Concepts and Methods: Linking Sustainability, Democracy and Development

In my years of working with Acehnese civilians who had endured decades of violence and brutality, they frequently told me that they risked their lives because they wanted salaries. Contrary to the way academics often frame resource conflicts (see Collier, 2000), the Acehnese didn’t want spoils. They dreamed of jobs in a new economy that would offer the quality of life found in countries like the U.S., where ExxonMobil was headquartered.  In their minds anti-colonial demands for “freedom” meant democracy and development.  Unfortunately, development is controversial. There are chasm-like differences between the mainstream discourses that inform development practice and those of development’s ecologically informed critics.

The formula for post-conflict democracy that developed in the 90s hinged upon converting combatants into political parties, liberalizing markets, and purchasing peace with a peace dividend cashed in by local elites. This approach was far from successful: half of all conflicts resumed (Paris, 2004), and where conflict didn’t resume political repression and criminal violence often dominated the peace (CITE).  Left unchecked, the social contradictions that continue in peace are neither politically nor environmentally sustainable; the crux of the problem is lack of informed, local control over development decision-making.

The argument, often advanced by aid agencies is that the course of action should be: “a twofold task: to help people make the transition to democracy from authoritarian rule and to facilitate the empowerment of individuals and communities in non- democratic societies, in order to create a climate conducive to sustainable development” (USAID, 1994). Development agencies promoting democratization rely on the intertwined concepts of “participation” and “decentralization” as key metrics. In nearly 100 countries across the globe, governments are implementing reforms aimed at strengthening and decentralizing local governance (Maximo MM Ng’ andwe 2001). Sawyer and Gomez note: “in parts of virtually every region of the world, decentralization has championed a belief in civil society and its greater participation in defining social and political processes (2008: 19).” Over the past 30 years, these intertwined concepts have become ubiquitous in development and democratization programs.

            Indonesia is a particularly extreme case of this larger global trend. Today, the democracy assistance programs of the USAID and the World Bank have made Indonesia among the most decentralized governments in the world (Hofman and Kaiser 2002; Hadiz 2004), but assessments of democracy in Indonesia remain conflicted. While a range of world governments, have heralded Indonesia as a democratic success story (Aspinall 2010; Mietzner and Aspinall 2010; Freedom House 2009), local Civil Society Organizations (CSOs)[1] paint a more critical picture of rampant corruption, nepotism and systemic failure (Aspinall 2010; Mietzner and Aspinall 2010). Hadiz argues that in contrast to the “tendency to link processes such as decentralization, democracy, participation, accountability and the nurturance of civil society/social capital, the Indonesian case demonstrates that decentralization can be appropriated and captured by decidedly ‘uncivil’ groups” (2004: 716-7). These scholars echo an avalanche of wider critiques that charge that “decentralization” and “participation”, as delivered by the World Bank and western powers, has consistently failed to resolve the crisis of accountability driving inequality and environmental degradation (Kothari and Cooke, 2001; Sawyer and Gomez, 2008).

Since the power arrangements of new democracies were seen as an open door for “uncivil” powerbrokers not to mention extremists fomenting local religious and ethnic conflicts, a “sequencing” approach to democracy focused on institution-building became increasingly funded by NGOs working alongside government agencies focusing on “good governance” programs (Carothers, 2007; Törnquist, 2010). However, reducing democracy to an apolitical set of technical procedures for participation ignores the underlying power dynamics that preclude sustainability and social justice. Hadiz explains: “This allows the Bank itself �" and by implications its domestic allies �" to deny that they are part of a global coalition of power and interests whose agenda often coincides with that of the most globally mobile sections of corporate capital” (2004: 706). Critics argue that technocratic decision-making (Mitchell, 2002) and the faux depoliticization of aid (Ferguson, 1994) allow elites to direct the course of development while the poor remain powerless.

Development driven by corporate profits also presents a problem for ecologists.  Ecologists estimate that humans already capture up to 40% of the Earth’s productivity to maintain their quality of life, with state-shifts in nearly half of the Earth’s terrestrial ecosystems (Barnosky et al 2012). This has pushed the planet to its sixth major extinction event, with much of the biodiversity loss driven by international trade (Lenzen et al 2012).  Indonesia, whose biodiversity rivals Brazil in significance, has over 1,100 Red Listed species threatened (World MRIO, 2013). According to the living planet index, the tropical regions of the global South have suffered losses of 61% since the seventies, while the temperate forests of the global North have gained 31% in the same period (WWF, 2012).

