in
Pacific Grove, California, to allow practitioners to share experiences
and discuss the future of agricultural biotechnology.
The conference is expected to draw participants from the private sector,
academics, policy makers, representatives of development agencies, and
trade organizations. Unlike most professional conferences and scientific
symposia in biotechnology which focus mostly on the state of the science
or review progress in the industrial sector alone, this conference will
also give attention to such multidisciplinary aspects as intellectual
property rights, biosafety, and trade. It also will examine expanding
global development of agricultural biotechnology, and the associated
opportunities and challenges.
Information: Dean Norton, Michigan State University, 414 Plant & Soil
Sciences Building, East Lansing, Michigan 48824-1325; tel. +1 (517) 353-
5263; fax +1 (517) 432-1982 or +1 (517) 353-1888; e-mail:
mailto:<global97@pilot.msu.edu>.
GLOBAL KNOWLEDGE FOR DEVELOPMENT
The conference, "Global Knowledge 97: Knowledge for Development in the
Information Age," will be held in Toronto, Canada, 22 to 25 June. Organ-
izers expect some 1,200 participants: senior government officials, local
knowledge builders, representatives of nongovernmental organizations,
business leaders, and other experts from around the globe. The confer-
ence will focus on these themes: understanding the information revolu-
tion and its implications for developing countries and the world's poor;
sharing strategies, experiences, and tools in harnessing knowledge for
development; and building new partnerships that empower the poor with
information and knowledge, foster international dialogue on development,
and strengthen the knowledge resources of developing countries.
In preparation for the conference a principal sponsor, the U.N. Develop-
ment Programme, is starting a public, on-line discussion forum. Sub-
scribers should use the forum to express their own needs, experiences,
and suggestions related to conference themes. To subscribe please send
an e-mail message to <mailto:majordomo@mail.edc.org>. Do not enter a Subject.
In the body of the message, type: "subscribe gkd97" without quotation
marks. Please do not put anything after gkd97. You will receive a wel-
come letter in response.
Other Information Sources: A Web site, URL <http://www.globalknowledge
.org>, is under construction. Also, for UNDP, Hans D'Orville <hans
mailto:.dorville@undp.org>; for the World Bank, the Conference Secretariat,
Global Knowledge 97 <mailto:GlobalKnowledge@worldbank.org>; for the Education
Development Center, Janice Brodman <mailto:janiceb@edc.org>.
* * *
HOW TO JOIN VITA'S ELECTRONIC FORUM
VITA's free, public, online discussion forum, DEVEL-L, provides for the
exchange of ideas and information on a wide range of issues and topics
related to technology transfer in international development; for exam-
ple, technologies, communications in development, sustainable agricul-
ture, women in development, the environment, small enterprise develop-
ment, meetings, and book reviews. Subscribers to DEVEL-L automatically
receive this newsletter. To join the forum, send this message:
SUB DEVEL-L (your real name, without parentheses)
to this address: <mailto:LISTSERV@AUVM.BITNET> or <LISTSERV@AMERICAN.EDU>. You
can receive the same benefits by joining the newsgroup bit.listserv
.devel-l. Other organizations archive postings to DEVEL-L on the World
Wide Web at URLs <http://www.ljextra.com/mailinglists/wwwdevel-l> and
<http://library.wustl.edu/~listmgr/devel-l>.
You can subscribe to this newsletter, DevelopNet News, without joining
the discussion forum by sending the following message to the same
LISTSERV address:
SUB DNN-L (your real name, without parentheses)
Please do not send these messages to VITA or to DEVEL-L.
* * *
DevelopNet News is an electronic newsletter published monthly by Volun-
teers in Technical Assistance (VITA), a private, nonprofit, interna-
tional development organization located in Arlington, Virginia. The
newsletter needs your stories: you are invited to send them to the edi-
tor in electronic form. Your redistribution of DevelopNet News is
encouraged. Kindly send us a message on the approximate size of your
mailing list; it will be helpful in our planning. Back issues can be
downloaded gratis from VITA's BBS and gopher addresses.
President: Henry R. Norman <mailto:hnorman@vita.org>
Editor: Vicki Tsiliopoulos <mailto:vickit@vita.org>
Editorial Assistant: Rafe Ronkin, VITA Volunteer <mailto:rronkin@vita.org>
VITA specializes in information dissemination and communications tech-
nology. It offers services related to sustainable agriculture, food
processing, renewable energy applications, water sanitation and supply,
small enterprise development, and information management. It has pro-
jects in 6 African countries.
VITA's publications, on a variety of practical subjects, are designed to
assist persons and organizations in developing countries. You can
request a descriptive publications list by postal mail, phone, or fax.
You also can download the list by anonymous ftp or gopher. A searchable
version of 150 publications is available on a single CD.
VITA's on-line information services: 24-hr BBS: +1 (703) 527-1086 [9600,
N,8,1], URL gopher://gopher.vita.org, anonymous ftp://ftp.vita.org,
World-Wide Web http://www.vita.org .
Volunteers in Technical Assistance (VITA), 1600 Wilson Boulevard, Suite
500, Arlington, Virginia 22209. Tel. +1 (703) 276-1800, fax +1 (703)
243-1865, telex 440192 VITAUI, cable VITAINC, e-mail: Internet
mailto:<vita@vita.org>, FidoNet 1:109/165.