As stated at the outset, the objective of this Report is not to write a development plan for Guyana or to provide a shopping list of Government policies and projects. Such an endeavour clearly would be inappropriate and inadvisable without the broadest possible involvement of the actors and participants in the development process. The production of this first Human Development Report for Guyana has, however, inevitably generated certain broad guidelines for framing policy and it was therefore incumbent on us to indicate these, as we have done. Quite a number of policy recommendations have been made in the main body of the Report, usually at the end of sections and sub-sections, or wherever else they were deemed to be appropriate. The purpose of this concluding chapter is not to collate these or indeed to provide a summary of them. Instead, this chapter identifies some broad themes within which these recommendations might be grouped or synthesised. For purposes of clarification and explanation, several of the recommendations in the main text will be referred to, but not in the detail already presented. From time to time also, the themes have suggested new angles on the recommendations treated earlier and these are incorporated in the chapter.
The Need to Design Guyana-specific Measures of SHD
The concerns of this Report are all directed towards the promotion of SHD in Guyana by raising popular awareness of what this means and providing a framework for policy consultations and discussions. That is why the first set of questions dealt with in the Report were those directed at finding out what SHD meant in the context of Guyana. We have found the annual Human Development Reports basic indices (HDI, GEM, GDI and CPM) as well as their elaborations on the importance of such concepts as Government spending priority ratios and social capital, to be appropriate when used as indicators of SHD in Guyana.
However, we have sought to go behind the national averages presented in these annual reports to capture the data at the disaggregated level: by district, sex, ethnicity, age, and so on. However, taking into account the specific features of Guyanese society, its historical evolution and development since Independence, we have suggested five additional variables to be used in future Guyana Reports. These are:
Hopefully, this proposal would generate some debate on their appropriateness, and if they are found to be acceptable, or new ones are added, these will be used in policy formulation in Guyana, as well as in future annual appraisals of SHD performance.
The Promotion of Sustained Growth and Macro-economic Stability
The negative experiences of immiserising growth in the Guyanese economy have indicated an important linkage between the long-run performance of the economy and development. While growth cannot be equated with development, over the long run, the persistent decline in the performance of the Guyanese economy led to significant reversals in the development indicators, especially indicators such as poverty, health, economic infrastructure, utilities, and education. The inference we have drawn from this is that the reversal of past economic performance, i.e., the promotion of sustained economic growth, is vital to the outcome of SHD. For this growth to be translated into SHD, however, policies related to production, distribution, resource conservation, and investment in further growth will have to be designed to make growth and SHD congruent, as this congruence will not appear on its own, spontaneously. We interpret this to be the position adopted in the 1996 Human Development Report.
Considering that in all market-based economies, economic fluctuations will occur and gaps between intended private spending and saving, government spending and saving, as well as foreign exchange receipts and expenditures will routinely manifest themselves, successful short-run macro-economic management of the economy has an important bearing on whether growth is sustained or not. We therefore recommended that public policy should start with the explicit recognition that the economic growth which resumed in 1991 should be maintained. The achievement of this would require the removal of constraints to growth, as well as the creation of an environment conducive to further growth. In this regard, particular areas of macro-economic management emerge as crucial.
For example:
Particular areas of emphasis in economic growth also emerge as important. For example:
Throughout the Report a major structural challenge which confronted us related to how to improve access to and ownership of productive assets for those sections of the community left out and marginalised through existing processes of change. We noted this in relation to the Amerindian communities, the landless and small farmers, the small and micro-enterprises, the unemployed, children, women who head households, and the high proportion of the country's youth who neither work nor study. It is our view that improved access will not be attained unless major institutional changes are undertaken to the way in which access to productive assets is controlled. Complementing this, Government must be able to provide the basic services and infrastructure required.
Thus, in the analysis of the educational system, we have indicated several major weaknesses and defects. Resulting from these, a number of specific recommendations were made ranging from improvements in pay and conditions of work for teachers, curriculum reform, and improved facilities for instruction. We emphasised also three priority areas where the impact on the Government's budget would be small in relation to the anticipated benefits. These are:
We also recognised that in education as well as the related health sector, plans have already been drafted which on the face of it would seem to us compatible with the promotion of SHD. The difficulty, as we interpret it, is how to move these plans, which have been around for some time now, to the stage of implementation. Achieving this, we believe, requires political will and systematic consultation with all the principal stakeholders, as in some instances, e.g. salt fluoridation, the cost of implementing the decision is small and the potential benefit from doing so is huge, particularly when we take into account that dental caries is the leading morbidity indicator in Guyana. In other instances, the cost is high but unavoidable, as for example, implementing the 20:20 provision adopted at the World Social Summit.
