Thinking Aloud:
Steering Normative Waters From Ethical Shores
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Poor nations, says a landmark publication of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Ethics and Agriculture, must be able to determine their own future rather than having it defined for them by donors. Within nations, poorer citizens must be the architects of their own destiny. True national security can only be secured by providing all citizens the wherewithal to live their lives with dignity and justice. It is not possible to create a world that is equitable, just, legitimate and democratic solely via appeals to self-interest. Markets are human institutions, creating self-interested individuals who compete under highly restricted conditions and who may attempt to insulate themselves from the core goals of society at large. Even if markets are enthusiastically embraced, institutions must be designed in order to ensure freer and fairer competition. Among other things, efficient markets require organization, planning, well-defined property rights, rules of exchange, and a clear and enforceable distinction between the public and private sectors.
But markets are just one means of distributing goods. There are certain things that all societies agree should not be bought and sold in the market. Human beings. Votes. Justice. Divine grace. The guarantee of survival. All societies have a notion of “public goods”, determined in terms of what members of a community or society commonly see as desirable. Individuals may be affected differently by the policies that societies adopt to ensure the adequate availability of public goods. Something that is considered a good in the sphere of health is not necessarily a good in the sphere of agricultural production. It is the contradictions among the different spheres that are a source of conflicts, negotiations and compromises in all societies. Thus, their solutions should be sought not by enforcing conformity to a single concept of justice but by mediating among many different concepts. These conflicts may not be avoided, but institutions can be devised to contain and limit them.
Achieving food security requires an abundance of food, access to that food by everyone, nutritional adequacy, and food safety. At the world level, there is abundant food, yet there are distribution and access problems resulting in some 800 million people not having enough food. For some, access to food can be assured by providing direct access to land. For the burgeoning urban populations, access depends on good farm-to-market roads, farm production that is well above subsistence levels, price structures that provide incentives to produce for the market, accurate market information for producers, food processing industries to transform raw products into storable foods, and employment that permits people to earn enough to purchase food. In places where full employment is lacking, consumer subsidies, either through grants of food or monetary grants to purchase food, are also essential to ensure access to food. To guarantee adequate food supplies for a growing population, investment in research-an endless task, as the agricultural environment is continuously changing-as well as the conservation of agricultural land, forest and water resources are needed.
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Based on FAO chart prepared in 1946, comparing pre-Second World War food consumption in four countries |
Food must also provide a nutritionally adequate diet. Today, some twelve million children die annually of nutrition-related diseases. Far more are chronically ill. Food must be safe to eat; microbial contaminants are common, especially in urban areas, where food must travel long distances before consumption. The poorest are the most likely victims but, as world food trade expands, consumers in wealthy nations are also being affected by food-borne diseases.
Globalization of markets and technological developments have increased the interdependence among nations and cultures. Time and space have imploded; fences between nations have been lowered. But interdependence does not imply equity, equality of opportunity, justice or even compassion. There is no automatic process by which markets can ensure the realization of these widely held values. Nor can markets be the universal solution, reconciling all values by economic means. Indeed, markets do not concern people’s shared values or collective rights and duties as citizens; rather, they concern their roles as producers and consumers. In other words, people’s ethical obligations must be worked out through political processes and not be reduced to market administration.
Thus, the challenge to develop institutional means to ensure losses through market forces does not violate basic rights, bring widespread hunger or cause the immiseration of individuals, families, communities or States. Although there have been proposals to redress the grievances of losers, these have rarely, if ever, been brought to fruition. An alternative approach could be the expansion of civil society beyond the nation State, allowing all citizens to feel responsible for all people, and for the earth as a whole, and their participation in the democratic control of the market. Members of this global civil society would devise better means for peaceful conflict resolution, ensuring global financial stability, managing the global environment and global markets, establishing global standards and promoting sustainable development.
The realization of such goals, however, is often blocked by a lack of jurisdiction, participation and incentives. Even if these obstacles can be overcome, the goals must be achieved without creating bloated bureaucracies; indeed, these would destroy the very processes they were designed to foster. Nor should progress in attaining global goals require discarding national sovereignty. The global economy will acquire its long-term justification only if it is a means to further fundamental human values. States cannot be accountable solely to foreign investors, fund managers and domestic exporters. Fundamental values cannot be actualized by an élite or decree: because they are sometimes contradictory, values require democratic deliberation, dialogue and discourse. Thus, all States need to develop new means of democratic participation in the fundamental decisions that affect people’s lives.
Globalization underscores the importance of the diversity of “place”. To say that a process is global is not to say that it happens in exactly the same way everywhere. Rather, it means that it “acts at a distance”. Thus, FAO is global only to the extent that it can act at a distance; that is, a decision made in Rome - a distinct, local place - can affect people 10,000 kilometres away. A place continues to be local in character, with a local culture, ecology and economy. Thus, both losers and winners are always geographically and socially placed; it is never a matter of those who are global and cosmopolitan versus those who are local and parochial. Rather, it is a matter of those who, for a variety of reasons, can act at a distance and those who cannot. When conflicts emerge over access to natural resources, they are not caused by disputes between global and local forces. They result from disputes between those able to act at a distance and those unable to do so. Often, such external interests are able to encroach on weaker communities, leading to impoverishment and marginalization. Sovereign as States are, they have not always been good stewards of such resources.
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| FAO Photo |
All too often States have been used by an élite in collusion with external actors to crush community opposition. Capacity of weaker communities to defend their rights in the face of encroachment by their own State or other foreign actors must be strengthened, requiring institutionalized mechanisms of self-restraint for both States and transnational companies. At the same time, it will require giving a greater voice to weaker communities through participatory management of natural resources. Global development policies make little sense if they are not viewed through the lens of national and local development policies. What is needed are social mechanisms allowing the development of far messier plans that achieve their rationality by employing the wealth of intelligence and creativity emerging from democratic participation. Participatory management cannot be an afterthought, tacked on after a policy or project has been designed and is ready to be implemented. It must be a central element from the very inception of a project. One way to pursue this goal is through “collaborative management”, whereby the relevant stakeholders are substantially involved in management activities. Such a system would be flexible and adaptable to differences in places and times, with partnership among affected communities, nations, the private sector, civil society and international organizations.
Globalization simultaneously homogenizes and fragments cultures. We need not all follow identical paths to development, nor arrange our values in the same way everywhere and for all time, nor treat cultural diversity as an obstacle. Homogeneity does not ensure social solidarity any more than heterogeneity guarantees conflict. We need to promote consensus on values and practices without imposing a stifling uniformity, enhancing respect for pluralism among, as well as within, nations and at the level of institutions. Dialogue and debate need to be pursued within cultures to allow for their evolution.
The first global conference on the environment affirmed the imperative “to defend and improve the human environment for present and future generations”. This is not a commitment to specific individuals who do not as yet exist, but an obligation not to impose unending and onerous duties on them. We need to: conserve options that they might wish to pursue; ensure that the planet is not left in a worse condition than when we inherited it; and conserve the legacy of the past so that future generations might have access to it. Our duty can be examined through the lens of sustainability, which environmentalists often define as “avoidance of use”, while some in agriculture define it as “production without reducing soil fertility”. Sustainability is often so broadly or narrowly interpreted that it provides little guidance for action. Indeed, some highly exploitive systems might be sustainable for centuries. A more balanced approach might define agricultural sustainability as a form of stewardship that attempts to respect nature, conserve resources, engage in agriculture and achieve equity and justice. Such an approach would also recognize that no agricultural practices are without potential for irony and tragedy; no human plans are perfect.
