Not very long ago I said something in a private setting, in
the company of people I know pretty well, that caused a bit of a stir. It was
intended as a satirical – or, at least, disparaging – reference to officials in
authority, in government (elected and permanent) who look down their noses at
the occupants of distant lands and their failures to raise themselves above
dependency.
Unfortunately, my remark was not recognised as satirical,
sarcastic or disparaging and led to a bit of frostiness. I gave it some consideration and now share more widely some thoughts triggered by that
exchange.
Corporate greenwashing
In the course of my writing activities, especially about globe-spanning
supply chains, I am in contact with people in countries in many other parts of
the world. Sometimes, readers have picked up a sense of my discomfort with
global realities; not all the articles have managed to retain that air of
dispassionate, balanced reportage that I strive for!
I have often spoken with companies, countries and
individuals that are on the receiving end of detritus from the West (&
elsewhere – the West does not have a monopoly on misbehaviour). I speak to
organisations, both commercial and charitable. They grind their teeth in
frustrated fury at the attitude from Western agencies, NGOs, government
representatives and corporations, which dump ‘solutions’ that may play well
back home but are worse than window-dressing. They are denied agency by
globalisation and neocolonialism, its slightly older first cousin.
Well-meaning solutions can make things worse
In East Africa, it is common for agencies to “roll up in
convoys of 4 by 4s”, impose a dam, or reservoir, or packing plant, etc, without
consulting any of the locals, have a few photoshoots with local bigwigs and
besuited politicians no-one has ever seen before & will not see again, then
buzz off, having failed to teach anyone how to run the dam or attached turbine,
provide a power source for the packing plant, or whatever.
They come back a few years later, express surprise at the
state of the infrastructure and contempt for the locals who have let it get to
this stage, maybe arrange another loan (with politicians – not the community)
for repairs and drive off in their convoy of 4x4s again. The local community
is, of course, liable to repay the loan through taxes. And not all the money
gets to whatever project it may be, as luxury houses and expansive estates readily testify.
Window dressing rather than real help
These operatives, often from high-profile organisations and NGOs, deny agency and are viewed with exasperated contempt by
people associated with other, leaner charities like Cafod and Caritas – &
very few others – who work on the ground to develop and build long-term
solutions, including education, health, low-energy cooking, water, etc, etc.
Not glamorous but vital.
West Africa’s problem
with the dumping of electrical goods that are supposedly being recycled has
been chronicled so often that it’s a surprise that more people aren’t aware. In
parts of East Africa, as well as SE Asia, it’s dumping of plastics – supposedly
sent for recycling - which allow the appropriate CSR (corporate social
responsibility) boxes to be ticked and the reassuring shades of green graphic to
be printed in the Annual Report.
There is corruption, we know; politicians and senior
trade/aid delegates fly in, unveil a plaque, engage in a photo opportunity and
sign a trade agreement for recycling. The dumpers never check actual capacity;
the companies that come in behind them to ship their rubbish don’t, either. The
CSR box is ticked; the graphic is signed off – and agency is denied.
The rivers get blocked. The foreign press might do an expose; politicians and
aid/trade officials express patronising concern and ‘what more can you
expect/what can you do with these people?’. Rarely out loud, in public, but ‘in
private’, among ‘friends’ or ‘off the record’. Agency is denied because, for
all the talk about development, agency is denied because they don’t think they
are worthy of it or up to it. An attitude one hoped had died out half a century ago.
Behind the veil
Some initiatives – that many young people are fond of – are
somewhat disappointing behind the scenes. Coffee is an example. A sustained
campaign has led to farmers being paid a fair price for their coffee beans – or at least a much better
price – than previously. European tariff barriers
against coffee beans, among other agricultural produce, have been pretty much
eliminated; there is free trade! Fair trade! Look at their smiling faces!
In coffee beans. Raw material.
Exclusion from real wealth creation
Tariff barriers against added-value products, such as
roasting of coffee beans, grinding coffee and the freeze-drying of instant coffees all remain
insurmountably high. The added value activities that would actually lift the
economic performance of developing countries are, in practice, barred. There’s
not much point buying “fair trade” anything (a range of initiatives have
similar titles and I am not singling out any particular one), if you really
want to make a difference; those activities look kinder and fairer but they
support the status quo. The price of raw material is the least part of the
finished product. The added value is reserved to advanced economies.
