THE EAST ASIAN CRISIS

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RETHINKING OBJECTIVES, STRATEGIES AND THE ROLE OF CIVIL SOCIETY
IN SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN THE AFTERMATH
OF THE EAST ASIAN CRISIS

Kamal Malhotra
Co-Director, Focus on Global South, Thailand

Summary

The global crisis is an opportunity to pause and rethink the needs of sustainable development and its medium and long-term objectives and strategies. To achieve sustainable development, our objectives and strategies should be human development through equity, not economic growth alone. The primary challenge and objective for sustainable development is to subordinate economic policy-making to human development and social policy goals.
Such objectives necessitate: a monetary policy responsive to the needs of small and medium enterprises and ordinary households; a fiscal policy framework based on a progressive direct taxation system; an economic policy firmly rooted in domestic savings and the domestic market; a discriminatory approach to foreign financial flows; and serious consideration of process and participation issues.
Civil Society Organisations (CSO) have often been equated with NGOs, but numerous CSOs do not resemble NGOs. In the past fifteen years, most NGO roles have shifted to provide social services that have traditionally been the responsibility of governments. To contribute to sustainable human development, NGOs and CSOs will need to change from their current roles as surrogate service deliverers. CSO roles and responsibilities should prioritize those of primarily being societal watchdogs. Other desirable CSO roles include: de-operationalisation of Northern CSOs from Southern CSOs; an increased emphasis on social justice and development work in the North, education of domestic constituencies; and building domestic and international constituencies for development cooperation.
The role of CSOs needs to be examined in the context of a world in which it is increasingly difficult for governments to meet their social, economic, political and cultural responsibilities to their citizens. However, only governments are equipped to operate on the large scale necessary to achieve poverty eradication, full employment and social integration.
Appropriate CSO roles are primarily in the areas of monitoring, advocacy and policy influencing to ensure that governments create and sustain an enabling environment for social and human development. CSOs can help politically committed governments build a socially cohesive and integrated national, regional and global constituency. CSOs need to direct their limited resources and energies to campaigning, advocacy and other policy influencing strategies aimed at ensuring that governments fulfill their responsibilities and commitments. CSOs should continue to strengthen operational and service provision aspects of government policies and services. Other roles CSOs must take up in the future include: effectively challenging the authoritarian roles and tendencies of governments; helping build transparent and accountable governments; devising responses to the increasing service delivery gaps; and supporting state capacity to effectively constrain and regulate the influence of global international financial and trade institutions.
Other issues with major implications for sustainable development include: the fact that a move towards the market does not necessarily imply a move toward democracy or better economic and political governance; a need to design and implement comprehensive social security policies and systems; universalizing primary education and investing in primary and higher education; and the crucial role of institutional constraints and factors.
Economic policy exists to serve human and social policy goals, so regional and global financial institutions should play subordinate roles to regional and global multilateral institutions that are primarily concerned with human and social policy issues. In many areas, economic policy controls and leads human policy. To sustain human development, human policy must lead and stay in control of economic policy.