Global Learning and International Development in the Age of Neoliberalism

Stephen McCloskey

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781000459197
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Global Development Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This book argues that the international development sector is in crisis which can be mostly sourced to its side-stepping the dominant development question of our age, the neoliberal growth paradigm. It argues that this crisis can be addressed, at least in part, by the sector's re-engagement with the radical development education process that it helped to foster and sustain for over two decades.

The recent safeguarding scandal is symptomatic of a sector that is becoming overly hierarchical, brand conscious and disconnected from its base. This book argues that many of the problems the sector is facing can be sourced to its failings in grappling with the question of neoliberalism and formulating a coherent critique of how market orthodoxy has accelerated poverty in the global North and South. This book recommends re-embracing the radical origins of global learning, situated in the participative methodology and praxis (reflection and action) of Paulo Freire, both as internal capacity-building and external public engagement. The book proposes a new development paradigm, focusing on bottomup, participative approaches to policy-making based on the needs of those NGOs claim to represent – the poor, marginalised and voiceless – rather than constantly following the agenda of donors and governments.

The recommendations made by this book will serve as an important resource for researchers and students of international development and global learning, as well as to NGOs, civil society activists and education practitioners looking for solutions to the problems within the sector.

1

Introduction

Fairy tales of development

Fairy tale: a fabricated story, especially one designed to deceive.

Stevenson, 2010: 628

Introduction

The international development sector is in crisis and much of it is its own making. The recent safeguarding scandal is symptomatic of a sector that is becoming overly hierarchical, brand conscious and disconnected from its base. It is also now facing a global pandemic that will push an additional 176 million into poverty and further derail an already failing Global Goals agenda (Alston, 2020).

This book argues that many of the development challenges faced by international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) have been created by neoliberalism. The pro-growth neoliberal model of ‘development’ has been characterised by extreme levels of inequality, failing public services and the idea that ‘competition is the only legitimate organising principle for human activity’ (Metcalf, 2017; Oxfam, 2020). INGOs have been slow to respond in a coherent and meaningful way to the impact of neoliberalism on vulnerable, marginalised communities in the global North and South (McCloskey, 2019). This book suggests that the policy goals of most development organisations are dominated by overseas aid and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – described here as ‘fairy tales of development’ – rather than directly addressing the economic failings of neoliberalism (McCloskey, 2019). It argues that INGOs should re-embrace radical development education (DE) practice, which they largely sustained from the 1970s to the late 1990s. DE supported critical understanding of the root causes of global issues and long-term public engagement based on solidarity rather than charity (Bourn, 2014: 10). Re-engaging with DE practice can help build the capacity of INGOs to challenge the extreme levels of inequality which have characterised the era of neoliberalism.

From safeguarding crisis to COVID-19

When this book was first conceived, the international development sector was already facing a self-inflicted crisis. The Charity Commission for England and Wales launched an investigation into allegations of child abuse and sexual exploitation by Oxfam staff while working in response to an earthquake in Haiti in 2010. The resulting report concluded in 2019 that ‘The charity’s governance and culture with regard to safeguarding has repeatedly fallen below standards expected and failed to meet promises made’ (Charity Commission for England and Wales, 2019: 32). A key criticism of the report was that allegations of inappropriate behaviour were not properly investigated by senior management and the charity’s chief executive, Mark Goldring, and deputy chief executive, Penny Lawrence, both subsequently resigned. The Charity Commission report also drew attention to the impact of the crisis on the wider sector when it said:

The events in Haiti in 2010/11 and concerns about how they were handled have become a focal point for the resulting damage to public trust and confidence in the charity and other charities over the last year.

Charity Commission for England and Wales, 2019: 32

In October 2018, the Department for International Development (DFID) – merged in 2020 with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office – organised a safeguarding conference ‘to prevent and respond to sexual exploitation and abuse and sexual harassment in the aid sector’ (DFID, 2018). In the aftermath of the Oxfam revelations, other charities have also disclosed similar failings which have impacted on public donations and trust (Slack, 2018). The Charities Aid Foundation has reported a ‘steady decline’ in charitable giving between 2016 and 2018 while trust in charities has ‘decreased significantly’ since 2016 (Charities Aid Foundation, 2019: 5). But all of this preceded a global pandemic, COVID-19, which was first reported in Wuhan, China, on 31 December 2019, and which has registered 177 million cases worldwide and caused 3.8 million deaths by June 2021, a total tragically still spiking despite the approval and rolling out of vaccines (John Hopkins University, 2021). COVID-19 is a pathogen transferred from animals to humans and has been sourced to a wet market in Wuhan trading in wild meat with animals densely packed on site, creating conditions for the spread of a zoonotic virus similar to SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) (Newey and Gulland, 2020).

