Thinking big to think small

By Renton de Alwis

During the post second world war phase of human development on our Planet Earth, we observed the “Big is better” dictum ruling its direction. Most countries that found riches through extraction of much valued resources of oil, minerals and forests also sought to have the tallest buildings on Earth, the largest shopping malls and the biggest theme parks. Movement of global investment capital and consumer spending based on unreal ‘to be earned incomes’ was rapid and fast with info-communication technology innovations facilitating it. Transferred with the capital flows were the mega models of resource extraction and off- scale development, into some of the developing countries as well.

This was true until recently, when we realised its folly with the crash of the biggest ever real estate boom in the USA, fall of large financial institutions and corporations the world over, massive losses in jobs and livelihoods due to closure or downsizing of large industrial complexes and the like.

Meeting Challenges

We talk today of the merits of green buildings, carbon neutral cities and tourist destinations, foliage gardens on the surrounds and top of high-rise buildings, making available potable water through desalination of sea water, harnessing alternative energy sources such as solar, wind, bio fuels etc. Nanotechnology, biogenetics and the like of more efficient adoptive technologies are being talked about as ‘saviour’ options giving us, humans hope for a future. We are told that this will be a future tougher than the past, with global warming impacting on sea level rises with inundation of low lying areas. Climate change researchers tell us that we will see increased incidence of natural disasters such as droughts, floods, earth quakes and the spread of new diseases of epidemic proportions we today call pandemics, that will impact on the rich and poor nations and citizens of the world alike.


Fast Growth
 
We also are sensitised to how the ages of human evolution that took hundreds of thousands of years of gradual formation until the last century; i.e. the pre-historic, stone, agricultural and industrial ages, thereafter took on a path of exponential transformation. With only decades defining their fast-forward formation, the ages of information technology, globalisation, knowledge and creativity descended on humankind with meteoric proportions and speeds. Several futurists have attributed the phenomena of the rise of fundamentalism and the emergence of terrorism as an outcome of the human mind’s inability to keep pace with the rapidity of these transformations, often creating states of chaos and conflict.  

After 30 years of conflict and a war on terror ending in Sri Lanka, there seem to be some who are bent on thinking that it is time for us as a nation to catch up on lost time. That we must take on projects that will bring fast and rapid returns to ensure that our people will not have reason to doubt the ability of our leadership and government to deliver them the fruits of big time growth. That we must rush into inviting the petro-dollar type capital floating around and go in for mega developments, glitzy and demonstrative of what some may call a ‘developed’ country. We recently read reports quoting our investment promoters and tourism policy makers talk about mega investments from mega sources, for making sure that all of Sri Lanka’s past follies will be put right with it becoming another Singapore or a Hong Kong.

Way forward

On the other hand, policies outlined and statements of the Head of State emphasise the need for Sri Lanka to have a model of development, where a holistic empowerment of communities and their participation in development is highlighted. Correcting the current regionally skewed distribution of benefits of development, attaining self- sufficiency in agriculture to support our food needs with least dependency on imports, better value-addition in our exports and ensuring environmental and socio-cultural sustainability are the other key directions. Such a model based on the ‘Sufficiency Economy’ principles, assumes the participation of the majority to pave the way for a more profound path of development that can be on-scale and sustainable providing direct benefits to stakeholder communities, different to the dominant model of ‘investor takes it all’ operated mainly with wage workers and crumbs of CSR dropping on the communities.

Our own brand

The positives we as a nation have, when we come out of the negatives of the past thirty years of internal strife and conflict, are that we have retained a good part of the country’s green cover and we have a good majority of the citizenry yearning for lasting peace, sensitive to the need for rebuilding unity and for creating a tolerant and caring community. We have retained what most other countries have lost in their quest for fast-paced growth in the past, in uncontrolled urbanisation. We still have our ethos and cultural values in tact, needing a rational stimulus to make them take firm root again. What we need now is to buy-in and share the vision of a Sri Lanka that we can all be proud of. A Sri Lanka that will learn from the follies of others, obtain the support of others who want to genuinely partner in our progress, take the hard road to build on our strengths and shoulder responsibility ourselves for paving our way ahead. We shall need to think big to be able to retain our uniqueness, to think out of the box and think afresh to be able to bring true meaning to what will be valued in the future by the rest of the world; a unique and truly Sri Lankan brand of Sri Lanka.  

Useful web addresses:

International Institute for Sustainable Development - www.iisd.org
Munasinghe Institute for Development (Sustainable) - www.mindlanka.org
Sustainable development (Small is Beautiful) - www.schumachersociety.org
World Business Council for Sustainable Development - www.wbcsd.org

 

 

(Written in mid 2010 as a 'Back to Basics' column in the Daily News of Sri Lanka.)