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Masters of Illusion. The so-called 'Western
world' is used to hearing general news about the benefits
brought to 'the Developing world' by the caring and selfless
financial assistance provided by the World Bank, the IMF (International
Monetary Fund) and, more recently, by NAFTA (North American
Free Trade Agreement) and the WTO (World Trade Organization).
Europeans tend to assume that the EU in Brussels is pursuing
the same types of almost charity-like activities within Europe
(and further afield) with an aim of bettering life for the
less fortunate. One should be cautious with such assumptions,
try and look behind and beyond what is easily available in
the media, and bear in mind that such organizations are run
by humans, with all their faults, and not by saints. A case
in point is the resignation in early 1999 of the President
and the higher-ranking officials/Commissioners of the EU,
an event of major importance that had its brief time in the
media limelight and was then quickly forgotten, in the assumption
that all would now be fine. The fact that, it is said, the
equivalent of circa US $5 billion (about 7% of the annual
EU budget) seemed to be almost annually rather difficult to
actually account for eventually became a little bit too tricky
to dismiss even by officials trained in avoiding rocking the
boat. However, it took the bravery of the Dutch EU auditor
- whom the EU fired as soon as he had presented them with
his official report - to bring this to light by having the
full text rapidly published in a Dutch newspaper. It is hard
to disagree with Anthony O'Hear (Professor of Philosophy at
the University of Bradford in the UK and Director of the UKs
Royal Institute of Philosophy) where, in his 1999 publication
"After Progress: Finding the Old Way Forward", he
deals briefly with the EU: "...a European bureaucracy,
now shown beyond doubt and for all its protestations and charters,
to be hopelessly and probably irredeemably inefficient, wasteful
and corrupt (ibid. p 88)".
It is a long way from looking at traditional
pagès Eivissenc (Ibicencan peasant) attitudes to aïgu
(water) - as in my previous articles - to trying to analyze
the machinations of international financial organizations,
but looking at things from an anthropological perspective
leads to such attempts at analysis. One begins with small-scale
local phenomena and tries to see how these fit in a larger
context. Well perforations here on Eivissa proceed apace as
the October 1st deadline for the Plan Hydrologico Nacional
(National Water Plan) - the same as the Plan Ecologico Internacional
mentioned in my article of 8th September in Weekly Edition
028. Possible peasant suspicions about potential water control,
water taxes and water 'misappropriation' may not necessarily
be misplaced, as a delegation of peasants from the Spanish
mainland left earlier this week to demonstrate outside the
EU headquarters in Brussels regarding this. Peasants tend
to often rather accurately determine where the real pressures
are coming from, or 'who the real culprits are', and as their
lives are more intimately concerned with water than any modern
economists, are therefore willing to pitch their battlefield
on the steps of the organization they feel is responsible
for a potential threat. Of course it is within the scope of
the EU to be planning the co-ordination of its member states
water resources, but experience of earlier projects and a
bit of knowledge of certain connections between the EU and
other such international organizations tends to make one 'approach
with caution' such well-meaning plans that might eventually
possibly be modified. The fact that, as with all such large
institutions and their projects, there are high profile spokesmen
easily available to extort the benefits of such and such a
programme actually means very little. Look at the then British
Minister for Agriculture who in 1995 was filmed lauding the
safety of British beef whilst handing a hamburger to his daughter.
As one veteran US financier with extensive banking and political
links told me when I was young, "Never expect to hear
the full story from a banker, a lawyer or a politician: the
telling of the truth is actually incompatible with these respected
pursuits". Such idealism is not restricted to these high
callings. The EU may well be following up international concern
or 'interest' in water resources, and rightly so, but it may
leave Europe open to eventual international manipulation of
its own water reserves. Near the top of all these major organizations,
though, everyone knows everyone else and it needs no world-wide
'conspiracy' to gradually push through something that might
look like one - it just needs a few informal deals between
delegates at the water cooler/bar/ restaurant/corridor of
any relevant international meeting. Unfortunately that seems
to be the way that many things are done in our modern world
- anyone who has attended such meetings knows this - it actually
has very little to do with democracy or respecting the wishes
of ones constituency/voters/nation, etc. In fact most such
international or multinational organizations would hate to
have real democratic or public involvement in their decisions,
they rely on the fact that they are usually well insulated
from the public and therefore do not necessarily need to be
accountable to them.
