CONFERENCE:
CITIES OF THE SOUTH, SUSTAINABLE FOR WHOM?
Network Association of European Researchers on Urbanization in the South
European Science Foundation
Institute for the Built Environment of the Federal Polytechnic of Lausanne
United Nations Research Institute for Social Development
Jaime Joseph, Centro Alternativa, Lima Peru
Introduction
In this Conference we are asked to take a new look at sustainable development from the point of
view of the cities of the south. In our particular case, we want to center our point of view in the
megacity, Lima, convinced that the megacities in the Third World are a thorn in the side of
strategies for building democracy and sustainable, human development. Perhaps the Third
World's megacities is where development seems least human and least sustainable. We want to
ask what 'sustainable' can mean in the megacities. More precisely, our concern is to find ways in
which the grassroots community organizations can continue to respond to the basic material
needs, but to do so in such a way that their efforts be part of sustainable and integral development
processes and not limited to poverty relief programs and environmental cleanup. We are well
aware that this concern is a social, political and ethical enterprise.
This paper has two main parts. The first part is an unavoidable and very compressed reflection
on the concepts and theoretical framework involved in the topic. We will begin discussing the
concept of 'sustainable' development, arguing that in order to be sustainable the development
processes and strategies must be based on an integral approach to development. That is to say
the approaches to development must comprise all the dimensions that the people themselves
recognize as essential to their well being, both as individuals and as a community or society.
We will then reflect on ethical and cultural basis for sustainable development, and argue that
our thinking must not become trapped in the very terms of the crisis of the dominant, ‘neoliberal’
development model. We must be able to step back and get a new look at development, based on
the people and society, on their needs and capacities. We will argue that among the central
aspects of sustainable human development are the ethical principles and cultural values that
should direct the development processes. Working out from an integral perspective with clear
ethical principles and cultural values it is possible to construct criteria for reviewing the different
policies and approaches to development that are common to the national and international agents
and evaluate to what extent they support or hinder sustainable development.
We will end this theoretical reflection in a brief discussion of the central role to be played by
democratic politics. In complex societies, if development is to be human and integral, and freely
chosen (Sen), then a democratic political system must be constructed which allows society to
choose freely its own criteria for development. And society must do so in a way which protects
the freedom and rights of all members of that society. We will argue therefore that democracy
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and development are inseparable components if development is to be sustainable and fully
human.
In the second, more analytic, part of our reflection we will propose that a central problem in the
search for human sustainable development is fragmentation. We are living in a world of
fragmented dreams, visions and paradigms. The peoples capacities and needs have been
fragmented into separate, unrelated issues. And the greatest obstacle for sustaining processes of
human development is that the actors themselves as individuals and as social groups are
fragmented and have lost their common grounds.
One of our major concerns, therefore, will be to find ways to integrate actors, especially the
popular urban actor, but also the State and private sectors such as NGOs and international
cooperation agencies. We will argue that such a task is basically a political task, which implies
building democratic political systems and scenarios and forms of negotiation that can lead to
integral, sustainable development. Further we will argue that in the megacities, which are more
urban agglomerates than integrating cities (J. Borja, 1997), such a democratic approach to
development must be carried out in decentralized scenarios. In the case of Lima these scenarios
are found in its geographical Cones around the center of the city where the bulk of the urban poor
live.
We will end by reviewing some of the practices in the megacity of Lima that could become and
essential part of the strategies which will allow us to break out of our crisis and to promote and
sustain processes of democratization and development.
Part I: Sustainable: for whom and how?
Sustainable for whom: the urban poor
The concept of sustainability as applied to development already has a history. In 1983 the
General Assembly of the United Nations set up the World Commission on Environment and
Development. Four years later, under the presidency of Gro Harlem Brundtland, the
Commission published a document, “Our Common Future”. That document defined sustainable
development as “a development which satisfies the needs of the present without compromising
the ability of future generations to satisfy their own necessities”. The essence of ‘sustainable’
seems to be to limit development. Instead of ‘more is better’ a slogan was launched claiming
that ‘sufficient is better’. What was not clear was what mechanisms who and how should be
used to ‘limit’ development. This is not principally a technical question but rather an ethical and
a political problem that still remains unanswered.
The Earth Summit in Rio (1992) was organized as alarms were going off and the continue to go
off all of them telling the planet that resources are limited, especially the resources that are the
mainstay of our present model of development. What is even more alarming is that we may
destroy the very conditions necessary for human life even before the resources run out. Global
warming, holes in the ozone layer and simple overpopulation are a threat to life in general. As is
known, in the Summit 179 countries, North and South, made a commitment to construct their
own Agenda 21 for sustainable development. And since that time, 1,300 local authorities have
responded to the mandate of the Agenda 21, designing their own action plans for local
sustainable development (IGLEI, 1996).
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In general the First World seems to be pressuring the Third world to do the limiting: reduce
population, preserve rain forests, water, etc. Therefore it is not easy to reflect on sustainability
from the point of the urban poor who make up a large part of the megacity and who have a great
number a basic material needs unsatisfied. There is in fact some feeling of discomfort with the
topic, and it is worth mentioning the reasons. “Sustainability” is in many ways an induced
concern in the urban poor communities who are struggling to satisfy the basic material needs
which are essential for their own personal and social development.
'Environment and sustainability' are two of the many urgent issues or concerns that have sprung
up in the North and migrated to the South. In addition to environment, we in the South have
become aware of the gender issue, human rights, especially those of children, citizen’s rights,
worker’s rights, the freedom of sexual preferences. All of these concerns, which indeed are
essential and urgent world concerns, have become part of an agenda in the particular historical
context of freemarket, capitalistic development in the West. And the full significance of these
terms can only be grasped in that concrete process and in the meaningful systems (language,
discourse and institutions) that also arose within the same historical process of which they are
apart.
Without denying the centrality of these issues we must ask ourselves if they have the same
meaning in the South as in the North. Perhaps this concern or precaution might seem out of
order, especially when environment and the limits of our planet are such universal concerns.
However, it was not too many years-ago when the countries in the South were described as
'underdeveloped', and it then seemed quite obvious that they had to make efforts to move ahead
on the same development road the North had followed. Today, we want to make sure that
sustainability be a integral concern in our development process and not simply an add-on or
limiting factor.
The most basic definition of ‘sustainable development’ is found in the World Commission on
Environment and Development (1987): “Sustainable development is development that meets the
needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own
needs.” When these concerns, couched in the languages and meaningful systems of countries
who have arrived at a modern social, political and economic development, are transferred to the
South, they often become distorted and fragmented issues, rather than meaningful dimensions of
an integrated agenda. For example, sustainable development can become a limiting norm and
not an qualitative indicator of development, concerned, for example, more with conserving
resources than with quality of life, social justice and equality (Marcuse, 1998). The nightmare
which pictures every Chinese family having a refrigerator and a twocycle motorbike is certainly
in the background of much of the discussion on sustainability. It is easy to understand that
‘constraint’ has different meanings and different consequences when used in an affluent society
as opposed to societies whose basic needs are still unsatisfied.
It is hard to image that the Western world could have achieved the type of economic capitalist
development if from the very start the emerging productive, financial and commercial classes had
to limit their use of natural resources and avoid polution, pay just wages and provide safe, health
conditions for workers, respect the rights of women and children, and not exploit ethnic and
foreign workers. The Third World populations, trying to move ahead on the road to
development, are being asked to carry the additional load of these extremely important issues.
