I didn't have many expectations before coming to Mauritania, or so I thought. I now realize that I had quite a few. I imagined that the desert would be a hard place to live in. I expected Peace Corps to drop off its volunteers in remote villages, not to be seen by other Americans for over two years. I expected language to be the ultimate key to cultural integration. Above all, I expected every Mauritanian to jump at the chance to work with me, a Peace Corps Volunteer, ready and willing to help. I was going to teach them how to use their local resources more efficiently in order to improve their standard of living. I was thrilled at the prospect of doing "sustainable development!" Unfortunately, after two years of doing what the twenty-first century calls "sustainable development," I realize that what in fact I was trying to do was to teach my village how to exploit the resources they already had in ways that would make their shops more prosperous, their children more marketable in the global economy, and their community more materially comfortable (and hopefully, but not necessarily, more peaceful).
Peace Corps throughout the world, along with other grass roots and non-profit organizations, is guilty of making "sustainable development" a matter of economics, rather than a means to peace and permanence. We act as if growth, expansion, and development are all possible in a finite environment, that is, an environment of limited trees, water, animals, rains and land. The original idea behind sustainable development is the belief that environmental growth and resource development, when brought to a sufficient level of production, eventually reaches an equilibrium; the participating organizations who had helped the struggling community attain a certain degree of self-sufficiency, would then head home proud of the peace and environmental prosperity supposedly reached. But in reality, growth will never be enough.
We have been taught in school, in Peace Corps training, and through our own experiences, that the "donne moi dix" trend is typical of developing countries which have received aid for extended periods of time. However, has any industrialized country ever been known to say, for example, "thank you, we have enough oil"? Has any large-scale corporation ever been known to say "we are closing business because we've made enough money"? The level of need for developing environments is basic and easy to recognize. We naturally sympathize with the needy and want to help. However, in helping them meet their basic needs, we actually create more needs, disrupting the stability of families, communities and countries, moving us farther and farther away from our initial goal: peace. Never will any rich country, nor will any poor country, say they've experienced enough economic growth. Therefore, it seems, life will be forever unstable and peace illusive.
E.F Schumacher in his book Small Is Beautiful asks whether the rich or the poor treasure peace more highly? Are we less able to live in peace because we are afraid of losing it? We must continuously stay on our toes to compete with other consumers, producers, manufacturers, dictators in oil rich countries, and angry terrorists playing off the need for security in poorer populations. Do the poorer communities live more peacefully because they possess a greater sense of equilibrium with what sustains their existence? Sustainable development, centered around the economic motive for prosperity, seems only to have increased the needs of poorer populations. They are no longer able nor willing to say: enough. If we continue to work believing that sustainable development means economic development, life in Mauritania and in other developing countries will remain unstable, furthering rather than eliminating potential problems. The natural peace born from living off what the environment can reasonably sustain will falter, giving rise to a higher degree of civil unrest, and keeping us from achieving our intended goal: peace.
So now what is to be done? I am in Mauritania one more year, and I still have time to change my modus operandi. However, even though I see the pitfalls of what we do as development workers, I can't think of a better alternative. The desire to make people's lives more comfortable is a noble sentiment. It leaves me to wonder, how is one to balance the desire for immediate gratification with the longer term goal of peace.