Health and education are critical elements in any programme of human resource development. This is widely recognised and is supported by the special emphasis given to them in the construction of the HDI. Improved access to productive assets should therefore be rooted in policies aimed at raising the skills and well-being of the population at large.
Another example of the importance of improved access to productive assets is revealed in the area of small scale agriculture. We noted the many defects of the agricultural system such as inequitable distribution of lands; inadequate tenurial arrangements; neglect and breakdown of water control systems; low productivity of farm labour; poor agronomy - low yields, poor planting material, bad post-harvest practices, and the prevalence of pests and diseases; collapsed extension services; weak rural organisations, and so forth. On the basis of these, we drew certain policy implications, for example:
All the above are "software-type" recommendations in that they lay emphasis on design, institutional arrangements, social networks, and communication. Investments in these draw more on the social capital of the community than in the case of such hardware investments as drainage and irrigation schemes. In this regard, a shortage of financial resources is not by any means the principal impediment to their successful implementation.
SHD is people-centred development. And, not surprisingly in this baseline documentation on human development in Guyana, a number of policy implications for people-centred development were identified. Thus we noted the particular plight of the indigenous Amerindian population; the situation of women; that of youth leaving school and not finding work; and the ravages inflation has wrought on pensioners. An important aspect of all these is the way the labour market operates in Guyana.
Hard times have forced children and women on to the job market where they are being severely exploited, with little or no effective regulatory protection coming from the authorities. Moreover, the movement of economic activity into the hinterland areas has opened up a number of unregulated job sites in mining, forestry and services. Occupational health and safety regulations, working hours and even the requirement of national insurance coverage in the worker's interest, are not being adhered to. The minimum wage is also not adequate to keep households out of poverty, given the employment structures within households. As we pointed out, a clear priority, therefore, is the need for government intervention to bring these abuses to a halt and to provide more constructive opportunities for the advancement of labour. Examples are a poverty-line indexed minimum wage and the speedy passing of occupational health and safety legislation now in draft.
As with recommendations made in other areas, policy prescriptions in the area of people-centred improvements also have a high "software" component. This has been shown in some of the items cited above and those earlier in the main body of the text, such as putting in place a modern labour information system, establishing a national standard classification of jobs, and passing into local law the several ILO conventions already agreed to by the Government of Guyana.
The fact that people-centred development draws on the social capital of the community permits us to look at development in the broadest sense, including as well, the contribution of the social structure to it. Despite the unhappy associations of cooperativism in Guyana during the period of immiserising growth, cooperative activity and self-help still have an important role to play in Guyana's development. For example, due to the size and topography of the country in relation to its population, the systematic maintenance of infrastructure is a prime necessity. Experience elsewhere has shown that one of the "cheapest" and most effective ways of monitoring the need for maintenance and repairs is through community involvement in the process. If the number of "bystanders" and "free-riders" can be kept to a minimum in any community through participatory mechanisms, this is likely to lead to better care of the community's infrastructure and other services provided.
This Report accepts the likelihood of a congruence between SHD and good governance in Guyana. We have sought in this regard to follow the current usage of this term by the UNDP, with primary emphasis laid on the system of political authority. We have stressed the importance in Guyana of representative institutions, participatory authority structures, accountable political institutions, the pursuit of due process and the rule of law, and a recognition of the importance of adherence to the formal and informal rules and procedures which obtain in institutions. We believe that these are in keeping with the traditions of the society.
We have also noted the concerns expressed over the 1980 Constitution, the problems of public management which range from a fragmented personnel process, high turnover of staff and difficulties in recruitment, to defective and complicated legislative enactments, institutional overlaps, budgetary pressures, low morale, and weak information management systems.
As such our policy implications stressed three broad priorities:
The importance of these recommendations is that there is no institution at this stage of Guyana's development, other than an improved and effective State, which could give leadership to the processes and policies recommended in this Report. The success or failure of SHD depends in large measure on whether these policies are accepted and acted on speedily by the Government.
What the proposals envisage is the promotion of a participatory political culture that supports "trust and transparency in the conduct of public affairs", and which in so doing also reinforces the country's strong traditions and commitment to representative and participatory forms of democracy. The promotion of such a culture also depends in great measure on two further developments, which we recommend.
One is the institutionalisation of processes which are in support of SHD. In this regard, we find it a positive sign that on August 4, 1996, the President announced Government's intention to establish a National Council on Sustainable Development which he himself would co-chair. This action follows after the Government's acceptance of a number of declarations and positions adopted at important international fora on related matters such as UNCED's Rio Conference, the World Social Summit in Copenhagen and the Beijing International Conference on Women, and the Small Island Development States (SIDS) Conference in the Caribbean.