The international development sector is now facing an altogether greater crisis as the World Food Programme (WFP) predicts that 265 million people could be suffering from acute hunger by the end of 2020 (WFP, 2020). As countries across the world have entered into lockdown, shutting down their economies and confining citizens to their homes, millions of workers in the informal economy have been left ‘hanging by a thread’. As WFP Chief Economist, Arif Husain, puts it: COVID-19 has been ‘a hammer blow for millions who can only eat if they earn a wage’ (WFP, 2020). Millions of people in low wage, public-facing occupations without the option to work from home or access government support have been forced into a terrible dilemma of risking exposure to COVID-19 by continuing to work or going hungry. And looking beyond the immediate crisis is the prospect of a long-term recession with Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), warning that the global outlook post-COVID-19 could be ‘a recession at least as bad as during the (2008) global financial crisis or worse’ (RTE, 2020). For INGOs that could mean squeezed official development aid (ODA) flows and reduced public donations should governments pursue the post-2008 playbook of austerity, cuts to services and wage freezes. Indeed, the British government announced a cut of £5 billion to the UK aid programme in 2020 despite having enshrined the target of 0.7 per cent of gross national income (GNI) for overseas aid in law (Worley, 2020; UK Government, 2015).

COVID-19, like the climate emergency, can be sourced to the neoliberal growth model that has underpinned inequality since the 1970s and, yet, has been a studied omission from the policy and practice activities of most INGOs (Selby and Kagawa, 2020). The twin crises of COVID-19 and climate change appear to demand a reconceptualisation of ‘development’ beyond the growth imperative to a model based on the Latin American concept of buen vivir (good living) which is ‘community-centric, ecologically-balanced and culturally-sensitive’ (Balch, 2013). This will require a change in the behaviour of development NGOs, multilateral bodies, private capital, citizens as well as governments.

Two global crises – one cause

COVID-19 is just one of two global crises currently enveloping the world with the World Health Organization (WHO) describing the climate emergency as the ‘greatest threat to global health in the 21st century’ (WHO, 2015). Climate change is a major contributor to infectious diseases and malnutrition, endangering human health and causing cancer, respiratory and cardiovascular diseases from air pollution which the WHO argues claims seven million lives a year (WHO, 2015). Selby and Kagawa argue that there is a ‘strong case for conflating understandings of the two crises’ as they are ‘widely identified as inevitable outcroppings of the prevailing global economic growth model’ (Selby and Kagawa, 2020: 105–106). Kolinjivadi suggests that

The two emergencies are in fact quite similar. Both have their roots in the world’s current economic model – that of the pursuit of infinite growth at the expense of the environment on which our survival depends – and both are deadly and disruptive.

Kolinjivadi, 2020

As Spinney (2020) argues ‘Covid-19 wouldn’t emerge in food markets if it wasn’t for factory farming, globalised industry and rapid urbanisation’. The virus has spread so rapidly around the world because of the increasingly interdependent, interconnected and deregulated trading system that has been spawned by neoliberalism. As Lent (2020) suggests ‘coronavirus is revealing the structural faults of a system that have been papered over for decades as they’ve been steadily worsening’.

An interesting point of comparison has been drawn between the response of governments and multilateral agencies to the COVID-19 pandemic and the climate emergency. Clark (2020) argues that the outbreak has shown that ‘governments can take radical and urgent action to tackle a clear and present danger’ and Jones (2020) asks ‘Why don’t we treat the climate crisis with the same urgency as coronavirus?’ Yes, there is a terrible immediacy and threat to coronavirus to which we are all vulnerable, and, yet, the WHO estimates that between 2030 and 2050, climate change will cause approximately 250,000 additional deaths per year, from malnutrition, malaria, diarrhoea and heat stress alone (WHO, 2020). Despite these dire warnings, governments have not mobilised resources and sought to guide public behaviour in a way that will ensure that global warming is limited to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels as set out in a 2018 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2018). As Jones (2020) suggests, the ‘climate crisis is still presented as an abstraction whose consequences are decades away’ despite the series of extreme weather patterns – heatwaves, forest fires, cyclones, floods and droughts – that have become increasingly prevalent in recent years.

Ironically, the global economic shutdown necessitated by COVID-19 temporarily offered some respite from carbon emissions with the drop in airborne pollutants in January and February 2020 in China estimated ‘to have saved the lives of 4,000 children below five and 73,000 adults above 70’ (Clark, 2020). As Clark (2020) suggests:

Right now, an unintentional but illuminating, large-scale experiment is under way on global emissions. The pandemic has shut down industrial activity and airline flights, minimised car exhaust fumes and slashed air pollution in our cities. It is this pollution which has created a scourge of respiratory illnesses over time and which has now made millions more susceptible to the worst effects of the coronavirus.

However, Kolinjivadi (2020) cautions against the same kind of extreme action to address the climate emergency given that millions of people have lost their employment due to the lockdown or have been exposed to coronavirus because they have been forced to work in public-facing jobs during the pandemic. Kolinjivadi (2020) instead calls for a ‘just climate transition which ensures the protection of the poor and most...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction: Fairy tales of development
• Part 1 Development education and transformation
• Part 2 Development education, international development and neoliberalism
• Part 3 The policy environment for development education and international development
• Index