This apparently puts the Southern countries, especially the Southern cities, in a bind: either we
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must accept our ‘under’development and deprive ourselves of the goods which other societies
enjoy in excess or we will inevitably bring about the destruction of the planet. Obviously we
must find a third option.
This Conference has invited us to reflect on this ‘gap’ between the accepted meanings of
sustainable development in cities North and South. This gap cannot be found principally in the
difference in definitions but rather in the different contexts, processes and meaningful systems in
the North and South.
Change the terms of reference: a new and ethical look at development
A few yearsago Jose Arico, an Argentine political analyst, said that we could not get out of the
present crisis because we continued to think about the crisis in its own terms. We have painted
ourselves into an ideological corner and have accepted certain truths that have achieved an
almost absolute status. These basic truths have been packaged into the onethoughtworld, or
the pensement unique, which has spread throughout the world along with the socalled neoliberal
development model. There is no need to enter into details about these ‘basic and universal
truths’. Perhaps the central truth is that a marketdriven economy, with stable macroeconomic
indicators, small and efficient governments, an expansive private sector are the only way to
achieve economic growth. As corollary to that truth, economic development is understood to be
the center of human development. This approach to development is what has been called
‘reductionist’ (Goulet, 1997).
In the last few years, however, it has become clear that this neoliberal model is, on the one hand,
creating more poverty and widening the poverty gap, as well as, on the other hand, proving to be
incapable of curbing the overexploitation of the planet and its resources. The UNDP's Human
Development Report 1996 tells us that eighty-nine countries are worse off economically than
they were a decade ago. The July 15, 1996 New York Times article on that report headlined its
story: "U.N. Survey Finds World Rich-Poor Gap Widening". (Morris, 1996)
In the face of this undeniable realty, there was a new item tacked on to the neoliberal model:
poverty relief and redistribution measures. In fact it can be argued that the nation-state, so
weakened by transnational economics and globalization, has survived and even propsered in its
ability to relate to (or manipulate) the growing poor populations in Third Word countries due to
the State’s role in administrating poverty relief programs. For example in September of 1996,
Enrique Iglesias organized a forum to study the Washington Consensus in which John
Williamson, author of the Consensus, recognized that often the measures had been applied like a
neoliberal bible. He underlined the important rol of the State in providing technological support,
credit, information and above all redistribution.
Those who have worked with grassroots organizations through NGOs have been very much
involved to poverty relief programs. Many of these programs have been quite successful in
reducing the negative effects of the development model and the structural adjustments which
have been imposed on all countries to put them on the ‘reductionist’ development track. Also, as
we will mention later, these programs and experiences have been very important factors in
building community organizations and values, which should be an important basis for finding
creative ways out of the crisis.
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But as Morris David Morris has stated, it is not enough “to add a dollop of humanitarianism to
orthodox development policies already in existence, as seems to be what is happening currently
among official donors”. Unfortunately, "strategic adjustment with a human face" implies that
rapid GNP/c growth remains the basic objective and social improvement remains the passive
consequence. If development policy is to be successful in affecting human wellbeing, it must be
designed so that improvements that raise the quality of life indicator are actively interacting, even
driving, the GNP/c growth strategy (Morris, 1996). We might paraphrase Morris and say that it
is not enough to add the adjective 'sustainable' to the same marketdriven model.
Ethics and Development
It is therefore becoming clear that the neoliberal development model, structural adjust and
poverty relief programs are not sufficient though for many relief and redistribution are still
extremely necessary and justified measures for achieving sustainable human development. It is
also becoming very clear that if we are to find new terms for understanding and overcoming the
crisis we must step back and get a new look at development itself. This has led many to turn to
ethical principles and cultural values and their role in development approaches and strategies.
Ethics and development is not a new topic. The discussion is at least as old as Weber. Denis
Goulet is one of the pioneers in this field in the last decades, (Goulet, 1995). In South America
MaxNeef was one of the most important intellectuals who made it clear that economic
development was not the same as human development, that having (material goods) was not the
same as being (a full human being). “Development refers to persons not to objects … The best
development process will be that which permits raising the quality of life of the persons”
(MaxNeef, 1986:25 tr. JJ).
And Amartya Sen centered the strategies of human development in the development of the
human capacities freely determined (Sen 1983). “If in last analysis, we consider development as
the expansion of the capacities of the population to achieve activities freely chosen and valued,
then it would be entirely inappropriate to consider human beings as ‘instruments’ of economic
development” (Sen, 1999:600).
More recently Sen has made it clear that ethical principles and human values are essential for
development. He has pointed out that while Adam Smith argued that self-interest was behind
the motivation to interchange, Smith never said this interest was enough. Confidence, interest
and concern for others, what Smith called 'sympathy', 'generosity' and 'public spirit', were also
essential. Sen argues that "capitalism could not have survived on seeking personal benefits
alone". Values are essential to the process from the very beginnings (Sen, 1997).
It is encouraging to note that today there is much more attention given to the role of ethics,
philosophical principles and cultural values in the discussion of development.
The
well-deserved Nobel Prize given to Amartya Sen in 1998 is an expression of this increasing
interest in ethics and development. However a word of caution is needed in this matter. There
seems to be good reason to fear that the interest in the human dimension of development and
ethical principles may be introduced as another addon to the present model. Ethic could come
to occupy a second or third place both in time and in importance in relation to the neoliberal
principles of market driven economy and structural adjustments. If this were the case, ethical
concerns such as justice, solidarity, equality would become another burden on the shoulders of
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the worlds poor as they struggle to attain full development and not a guide to human
development. And this is not a theoretical problem. For example, those who work with the
small and micro enterprises often considered to be the answer to poverty and unemployment for
the neoliberal model know how difficult it is to survive in the market if equality, human rights,
solidarity, democracy and environment are taken seriously.
That is to say, ethical and human concerns often enter into the scene after the fact; once structural
adjustment has taken place and the damage in terms of poverty and marginalization has been
done. I do not think it is simply a coincidence that before Sen, Friedrich von Hayek received
that same Nobel Prize in 1974, and Milton Friedman in 1976. We do not want an approach to
development and ethics that from the very start is hemmed in by the very ideology that is at the
basis of the crisis itself. If we allow this to happen, ethics and human values will only enter into
the scene at the end of the process. They will be used to give a face-lifting to the model and to
curb its chain of negative effects: poverty and inequality, unemployment, the environmental
destruction, exclusion, violence, anomia and authoritarianism. Our question is if and how
ethical principles can help us break out of the ideological chains we have wrapped around our
approach to development and find new, effective and sustainable approaches to development
Democracy and development
The very title of this conference, “Sustainable for Whom” is a question not so much about ‘what’
type or model of development is pursued, but ‘how’ development decisions are made, and ‘who’
makes them. We understand ‘sustainable’ as comprising more than the environmental goals.
‘Sustainable’ is defined as ‘capable of being upheld or defended’ (Oxford English Dictionary).
Our question must be how can development which must be ‘freely determined’ as Sen says be
upheld in a diverse and conflictive urban society. “Sustainability is a treacherous (formulation
of goals) for urban policy because it suggests the possibility of a conflictfree consensus on
policies, whereas, in fact, vital interest do conflict: it will take more than simply better knowledge
and clearer understanding to produce change.” (Marcuse, 1998).
Sustainability, like
participation, can be a camouflaged trap. Both terms very respectable indeed can be used to
maintain the status quo, focusing on particular ‘issues’ and covering up deep rooted, structural
problems. When ‘sustainability’ is applied as a limiting principle, and ‘participation’ is limited
to poverty relief programs, these concepts can hide the authoritarian hands and the power behind
the control of major decisions in development and cover up the real nature of the model itself.