The World Bank is possibly a prime example
of such an institution, one that has such a high international
profile that it has for decades been able to pursue its work
with relatively little regard for public opinion. It is also
a fact that the public in general does not usually hear the
'down' side of any World Bank projects. A close friend and
distinguished academic with an extensive knowledge of Papua
New Guinea over the last 30 years has recently come back from
another 6 weeks there. Some readers might now reach for their
world maps - it is the eastern half of the worlds largest
island, just north of Australia, and its inhabitants boast
nearly 900 different indigenous languages and cultures. Not
really part of the modern world do I hear someone say? Wrong,
it is part of the real world, but facing a rather hard time
at the moment. My colleague writes (16th August 2001): "The
country staggers onwards and downwards - the economy and political
situations seem never to get better. The overwhelming impression
of Port Moresby (the capital) is a city where road building
(all on aid money) rules, whilst the average person struggles
to maintain a viable lifestyle. This may sound overly dramatic,
but behind those flash new roads and some very good attempts
to make the city look attractive, there lurks the smell of
decay. During my (stay) in Moresby, the Koiari people, on
whose land part of the hydroelectric power scheme for the
city is based, interrupted power supply by taking over two
generating stations. (There was) weeks of power cuts, and
in some suburbs, water shortages. The issue was finally resolved
... when the Koiari leaders handed back the keys to the generating
stations. Moresby was under curfew between 6am and 10pm because
of protests in late June that left four people dead. The protests
were against the government's alleged support for economic
reforms that the World Bank wants to impose on PNG (Papua
New Guinea) (the World Bank is withholding loan funds until
some changes are made). One of the reforms includes what someone
stupidly has officially described as 'making the land more
profitable' ('mobilising the land') by privatising ownership
so it can be sold (and presumably then concentrated into the
hands of the rich and powerful)". I should here point
out that in Melanesia (New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu
and Kanaky-indigenous New Caledonia) the concept of individual
ownership of land is almost unknown. Almost unknown also is
the concept of selling land. Traditional land custodianship
systems are clan or lineage-based and have been since time
immemorial. This is just one very recent example of the kind
of strategy that the world Bank has been trying to impose
on societies and cultures and nations around the world, a
strategy ignoring cultural differences and assuming that the
American (or Euro-American) system is the only correct one.
Rather than improving the lot of many societies around the
world, many World Bank projects have brought social and environmental
disruption, misery and increasing poverty to numerous previously
almost self-sufficient societies in the 'Developing World"
- precisely the kinds of peoples that supposedly such institutions
were set up to help.
Some readers may say that the instability
and, in some instances, supposed venality of certain governments
in the 'Developing World' ensure that 'development' projects
will not succeed, that funds will be wasted, that loans will
never be repaid, and so on. Even some United States public
figures have hinted as such. Both the World Bank and the IMF
have their headquarters in Washington and, although supposedly
international in nature, are thought by many - and not without
some reason - to really be arms of the US government and the
US business and banking sectors. But both institutions were
originally established with high ideals, to help stabilise
and develop the world in the aftermath of World War II. After
preliminary meetings in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire (USA)
in 1944, the IBRD (International Bank for Reconstruction and
Development, or World Bank for short) and the IMF were signed
into existence in a ceremony at the State Department in Washington
on 27th December 1947. The high ideals of the time reflected
not just, of course, the desire to help the world and combat
the spread of Communism, but also possibly lurking in the
backs of the minds of some of the more elderly Americans present
was the realisation that without the generous lending and
investments of European companies and nations in the United
States economy itself, the nation would possibly never have
been able to get where it was today (then). Most people -
sad to say, many Americans amongst them - forget that previous
to World War I the US had been basically a borrowing nation
and not a very reliable one at that. For well over 60 years
mainly British, German, French and Dutch investors lent billions
to US state governments and businesses. These loans helped
to develop the nation's canals, railroads, mining, steel,
oil and electricity industries. There were, of course, problems
of paying back the loans (as Developing countries are finding
today) and at one point the states of Louisiana, Mississippi,
Pennsylvania and Maryland defaulted on their loan repayments.
Anthony Sampson, in his classic study of banks and bankers,
"The Money Lenders" (1981), cuts through the usual
banking language by saying that at this point the London bankers
viewed the US "as a very unreliable developing country,
with a black record of embezzlement, fraudulent prospectuses,
and default". There really is nothing new under the sun,
it seems.
So the US had a bit of ethical catching
up to do. Hopefully the two institutions that came out of
the Bretton Woods Agreements would help to rebalance the situation,
help the post-war world, and spread peace and prosperity.
But in many instances things have seemed to go increasingly
wrong, loan following loan to such an extent that loans are
going out just to enable developing nations to pay the interest
on their previous loans. But what does this have to do with
water? We shall see.
Kirk W Huffman
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