I don’t bother to buy coffee with the ‘right label’; I buy
Nescafe Alta Rica, because I like the taste. It is processed in the UK or
near-Europe, as is Costa – whose roasting and processing plant in Kent I
welcome, because it provides jobs in an area that needs them, but I am aware of
the other side of the coin.
The foreign press doesn’t often do exposes about that kind
of thing, beyond lauding the supposed ‘good guys’ for paying the farmers more –
but they do feed the ‘what can you expect/what can you do’ position.
The hypocrisy of Big Aid
This is not limited to the West and the UK is far from being
the worst offender in the West. If you are unaware, check out what China is
doing with its Belt And Road strategy. It has taken a leaf out of the Western
aid model, including US. It talks about ‘aid’ to foreign countries, which
ordinary folk would think of as donations, gifts and the like. When we are
asked to give aid, we don’t generally expect the money back (except via Lend
With Care, which has a particular purpose, goes direct to people to use and the
money for which can be endlessly recycled).
Not so with Big Aid. Much of that is in the form of loans, either conventional
or sovereign Bonds – what we call Gilts, in the UK.
The loans are typically for big infrastructure projects – and come with
strings. The biggest are that the loans are from developed countries’ banks AND
the major works have to be done by US, UK, French, German, Italian, etc,
contractors. Local content is pretty low, if it is actually above zero. Appropriate
local skills, non-existent before the project, remain so afterwards, when the
foreign corporations have completed the project and then leave. The dam,
reservoir, power station, whatever, is impossible to maintain – they don’t have
the skills – and they fall quite quickly into disrepair. Not the loan, though:
that still has to be repaid.
This behaviour is described in some detail in The Corporation, by Joel Bakan (https://amzn.eu/d/8RLQAPp - also available
as a documentary movie). He used to work in this field. I also recommend The
Silent Takeover, by Noreena Hertz (The Silent Takeover:
Global Capitalism and the Death of Democracy), who used to work for the
World Bank Group’s International Finance Corporation, in St Petersburg – the
one in Russia, not the one in Florida.
New World Order, same old system
What China does is lend countries money for their new
airports, transport infrastructure, power stations or whatever, itself – it
doesn’t use foreign banks, no matter how much they knock at the door. They have
the same strings, though: Chinese companies to do the work, with Chinese managerial
and executive staff; local labour is employed in low-skilled, manual activities. Chinese
staff are housed in compounds that, paradoxically, often include such things as
cricket clubs established by the British.
When the countries inevitably default on the loans, there is no refinancing;
China repossesses the asset and thereafter charges the country for its use.
It’s a not particularly novel and traditionally onerous form of neocolonialism.
Keeping Africa in line
Talking of neocolonialism, check out the CFA Franc – Western
CFA Franc or Central Africa CFA Franc. It doesn’t matter which; they are currencies
on fixed exchange rates, fully interchangeable and tied to the French Franc.
They seem to have the same objective – or do in practice: to keep former
colonies in the role of suppliers of low-cost raw materials, whose economies
are subject to French economic needs and diktats. Until very recently – 2020 –
countries that are part of the CFA Franc zone were required to deposit 50% of
their foreign currency reserves with the French Treasury.
There is now a new currency, called the Eco. It was intended to be a regional
currency for West Africa but has been essentially co-opted – some would say
‘kidnapped’ – to perform the same function as the CFA Franc. It is pegged to
the Euro and ‘freely exchangeable’ with it.
These countries have no control over their own currencies. Countries
who need to devalue cannot do so. Nigeria, the largest economy in Africa, is
blocked from joining the Eco because it will not accept the conditions.
Why the dinghies are setting sail
The contempt and corrupt attitude towards these countries is
not only enraging, it leads directly to the migration crisis we are seeing
across the Mediterranean Sea and ultimately washing up on our shores, via
dinghies across the Channel. I wrote over a quarter of a century ago, in The
Manufacturer, that we (the West) should invest in growing the economies of
developing countries, especially Africa, or the time would come when their
population would come to us, to demand their share.