Up to this point we have made a number of affirmations which make it possible to synthesize our
central argument is this reflection: That we will only be able to make development sustainable if
development is approached from an integral point of view and is understood as the freely
determined realization of individual and societal capacities and need. That is to say ‘sustainable’
cannot be simply a limiting concepts. It must be part of the unlimited quest for full life. This
first affirmation implies a second, which states that development cannot simply reflect on and
respond to technical or economic criteria. In all stages of the development process ethical
principles and cultural values must be operative and determinate. And finally, we argue that in a
complex, modern and free society, ethical principles can be operative in development strategies
only through a fully democratic political system. No one is free if someone else is making the
main decisions as to the type of development that is to be pursued. Our argument makes human
sustainable development and democratic politics inseparable, binomial concepts linked in integral
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processes. We must then ask how and where the processes of development and democratization
can be one.
Part II: The megacity as a possible scenario for sustainable development
From my own point of view both personal and professional one of the important positive
results of the Earth Summit has been to place cities, especially Third World cities, back on the
agendas of national states and multinational organizations. In the ‘Manual for local planning of
the Agenda 21, 1996’ of the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI),
Elizabeth Dowdeswell, Executive Director of the UN Program for Environment, has pointed out
that there are 213 cities in the Third World with more than a million inhabitants. “The future of
cities, she says, will increasingly determine not only the destiny of the nations but also of the
planet” (ICLEI, 1996, p. iii).
This is an important change since the main urban cities in the Third World, especially our
megacities that had been pushed to the margins of national an international concerns, are getting
back on their agendas. This is due not so much to a concern for the massive and endemic
poverty and injustice present in the cities. Unfortunately there has been a common belief that all
the inhabitants of the megacities somehow benefit from the concentration of wealth and power
found in them, and therefore they do not need priority attention.1 Now our cities are getting
attention because they are a threat to the planet. Their demands for services are a threat to
sustainability and therefore we need an "approach entirely different for planning and providing
services” (ICLEI, ibid.). We might say that the urban poor are getting back on the agenda
through the backdoor. For whatever the reason, it is important to be on that agenda, however we
will try to argue for a more positive view of the megacities, a view based especially on the
potentialities and the practices of the urban poor.
Maurice Strong, president of the Earth Council, indeed expressed a more positive approach to our
Third World cities. "(U)rban areas present the concentration of our worst social, economic and
environmental problems, and also offer opportunities for some of the most effective solutions"
(ICLEI, 1996). He mentioned social, economic and environmental problems, which are central
issues, but he did not mention the essential and key aspect, which is building democratic politics.
Our argument is this discussion follows a simple but solid logic. As we said above, it will only
be possible to attend to the needs and demands of the poor in urban and rural areas with justice
and equality if ethical values are operative and predominate in the basic decision making process.
Second, we have argued that in our complex and modern societies, the only way in which ethical
principles can be the foundation of decision making is through democratic politics.
We will add to these considerations the fact that no where in the Third World have the social and
political basis for sustainable development (ethics and democratic politics) been so weakened as
in our megacities. Without doubt, in the megacity of Lima, especially in the popular urban
areas, the approach to development is being reduced to survival tactics: nutrition, employment at
any cost, health, and security in face of violence and delinquency. In these tactics, extreme
individualism tends to override ethical considerations such as justice and equality and cultural
values, especially solidarity, that have been an essential element of community based
1
For example in Peru, the ‘Cities for Life Forum’ prides itself on “not giving priority to Lima … (in order) to
contribute to the strengthening of the capacities of those who really need them most” (Miranda 1998).
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organizations. Also the direct intervention of central government agencies and the overt
manipulation of the poor in poverty relief programs are undermining the basis for democratic
politics
We will argue, however, that through a decentralized approach towards development and good
governance, the megacity can become a possible scenario for integral human development
strategies, for making community ethical principles and cultural values operative, and for
building a democratic political system for development. We will try to show that there are new
practices that can be indicating a way out of our crisis.
Fragmented dreams and fragmented people in the megacity
A major thesis in our reflection is that fragmentation is a growing problem for human
sustainable development and for the democratic political systems that can make such
development possible. And we therefore are concerned with the scenarios and practices that can
lead to overcoming the widespread fragmentation.
The increased concern on the part of governments and multinational agencies for growing
poverty, environmental destruction, gender inequalities, employment all within the confines of
the neoliberal model have contributed to the fragmentation and the loss of an integral, human
and therefore sustainable view of development. The efforts to offer relief for these problems,
without questioning the very premises of the development model have led to the fragmentation of
the demands and necessities of the people, converting them to separate issues, each isolated from
the other. Often one issue neutralizes of blocks others. For example economic growth seems to
be at loggerheads with environment.
Two decadesago in the urban poor areas the approach to basic human needs included an
analysis of the structural causes of the problem and the community organizations reflected on the
injustice and inequality expressed in these structures. These reflections were part of what was
called ‘popular education’. Many agencies and NGOs have fallen into a comfortable
selfimposed censorship which leaves aside these more structural and ethical problems which
lead to questioning the model. ‘Popular education’ has be accused of being a tool of radical
Marxist political groups. In Peru NGOs were accused of being fronts of apologists for the
terrorism of Shining Path. Unfortunately we have lost much of our critical work and as a
consequence we have lost must of our creative ability.
So what we find is fragmentation in our strategies and programs. For example, the survival of
small businesses often depends on child labor, no social benefits, and extremely long hours.
Programs devoted to building citizenship and promoting ‘civic participation’ or ‘local
democracy’ often leave aside the concern for the contents of the decisions made. In a recent
conference in Lima, the city planner and councilman of Barcelona, Jordi Borja, described an
incident that illustrates this point. Residents in a predominantly working-class neighborhood of
Barcelona organized to oppose the building of a recreation centre for elderly people. According
to Borja, the local community rejected the idea of having ‘old people in our neighbourhood’.
However, as Borja pointed out, this very unjust action is ‘civic participation’, but a participation
with a clearly anti-democratic content. This anecdote serves to emphasise the importance of
ensuring that our efforts to build a democratic political system do not take place in isolation from
the processes of human development, processes.
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A particularly difficult and very fragmented issue is that of gender inequality. For example, in
recent times we have seen great concern and campaigns for increasing the participation of women
in elected political positions. Most of the these campaigns do not take into consideration what
the women to be elected think about development, democracy, the human and civil rights of other
groups, or even about issues closely related to gender such as abortion, the right to life and the
right to choose. “Elect a women to Congress” reads a bumper sticker on a friend’s car. One
can almost add, “Elect any woman” no matter what she thinks about justice, development,
democracy.
The breakdown of problems and concerns into isolated issues has increased with the ‘focalized’
approaches to fighting poverty. Originally focalized strategies were ‘focused’ on the structural
causes of poverty. However as poverty became massive, especially in the cities, and as it
became clearer even though often not admitted that poverty could not be significantly reduced
within the framework and criteria of the present model of economic development, strategies were
designed to focus on pockets of ‘extreme’ poverty. Usually such pockets were found in rural
areas. It is not our purpose to discuss the validity of the indicators use to evaluate poverty and
the quality of life in cities and in the rural areas 2 . What is important for the topic of this
Conference is to point out that focusing on separate issues has fragmented these issues and has
closed them off from any possibility of more synergetic strategies, and therefore has closed them
off from an integral and sustainable development strategies.
