‘Development ethics’ can be seen as comparable to business ethics, medical ethics, environmental ethics and similar areas of practical ethics. Each area of practice generates ethical questions about priorities and procedures, rights and responsibilities. So, first of all, ‘development ethics’ can be seen as a field of attention, an agenda of questions about major
value choices involved in processes of social and economic development. What is good or ‘real’ development? ..

Gasper, D.R. (Des)

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Human Development Report OfficeUnited Nations Development ProgrammeNHDR Workspace: http://hdr.undp.org/en/nhdr/ version française | versión en español     HD INSIGHTS     HDR Networks January 2009 Issue 24    What is ‘development ethics’?  ‘Development ethics’ can be seen as comparable to business ethics, medical ethics,environmental ethics and similar areas of practical ethics. Each area of practice generatesethical questions about priorities and procedures, rights and responsibilities. So, first of all,‘development ethics’ can be seen as a field of attention, an agenda of questions about majorvalue choices involved in processes of social and economic development. What is good or‘real’ development? How are those benefits and corresponding costs to be shared, within thepresent generation and between generations? Who decides and how? What rights ofindividuals should be respected and guaranteed? When— in for example the garment trade,the sex trade, the ‘heart trade’ in care services, and the trade in human organs—should freechoice in the market be seen instead as the desperation behaviour of people who have toolittle real choice ? Besides such issues of policy ethics, come the many ethical issues, stressesand choices in daily professional life and interaction. (Glover 1995, Goulet 1988, and Hamelink1997 are fuller statements of agendas)   Second, development ethics is the body of work that has tried to address such questions, andthe sets of answers that are offered. This includes work from long before the label‘development ethics’ existed; for example, we find positions on some of the questions abovefrom 19th century writers like John Stuart Mill and Karl Marx. It also includes current work thatmay not use the name ‘development ethics’ but addresses various of the questions, forexample Joe Stiglitz’s Making Globalization Work.   Third, more narrowly, we have work which uses the name ‘development ethics’. Its founder, ifanyone should have that title, was the economist Louis Lebret (1897-1966) who led a groupcalled Économie et Humanisme, which worked first in France and then in many othercountries. Similar work emerged in Spanish, Portuguese and elsewhere. Notable in connectingthese traditions and spreading them into English language work was the polyglot Americansocial planner Denis Goulet (1931-2006), for example in his book The Cruel Choice (1971).Others, such as David Crocker, have linked Goulet’s thinking to the research traditions ofhuman development, human rights and deliberative democracy. Work on development ethicsincludes much by authors who, like Crocker, have been active in the human developmentapproach. Fourth, more narrowly still, development ethics is the stream of work that has in additionhighlighted a development ethics agenda and tried to institutionalise the field, in publications,Development Ethics and Human Development Des Gasper Institute of Social Studies, The Hague  scholarly associations, networks and courses. The International Development EthicsAssociation was formed in 1987 (http://www.development-ethics.org/).  What is the role for ‘development ethics’?  The main role for development ethics is as an interdisciplinary meeting ground where diversedisciplines, concerns and approaches interact, rather than primarily as an academic sub-discipline in philosophy. Only in this way can it have substantial impacts on methods,movements and education. Since ethics is a branch within philosophy, development ethicswork has been found partly as one niche of practical ethics within university worlds. However,just as environmental ethics is certainly not only engaged in by disciplinary philosophers, workon development ethics involves people from a wide range of backgrounds. The required typesof immersion, in particular contexts each with their own reality, and in trying to understand andinfluence the methods and systems that structure routine practice, must be undertaken bypeople who come from and remain well connected to specific disciplinary and/or professionalbackground(s).  Why should one bother with ‘development ethics’ if one works within the humandevelopment approach and/or capability approach?   Human development thinking, as formulated by Mahbub ul Haq, Paul Streeten and others,contains both an ethical perspective and a theory of interconnections. Both arose in reaction tothe traditional perspective in economics. The principle of interconnection holds that linkagesthat are not mediated and measured through economic means are often centrally important: forexample, the linkages from lopsided income distribution to malnutrition to reduced learningcapacity and lifetime earning capacity, or the linkages from skewed international tradingsystems to societal stresses and conflict in low-income countries. ‘Side-effects’ and ‘collateraldamage’ are widespread; they are marginal only in terms of the attention often given to them,not marginal in their occurrence and human significance. ‘Some get the gains, others get thepains’, remarks Michael Cernea. The principle of interconnection strengthens the ethicsagenda as well as implying wider scope in explanation—it brings a focus on the ‘side-effects’damage to some people, for example when greater purchasing power and greater politicalpower for some groups makes food unaffordable for weaker groups or leads to theirdisplacement from lands that more