Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.95.961230105844.9785C-100000@ccen.uccb.ns.ca> Date: Mon, 30 Dec 1996 11:00:40 -0400 From: Michael Gurstein <mailto:mgurst@CCEN.UCCB.NS.CA> Subject: United Nations News Service: 29 December 1996 (fwd) To: Multiple recipients of list DEVEL-L <mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU>
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United Nations News Service: 29 December 1996
Table of Contents: From Inter Press Service (IPS): o CANADA-DEVELOPMENT: Study Wants Foreign Aid To Target Research,
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Copyright 1996 InterPress Service, all rights reserved. Worldwide distribution via the APC networks.
*** 26-Dec-96 ***
CANADA-DEVELOPMENT: Study Wants Foreign Aid To Target Research, Technology
by Stephen Dale
OTTAWA, Dec 26 (IPS) - A panel of experts is recommending that Canada increase the impact of scarce foreign aid dollars by focusing its efforts on ''the knowledge sector.''
''Canada should position itself for the coming century as a creator and a broker of knowledge for sustainable development,'' states the report of the panel, chaired by Maurice Strong, former chief of the 1992 U.N. Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Brazil and current World Bank advisor.
The nine-member panel, which also includes Canadian Ambassador to the United Nations Yves Fortier, calls for Canada to devote, by 1999, at least 15 percent of its development assistance to ''knowledge-based activities'', such as the creation of electronic information networks and the forging of partnerships between Canadian and overseas research centres.
This strategy, according to the report, recognises both the emergence of a global ''knowledge-based economy'', as well as the breakdown of the notion that the world is divided into ''developed'' and ''underdeveloped'' countries.
The task force notes that Canada's economic power may soon be much less than that of rapidly developing countries, particularly in Asia, that have traditionally been aid recipients.
''The traditional North-South topography is changing, and in its place is a new type of topography, where those who have full access to knowledge, in whatever country, are doing very well and those who do not are at an increasing disadvantage,'' task force member Margaret Catley-Carlson told IPS from her office as president of the Population Council in New York.
''You go to India and see there is a stratum of society that is plugged into the knowledge economy who are prospering,'' she says. ''In Canada, it's the same thing: those with a less than tenacious hold on the knowledge networks are quite insecure in their economic prospects.''
Catley-Carlson, a former president of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), added that changes in social and economic patterns have been matched by technological advances which now make it possible to spread the knowledge, allowing governments, businesses, and individuals to work more efficiently and with less impact on the environment.
For people investigating everything from better logging or fishing practise to setting up an animal quarantine system, she says, it is now possible to compile a list of names and phone numbers of the world's leading experts in the field.
This means that within a couple of weeks, at minimal cost, people anywhere could assemble the knowledge base to ensure that ''whatever we are doing, we can do it better,'' says Catley- Carlson.
Reactions to the panel's study are mixed.
CIDA spokesperson Andre Doren said the agency was still studying the report, but he called it ''a good contribution to the debate'' on Canada's place in the world.
Brian Tomlinson, development policy analyst with the Canadian Council for International Cooperation (CCIC), an umbrella group for Canadian non-governmental groups, characterised the report as ''provocative and dynamic'', but said that it invests too much faith in technology as a cure-all for global social ills.
''My interpretation would be that there is too great an expectation about the impact of knowledge and access to knowledge on development change,'' Tomlinson told IPS.
''I find it difficult to separate the acquisition of knowledge from all the other aspects of the development process,'' she said. ''I'd feel more enthusiastic if what they were saying was situated in a wider context.''
Tomlinson also disagrees with Catley-Carlson's view that the gulf between rich and poor is a new outgrowth of the knowledge economy, to be remedied mostly by infusions of information. As far back as the 1960s, says Tomlinson, development theorists have spoken of ''parallel economies'' within developing countries, with a modern sector linked to the global economy and others that remain isolated and impoverished.
While information is important in bridging that gap, ''development also occurs because there are social change movements challenging the inequitable distribution of wealth,'' says Tomlinson. ''In some senses, maybe we're still dealing with the same issues of social and economic justice.''
Still, the analyst feels the task force is right to draw the government's attention to the importance to funding research.
Colleges and universities working oversees, as well as the Ottawa-based International Development Research Centre (IDRC) have suffered major funding reductions in recent years.
However, a recent announcement by International Cooperation Minister Don Boudria shows that universities and colleges will have their development assistance share cut by only 3.8 percent this year, compared with 7.1 percent for non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and 5.0 percent for Industrial Cooperation, a programme designed to stimulate joint ventures between Canadian businesses and counterparts in developing countries.
Catley-Carson says that massive cuts to the Canadian aid programme was a primary reason the task force was set up. The IDRC, whose first president was Strong, joined with the North- South Institute and the International Institute for Sustainable Development in requesting that the task force be established to advise CIDA on how to make best use of Canadian strengths.
The Canadian aid pie will be roughly a third smaller in the 1998-99 fiscal year than it was in 1991-92. The aid budget of 1.62 billion U.S. dollars will be equal to a post-World War II low of 0.26 percent of gross domestic product (GDP).
Catley-Carlson rejects the idea that the task force had become too entranced with technology, at!the expense of fundamental concepts such as human rights and economic equity. The new knowledge networks would support groups working for social reform, she said.
''That's why you fund this on a concessional basis through the aid programme,'' said Catley-Carlson. ''What distinguishes this from a commercial project is the commitment to human rights, justice, and equity.''
The task force report, 'Connecting with the World', provides several examples of where Canadian expertise in research and networking have supported social initiatives.
In one case, the IDRC played a lead role in the development of an indigenous African Economic Research Consortium, the growth of which has made it possible for African nations to engage in negotiations with the International Monetary Fund without having to rely upon the statistics and analysis of the IMF itself. (END/IPS/SD/YJC/96)
Origin: Washington/CANADA-DEVELOPMENT/ ----
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