What is even more of a concern is that this fragmentation of issues affects the social actors
themselves. Each group or organization, often each person, has its own specific area of interest.
This fragmentation has greatly weakened the urban popular organizations. It is often said that
the grassroots organizations have disappeared. This is simply not true. In fact, with the
structural adjustment the number and types of organizations has grown, especially in the cities.
New organizations have sprung up to face collectively problems that previously had been solved
privately, by individuals or in the family: nutrition, health and employment, among others. Also
new organizations arise to cover responsibilities that the downsized States are unable or
unwilling to face: environment, citizen security, and even criminal justice.
However the different grassroots organizations have lost much of the interrelations and
coordination among different sectors. Previously such coordination was materialized on the
more political level (urban popular Confederations worked with labor unions and peasant
movements) and were involved with political parties and political campaigns. With the
weakening of political parties and the virtual breakdown of the democratic political systems the
grassroots organizations no longer work together in the same way. They have lost the common
grounds explicit paradigms and political scenarios upon which common proposals, common
interests and common values and principles can be built. They have also lost their power to
influence public opinion and political decisions.
We must admit that as NGOs we have often been part of this fragmentation of issues and actors.
NGOs working with grassroots communities have felt the need to achieve more professional
2
However it seem obvious that these indicators must be different. Not to have sewage, water, or streets
lights is quite a different thing in a shanty town than in a rural area. Or if we included quality of life
indicators such as number of persons who were victims of violence or robbery in the last six months,
pollution and so on, the poverty maps of the megacities would be quite different.
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expertise and to become highly specialized in different problem areas. This necessary
specialization is often reinforced by the international agencies that demand more ‘concrete’
indicators which usually means ‘quantitative’ indicators to measure results in each specific
problem area. In many cases such demands have effectively helped to respond to specific and
basic human needs of the urban poor in a context of increasing poverty, reduced resources and
the retreat of State from it social obligations. However the cost of this efficiency has often been
the loss of perspective, with less ability to link strategies and actors and to go beyond the
short-term goals towards sustainable development processes.
Therefore, our concern in promoting human, sustainable development processes must look for
ways in which problem areas and different social actors can interact and where human values and
ethical principles can be operative and capable of orienting development. The strategies that we
design in this endeavor must guarantee that the ethical principles and values be present
throughout all stages of the development process: planning, execution and evaluation. This is no
doubt a complex enterprise, which present serious problems and not a few traps on the levels
of philosophy and ethics, politics and society.
On the more philosophical level we must ask ourselves how we can build a common ethical
basis, a common good if you will which can direct the development process of a complex and
diverse social. At the same time we must be concerned that this common ethical basis and
common good not be imposes on other individuals or social groups and not limit their liberties.
On the social level, therefore, we are concerned with the breakdown and fragmentation of social
fiber and institutions that are the only sustainable basis for human development. On the political
level, we must ask ourselves in the face of growing evidence to the contrary if democracy can
really work and be the basic instrument for stable human development and for safeguarding the
rights and liberties of each person and social group.
Let us mention just a few of the problems and traps in the search for sustainable development
strategies. For one, we must address one of the basic questions asked in this Conference: Whose
sustainable development? In other words, is it possible to build democratically a common
ethical basis for human development when dealing with such diverse cultures, ethnical groups
and religions? This is a classic problem in modern ethics and political philosophy.
The most effective form of ethical domination in our world today, as we have mentioned, is the
imposition of the one-thought world, the pensement unique that has been globalized. This
proposed universal mindset which we have imported, whether by choice or not, along with the
neoliberal development model is destroying the very political and social framework needed to
find a path out of the crisis. The one-though world has not helped to galvanise us as people or as
nations. Rather this imported ideology has weighed our theoretical, epistemological, and ethical
anchors, and has set us adrift on the tides of a globalized sea. In the words of the Chilean
political analyst Norbert Lechner, ‘[I]nterpretive codes are crumbling and, as a result, we
perceive reality as disorder on a large scale’ (Lechner 1998).
The increasing respect for individual freedoms and rights to choice seems to be leading to chaos,
violence and anomia. However on the other end of the ethical spectrum, the greater risk is that
ethical principles, values and norms be imposed on other peoples along with the common
neoliberal good. Or where the neoliberal model has not been fully successful, authoritarian or
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fundamentalists regimes are trying to impose their ‘alternative’ ethical system. Is there a real
basis for building a common good that can avoid the risks of anomia or the imposition by the
powerful or tyranny of the majority in a democratic system, as was feared by so many liberal
thinkers?
A second major trap this one more on the political level is often found in strategies designed to
approach poverty relief and environmental programs through different forms of ‘participatory
democracy’ for local development. The trap is not in the people’s participation in such relief
programs, although such participation is often a camouflaged form a free labor, mostly women’s
free labor. The problem is that these participatory strategies in effect tend to enclose the
majority of the people and their organizations within the reduced boundaries of shortterm relief
programs. The understanding of 'local development' is limited to providing relief for the effects
of neoliberal macroeconomic growth. Likewise, the understanding of 'participatory democracy'
is reduced to deciding how to implement the relief programs. We must build strategies that
work out from the local level and the people’s needs but go beyond the local level and immediate
needs.
On the social level we are finding other problems for a more global strategy of development and
democracy. The increasing, massive and prolonged poverty as well as the gap between rich and
poor tend to weaken the moral fiber of the people themselves and to encourage a savage
individualism. Also the poor, especially those in the megacities, have absorbed much of the
neoliberal discourse of extreme individualism, but at the same time they are well aware of the
tremendous disadvantages they face and that it impossible to compete in a market which is free or
liberal only in name.
They often have a sense of defeat even before the market game begins. As one analyst said, it's
like entering a monopoly game when all the property has been bought up, and the only solutions
are either to go to jail or to overturn the playing board. A feeling of defeat is a tremendous
problem from our point of view for it is a fact that no people or social class in defeat has ever
been a free and creative agent of historical changes. To feel alone, an outsider defeated and
unable to compete makes one open to manipulation and willing to accept authoritarian solution
and governments Weak selfesteem and a lack of a sense of dignity also make it much easier
to manipulate the people and to traffic with their needs. There is increasing evidence that the
poor see themselves as recipient of 'favors' rather than as persons endowed with rights and
obligations.
We should not underestimate the negative effects of these changes in the people’s selfimage.
An essential difference in the world of the urban poor twenty years-ago and today, is that then the
people, their political and social organizations, were on the rise, were building a city and were
part of a social political movement that proposed to change the world. Today much of this vital
force has been lost, and there is a growing feeling of defeat, of the impossibility to get out of the
hole through one’s own efforts. The poor, especially those in the megacities, have absorbed much
of the discourse of extreme individualism, but at the same time they are well aware of the
tremendous disadvantages they face and that it impossible to compete.
The overall results of these negative tendencies are a people more fragmented than united; an
approach to development limited to survival; and a democratic systems ever further removed
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from the real power structure and decision making mechanisms. In the wake of this process,
authoritarian regimes often with formal democratic facades tend to grow.
Poverty and exclusion, limited democracy and authoritarianism as well as social, cultural and
ethical fragmentation are the central problems we must face if we propose to move ahead towards
sustainable human development. We must ask ourselves several basic questions. How and in
what scenarios can ethical principles be discussed and developed in such a way that they be the
guidelines for the development process? We must ask how this can be done in a democratic
system so that the tyranny of the majorities or the manipulation of the powerful minorities can be
checked and overcome? We also ask ourselves how a planned process of human development
can be effective in an adverse economic and political scenario? And we must especially ask how
and in what scenarios a people immersed in poverty, in an increasingly unequal and unjust social
system, excluded from most forms of power can become vigorous social and political actors?