To this we would endorse the call made at Guyana's first Colloquium on Poverty sponsored by the Institute of Development Studies, University of Guyana (March 1993) for the institution-alisation of Annual Presidential Reports to the nation on the state of poverty in Guyana. This should be broadened to deal with the subject of sustainable human development, and might well be a point of focus in the public activities of the proposed Commission. This proposal also could coincide with the annual production of Guyana's Human Development Report and become a regular follow-up activity to the World Social Summit.
The second development we recommend is the framing of targets for performance on the SHD indicators, as far as practicable, in a time-related quantitative manner. This we believe is important, since it not only provides targets which are measurable, but also has proven elsewhere to work as benchmarks around which social action and advocacy can be organised. Indeed the Annual Human Development Reports operate in this way. The UNDP as well as public and private authorities use these reports to galvanise persons and groups to support the call for SHD.
In the process of development, a need will always arise to cater for those who are in vulnerable situations when compared with others within the society. A large component of this ought to be the public provision of and/or the creation of opportunities by public agencies for persons to acquire the skills and means needed to ensure their self-advancement. In the main body of the Report we have identified a number of major target groups among the vulnerable population - women and children because of the maternal and child health concerns we have recognised; youth who neither work nor study; the employed poor and pensioners whose situations have been exacerbated by public sector lay-offs and inflation; small farmers; the unemployed; single parent households, particularly those headed by women; and the disabled. The indigenous Amerindian peoples emerged as a special category, "the poorest of the poor."
While all these groups may be generally categorised as vulnerable, the causal factors determining their situations differ. This has encouraged the search for typologies through which we can categorise and explain the variations in the underlying systemic factors at work. One such typology which we have found to be valuable is the one that distinguishes between the systemic poor, that is, those who are born into poverty and remain poor over their lifetime. This group reflects the present underdevelopment which characterises Guyana, as well as the differentiation of the society into different groups and classes; the "newly poor" or those made poor by the decline in the economy since the mid-1970s and the subsequent application of stabilisation and structural adjustment measures, (sometimes referred to as the "structural poor"); and the transient poor whose situation reflects seasonality of production in Guyana and the short-term cyclical swings in economic activity which occur. Again because of the qualitatively distinctive nature of their vulnerability, the Amerindian peoples stand out as a fourth category (Thomas, 1994).
Whatever the typology used, the major causal factors which produce the vulnerability of groups which are identified refer either to the historical underdevelopment of the country; the traditional structures of property rights and ownership of wealth as they have evolved; the long period (two decades) of immiserising growth which has occurred; or the decline in public services provided by the State, particularly in the area of infrastructure and basic social services.
The emphases given here to identifying target groups and in providing a workable typology along with determining the major causal factors, is to permit policy responses to distinguish between those which are concerned with alleviation, that is, primarily palliative, and those which go to the root causes of the situation being dealt with. This is an important distinction as the range of groups which fall into the category of the vulnerable is quite wide. As we observed earlier, based on consumption measures, 43 percent of Guyanese households live below the poverty line, while based on income measures the percentage is even higher (78 percent). Removing poverty on this scale cannot be achieved through palliative means alone. Redistributive measures, while very important, will not suffice. It also requires growth and development of the economy.
While we recognise and do not underestimate the importance of redistributive measures, the timely availability of public support when needed, greatly improved data gathering or better targeting and administration of the available safety nets, we nevertheless believe that public policy should start from the basic premise that the promotion of the all-round development of the society, including sustained growth is the overriding priority. We therefore advocate that emphasis be placed on the measures raised earlier which are directed at this.
Sustainable development, defined development as that "which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs" requires that priority is given to the habitat within which the economy and social structure are located. In this definition, sustainability of development is closely linked to population growth. Renewable resources are also treated as scarce and not in unlimited supply and the risk of damage to the ecosystem and loss of biodiversity are seen as ever present risks whenever people organise activity to satisfy their needs. The manner in which people's need for food, clothing, shelter, energy, other utilities, social services, jobs, and entertainment are satisfied, therefore, has an important bearing on environmental outcomes. Because of such considerations, we concur with the approach that argues, for Guyana, "environmental sustain-ability is not only a green issue", it is a matter that affects us all.
The ecosystem of Guyana shows a complex array of natural factors at work. This, as we saw, is reflected in distinct geographical regions each with distinctly different patterns of settlement and economic activity. In part, this reflects the variations in natural resources such as forest and minerals in the interior areas, fertile alluvial soils on the coastal plain and important minerals (such as bauxite and silica) in the intermediate savannahs. Careful environmental management is therefore required to ensure that natural resources are used sustainably and that economic growth is not at the expense of future development.
