HUMAN DEVELOPMENT REPORT 2001

["Mark Jones" <jones118@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I've been looking over the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)
annual report: "HUMAN DEVELOPMENT REPORT 2001:
Making new technologies work for human development", published today on the
UNDP website:
http://www.undp.org/hdr2001/

It is a paean of praise to the globalising neoliberal model of development
and strongly argues for the TRIPS intellectual property rights regime, for
corporate rights generally, and for the benefits of new technologies in
pharmaceuticals, genetic engineering in agriculture and other contentious
areas. The HDI indices are surely worth deconstructing.

It's preface begins:

>>Development and technology enjoy an uneasy
relationship:within development circles there
is a suspicion of technology-boosters as too
often people promoting expensive,inappro-
priate fixes that take no account of development
realities.Indeed,the belief that there is a tech-
nological silver bullet that can ?solve ?illiteracy,
ill health or economic failure reflects scant un-
derstanding of real poverty.
Yet if the development community turns its
back on the explosion of technological innova-
tion in food,medicine and information,it risks
marginalizing itself and denying developing
countries opportunities that,if harnessed ef-
fectively,could transform the lives of poor peo-
ple and offer breakthrough development
opportunities to poor countries.
Often those with the least have least to fear
from the future,and certainly their governments
are less encumbered by special interests com-
mitted to yesterday ?s technology.These coun-
tries are more willing to embrace innovations:for
example,shifting from traditional fixed line phone
systems to cellular or even Internet-based voice,
image and data systems.Or to jump to new crops,
without an entrenched,subsidized agricultural sys-
tem holding them back.
So with the Internet,agricultural biotech-
nology advances and new generations of phar-
maceuticals reaching the market,it is time for
a new partnership between technology and de-
velopment.Human Development Report 2001
is intended as the manifesto for that partnership.
But it is also intended as a source of cautionary
public policy advice to ensure that technology
does not sweep development off its feet,but in-
stead that the potential benefits of technology
are rooted in a pro-poor development strategy.
And that in turn means,as the Human Devel-
opment Reports have argued over 11 editions,
that technology is used to empower people,al-
lowing them to harness technology to expand
the choices in their daily lives.
In India,for example,there are two de-
velopment faces to harnessing information
technology.One is the beginning of Internet
connectivity in isolated rural villages ?
allowing critical meteorological,health and
crop information to be accessed and shared.
But the second is growing regional informa-
tion technology ?based economic clusters,as
skills demand by successful start-ups drives the
opening of new universities and the rapid ex-
pansion of an extensive ancillary service sec-
tor.In other words,technology itself has
become a source of economic growth.
While it is undeniable that many of the
high-tech marvels that dazzle the rich North
are inappropriate for the poor South,it is also
true that research and development address-
ing specific problems facing poor people ?from
combating disease to developing distance edu-
cation ?have proved time and again how tech-
nology can be not just a reward of successful
development but a critical tool for achieving it.
That has never been more true than today.We
live at a time of new discovery,with the mapping
of the human genome,enormous structural shifts
in the way science is carried out and unprece-
dented networking and knowledge-sharing op-
portunities brought about by the falling costs of
communications.But it is also a time of growing
public controversy on issues ranging from the pos-
sible risks of transgenic crops to providing access
to lifesaving drugs for all who need them.
Our challenge now is to map a path across this
fast-changing terrain.Not just to put to rest the
debate over whether technological advances can
help development but to help identify the global
and national policies and institutions that can
best accelerate the benefits of technological ad-
vances while carefully safeguarding against the
new risks that inevitably accompany them.<<