I support development by supporting and evaluating projects that pursue social missions with their businesses. These projects try to operate businesses that can earn cash and use it for social purposes without exhausting their seed funds. Examples of such projects include making ice cream to create decent jobs for the disadvantaged, expanding art programs for underprivileged children while selling art products, and designing and selling simple solar lamps in off-grid areas. The projects can be sustainable and even increase the number of beneficiaries and benefits to society once the businesses successfully make money to meet those purposes. We call these projects social enterprises or social economy organizations. I felt great that the projects I supported made the lives of people living in poverty better.
Then I got to go to Cambodia to find the real meaning of ‘development’ a few years ago. I visited some of the projects I had partnered with to support. I wanted to confirm that social enterprises and organizations play a significant role in sustainable development. I prepared simple questions, such as “What do you expect from development?” But the interpreter said there is no exact word for ‘development’ in the Cambodian language (Khmer). Trying to explain development in easy terms, we changed the question to “What kinds of changes do you want to see in your villages and Cambodia in 10 years?” and “Please elaborate on the world you want your children to live in 10 years from now.”
Although it was not intended, this triggered me to contemplate ‘development’ again, the fact that we changed a simple question into a concrete question with a clear subject and an ideal image. As far as I know, ‘Development’ is the positive change the subject wants to achieve in the future. But I never considered a concrete subject when I supported development. I just imagined the future that somebody might want as the ‘development.’
Like many other people, I want tomorrow to be more developed than today. These days, development is being addressed as an essential issue at the national and societal level, as well as at an individual level. However, we seldom deliberate exactly what development is, despite the fact that we long for that. What would you expect from development if you were able to create it however you wished?
Skyscrapers, clean streets, and people walking along them in freshly washed clothes… Well-designed and well-constructed roads where cars can move fast and efficiently, modern sanitized toilets, and worldwide franchise stores whose familiarity brings us a feeling of relief when we see them.
If you imagine these things when you think about development, what about using South Korea as a milestone of development? South Korea became the 29th member of the OECD, the so-called developed countries’ club, in 1996, and the UNCTAD has classified Korea as a developed country since 2021. Korea is around 10th in the world rankings of economic size. In addition, Korea provided over 2.8 billion USD in Official Development Assistance to the world’s least developed and developing countries. If you’re still hesitant to call Korea a developed nation, what else do you want from the word ‘development’?
The economist Amartya Sen said that development is the “expansion of substantive freedoms” which allows people to enjoy the aspects of life that they consider invaluable. The extension of these freedoms is the ‘capability’ to find and choose a life that one would like to have without feeling insecure and without having it given by others. However, as someone who lives in Korea, a developed country that supports other countries suffering from poverty, I do not think I have that freedom.
I live day to day and paycheck to paycheck I can barely play my roles as friend, sibling, child of parents, and parent of my kids. But how long could I sustain my life if I had to quit my job and stop working because of illness or burn-out? Everything could collapse all at once. I must pay for my house, living expenses, and my children’s education monthly anyway, while I only exist and breathe. It would be a disaster if one of my family members became ill. Could I bare the medical expenses and care service charges? Even if my financial situation improves, there are more things to do that will cost me. I will spend some money for my children to take the extra classes they want to take and send some cash or presents to my parents season by season as a proud child. To do that, I must tighten my budget more and buy private insurance to protect my family from emergencies, and save and invest for the future as much as possible to make more money just in case. Many people are much richer than me; I don’t have to be the person who cares for others and does well for them. I have no space for them. I have too many things on my shoulders and do not want to get public help as a person in need. I have no space for myself to think about what kind of life I would like to live, either. Even though I have some space, I have no courage to attempt to live the life I want. I feel too unstable and insecure to do so.
It was not long before Koreans started to call Korea ‘Hell, Chosen.’ ‘Chosen’ refers to Korea’s last dynasty, and hell is hell. Korea is hell for Koreans who want to get a job, have a space to live in, have babies, and raise them since they cannot afford to. But surprisingly, Korea’s labor productivity by hour increased almost ten times over the last 30 years (KRW 3,485 in 1989 to KRW 36,040 in 2019), and its GDP per capita also rose to ten times what we had 30 years ago (KRW 3,890,000 to KRW3,7540,000). People earn much more than before, but the relative value of the money that they can spend willingly and without concern seems to have grown smaller. As a result, the number of people who regard their living as decent has shrunk. Most statistically middle-income people don’t see themselves as part of a real middle-income class in society. In 1989, 75% of Koreans perceived themselves as part of the middle-income class, but that number was only 48% in 2019. The amount of money I need has grown greatly, even though I have increased my productivity during that time. The development of freedom that Sen spoke of hasn’t reached Korea yet. I used Korea as an example, but things might work the same way in other so-called developed countries. We thought ‘development’ meant “living wealthy”, and that “living wealthy” meant having enough money to live safely and comfortably. But we cannot find answers if we ask only how much money we need for our desirable future, for ‘development.’