The innocence of youth…
My young friend took me to task for a scathing satire of the
attitude of the establishment, across the West and developed nations. I was
surprised that they misunderstood.
…and, of course, the EU
They snorted when I mentioned that the fisheries was one
reason why I voted and supported Leave. Others included: antidemocratic
governance, very much along the lines advocated by Oswald Mosley, the
unreconstructed Nazi-sympathising genuine fascist; the erosion of people’s
power, the inevitable gravitational pull of the Paris-Bonn-London triangle for
investment, and the restriction on targeted economic stimulus, including local
purchasing for public sector needs. All of which came to pass, and more.
And now, even after Brexit, we have the Attorney General
seeking to impose EU-style judicial authoritarianism on the UK. I’m against
that, too.
I’ll mention an article I wrote a few years ago that went into some detail
about how the Common Fisheries Policy developed and how damaging it has been.
Yes, I welcome the reduction in quota for the EU fishing fleets, and increase
for the UK’s.
I would like to see a
lower increase in quota for the UK, as the whole fishing catch should be reduced – but
one thing at a time; the whole is gradually being reduced and annual
discussions should keep them heading the right way. [update: it looks like
we have lost even that]
The acid test this year will be where the Dutch and Belgian
supertrawlers go to gouge out the seascape.
On treasures, lost and found
My article on the subject: Fishing:
The Great Betrayal - Briefings For Britain.
Sadly, my article on the downsides of globalisation –
including the spectre of mass migration of the poor – published in 1998 and in
which I coined the term ‘turbocapitalism’, does not seem to be available any
more.
I was genuinely hurt that it even occurred to my young friend thought of these issues as somehow right-wing. When I was their age, opposition to the EU, for example,
was definitely a left-wing cause. Organisations like War on Want and
Third World First saw through the early days of Greenwashing and long-haired,
bearded ‘capitalism with a groovy face’ to the realities of neocolonialism and
exploitation.
I may be disgusted by Labour’s lurch to antisemitism and
bourgeois callousness, have little or no time for the feel-good window dressing
of comfortable Green Party leaders and do not see the State as the solution to
all ills* but I have not abandoned my principles and become a rabid right-winger. But I will admit that I am not as optimistic as I once was. Protest
is not the answer, either; the establishment can easily contain protest, as
Noreena Hertz pointed out, nearly 20 years ago, and as we generally found out when two million people on the streets of London failed to stop the invasion of Iraq.
“The game is not to win; it is to prevent others from
doing so.”
*Regarding the state. I recently read ‘The Long Shot’, by
Kate Bingham. It is hard going to begin with but well worth it. I have
been speaking to people on the sales end of public sector procurement for many
years and I know how inefficient it is. What I did not know is how much of a
game some (too many) senior public sector officials seem to regard it as –
and the game is not to win; it is to prevent others from doing so. The
realisation explains a lot.
I recommend it. The first third is establishing the
scene and is full of how wonderful are the people she selected and how eminent
in their fields – but she does know her stuff and, once she gets going, it is
revelatory, both as to what can be done and how things that should be celebrated as utter,
undiluted triumphs, such as the Ventilator Challenge and the Vaccine Centre in
Oxford, are belittled, sidelined, frustrated and finally, in the case of the
Oxford centre, sold off, to the detriment of the country more widely.
BTW: I initially thought Kate Bingham was a ‘chumocracy’ appointment, like the
hapless Dido Harding; I recognised by August 2020 that I was wrong. That she
was immensely capable and was making incredible headway.
Kate Bingham believes that part of the solution is to have
intelligent women, with experience and qualifications in STEM subjects, in
decision-making positions.
That’s my young friend. Despite their callow years (and
surprising lack of perception in this case) I have enormous confidence and hope
in them to make a difference.
A shocking suggestion for the young and talented: if you
can’t make a difference in government, elected or permanent, then maybe join
Kate Bingham in venture capitalism, which is where the Government turned to
when it really needed something done.
I hope it isn’t too late to make a difference.