The social environment also displays marked variations. These range from the low economic exploitation of the hinterland areas, but on a sustainable basis, by the indigenous inhabitants, to leasing of large acreages of Government lands for mineral and forest production by external firms, for large scale production for export, with the Government itself having a very inadequate regulatory capacity to guarantee that sustainable practices are routinely being applied during production.
To these we should also add problems generated out of on-going social and economic activities. We have noted the negative impact of such concerns as poor sanitation and bad housing on the health of the population; the risk of using toxic chemicals in mining (the cyanide spill at Omai) and agriculture; and the effects of industrial pollution on communities in the bauxite belt. Flooding, as we have also observed, is a major problem in many parts of the country as the water control systems in place are inadequate for dealing with the heavy rainfall and high tides which frequently occur.
The environmental deficit is therefore huge and the pressures on the Guyanese people to preserve their habitat are immense. These pressures have been heightened by the glare of international attention which the country receives because it is one of the few surviving major locations of virgin tropical rainforest. This is no doubt one of the important considerations behind the Iwokrama International Rainforest Programme discussed earlier, as well as efforts to development of national protected areas and parks like the Kaieteur National Park. There is no easy way out of the dilemma, but the present generation with all the pressures on it, still needs to use the environment sustainably to be just to future generations.
In the Report we have recognized that a number of policies and proposals are in the works to address these environmental concerns. For example, an Environmental Protection Agency has been established, following the earlier publication of Government's National Environmental Action Plan. The Commissions on forestry and mining are also being revamped. In the Report we have also added a number of proposals at various points. Taken together these are based on four central themes:
-First, the need to anticipate, at the formulation and design stage of all development activities, programmes and projects, that these affect the biological, physical and social environment in complex ways, which are not always anticipated. There is a need therefore to build into these activities adequate incentives and a suitable framework for their administration to ensure that individuals, groups and enterprises, use the ecosystem in a sustainable manner.
-Second, the need to adopt multi-disciplinary and integrated perspectives when dealing with environmental issues in Guyana.
-Third, the need to pay particular attention to certain linkages. For example those between women and the environment, and poverty and the environment, and to learn as well from the experiences of the way the Amerindian peoples relate to the environment.
-Fourth, the need to routinely use as aids to decision-making for all economic and social projects, the standard techniques for the appraisal and assessment of environmental impacts now in use, eg. environmental overviews (EOs) and environmental impact assessments (EIAs).
Finally, there are two recurrent themes running through this Report. One is, that in so far as it emphasises a state-of-the-data presentation of the material, several weaknesses have been identified in relation to the paucity of the data, as well as their dated nature. For example, much of the social and economic data presented in the Report were derived from three surveys, all conducted over the period 1991-1993. These are the population census, the Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES) and the Living Standards Measurement Survey (LSMS). When we consider that prior to these the only significant data sources were the population censuses conducted every decade, and partial surveys like the IICA/IFAD survey of five rural coastal areas, the availability of these data has transformed the situation remarkably. Unfortunately however, these data are becoming dated, not only as time elapses, but because of the rapid changes in economic and social performance which indicators show to have been occurring since 1990.
This comment does not deny the usefulness of the data series put out by institutions like the Bureau of Statistics and the Bank of Guyana. The latter however, focus primarily on reporting standard economic and financial data, e.g., the national accounts, external accounts, and financial/monetary data, while the former, when presenting data outside this scope, is itself constrained by the availability of up-to-date survey information.
The policy inference from this is clear. Priority should be given to improving the statistical services in all agencies, including the Bureau of Statistics itself. More immediately also, the LSMS survey needs also to be updated. This policy recommendation underscores one more role which the Annual Presidential Reports on the state of poverty and sustainable human development can play. They can catalyse the process of information gathering.
The second recurrent theme emphasises the importance of changing attitudes, behaviour and outlook among the population at large in promoting SHD. As a people-centered process SHD requires the involvement of people not only in social groups, but as individuals and their conception of self and the world around them. The process of sustainability correctly emphasises self-development based on the expansion of choices and the creation of enabling environments. It is through these that people are transformed, both personally and in their social interactions at all levels, from the family to the citizen. As a consequence, we should not expect sustainable development to be generated from government action alone, this would be impossible. It is for this reason therefore, that the Report identifies areas where private business organisations, non-governmental and community-based organisations, international agencies and external countries can contribute to this process.
For all this to occur, channels of public communication will have to be broadened and deepened. The media and the arts, as well as the institutions of formal and informal education have important, constructive roles to play in building awareness, strengthening democracy and enhancing the perception of self. In other words, sustainable human development has to be a proclamation of, for, and by the people of Guyana.