We are faced with a triple task: to consolidate the personas and their organizations, which are the
point of departure and the goal of any human development process; to place ethical, human
values at the center of the development process; and to build a democratic political system which
can make these principles effective. Our search takes us to the scenario of the megacity in the
Third World.
Megacities of the South
‘Megacity’ is a concept that can be understood in different ways. From the European context,
Peter Hall defines a megacity as an urban agglomeration of ten or more millions of inhabitants,
and he points out that the megacity is growing in importance in developing countries (Hall,
1998). In 1960, only nine of the nineteen megacities were in developing countries. Now, at the
beginning of the new century, fifty of the sixty megacities are in developing countries.
However, from our point of view, even though the number of inhabitants is an important factor in
the definition, it is neither the only one, nor the most important. The megacity draws our
attention because of its impact on society, development and on the State.
There is another important difference between the majority of the megacities in Third World
countries and the modern megacities. Modernity has not only produced globalized cities linked
though the highways of information networks (Castells, 1996). In the last few decades a
different type of megacity has appeared, which is more an urban agglomerate than a city. These
agglomerates do not integrate the urban population, but rather they express exclusion and
disintegration. Such disintegrated and segregated cities are more common in poor countries
even though there are growing indications that the megacities in developed countries are also
faced with similar problems that weaken the possibilities of consolidating a democratic political
system at the service of development.
In fact there are some analysts who feel that we are witnessing the death of the city as defined by
Jordi Borja: “that physical, political and cultural complex, European and Mediterranean, but also
American and Asian, which we have characterized in our ideology and in our values as a
concentration of population and activity, a social and functional mixture, the ability of
selfgovernment and a place of symbolic identification and civic participation. City as
encounter, exchange, city that means culture and commerce. City as a place and not a simple
space for flows (of traffic and people)” (Borja, 1997:2, tr. JJ).
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Lima, the capital of Peru, is an example of such megacities in the process of disintegration. It is
a megacity, not in numeric terms according to Hall’s definition but because Lima concentrates a
large population in both relative and absolute terms. It has over seven million inhabitants, one
third of Peru’s total population and 43.8% of the urban population. It also concentrates
economic powers (production, finance and commerce) and information. It also concentrates the
political powers, and in the last ten years this concentration has increased under the present
authoritarian regime. However, in comparison with megacities in the modern, developed
countries, or the global megacities, Lima is not an urban center that links and integrates its own
urban population nor does it link and integrate the other regions of Peru. That is an important
factor in explaining why the movements for decentralization have anti Lima overtones and often
are explicitly opposed to the megacity.
Community Based Organizations and Sustainable Development
The question about sustainable human development is particularly complex in the context of a
disintegrating urban agglomeration like Lima. For the last twenty year, the years of political,
social and economic crisis in most Third World countries, the years of structural adjustment and
the expansion of the onethought world, as a NGO we have centered our strategies on the
popular urban community based organizations, (CBOs). The story is well known of how the
urban poor have organized and found solutions even if on the survival level to their basic
material needs. In a real sense the inhabitants of Lima’s barriadas have been the builders of
their city.
However, the situation in the megacities in the Third World has changed, and the reality of the
popular urban organizations has also changed. These changes are what led the United Nations
Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) and the United Nations Volunteers (UNV)
to ask us to participate along with other researchers in a study of the situation of the CBOs in the
megacities. The purpose was to evaluate their potential for participating in integral, sustainable
development processes along with the local governments.
Our study in Lima (Joseph, 1999) confirmed our basic strategy and option to work with the urban
CBOs and enabled us to make more precise our strategies for moving towards sustainable
development in Lima, building on the strengths of the people and their organizations without
overlooking the increasing obstacles to our goals. We are presently trying to refine a
decentralized approach to development and government in the megacity.
Here we can only present a brief summary of the positive aspects found in the urban
organizations. The popular urban organizations had demonstrated great creativity in solving
their basic material needs. This was the case from the very beginning (1950) of the urban
expansion around metropolitan Lima in what is now known as the three ‘cones’ of Lima, north,
east and south. The urban squatters organized for all stages of development of their habitat:
invasion, urban design, basic services, and legalization. There has been much praise, and rightly
so, of the solidarity and cooperation which made the conquest of habitat possible. In these
scenarios women began to play a central role in community life and later in political life, and
their organizations, even more than the family, were the starting place for addressing the gender
issue, involving women, men and children.
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The following decades (1960 – 1970) were also very agitated in both the social and political
areas. The workers movements grew in number and strength due to industrial growth and to the
support given by the military dictatorship to labor unions in its first phase, 1968  1975. The
peasant movement experienced similar growth and strength when the land takeovers of the
haciendas were followed by the agrarian reform. The popular urban organizations also were
centralized in federations in Lima and on a national level. All of these social movements were
also part of a growing political activity, especially on the part of left and popular parties such as
the different Marxist groups and the APRA party. All of this activity seemed to be showing that
the different popular organizations were part of a movement that would lead to a different, more
just and human development model all imagined according to different forms of socialism.
In the last two decades (19801990) this reality changed radically. For our purposes here we
can limit a review of the changes to the aspects which are important for finding strategies for
sustainable development in the city. For the poor urban organizations and their members, the
most important change was no doubt the structural adjustment, which actually began in Peru in
more subtle forms in the beginning of the second phase of the military government, from 1975
on. The Fujimori government later applied the mandates of the Washington Consensus ‘without
anesthesia’ as has been said. This meant a tremendous reduction in the buying power of the
popular urban families, the loss of jobs in factories and State institutions. The loss of jobs also
meant the loss of social benefits, especially in health care.
As we have already mentioned, the urban poor responded to the new situation with the same
strategies and mechanisms that they used to build their habitat: courage, creativity, organizations,
solidarity and a sense of justice and dignity. New organizations sprung up to face collectively
the new problem.
However these organizations, their values and proposals no longer have the same impact beyond
the narrow limits of the local neighborhood. The CBOs are not a profitable commodity in
marketdriven mass media dominated by ratings. In such a media context, a good scandal, the
more sordid the better, has much more chance of making the news than hundreds of thousands of
urban poor defying social statistics and not only surviving but becoming involved in integral
development processes. But the problem is not just the media. The media is more a
thermometer of what is happening in our society.
If we step back and take a broader look at what has taken place, especially in the last two
decades, we find that not only have the grassroots urban organizations dropped off the news
agenda. The worker and peasant movements have also seen their organizations greatly
weakened. This is due in part to the structural adjustment which, in order to cut production costs
and reduce government spending, has made labor laws ‘more flexible’. Any union leader who
becomes a bother can be quickly thrown into the growing unemployment sector. And the
peasant farmer movement has been hard hit by the breakup of community lands, the lack of
technical and financial aid and the individual struggle for survival within the neoliberal ideology
and a strictly marketdriven agricultural strategy.
Another important factor is the virtual collapse of political parties, which in previous decades
were important in organizing the popular movements and brought them together under political
platforms. By the time we can discuss this paper, the general elections in Peru, April 9 th, will
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certainly have shown that none of the traditional political parties in Peru will have reached more
than 5% of the vote.
If we look deeper into the political situation we can easily come to the conclusion that what has
collapsed is not the CBOs, nor just the party system. We are faced with the break down of the
democratic political systems, understood as the mechanism by which a nation or society can
determine what type of development it want to pursue. It is increasing evident that the
‘demo-cratic’ system does not put the real power (‘cratos’) into the hands of the people (demos)
and their organizations. Democratic politics and systems are more and more reduced to political
circuses, and as we are observing now in Peru often the best way to be elected is to be the best
clown.
