From Bangladesh and Myanmar to Syria, Mexico and Puerto Rico—today’s world is fraught with crises. Some are people-made, some are ‘natural’. Many are some combination—underpinned by the earlier symptoms of global warming or widening gaps between rich and poor.
Since at least the earlier post-World War II years, international development agencies, not least the World Bank and European Investment Bank, sought to balance ‘structural adjustment’ strategies with fostering efforts ‘to oil’ economies through a reduction of impediments to freer flowing markets: ‘perfect competition’ remained a theory to be cited, if not a practice to be pursued ‘in one’s own backyard’. Principles and procedures needed to be articulated and infused into legal systems. Among two such examples are the various efforts to codify ‘human rights’ (tracking back to the initial Geneva Convention triggered by Henry Dunant, founder of the International Red Cross movement) and the law of the sea (much supported by the life work of Elisabeth Mann Borgese).
This short essay, and more particularly the brief book that it draws upon, is much influenced by both. The experience of working within, and exposure to, Henry Dunant’s legacy of the International Red Cross Federation led the author to write a small booklet Projects for Relief and Development.1 The subsequent use of that work as part of course materials by the author for International Ocean Institute (IOI) courses, at the request of Elisabeth Mann Borgese, led in part to the writing of the ‘more cautious’ book that is addressed in this essay, Projects in Search of Relief with Development.2 That work comprises six main chapters, incorporating a number of planning and management frameworks, as well as drawing upon a variety of case studies and ‘lessons learned’ critiques. These case experiences range from the 2015 earthquake in Nepal to challenges that have been encountered by Newfoundland, Canada, from a variety of African and South-East Asian events, to reflections on a sample of North American and European Union approaches.
The introductory chapter opens by challenging the reader to define a ‘good project’ and just how its potential impacts are indeed to be assessed. So-called ‘relief’ and ‘development’ projects are introduced: issues such as community
The second chapter probes further into the identification and design of projects. It draws initially on the World Bank’s project cycle approaches and then moves into a cross section of private sector and non-governmental organization frameworks. The influences of core themes, including ‘new towns’ and ‘national parks’, on public sector strategies are examined, with examples of some of their apparent strengths and limitations. The chapter then moves into project preparation phases, including participation issues that are so important for both relief and recovery processes. How are gender and ethnic issues responded to, not to mention corruption and the behavior of rival power groups? Thence, the discussion introduces several design and feasibility frameworks and, too often neglected in relief project planning, the spelling out of coherent exit options. “Exit strategies,” it is emphasized, “are not to be viewed as ‘escape mechanisms’, but rather as avenues for planned capacity-building…. In many cases, the best exit strategy will incorporate a long-term partnership agreement.” This philosophy it might be noted, also underpinned the emphasis Elisabeth Mann Borgese placed (in many conversations with the author) on the evolving IOI training courses.
Chapter 3 explores aspects of the appraisal and financing of projects. The challenges of both identifying and also quantifying the costs and benefits of projects are delved into—over time and taking into account alternative kinds of potential risk and insecurity scenarios. A proposed international assistance project for a West African university is used as one model, with care taken to note that donor agencies are frequently pressured by their financial units to focus too narrowly on the more readily quantifiable cost and revenue dimensions—thereby downplaying critical but less-measurable environmental and social costs/benefits. Chapter 3 then draws on a review the author undertook on the manner Canadian Treasury Board officials had been responding to a maze of project proposals that were fraught with political and other, dubiously presented, alleged ‘rates of return’. Those findings, to put it mildly, were provocative—not least in the context of coastal zone management impacts.
Donor-driven relief and development projects are then discussed, as well as a cross section of issues encountered within federal-provincial systems and also after war situations. Oxfam’s experience with the British government’s reading of the Charity Act is referred to, as well as UNICEF’s enlightened study
The chapter concludes with (as an annex) a follow-up framework, written immediately after the 2015 Nepalese earthquake. As important as the author argues the shorter and longer-term suggestions of ‘what to do’ might be, equally important can be the framework lists of ‘what not to do’. In each case, both short-term and longer range approaches are suggested. Insights were not only drawn from more recent Haitian earthquake experiences, but also from tsunamis (among other examples) in Southeast Asia.
