The International Development Efforts and Sustainable Development

After the 1980s, even the international development agencies themselves started questioning their development programs and the intervention strategies they have put in place. Thirty years after World War II's economic reconstruction of Europe, the world was still plague by the same social inequities and global woes of unemployment, disparities in gender equality, racial discrimination, etc. Governments of Third World countries were questioning the development agenda and the intentions of development agencies like World Bank and the United Nations. The questions were shifting from what intervention strategies can development agencies manage to making intervention strategies sustainable.

The most universal definition of sustainable development comes from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development or OECD that simply seeks to respond to a fundamental challenge: "How can we meet the needs of today without diminishing the capacity of future generations to meet theirs?"

According to OECD, "Sustainable development implies a broad view of human welfare, a long term perspective about the consequences of today's activities, and global co-operation to reach viable solutions." This statement however was not framed by the OECD but by the United Nations through the Brundtland Report of 1987. The OECD definition was more popular because of the public relations program waged by TNCs or MNCs to sidetrack efforts to make the UN Code of Conduct on Transnational Corporation of 1976 mandatory among global corporations of UN member countries.

In a document entitled "Sustainable Development Strategy: 2004-2006" prepared by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) it states that more than 30 years of development cooperation have taught and has established a consensus in the international community about certain principles in effective development.

The following are principles of effective and sustainable development:

· local ownership and local priorities;

· improved donor coordination;

· stronger participation with well-defined responsibilities;

· greater policy coherence between aid and non-aid policies; and

· taking a results-based approach to programming.

The same CIDA document added that a number of key factors also contribute to sustainability, as follows:

· good governance, which is the most important determinant of aid effectiveness and development progress;

· building capacity to ensure progress is sustained after donor countries have left; and

· engaging civil society to help meet the needs of the people and ensure local ownership at the grassroots level.