But what is most alarming, and most pertinent for our concern for promoting sustainable and
human development, is that the people themselves have become more and more distant and
disinterested in democratic politics. They do not expect the democratic political system to
contribute to the solution of their immediate material needs, and even less to help them move
ahead on the road to development. The people’s support for our present authoritarian
government is not surprising. The Peruvian people are choosing to turn their backs on politics,
to ‘exit’ in the terms of Hirschman (Hirschman, 1982). They would rather ‘delegate’ their
political rights and responsibilities to others in order to get on with their individual struggle for
survival (O’Donnell 1992).
We might add that this breakdown of the democratic system is not limited to these changes in the
last decades. In fact if we look back on the history of many Third World countries that were
formerly colonies we find that the democratic systems imported at the time of independence have
never been a political expression of a modern integrated society. This is especially true in those
countries that have an important ethnic populations, such as is the case of Peru and other Andean
countries. Even less have the democratic governments been stable roads to development. In the
minds of most Peruvians, economic prosperity and ethnic pride are more related to authoritarian
regimes than with democratic governments. The ‘Revolutionary’ military dictatorship de
Velasco Alvarado, (19681975) is a good example of this. . This reality has recently led Ralf
Dahrendorf, former head of the London School of Economics, to ask very seriously "Is there any
future for democracy?" (Dahrendorf).
Therefore our search for approaches and strategies for promoting sustainable development
processes has become quite complex. Our approach to sustainable development has certainly
gone far beyond the simple concern for the essential need to conserve natural resources. We
have argued that the conservation of the planet depends not so much on limiting cutting back
on the use of natural resources. This is especially true in countries where basic material needs
are still unsatisfied. What is needed is a new, ethical, approach to development, in which the
economic dimensions, the material aspects, the ‘having’ are seen as means to ‘being’, to quality
living, to the unlimited expansion of our individual and social capacities. And we need to build
a political system that makes such development possible. Our argument has led us to understand
that in complex modern societies, built on individual freedom, ethics can only be brought into
development through democratic politics.
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A Stable Structure for Sustainibility
Before moving to a discussion of strategies emerging in the megacities it might be helpful to
synthesize what we consider to be the central aspects which these strategies must take into
account.
It is becoming increasing clear that ‘stability’ in human integral development is a complex
challenge and must be considered to be a social especially educational, political and economic
process. If fact even if we were to limit the scope of ‘sustainable’ to the environmental aspects,
it is obvious that with an integral view to development without a democratic political system the
concerns for our planet and its limited resources will have no effect on the decisions taken. We
might suggest a summary of the different aspects that must be taken into account in this process:

On the social level
Our point of departure and point of return in the development process is the people and their
communities. That is say, development is concerned as many have said with the people’s
needs and capacities, and with building communities which permit the highest quality of living.
In the urban poor areas, sustainable development cannot overlook the ethical mandate to provide
the basic human conditions that give each person a just opportunity to develop his or her
capacities. However these tasks must be carried out in such a way that goes beyond mere
survival tactics and inserts the programs for poverty relief and attention to basic human needs in
an integral development process. This includes, of course, programs designed to improve
environmental living conditions in urban areas: defense of water supplies, solid waste control,
parks and green areas.
All of these programs can be designed in a way that reinforces the fragmentation of problems into
separate issues or in a synergetic strategies which relates problems, solutions and actors. We are
concerned, for example, that while most programs proposed for addressing these problems call
for ‘participatory’ methods, very few seem to take into account the fact that the political and
social systems have been weakened and fragmented themselves. The same strategy that might
be adequate in a country with a stable and institutionalized social and political system is
inadequate for the chaotic realities found in many of the Third World’s megacities. Certainly we
must include in the indicators which evaluate the impact of our programs the concern for the
synergies created, the vision of development which results, and the type of social organizations
and networks produced.

On the level of integral development
It is becoming quite clear that our efforts in poverty relief and environmental protection cannot
remain on the level of simple survival. It is also becoming clear that with the levels of massive
poverty and the prolonged economic crisis which followed in the wake of the neoliberal model
redistribution measures are even more necessary but in themselves not sufficient. It is also clear
and please excuse the repetition that our redistribution, poverty relief and environmental
programs must be inserted in a fully developmental strategy. Our development will not be
sustainable if this is not achieved.
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Such an integral development strategy has two essential aspects. The first is to broaden the
scope of what is understood by ‘development’ to include all the dimensions of human
development and to focus on the quality of life and opportunities which development provides.
However, our concern for broadening the vision of integral development such avoid going to the
other extreme and overlooking the need for material, economic development.
Also we must be aware of the context in which we are approaching integral and sustainable
development. If we do not do so we run the risk of promoting oversimplified solutions. An
example of this is the importance given in recent years to the informal economic sector. There
has been much emphasis placed on the small or micro enterprises as the magic solution for
economic development in urban poor areas. Our work over the last twenty years with the small
businesses, which are multiplying in the megacity, makes it clear that most of them are limited to
mere survival tactics with little or no chance for accumulation. Other enterprises have more
possibility for growth, but their markets are limited and increasingly invaded by cheap imports.
Any strategy that proposes the need to link poverty relief and environmental defense programs to
integral development process must face the problem and conditions for sustainable economic
growth. This means, of course, creating the necessary conditions: productive capacity which
provides quality products and employment, market conditions which link local producers to local
consumers, and financial systems which supports such an economic system and adequate
legislation which guarantees the system.
If we look at the buying power of the inhabitant of the Northern Cone of Lima we find a possible
market for economic growth. The Northern Cone has a population of nearly two million. That
means two million pairs of shoes, socks pants. It also means furniture, building materials,
medicines, natural medicines services such as education and recreation, nutrition. The list is
very long. It is not unreal to project that local producers can satisfy up to 80% of these demands.
However the monopolistic and transnational productive system, the concentration of commerce
in a few malls, a financial system which siphons out the savings of the poor, and a free market
policies which offers no protection for emerging enterprises work against a sustainable
development strategy in the economic dimension which is essential.

On the political level
The third level that is proving to be essential for sustainable development is the level of
democratic politics. All our strategies and programs with the urban poor must be evaluated in
relation to their impact on building a democratic institutionalized (sustainable) political system,
which is understood by the people to be their principal instrument for moving toward human
development. This is another gigantic and complex area, but one which we cannot overlook.
Our strategies here must contemplate three basic aspects. The first is rethinking and reforming
the State. There is no justification for imposing on all countries a one-size-fitsall model of
State, a model that has been designed for other realities and other tasks. We need a State that
can make development sustainable for the people in poor urban settings. It must do more than
‘level’ the playing field. It must strengthen the players, help give them the tools they need and
especially while they begin to grow project them from other oversized players who invade their
field.
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Secondly it is becoming increasing clear that the complex societies of our Third World countries
need much more than simple referendum or plebiscite democracies. Our sustainable political
systems require professional political actors, both persons and political parties. Many analysts
have placed the blame for the political debacle in Peru exclusively on the political parties, both
right and left. As mentioned before, the voters seem to share this evaluation and continue to
punish the political parties and the party leaders. However, after 10 years of an ‘independent’
government we are becoming aware that without professional political actors the aspirations and
proposals of the people cannot be transformed in viable political proposals. Rather independent
rule has meant domination and manipulation and, most alarming, the breakdown of the will of the
people to participate in politics. It is almost certain that in Peru, after this present electoral
process whose validity is questioned the world over, that there will be a swing back to party
politics. The question is how will this process be carried and what type of political parties will
result.
