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12 Lessons for the Future: Development Thinking and the UN’s Future
- Indiana University Press
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299 12 Lessons for the Future: Development Thinking and the UN’s Future • Maintaining a UN Environment in Which Creative Thinking and Policy Analysis Can Flourish • Priorities for Development in the Twenty-First Century • Priorities for Development Ideas and Analysis in the UN • Toward a New and More Flexible Concept of Development • Priorities for UN Ideas and Thinking about the Global Economy • The Statistical Needs for Improving Management of the Global Economy • Improving Implementation • Conclusions What has become clear, we hope, is that the United Nations has done an enormous amount of pioneering and creative work in helping to shape development thinking and practice. In the early period—during the late s and early s—the organization dominated the development scene, particularly with macrolevel policies. Influential reports and contributions were written by some outstanding experts, including several future Nobel laureates.When later the BrettonWoods institutions took over from the UN at the international level of strategic economic thinking—around —the UN was sidelined, but this did not mean that the organization vanished in all areas of development strategy and decision taking. It is true that in the main areas of economic strategy, the UN in the s was largely silent—or was moved to protest. But by the s,the UN had returned once again to make distinct and pioneering contributions . It did so through the global conferences, its new vitality in promoting human rights, the paradigm of human development, and organizing an unprecedented millennium consensus in defining global goals for poverty reduction and mobilizing commitments in support of those goals. 300 Outcomes and the Future In this final chapter, we turn to the future. What lessons can we draw from the record of the UN’s past that can help improve its contributions in the years ahead? What are the new issues, where should the focus be, what policies and actions are needed to maximize its impact? And what can be done to improve the UN’s record of implementation? We will concentrate on the UN’s role in development matters, especially— but not only—those which concern the developing countries.After all, developing countries constitute percent of the world’s population today, percent if the transition countries are included.1 Developed countries contain only about one in six of the world’s population. By , this will be one in eight; by , probably one in ten. In total contrast to their population numbers, developed countries dominate the global economy and global debate. They account for nearly percent of world GNP—and control even more. The powerful pull of developed-country markets and institutions dominates technological research and development, accounting for some percent of the world’s research and development expenditure and over percent of the new patents issued.2 The relative lack of research, technology, and information directly focused on the needs and problems of developing countries is a most serious deficiency and imbalance. How long can this imbalance continue? These deficiencies and imbalances underline the importance of the UN as a fount of ideas, as a forum for debate, and as a catalyst for change on issues that are neglected or given too little priority in the world at large. This need for change is made more urgent by two further imbalances, each of which is likely to become more extreme in the years ahead unless purposeful action is taken. First, in today’s rapidly globalizing world markets, private-sector research and technological development is overwhelmingly led by profit-seeking commercial enterprises,mostly by multinational corporations of huge wealth and power. There is an urgent need to create mechanisms for research and technological development to respond to a broader range of human priorities, especially for people in poorer countries. Second, in today’s global economy, international structures of governance, with their rules, norms, procedures, and institutions, are of ever-increasing importance for the functioning of the global economy.Growing levels of global inequality are in large part the result of these structures.3 These problems are manmade. Most are the result of national action and international negotiation, especially in recent years. In both action and negotiation , the weakness of the smallest and poorest countries is only too apparent . Such countries have a limited income—often equivalent to no more than that of a small town in a major country. They usually have at most a handful [54.198.37.250] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 00:43 GMT) Lessons for the Future 301...