Chapter 4, on project implementation and management, introduces basic emergency management models such as those designed by Erik Auf de Heide. Next, a model developed for the International Red Cross at the time of the first Gulf War is discussed, followed by critical path and decision tree frameworks for agency intervention (the last by Mary Anderson and Peter Woodrow). From such earlier design phases, the chapter leads into project work structures, including critical approaches to project supervision. This section is followed by a discussion of monitoring and operations that includes details of three case studies: a university teaching hospital in a poverty-stricken region of Africa, a cyclone shelter on the Bangladesh coast, and a school in rural Canada. Among the concluding remarks to this fourth chapter is:
Responsible project management builds not merely on the kinds of mechanical skills that can be routinely acquired in the engineering or business oriented programs of urban universities, but it necessarily draws heavily upon social skills, cultural understanding, and (above all) a commitment to achieving results within ethically responsible community frameworks.
Project evaluation, follow-up and institutional memory-building is the next main theme (Chapter 5). Starting with a discussion of challenges encountered by government auditors, especially when questions of efficiency spill over into issues of effectiveness (not least on foreign aid projects), the chapter cites a number of findings from World Bank project reviews. These range from a technical paper on lessons from the Tennessee Valley Authority to audits in Bosnia/Herzegovina and Indonesia. In the last, for but one example, a physical audit of a World Bank-financed (community-driven development program that constructs roads) found that a full quarter of expenditures were ‘lost to theft’, probably orchestrated by village heads who oversaw projects.
Evaluations, it is noted, can obviously vary in scale and approaches from in-house reviews to sometimes complex and extended procedures on controversial projects, such as a major Olympic Games complex or international port. An entire academic industry, now, it is also observed, appears to be evolving around measurements of ‘well-being’ and the reader is referred to the thoughtful work on universities by Derek Bok, a former Harvard president.
‘What happens to the findings?’ is next discussed. This leads into a critique on ethical values and projects, including the findings of a review of the British Public Service, Just and Honest Government. One question that recurs, not least in peacekeeping settings, is ‘can ethical values appropriately change?’ Issues relating to media, political, business, and non-governmental organizations are raised. The chapter concludes with a critique of codes of conduct and their apparent effectiveness (and otherwise) at the project level—especially in the context of large organizations under financial pressures, not least including banks and international fishing corporations.
Chapter 6 brings together a cross section of the key points raised in earlier sections, under the heading ‘The Project in a Policy Cauldron’. This takes the reader from issues linked to mosquito nets and malaria to a bridge project in Croatia, from changes to a school curriculum in Zimbabwe to the political re-routing of national airlines. ‘Good projects’, it is argued, may indeed be Trojan horses for ideas that bring in societal change, but they cannot be viable substitutes for the changes themselves. The chapter is followed by an extensive annex that hinges back to the author’s early experiences, cited in the preface, in Bangladesh. Drawn from a World Bank report, the annex concludes on a cautiously optimistic note, “Bangladesh shows [in the context of cyclone impact reductions] how even poor countries can prevent disasters, thereby nourishing [community strengthening] institutions.”
The closing sections of the book comprise a select bibliography,3 a series of follow-up discussion and research questions, as well as the detailed outline for a workshop that leads directly back to (but also extends beyond) the core themes of the main book itself.
I. McAllister, Projects for Relief and Development (Geneva: Henry Dunant Institute, 1991).
I. McAllister, Projects in Search of Relief with Development (New York: Linus Learning, 2016).
This ‘outline for a workshop’ includes elements of workshops that have been used by IOI, as well as by the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre, International Red Cross Federation, and Olympic Aid.