SASKATOON – A former Canadian ambassador to Ethiopia, the Sudan and Djibouti says more open democracy is the key to agricultural sustainability, especially in the Third World.
“Genuine democracy relates to communities and cultures,” David MacDonald told an audience of 75 in the first of the Klinck lecture series, sponsored by the Agricultural Institute of Canada.
“Democracy is the root of the development issue; the root of the environmental issue. Renewal of democracy is the way to sustainability.”
The former Conservative member of Parliament for Prince Edward Island said renewal doesn’t mean simple political re-election.
Read Also
Dennis Laycraft to be inducted into the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame
Dennis Laycraft, a champion for the beef industry, will be inducted into the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame this fall.
“It means making the whole of democracy itself open to the creativity of the citizens.”
MacDonald warned the world is tending to the opposite of sustainability. The area of arable land is dwindling, while the world’s population is growing – by 2020 it will about double to nine billion people.
While it would be easy to conclude famine is the inevitable result of less land and more people, MacDonald said there is lots of opportunity to stop famine.
People must come first
A democracy that puts people first would allow communities in the Third World to take responsibility for sustainable self-reliance and reduce their dependence on foreign food aid.
MacDonald said famine and hunger can’t be arrested without dealing with the problem of population growth. Even more pressing is 95 percent of that growth is occurring in the world’s poorest countries.
Improving the economic prospects of women in those countries would be the most important thing the developed world could do to stabilize population growth, MacDonald said.
“We should be amassing a Marshall plan to help women in the poorest countries of the world,” he said.
These women are often the main food suppliers in families of subsistence farmers. He said there is a direct link between an improving economic situation in these families and women’s decisions to reduce family size.
In his experience as an ambassador, MacDonald said modest foreign aid projects that have allowed women in poor communities to help themselves were the best successes – these were projects as simple as setting up a school or organizing women to clean up the local water source so they wouldn’t have to spend three hours a day carting water.
“The more these projects were based on people, the larger the benefit.”
