Letter to the Editor
Published in Financial Times, September 21, 1999
By Mr. Owen Cylke

Sir, your editorial comment on the latest World Bank Development Report (September 16�see below) presents the old growth versus sustainability debate again as a zero sum game. No longer so. There is, in fact, something "startlingly new" and hopeful in economic globalisation.

Earlier this month, the Financial Times itself reported on the new Dow Jones Sustainability Group Indices, which address increasing investor interest in companies committed to corporate sustainability. These are companies that manage not only the standard economic factors affecting their businesses but environmental and social factors as well. And there is mounting evidence that their financial performance is superior to that of companies that do not adequately, correctly and optimally manage these important factors.

Corporate sustainability has become an investable concept. This relationship is crucial in driving interest and investments in sustainability to the mutual benefit of companies and investors. As this benefit circle strengthens, it will have a positive effect on the societies and economies of both the developed and developing world.

There is something new under the sun. We can seriously look for and demand both growth and sustainability.

Owen Cylke
Director, The Policy Group
US-Asia Environmental Partnership
Washington, D.C.

Published in Financial Times, September 16, 1999

The third way has come to Washington. "What is required," says the latest World Development Report from the Bank, "is to step beyond the debates over the roles of government." The report�s pragmatic eclecticism is very much of the moment. The big question is whether, in dethroning simple orthodoxies, the bank has lost a clear sense of its own development priorities.

The unifying idea of this report is the erosion of the old nation state by globalization and localisation. As always, the Bank is able to bring a vast amount of knowledge and good sense to its analytical task.

True, it is difficult to say anything startlingly new on the world trading system, global finance or protection of the global commons, although what is said is sensible. On what happens within developing countries, however, the bank is the world�s principal source of expertise. In bringing out the difficulties and opportunities inherent in political decentralisation and the developing world�s headlong urbanisation, the report is of great value.

Yet the question remains: does the Bank know what it is about? The fuzziness is disturbing. "Sustainable development has many objectives," says the Bank. Do not forget that "development policies are interdependent." What is more, "governments play a vital role in development, but there is no simple set of rules that tell them what to do." And, last in this list, "processes are just as important as policies."

Such an overwhelming sense of complexity risks becoming paralyzing. More important, is it really the business of the Bank to promote development, defined as a "range of outcomes, such as equality, education, health, the environment, culture and social well-being, among others"? Some of this agenda is beyond the scope of any international agency, however well intentioned.

In the good- or bad-old days, it was supposed that the overriding (although not the only) goal of development policy was rapid and sustained economic growth. From this many other good things would naturally flow�more public spending, better health, less child labor, and so forth, as it has done in high-income countries of today.