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DEVELOPMENT ALTERNATIVES GLOBAL – DAG
LEARNING, THINKING AND ACTING GLOBALLY
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Development Alternatives Global (DAG)
Antecedents, objectives, structure, functions, and methods of work
(Excerpts)
Framework paper approved at the meeting of
the founding General Assembly, 2 December 2006,
Marcellaz, France
Antecedents of Development Alternatives Global
Development Alternatives Global (DAG) is a non-governmental organization based in Geneva. Its parent body is the Society for Development Alternatives (DA), New Delhi, India.
The policy and conceptual origins of DAG date back to the work initiated by the United Nations at the UN Conference on the Human Environment (UNCHE), held in Stockholm in 1972. The Stockholm Conference addressed at the global level the emerging issues concerning development and the environment, the related concerns of eradicating poverty and inequity worldwide, and managing the natural resources of the planet.
The Conference, and the subsequent follow-up process, embodied an attempt in the UN to develop comprehensive, integrated, or systems-holistic analysis and approaches to major interrelated challenges facing humankind. The global systemic status quo and question of longer-term sustainability of existing trends, patterns of production, consumption and lifestyles were placed on the international agenda. The very nature of the environment problematique made it necessary to transcend traditional sectoral approaches and disciplinary divides and instead consider together the natural and man-made systems and their interrelationships, as well as the political, economic, social, cultural and S&T domains, ranging from the individual/local level to the global. Placing environment on the international agenda was a pioneering undertaking, which made it possible to also question the existing world order and the dominant paradigm.
DAG’s parent body, the Society for Development Alternatives (DA), was established in 1982, with headquarters in New Delhi, India. It was inspired by UNCHE and arose out of the experience and work of DA’s founder and president Ashok Khosla during his time in the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).
DA represented an innovative effort to translate the broad principles into action at the micro-level by using natural resources in a sustainable manner for the betterment of the lives of people and of their environment in rural India.
Its objective was to engage in research, design and development, and to promote widespread diffusion of appropriate technologies, products and processes for agriculture, industry and for the domestic and other needs of very poor and marginalized people in India and other developing countries. DA was among the earliest organizations specifically set up to address in practice the issues of sustainable development. It was also among the first to operate as a non-profit social enterprise. It combined public good and public sector objectives with private sector strategies, in an attempt to bring business-like approaches to the solution of socio-economic problems. Its initial operations were funded by a project grant from UNEP.
In the period since its launch, DA has established a solid track record and has had a significant practical and policy impact in India. Its work in the field of sustainable development, linking broad policy objectives, theory and practice, has been recognized nationally and internationally. In 2002, it received the United Nations Sasakawa Environment Prize. It has also received numerous other international and national awards for Outstanding Social Enterprise, Excellence in Science Communication, Technology Innovations and Habitat Design.
Throughout this period, DA has been keenly aware of global structures and regimes, including the complex processes of globalization, which have major, and often decisive, impacts on what happens, is done, or is possible at the national and local levels in developing countries.
It is in this context that DA has decided, at the start of the second quarter century of its work, to expand the scope of its activities and to launch Development Alternatives Global, as its global arm and platform.
Why DAG?
The establishment of Development Alternatives Global aims to bring Development Alternatives full circle in its evolution, taking it from global to the regional and local and back to the global. To achieve this, it will put in place mechanisms to address the systemic, cause-effect linkages between these interrelated domains, linkages which need to be identified and understood in multilateral efforts to cope with the increasingly wide-ranging, serious and complex challenges faced by the international community.
The launching of DAG represents an effort to contribute to the continuing quest for global, comprehensive approaches. It will address the current overarching worldview and system, and the underlying forces, rationale, ideology and interests that shape and drive it.
Given the currently weak situation of the United Nations, the explicit and systematic challenge to multilateralism, and the general unwillingness or inability of governments collectively to address in depth some of the basic, interrelated issues, a greater responsibility falls on civil society and academic circles to strengthen their contribution to developing new policy impulses in the world arena. Such responses have played an increasingly important role, but are largely fragmented and insufficient, having little impact to date on policy and decision-makers, including in multilateral processes. This is particularly the case when it comes to voices emanating from the South.