A third and central aspect on the political level, the one which is closest to our work and concern,
is the building of a solid civil society and strengthening citizens who must have a positive
approach to politics and a will to participate. There have been much effort and resources
dedicated to programs mostly educational designed to building citizenship and to
strengthening the ‘civil society’. However fragmentation and the one-world-ideology have also
been present in many of these programs. Such programs usually are designed on doubtful
presumptions. The first of these presumptions is that among the people there is a real will to
consolidate and participate in the existing democratic political systems. The second presumption
is that the classic liberal model for democratic politics and institutions can and should be inserted
into or imposed upon other societies that are immersed in different historical processes.
Teaching people their civil rights and explaining the laws and constitutions is essential. Getting
the poor, especially women, on the ballots are also important endeavors, but they only seem to be
scratching the surface of our political problems.
Surveys in Peru have always shown that the people, including the poor, prefer ‘democracy’ to
authoritarian governments. This makes it difficult to explain why an authoritarian president who
has repeatedly stepped out of Peru’s constitutional bounds, still has 47% of the people’s vote, and
more so in the poorer sectors, who have been most shamelessly manipulated even threatened
by the government to insure popular support. If democratic politics are to be practically
appreciated and defended by the people we need to revamp our strategies, work on different
levels and scenarios, and most of all built a new political elite in and with the popular urban
organizations and leaders. This is a matter of promoting processes that link democracy and
development rather than implementing a model. No doubt the resulting political system which
will evolve from these processes will look much like the other existing democratic regimes as to
norms and institutions. The difference will be that the resulting democratic regime will be a
product of the people themselves and the processes they are involved in. Therefore they will be
identified with the democratic system.
The above reflections, the vastness and complexity of an integral approach to sustainable
development have made us ask the question of where to begin. Our choices are limited, as are
our resources. As NGOs we have gained audience and participation in international scenarios
such as this Conference. We also have some impact on the national level through networks and
even in some government agencies, though the authoritarian government continues to close off
official scenarios to critical participation. However our strategy must center principally on
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actors and processes at the subnational level. In the megacities this means decentralized
strategies, in the case of metropolitan Lima we are building strategies for the surrounding the
‘cones’.
Within that subnational urban scenario we have centered our strategies on what might be called
emerging ‘public scenarios or public spaces’ were, we believe, conditions are developing for
building a new political and popular elite and new forms of linking democracy to development.
‘Public Spaces’: A decentralized approach to development and democracy in the megacity
In the face of these structurally related problems: a development model that is destroying the very
physical conditions for sustainable development, the breakdown of democratic systems which are
the only possible means by which ethical principles can become operative in a modern, free
society; and the weakening of the moral fiber of social actors under the stress of poverty
exclusion and manipulation; we must ask where and how to begin our way out of the crisis.
In the aforementioned study done with UNRISD and UNV we began to examine the evolving
experience of concertation which are found in the popular urban neighborhoods. Concertación,
is becoming a buzzword in local Peruvian scenarios. According to the Local Agenda 21 – Peru,
“The concept of concertación is difficult to translate. It goes beyond consultation and brings the
different stakeholders around the table so that solutions can be negotiated and responsibilities
assigned.
This includes conflicting interest where these exist” (Mirando 1998:71).
Concertation cannot be properly translated as debate, discussion or consultation, although it
includes all of these practices. In these processes different often-conflicting actors with their
interests sit at the planning table, analyze problems, design solutions, and when possible
participate in the implementation of the plans. According to Romeo Grompone, concertation
refers to “the integration of different actors in system of negotiation and in the construction of
public agendas. This situation requires that each of the participants be recognized as a legitimate
social and political actor (Grompone, 1999:217). In these processes and scenarios the actors and
institutions involved must be open to making compromises and concessions.
Concertation is taking place in public scenarios or spaces in which organizations of different
nature, with different and often conflictive interests, are learning to recognize the other persons at
the table as persons and social players with legitimate rights and interests. They are learning to
plan together, to build common interest, and we believe to incorporate into the development
planning ethical values and cultural principles which are essential if development is to be human
as well as sustainable. Our major hypothesis that is also a strategy is that in these experiences
we can find the seeds and ideas for a new democratic system that is an instrument for sustainable
development.
This hypothesis is based on the positive aspects we find in these experiences:

The new experiences create favorable conditions for discussing development and to broaden
the interests of the popular organizations, and also allows for linking concrete specific
demands and needs in synergetic strategies, and to look beyond the short term to medium and
long term planning. The process leads to a more integral and human focus on development.
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
Through the interchange and discussion in the planning processes the social actors learn to do
more than express demands for the things they lack. In the process they become more aware
of their capacities, needs and interests and they learn to express and defend them in dialogue
with other actors. This selfrecognition of interests and aspirations helps the participants to
recognize the legitimacy of the interests of others which is essential for building a common
based solution.

In these public spaces it is possible to discuss explicitly and to incorporate in the planning
process ethical principles and values. It is also possible to broaden and strengthen the basis
of confidence and solidarity that are essential for building a democratic political system and
for development. It is becoming evident that the ‘postmaterial’ values can be important
factors and are taken into account in development planning even when the actors are faced
with the lack crucial material goods.

In these public spaces the actors begin to value and appreciate the dignity and role of
democratic politics, understood as a human activity that not only is based on power but also
on discourse, meaning systems symbols and common values.

A new understanding and new relations to the State agencies and the local governments are
established, overcoming the exclusively conflictive relations that tend to predominate.
It is for these reasons that we are betting on a strategy that is centered in the strengthening of the
poplar urban actors, CBOs and local government and in consolidating the public spaces for
concertation.
Before going further in this reflection, a word of caution is important. Romeo Grompone (1995)
warns of the danger of reading more than exists into these experiences. In Peru and many other
Third World countries, these ‘participatory planning’ processes, or ‘concertation’ have drawn a
lot of attention and raised considerable expectations. This is especially true where the local
municipal government, often under the technical direction of NGOs, has induced the planning
processes and created the public spaces for concertation. These experiences have often been
quite successful in solving concrete and immediate problems, such as solid waste handling,
nutrition programs and urban infrastructure. But they do not necessarily take us further on the
road to stable democratic systems and integral development.
We can well understand the need to see success and to have a positive attitude, especially in the
bleak scenario of poverty, violence, exclusion and lack of vision. But in many cases these
experiences are presented as readymade solutions that glaze over the deep-rooted structural
problems we have mentioned above. This exaggeration and triumphal attitudes, often used for
election or funding purposes, can have negative effects in the long run, eventually leading to
discouragement as the experiences end and the public spaces close simply with the change of
municipal authorities. Therefore we in no way want to ignore these weaknesses, however in the
political and ethical wasteland in which we seem to have fallen, our challenge is to be able to
identify and strengthen the positive elements and to work to overcome the serious limitations.
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Political Culture and Development
Within the new experiences of concertation found in the emerging urban public spaces we have
begun to center our concern on the social urban actors themselves, especially the community
leaders, the urban elite. In doing so we do not intend to leave aside the other actors such as local
government, psolitical parties or NGOs and foreign agents. Nor to we mean to leave aside the
concern for the economic and political context which is at present so adverse for our strategies.
We are centering our interest on the social actors, especially the popular urban leaders because
successes in the other areas of our reality depend primarily on these leaders.
