Where’s the power in the new development paradigm?

Development has transformed over the last decade. Social Entrepreneurs, philanthropists, celebrities, new NGOs and global advocacy networks have injected new energy and ideas into the sector. This creates new opportunities, as additional resources and attention are brought to bear on persistent development problems, but also creates new challenges around coordination and alignment. In this panel discussion, representatives from private and public organizations discussed the challenges and opportunities this new paradigm presents.

Moderator: Michael Green, Co-Author Philanthrocapitalism

Speakers: Jamie Cooper-Hohn, President and CEO, CIFF (Children's Investment Fund Foundation); His Excellency Jose Maria Figueres, Ex-President of Costa Rica; Walter Fust, CEO, Global Humanitarian Forum; Martin Fischer, Co-Founder and CEO, KickStart.

Jamie shared about CIFF and its aims to deliver large-scale, long-term transformational advances for children as evidenced by clear indicators for children to survive, thrive and mature successfully into adulthood. Working primarily in Sub Saharan Africa and India, CIFF strives to proactively and consistently deliver knockout results and leverage complementary capabilities and resources toward a shared goal.

Walter Fust is from Global Humanitarian Forum, a new international organization personally led by Kofi Annan working to build a stronger global community for overcoming humanitarian challenges of today and tomorrow. Their operational work includes policy debate and networking for collective solutions, advocacy and accountability promotion and mobilization of targeted capacity building. Walter was candid in his opinion when he said that in today’s development efforts everyone wants to coordinate and no one ready to be coordinated. He said that the key challenges were the struggle to keep promises, demography and population and climate change. He was unsure of how to stop social unrest in these times of multi layers of crisis and submitted that he had more questions than answers.

Jose, in zooming out and sharing his opinion on the challenges of the future said the whole development construct (western view) was that increased consumption was means to achieve progress. He said that the current times should be the beginning of the end of consumerism and a need for rethink whether increased consumption equates to progress, democracy and happiness as is being projected.

Martin Fischer from KickStart stressed on the need to solve the problem of poverty amidst all the other issues that we are tackling. Dealing with poverty is not about making the poor big consumers but to be able to provide access to nutritious food, healthcare, education and access to better living conditions. Innovation was the key for an inclusive development strategy he maintained.

In summary,

• Major changes in international legislation in recent times have come from grassroots changes.
• There were healthy debates on whether and if the western entrepreneurs are tinkering with the essence of society and its priorities in the eastern world.
• There is a need to address the spiritual, cultural and ethical dimensions in the new paradigm. It is not just the development paradigm.

Uncertain times like now calls for a need for additional capacity for conversation and interconnectedness to discuss the needs for a paradigm shift. There is a need for transformative impact rather than incremental.