KITWE COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT

STAFF COLLEGE.

STUDENT NAME : JANE MULENGA

COURSE : COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT
SUBJECT : NGOs
TASK : EXPLAIN THE ASSUMPTIONS OF PEOPLE CENTRED
DEVELOPMENT ACCORDING TO DAVID KOETEN.
In 1984, David Korten, a former regional advisor to the U.S. Agency for International
Development (USAID), proposed a people-centered development strategy that incorporated the
values of justice, sustainability, and inclusiveness. According to Korten, the prevailing growth-
focused development strategy is unsustainable and inequitable. He calls for transformations of
our institutions, technology, values, and behavior, "consistent with our ecological and social
realities."

Published in 1989, The Manila Declaration on People's Participation and Sustainable

Development sets forth principles and guidelines for enacting these transformations.

The concept of people centered development gained recognition at several international

development conferences in the 1990s, such as the Earth Summit in 1992, the International
Conference on Population and Development in 1994, and the Summit for Social Development
of 1995. The concept was first widely promoted in the Program’s Human Development Report in
1990, in which countries' level of development was measured by the Human Development Index.
The UNDP's report deems economic growth a necessary means to achieving sustainable
development.

Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated in its 1996 official development assistance  report that
the objective of people-centered development is, "helping humankind lead an affluent and happy
life." "Shaping the 21st Century," a report published by the Development Assistance
Committee of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in 1996, made
people centered development a target policy for all member countries. It stressed the importance
of local ownership, participation, and capacity building while attaining economic growth.

Sustainability is an inherent component and explicit goal of people-centered development.

People-centered development calls for the establishment of self-supporting social and economic
systems, key elements of a sustainable society. In addition to its commitment to people-centered
development, the DAC High-Level Meeting in May 1996 made sustainability a concrete
development goal, requiring the implementation of national sustainability initiatives by 2005 in
order to reverse deforestation, water pollution, and other trends of environmental degradation.
The Manila Declaration stated that people-centered development is the only way to achieve
sustainable communities. Expanding beyond the environmental scope of sustainability, it
advocates small-scale community actions in order to enhance economic self-reliance and create
reliable sources of income. It also calls for debt reductions and blames excessive long-term
foreign debt financing for the cyclical repayment burdens and policy impositions that inhibit
sustainable development.

David Korten claims that people centered development is the only way to develop sustainable
communities. He criticized the common development practice of increased economic output
through natural resource depletion. Korten also advocates sustainability in the financing of
development projects and the relationships of external assistance. He calls on external
development partners to support objectives chosen by the people, building communities' capacity
to manage resources and meet local needs independently.

Wealth confers legitimate power over other people. People-centered development rejects the
concept of modern development that originated in countries like Britain when the common
people were pushed off the land and turned into paid laborers and employees dependent on those
richer and more powerful than themselves. It believes in economic justice and democracy
through policies that favor small producers, cooperatives, and worker- or community owned
corporations.

Progress and development are products of the ever-increasing exploitation of the Earth by people
who have knowledge and power as "lords and possessors of nature." People-centered
development rejects the anthropocentric humanism of the Enlightenment. It values people’s
cultural and spiritual respect for the places and natural systems, including the Earth and
the Universe itself, to which people belong. It holds that, insofar as the natural environment
belongs to anyone, it belongs to all people not just to the rich and powerful.

Economic activities form an impersonal system governed by deterministic natural laws, to be

understood "scientifically" and conducted as if personal, ethical and spiritual values are not fully
relevant to them. People-centered development rejects the intellectual split between economics
and the moral sciences and the belief that an invisible hand automatically turns greed into a
public benefit. To the contrary it believes that economic choice involves inevitable moral
responsibility and that markets serve best as instruments for achieving personal goals and public
policies, not as determinants of them.

Only those things that can be counted have value and money is the only valid measure of value
in public life. People-centered development believes that what is of greatest value often cannot
be counted or appropriately valued in monetary terms such as life itself. Economics is considered
to be a tool to be used in the service of higher values.

The world economy is a system of competing national economies. People-centered development

rejects the idea obviously absurd, but still generally taken for granted that people’s livelihoods
appropriately depend on the ability of their national economy to compete with other national
economies on the far side of the world in the production and sale of goods and services
which are not strictly essential for a decent life. People-centered development views a properly
functioning world economy as a multilevel, decentralizing system, so organized that the function
of each level enables the levels "below" to develop in a people-enabling and environment-
conserving direction. This system includes the household and the local community levels which
are ignored in modern economic understanding.

Economic progress takes place in the sphere of men, and is based on masculine drives and
values. People-centered development recognizes that the development roles and stakes of women
and children and elderly people too are as important as those of adult males. It also recognizes
the role of the social economies of the household and local community in creating real wealth.

Economics is separate from politics. People-centered development recognizes that different

people have different interests, and that economic policy decisions are inevitably political
decisions. It asks on each occasion, "Who will get the benefit and who will incur the cost and the
risk?" It recognizes that pseudo-objective calculations of a single overall balance
between economic benefits and costs, or benefits and risk, are spurious. It rejects the idea that
economic institutions can operate outside a framework of political and social choice.

Trade-offs have to be made between economic freedom and efficiency on the one hand and
social well-being and ecological sustainability on the other. People-centered development
recognizes that these supposed tradeoffs are usually conflicts of interest between different
people. It rejects the kind of economic freedom espoused by proponents of "free markets" and
"free trade" that makes some people free to diminish the freedom of others. It likewise
rejects the centralized regulation of the command economy and the social democratic consensus
of corporate elites in a conventional "mixed economy." In their place it seeks to create
institutions that enable all people to develop the capacity to meet their needs and the freedom to
do so, in ways that enable others to do the same. Believing that economic efficiency must be
defined by the goal to be achieved, it addresses questions of economic efficiency in terms of
the optimal allocation of resources to best achieve social goals.
REFERENCES

1. Korten, David C. (July–August 1984). "Strategic Organization for People-

Centered Development". Public Administration Review. Business Source
Complete. EBSCO. 44 (4): 341–352. doi:10.2307/976080.

2. Korten, David C. (1990). Getting to the 21st Century. W Hartford, CT: Kumarian

Press. p. 4.

3.  Asian NGO Coalition; Environmental Liaison Center International (1989). "The

Manila Declaration on People's Participation and Sustainable Development".

4.  OECD Development Assistance Committee (May 1996). "Shaping the 21st

Century: The Contribution of Development Co-operation" . Organisation for
Economic Co-operation and Development.

5. Korten, David C. (1990). Getting to the 21st Century. W Hartford, CT: Kumarian

Press. pp. 3–4, 67–71.

6. OECD Development Assistance Committee (1999). "DAC Guidelines for Gender

Equality and Women's Empowerment in Development Co-operation" .
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.