In this context, the establishment of DAG represents an attempt to articulate and give greater visibility to views, concerns and interests shared by the developing countries and their peoples, and to place these in the global context as a contribution to the elaboration of solutions and approaches based on international cooperation, equity and a longer-term vision of a common future.
In sum, two closely interrelated levels of work are envisaged for DAG, namely
1. one focused on the local, ground level in developing countries, drawing on the field work and experience of DA and similar bodies, disseminating these more widely, with particular emphasis on promoting South-South cooperation and exchanges, and
2. the other linking the local and global and addressing the larger, systemic questions by undertaking conceptual and policy-oriented analytical work on global issues and their interrelationships.
DAG as a global window on the local challenges of sustainable development in the South. DAG aims to draw wider international attention to DA work and practical experience in India, and to set up closer cooperative links with other developing countries, as well as with economies in transition. This objective is a logical outcome of two decades of fieldwork by DA and the widely held perception that its experience has relevance to the needs of other areas in the developing world. This know-how, and its transfer, could be expected to lead to a range of bottom-up, South-based policy and practical lessons and initiatives for designing and securing sustainable development locally. Drawing on its own experience, DA, via DAG, will promote methods to accelerate the transfer of knowledge from laboratory to the field, including the adaptation of knowledge to the social, economic and natural resource contexts of other developing countries, in order to contribute to building up their capacity and self-reliance and also to enhance South-South cooperation. DAG should also serve as a focal point that helps to identify and bring together the large number of local efforts and initiatives in the South, and to help relate these to global, South-South, national and local efforts and flows of knowledge and experience.
DAG as a policy and analytical instrument addressing global challenges. DAG will also serve as a facility – firmly anchored in field work, experiences, realities and perceptions of the Third World -- that promotes global, policy-oriented analyses, discourse and research on interrelated challenges of sustainable development, including the broader aspects of North-South relations, the world system and order and the global regimes that underpin it. These include development, environment, energy, the promise of S&T in the twenty first century, and global management and multilateral governance issues, including the roles of the UN and of the UN system and the global regulatory regimes, among others. This should strengthen and promote the intellectual underpinnings of efforts to diversify and democratize an integrated and pluralistic policy debate in the international arena. An important aspect of DAG activity will be authoritative policy analyses undertaken by a network of internationally recognized scholars and public figures, including those that have been associated with the work of the UN and have valuable, first-hand experience in multilateral processes.
Location of DAG
Geneva is the major multilateral centre that welcomes, hosts and assists a large number of international NGOs. It is here that the seminal 1971 Founex Seminar cast the foundations for the holistic and integrated approach to global development and environment which made possible the holding of the 1972 Stockholm Conference and its adopting significant principles and recommendations which continue to be relevant today. (DAG also draws in part on the precedent of IFDA – International Foundation for Development Alternatives – that was established in the aftermath of UNCHE and operated in the Geneva region during the 1970s and 1980s.)
The UN presence in Geneva, as also of other key international organizations, of facilities relevant to the proposed practical, analytical and policy work of DAG, and of experts whose long involvement in and familiarity with the issues could contribute to DAG’s work, would all provide important synergies and facilitate the development of a dynamic, productive institutional context.
The functions of DAG
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DAG will address and speak out on issues and their interrelationships that are seldom explored within a single institution, projecting a South perspective. It will bring the results of its work to the attention of governments and various groups in developing countries and to the Group of G77 and NAM, and make available its policy and research papers to other interested parties. Proposals on given issues will be prepared by DAG as a contribution to the formulation of developing countries’ group policy and negotiating stance.
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Development Alternatives Global will remain open to learning, innovation, new ideas and offers of cooperation. It will:
• be based on a core network of scholars and practitioners of multilateral cooperation, bringing their experience and knowledge into a single institutional framework;
• be intimately linked with and draw on national development experience in the field;
• establish close relations and interact with the developing countries’ policy and decision-making circles, national and collective, as well as with the UN and other multilateral institutions, and contribute to building the awareness and capacities needed to deal with multiple challenges generated by the global processes and in the global arena;
• be intellectually autonomous, acting as an advocacy and mobilizing mechanism, based on in-depth analysis of issues of special concern to countries of the South and their peoples, thereby also contributing to global agenda-setting, paradigm redefinition, and pluralism of thought and analysis in the international arena.
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