Our direct work with the urban CBOs in these scenarios and our ongoing research on ‘political
culture for development’ has provided us with some preliminary findings that are helpful in
bettering our strategies and forms of intervention. The research team combined interviews and
focus group discussions, along with direct observation with the community leaders. On the basis
of preliminary results of our study, we have formulated a series of concepts or hypotheses that
continue to guide our work and research.
Our intention in presenting some of the results of our studies is not to arrive at ‘conclusions’ or
even less to ‘verify’ hypotheses about the public spaces and the actors involved. We want to
suggest the topics and themes that could be part of a shared agenda for those interested in better
understanding the urban popular actors and their role in moving towards sustainable
development.
We have organized our questions and finding into three central categories: 1.) individual and
community, 2.) the vision of development, and 3.) the vision of politics. The originality in this
breakdown of the complex subject does not lie in the categories themselves. These categories
are not new and all of them have been the subject of many research projects. However what is
proving helpful, both for designing better strategies for our promotion work and for building
indicators to evaluate progress, is mutual relations we are discovering among the categories.

Individual and community
The first category is in the study of grassroots leaders is centered on the process of individuation
and its constituent elements. It is important to know how social actors perceive themselves as
individuals. We are trying evaluate the consistency of the leaders as persons, to understand to
what degree the construction of their identity as persons is related to their community, history,
and traditions. Through focus groups, interviews and direct observation we are trying to
determine the values to which the subject subscribes and his/her capacity to use this value system
as a basis for argument and discussion and well as for making decisions. The process of
individuation is known to be closely related to the values expressed within the community. We
are aware that the particular nature of the community or organization exercises a considerable
influence, for better or worse, on the personal development of those individuals who are capable
of engaging with the processes of development and democratization.
What we are finding is that individual leaders with a high degree of selfesteem, with a clear
awareness of his or her own capacities and needs are better able to relate to other individuals
within the same organization or in other organizations participating in the public spaces. A
strong individual is usually better able and more disposed to recognize the other a a person with
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rights and aspirations also. We are also finding that in individuals and communities where there
is a high degree of selfesteem, there is usually a more explicit reference to ethical principles and
cultural values. There is also a broader more integral perception of what is meant by
development, and finally there is a greater disposition to participate in processes of concertation
and in political scenarios in general.
The opposite is also proving to be true. When leaders and community have a low self-esteem
they tend to build vertical relations and use authoritarian methods within the community. In
such situations the values of solidarity and confidence are usually restricted to primary relations:
family, persons from the same place or origin, and recently religious communities both Christian
and nonChristian have also been a basis for solidarity. However we are finding that these same
values do not come into play in more complex scenarios and communities, such as the public
spaces and the processes of concertation to plan long-term development strategies.
It is therefore obvious that in planning and evaluating our work and programs with the urban
communities we must include actions that aim at strengthening the individuals and the type of
relations and values operative in the community. Likewise, we should include in our evaluation
indicators that measure progress of regression in this category.

Vision of Development
The second category includes the operative vision of development found in the leaders. We
want to identify the scope and contents of this vision in the community and in the leaders. It is
important to evaluate the to what degree the vision is integral including all essential dimensions
of a full life paradigm or reduced in time and reduced to immediate needs. The study tries to
capture the way the leaders define their needs, capacities and interests; the elements of ‘common
sense’ present in their approach to development. Also it is important to register the ethical
components, time frame and scenarios within which development is undertaken. We want to
evaluate if the individual and organizational actors share an integral vision of development, that
is a human vision and if that vision is discussed and elaborated with the participation of all the
members or imposed by the leaders or by external agents. Also it is important to know to what
extent the actors appreciate the role of community action in achieving personal and community
development or if progress is understood as strictly the result of personal endeavor and
competitiveness.
In this category we are finding that if the actors are simply aware of what they lack and do not
consciously express their own interests and rights, they usually do not arrive at an integral vision
and strategy for development. Likewise, where there is a low level of conscious and explicit
awareness of interests and rights, the values such as solidarity and confidence are only operative
in closed circles and are limited to defensive actions of survival, for example in the face of a
natural disaster or sickness.
These findings are already helping us to redesign our forms and methods of intervention both in
poverty relief work and in promoting sustainable development.. NGOs and other entities that
intervene in popular urban problem areas can have an important influence on the vision of
development that results from out work. For example, in planning strategies our objective in
different programs with the urban poor must be not only to achieve the concrete results in poverty
relief, environment protection or in the defense of human and citizen rights. We must try to
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integrate these programs in a perspective of a more integral development. This integration can
be both practical, involving synergistic interventions which link problems, actors and solution
and theoretical in as much as the participating actors come to understand better the common
interests and structural objectives shared by other actors in the same scenarios and that the
satisfaction of basic human necessities is a necessary condition for participating in and sustaining
processes of human development.

The vision of politics
The third category of ideas encompasses the political perspective and the construction of ‘public
spaces’. As we see it, opportunities for reconstructing the ‘public domain’ and a democratic
political system exist primarily at the sub-national or regional level. We are analyzing the
relationship that exists between the visions of development more or less human and integral
and the concertation processes in public spaces where new forms of democratic political activity
are being constructed. We need to know whether social organizations and individuals
understand that democratic politics are an important, indeed essential, means of achieving human
development, or whether they have closed development off in the private sector and delegated
their political responsibility to others. In particular, we wish to understand the factors that
motivate social leaders to participate in ‘public spaces’. From our point of view the possibilities
of rebuilding the necessary ‘public’ places and democratic politics are found in the emerging
public spaces on the subnation level, in regions throughout the country and not only in the
megacity.
We are discovering that there is a relation between the vision of development more or less
human and integral and the will to participate in the emerging new forms of democratic politics.
It is important to know if the social organizations and their leaders view democracy as more than
elections. If they consider democratic politics as an instrument for building a common good, a
common discourse and symbolic systems and for achieving development.
The approach we are proposing is therefore one that is based on the recognition of the vital
inter-relationship existing between the person or individual, the community, development, and
politics. These certainly are not the only aspects to be considered in approaching the problem of
sustainable development in our Third World megacities, but any attempt which does make the
social and political actors the center of their strategies is doomed to fail, unable to breakout of the
very theoretical and practical corner we have painted ourselves into.
We want to insist therefore that these topics individual and community, sustainable human
development and democratic politics can become part of our common agenda both North and
South. We need to do and share research on the social and political actors, especially in the new
experiences in the urban public spaces. The research, of course must be linked to our own work
in promoting sustainable development. And on the national level, it is important to help
integrate the different subregions where similar processes are evolving. In a country as
fragmented as Peru geographically, ethically, and politically it will be impossible to sustain
development and to achieve good governance without a decentralized strategy.
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Education and sustainable development
One final word before ending this reflection, which is really an introduction to a whole other area
of reflection. We would do a great disservice to the urban poor communities and leaders if we
were to motivate them to participate in the complex processes of democratization and
development if we did not also offer them the opportunities for an integral and profound
education which such tasks demand. It is not enough to simply ‘train’ the people in techniques
for facing isolated needs and issues. They must be given the theoretical and sophisticated tools
which will allow them to understand themselves and their organizations, democracy, ethics and
development and the importance of these elements in sustainable development practices and
planning. Along with the networking of subregional experiences and actor we are beginning to
take on the shared task of building educational opportunities, methods and materials needed for
the leaders require. But that will have to wait for another opportunity.
Cono Norte, Lima Abril, 2000
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