Sleepless and irritable in suburbia

(Personal View,The Financial Times, October 10,1994)

At the height of Washington’s long hot summer, my house was without power for 48 hours as storms swept through the area. It brought home to my family the extent to which we rely on electricity for air conditioning, television, to keep food fresh – even to make a hot drink.

After two sleepless nights and irritable days, we felt we had been through a major disaster. But we had simply experienced a few inconveniences. We knew that we could escape to the car’s air conditioning, we could buy fresh food at the supermarket, we could go to the cinema if we became bored with family conversation.

As an employee of the World Bank, which is committed to improving the quality of life of the world’s poorest people, I could not help comparing our "devastating" inconvenience with the reality of daily life for the two billion people in developing countries who have no electricity.

The same number of people lack adequate sanitation – at least our bathrooms continued to function during our blackout. We did not much enjoy our lukewarm water and beer, but one billion people do not have access to safe water. It is little surprise, therefore, that every year more than three million children in developing countries die of diarrhoeal disease, not to mention all the other illnesses that result from their living conditions.

The 17 per cent of World Bank lending that supports investments in population, health, nutrition and education helps people in ways that are easily recognised. Those investments tend to be mutually supportive: educated women, for example, have smaller families and healthier and better-educated children.

Such projects often have obvious appeal to the public. An example is the World Bank-financed project which will enable eight million blind people in India – one fifth of the world’s blind – to see again as a result of cataract surgery.

Less appealing is that portion of World Bank lending that pays for the provision of electricity, clean water and sewerage. In the last decade the bank has committed $25 billion to electric power projects and more than $8 billion to water and sanitation.

The fact is that in the past 30 years, life expectancy in developing countries has been extended by some 15 years, the number of children dying before the age of five has been halved, and literacy has increased dramatically. Most of the credit must go to the people of the countries themselves, but the investments the World Bank has supported have made a valuable contribution to improving living standards and reducing the incidence of disease.

Why then does the World Bank come in for so much criticism – especially over its lending for dams that create electricity and for other large projects? Small can often be beautiful but, for all the advances of the last few decades, the number of people who lack the basics in life is massive.

Many can be helped by small-scale, grass-roots efforts, but these must be complemented by the big investments that will bring electricity, water and sanitation to very large numbers of people. Similarly, irrigation projects have contributed to a doubling of food production and an increase in average nutritional intake per person of 20 per cent over the past quarter century.

Unfortunately, such larger efforts have the potential to cause environmental damage, and people may have to be resettled. The challenge for the bank and its partners in development is to work with the countries it is trying to help, to keep negative effects to a minimum.

The Bank has not always been as successful as it would wish – and its own self-critical reports, designed to improve future performance, provide ample fodder for critics.

But a vocal minority does not want the bank to do a better job. This group would like the bank to steer clear of any activities that challenge the right of people to live in pristine poverty if there are any negative side effects. Unfortunately, the bank does not have the luxury of turning its back on that which may be controversial or difficult.

In 1651, Thomas Hobbes, the English clergyman and philosopher, characterised the life of people living in a simple world of nature – without industry, without trade, and without the benefits of modern inventions – as "poor, nasty, brutish, and short". The inconvenience of a few hours without electricity in suburban Washington is a modest reminder of what life is like for the millions without electricity, clean water or sanitation in Bangladesh, Bolivia or Burkina Faso.

They must not be condemned to the state described by Hobbes.

Tim Cullen
The author is chief spokesman for the World Bank

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