In political circles, the impending ecological crisis has been largely framed in terms of scarcity. Initially posited as a global shortage of commodities, economists have argued that technology adapts to human needs: the coal of the 19^th century was ultimately replaced by petroleum, which in turn is increasingly becoming replaced by LNG (Krautkraemer, 2005, economist...).  However, the “New Scarcity” (Simpson, Toman and Ayres, 2005) can be viewed in terms of externalities faced by the poor: streams and rivers rendered non-potable by pollution, land rendered non-arable by clear-cutting.  As consumers in the global north buy fresh fruit at grocery stores, plantation workers making a dollar a day are not able to afford the food they could have farmed for themselves had they not been displaced from their subsistence plots.  Scarcity, then, is expressed as the occupation and degradation of ecological space for the consumption of the wealthy at the expense of the poor.  Its consequences are food insecurity, illness and injustice.

While development agencies press forward with cornucopian solutions, ecologists note that for the developing world to match Western levels of consumption would be physically impossible.  The ecological footprint of the consumption patterns of developed countries is so great that, if the rest of the world were to develop in a similar way, it would require the resources of up to 5 earths (Rees and Wackernagel ???).  If there are limits to growth, especially local limits, the current strategies for promoting post-conflict democracy should be viewed with concern. If, as Fannon observed, colonialism operates by “extracting natural resources and exporting them to the metropolitan industries thereby enabling a specific sector to grow relatively wealthy, while the rest of the colony continues, or rather sinks, into underdevelopment and poverty" (1963:106), post-conflict development and colonial extraction are strikingly similar.

The anti-colonial challenge for democratic governance becomes hinged upon the ability of environmentally vulnerable populations to impact the course of development. In reviewing Aceh’s experience with democracy, what are the obstacles to achieving Eckersly’s “Green State”? This article argues that the post-conflict transformation of social, political and ecological orders in Aceh is not the democratic resolution of an armed conflict over inequality, but a high-stakes competition between various powerful actors to extend, not reverse the colonial model. In unraveling Aceh’s history of struggle for freedom from colonialism, the crux of our analysis should be the political undercurrents at play.

Understanding the machinations behind democratic decision-making are central to plotting a viable path towards a sustainable future. In this endeavor, a qualitative, ethnographic approach is invaluable. Seminal sociologist Charles Tilly explains: “As pleasant as it would be to manipulate quantitative measures of democratization, de-democratization, increase in state capacity, and decrease in state capacity, in the present state of knowledge, detailed analytical narratives.... promise more because they allow us to match detailed changes in relations among political actors to alterations in their presumed causes” (2007: 71-72). Writing on development in Indonesia, Geertz asserts that his ethnography is: “a concrete example of the kind of parametric social conditions with which overall policies and programs, no matter how ambitious or how comprehensively stated, must in the long run come to grips. (1963: 143). Thick description is methodologically indispensible for the study of democracy because broader knowledges only have meaning as they play out in the visceral narratives of real human lives within their historical experience.

I’ve been in close contact with Acehnese civil society activists since 2003. In 2012 I returned to Indonesia to investigate political participation and development under the newly elected regime.  Over the course of eight months, I met with people involved in development planning within the government and PA, government officials, candidates for office, civil society activists and NGOs attempting to impact the development process, as well as the rural and urban poor that development had thus far failed.  In addition to hundreds of interviews I also observed CSO conferences, meetings of religious leaders, village meetings with PA, and negotiations between the party and CSOs.

Anthropological ethnographies capture elements that purely economic analyses may miss as they celebrate economic growth in Aceh. On the ground assessments reveal that deforestation from logging and flooding from mining devastates subsistence farmers, who must then live economically vulnerable lives making 1 dollar a day working on a palm plantation. The approaches to peace and democracy described above are predicated upon a model of development that ignores the environmental limits of growth and the ecological basis of livelihoods. Democracy, like freedom and autonomy, can be understood with greater clarity via its historical realization in the midst of anti-colonial tensions over natural resources.  The political and environmental histories of Aceh are linked.

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[1] In contrast to the strictly bourgeois civil society oft referenced in critical theory, I use the term CSO in the broadest possible sense, incorporating organizations of all classes and origins.

Reviews

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:: extremely well articulated... what's happening in india is that a large section of the so called urban middle class is taking 'development' to mean only industrial growth... after reading this section of your manuscript, i am even more convinced that growth has to be inclusive... and for that everything about the population has to be factored in... the history, the culture, the religious character, traditions... etc. etc. ... all of it... the poor (urban and rural) cannot be isolated or left behind...