Extract
Networking development organizations to foster global sustainable development.
Abstract
Achieving sustainable development has been a challenge to social scientists interested in the development field. This paper suggests a network development process that links all development organizations policy stakeholders for the purpose of sharing the information and resources. To effectively deal with multifaceted development issues, the author recommends networking these organizations at the local, national, and global levels, and taking advantage of the current information and communication technologies to devise policies that foster sustainable development. INTRODUCTION Lindbolm (1990:p.167) questioned the extent to which social scientists have been successful in shaping society reach the challenging goal of solving social problem and improving people's lives. He remarked that: Whether one is concerned with stabilizing the economy, improving schools, or effecting other societal ends, the troubling prospect persists that with no or only a few exceptions, societies could perhaps continue to go about these and other activities if social scientists vanished, along with their historical documents, findings, hypotheses, and all human memory of them ... The value of social science to social problem solving remains clouded to a degree that should shake any social scientist's complacency. The above quotation makes sense when one realizes how achieving sustainable development has been a challenge to the international development community for the last four decades. For instance, the technical and financial assistance to poor countries has not resulted in substantive social and economic development. While traditional economic development focused upon the roles of government and private business, traditional social development concentrated upon the role of government and voluntary organizations. Development strategists paid more attention to technical solutions such as better planning, better trade and pricing policies, and better macroeconomic frameworks (Stiglitz, 1998). Furthermore, driven by the desire to promote rapid economic growth, development economists suggested development policies that overlooked other key development dimensions such as social, political, cultural and ecological. Overlooking these dimensions not only is imposing exorbitant costs on government and private agencies, but also is threatening human lives. As Lyonette (1999) puts it, such costs ...See the full content of this document
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