powerful people now desire. The explicit ethicalperspective, the capability approach, holds that the ethical principles embodied in market-based economics do not suffice for public policy; market values are important primarily insofaras they support valuable ‘beings’ and ‘doings’. This component in human development theoryis vital, but is far from giving a full ethical basis; for example, for how to handle conflictsbetween and within different people’s valued ‘beings and doings’. To think about the ethicalmeaning(s) of ‘human’, and about trade and sweated labour, forced displacement orprofessional ethics, human development thinking can usefully draw on longer standingdiscussions in development ethics. (See e.g.: Esquith ed. 2009; Ethics and Economics, 4(2);Hamelink ed. 1997; Quarles van Ufford & Giri eds. 2003; Schwenke 2007, 2008)   Why bother with ‘development ethics’ when we have the human rights tradition?  Thinking in terms of rights is invaluable but insufficient: rights conflict, not all relevant valuescan be thought of in terms of rights, and rights language in isolation is at risk of becoming rigidand legalistic, set in forms and institutions which are often not accessible for poor people. TheWorld Commission on Dams illustrated how processes of equitable and respectful negotiationare needed, besides declarations of rights. We require a richer value basis than only rights oronly capabilities or the two together, which includes attention to roots, processes and formatsof ethical reasoning, and to attitudes of caring and commitment. One reason why humansecurity thinking has gathered momentum is because it draws on a deeper picture of humanpersonality, emotion, sociability and lived experience than has been used in some thinking onhuman rights and human development. It makes us ask: What is the ‘human’ minimum thateach person has a right to secure, beyond possession of a set of reasoned preferences andcapacities for choice? An exploited garment worker and the seller of a kidney may have madeinformed and reasoned choices. Human security thinking connects to the roots in humanistic psychology, humanistic philosophy and daily moral life that also feed Goulet’s thinking andrelated work in development ethics. Similarly, in thinking about responsible lifestyles orresponsible and respectful (and therefore more effective) forms of advice and influence, or intrying to interpret and counteract corruption, we can draft and use codes of rights and dutiesbut also need much more.   Discussion of ethical questions and principles is sometimes felt as embarrassing, but it is farfrom a luxury. As human beings we undertake our lives with notions about what areappropriate ends and rights and due respect, and those ideas require attention, for betterunderstanding, for negotiation, and for our orientation and motivation.  Some general sources:   1. Adger W Crocker, D.A., 1996. International Development Ethics. A short on-line introduction at: http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/OApp/OAppCroc.htm.  2. Crocker, D.A., 2008. Ethics of Global Development – Agency, Capability and Deliberative Democracy, Cambridge University Press. 3. Esquith, S., & F. Gifford, eds., 2009 (in press). Capabilities, Power and Institutions: Towards a More Critical Development Ethics, Pennsylvania State University Press. 4. Ethics and Economics, 4(2) [http://ethics-economics.com/Volume-4-Numero-2.html]. Selected papers from a 2006 International Development Ethics Association conference in Uganda.  5. Gasper, D., 2004. The Ethics of Development, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press (and 2005: South Asia edition, Delhi: Sage). A general overview and textbook. 6. Gasper, D., 2007. Human Rights, Human Needs, Human Development, Human Security. Forum for Development Studies (NUPI, Oslo), 2007/1, 9-43. 7. Gasper, D., 2008. Denis Goulet and the Project of Development Ethics: Choices in methodology, focus and organization. Journal of Human Development, 9(3), 453-474. 8. Gasper, D., & A. Lera St. Clair (eds.), 2009 (in press). Development Ethics, Aldershot: Ashgate. A selection of work from across development ethics. 9. Glover, J., 1995. The Research Programme of Development Ethics. Pp.116-39 in Nussbaum, M. and Glover, J., eds. (1995) Women, Culture, and Development: A Study of Human Capabilities, Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.  10. Goulet, D., 1971. The Cruel Choice. New York: Atheneum. 11. Goulet, D., 1988. Tasks and Methods in Development Ethics, Cross Currents, 38(2), 146-163. 12. Goulet, D., 2006, Development Ethics at Work: Explorations 1960-2002, New York: Routledge. 13. Gunatilleke, G., Tiruchelvam, N., Coomaraswamy, R. (eds.) 1983. Ethical Dilemmas of Development in Asia, London: Lexington Books. 14. Hamelink, C., 1997. Making Moral Choices in Development Co-operation: The Agenda forEthics. In Hamelink (ed., 1997), pp. 11-24. 15. Hamelink, C. (ed.), 1997. Ethics and Development - on making moral choices in developmentco-operation, Kampen, Netherlands: Uitgeverij Kok. 16. Quarles van Ufford, P., & A.K. Giri (eds.) 2003. A Moral Critique of Development. London: Routledge.  17. Schwenke, C. (2007), Formulating and Implementing an Effective Code of Ethics: Guidance Manual for Public Institutions. Washington, DC: Inter-American Development Bank. 18. Schwenke, C. (2008), Reclaiming Value in International Development: The Moral Dimensions of Development Policy and Practice in Poor Countries, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. 19. Stiglitz, J. (2007), Making Globalization Work, expanded edition, New York: W.W. Norton.  Note: HD Insights are network members' contributions and do not necessarily represent the views of UNDP.   

Development Ethics and Human Development

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Development Ethics and Human Development

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