Then what about social enterprises and organizations? Can the projects that pursue social purposes sustainably contribute to the development we want? We should question this, too. We say “it’s different from other businesses; we operate these only for the betterment of the world.” However, a business focuses on the people who can produce products and services, as well as those who consume them. Social enterprise projects try to make more people capable and to include them in the produce-and-spend cycle (inclusiveness). Great social-purpose-driven business models are designed to produce more and sell more so that the cycle runs faster. The business can survive sustainably only if it creates more financial and social value. If so, society can be sweet for a few more people. However, it still cannot alleviate our anxieties, such as those about environmental effects and relative deprivation from ‘more but never enough’ production and spending, which cannot lead us to the development we want. I am not talking about the limits of social business projects (in fact, they are struggling to find solutions to sustainable development and try them incessantly). It tells us that the effort we are making together to bring about development can have adverse effects on the development we want. The energy we produce makes people feel more comfortable and prouder, but the pollution emitted from its production harms the earth. After recognizing the earth crisis that looms ahead, some people started talking about zero-carbon policies, zero-waste movements, and a circular economy. Still, only a portion of the world’s individuals and countries cannot change the trend of the problem. In addition, it’s also impossible to stop or discourage countries and people that have just started to produce and spend more, finally becoming wealthy after suffering from poverty for so long. But we all know that our behavior is unsustainable if we all follow our separate will to produce and use as much as we want. In a chain reaction, it reduces our freedom and cuts off the sense that we are developing. (Think about the fact that we must wear masks to protect ourselves from COVID and micro-dust in the developed world)
So, how do we reach ‘development’, then?
Though it is a cliché, we need time to answer the question of why we live in the world. And it is necessary to share people’s whys and develop some common sense about why we live. This process could be the understanding and acceptance of oneself and other beings. Moreover, we need to recognize ourselves as beings with limits and be humble rather than focusing on our unlimited possibilities as humans. We all want humans to live a sustainable lifestyle, but we should reconsider making sustainability our main purpose for living. If we care only about our sustainability, anyone can become the main character of my earlier story, where one cannot escape from their self-made wheels going round in circles with anxiety. Alternatively, do you think you would be satisfied if you became a perfect being that didn’t desire to have things, to eat, or to be loved? Wishing only to live a sustainable lifestyle, you can minimize your energy consumption and the pollutants you produce from your consumption. But could you still be happy? If so, you can give up your physical body, which creates those desires and become a stream of consciousness on an online network, like in a novel.
Development cannot be reached through a single structure, in a single way, nor by oneself alone. We need others to live the life we choose without anxiety (extensions of freedom). Development is a process of experiencing a better me while supporting the development of others. To do so, we should try to figure out what others need in their lives, regarding them as our equals. What about just enjoying a pleasurable life with others who are connected with us now rather than being afraid of an unstable future and blaming others who don’t seem to care about the environment? Either way, we are to have an end. To attain that, what we need now might be not a seriousness focused only on me and my species, but simplicity and space to consider others’ needs. To open all of our senses to be happy as ourselves, to be open-minded to possibilities, to be connected with others, and to know that we are enough as we are keys to ‘development’. After all, what we can do now for the first for the world is to be tolerant of all beings, including ourselves, and to make an effort to reduce their burden and pain. We can say we are getting closer to ‘development’ if we can reduce our anxiety and get more freedom to choose the life we want during the above process.
We do hear that we need global solidarity and cooperation and sustainable practices to protect the earth’s ecosystem. We should keep in our mind that ‘togetherness’ is happening not by necessity but by care, appreciation, and love for others first. And it would be great if we recognized that we are spending something which decreases as we use it, and this something comes from common assets that the universe and other beings allow or yield us and that we can share ours in return.
Seeing the recent effects of climate change and viruses, I feel the limit of the planet is at hand. Might we be at the sunset of our existence someday? I hope everyone, including myself, will be respected and appreciated only for their presence on the earth, able to live now without anxiety about the future. Then we might be able to say we live in the development we want. [END]
References
Park, Don-gyu. The Middle Class is Disappearing (2021).
Myunghee Lee supports and evaluates social enterprises and social economy organizations, emphasizing mutual benefits and prioritizing people and the planet over profits while having businesses. She has reviewed business proposals of those organizations from 20 countries for 15 years. In-depth, some were visited and interviewed by representatives of the organizations and their diverse stakeholders. She likes to highlight the reason and sustained positive impact of the social economy organizations, finding their impact indicators to share common goals within organizations and help them to communicate with external stakeholders.