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Burgess Manuscript
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Hundreds of Issues
From the book 'Hundreds of Issues that Impact Relief and Development'
Section WWW
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Issue
WIPO
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Basic observation
World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)
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Prevailing response
This is a UN agency, and focal point for discussion and regulation related to intellectual property. While intellectual deserves a certain degree of protection, there also needs to be regulation that ensures that there is fairness in its application, and that legal rights do not dominate over natural rights.
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A better response
The protection of corporate rights to intellectual property should be balanced with the rights of natural discovery by indigenous peoples who do not have access and understanding of the IP regime that has been established.
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Issue
War
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Basic observation
War is almost always a result of failure, and frequently aggravates the failure.
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Prevailing response
The relief and development sector has done a lot of work over the past decades helping to make peace after war and violence has wreaked havoc in an area. Though the relief efforts are valuable, the favorable impact of relief is tiny compared to the aggregate damage and destruction caused by war.
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A better response
War is almost always a losing proposition, and should almost always be avoided. War is a result of failure ... and usually acerbates bad situations. What is needed is the information and action so that war does not happen ... not conflict resolution in the sense of stopping ware and violence, but conflict resolution in the sense of avoiding the level of conflict that produces war and violence.
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Issue
Water
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Basic observation
Water is essential to life, and increasingly a cause of conflict.
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Prevailing response
Water is a critical component of life, and there is a need to have the sort of infrastructure that makes access to water easy and efficient. But this investment has only been done in rich countries ... poor countries do not have the needed infrastructure and do not have adequate supplies of water. In many places water is wasted ... on other places there is no water to use, let alone waste. Like so many other things in the RDS, water is a subject of dialog and discussion, but there is a shortage of practical investment.
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A better response
Progress towards better water supplies is essential, and needs to be done community by community to get a reasonably improvement soon, especially where there are serious health problems associated with water supply. A lot of improvement can be done with small scale works, but large populations will need major civil works in order for the supply improvement to be to scale and efficient.
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Issue
Water pollution
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Basic observation
Water pollution is a serious by-product of modern agriculture and industry.
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Prevailing response
Water pollution was disastrous in Europe, the USA and everywhere there was industrial development until the 1950s when serious clean-up started. Modern industrial organizations need not be great polluters, but will be unless there is legislation, regulation and enforcement to operate to high water effluent standards.
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A better response
There is a lack of community information about water pollution and polluters, and no universal systems that can hold polluters accountable. The technology to operate in a pollution free manner is available, but it has costs ... but usually smaller than the societal cost of pollution.
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Issue
Wealth creation
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Basic observation
Wealth creation has become a big driver of the rich economies, but is missing from poor economies.
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Prevailing response
Wealth creation in poor economies is concentrated into a small local elite and/or is diverted to the internationally powerful. This is not an easy thing to change, but poverty does not get reduced when wealth creation is almost exclusively benefiting the already rich and the powerful.
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A better response
Wealth creation needs to be the foundation for socio-economic progress, but the allocation of wealth between the various stakeholders should be fair and equitable. Wealth creation should be subject to value chain analysis in order to see where the wealth creation is getting allocated, and steps taken to ensure that the value is not merely concentrated with the rich and powerful.
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Issue
Welfare
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Basic observation
Welfare is sometimes needed, but it is not a good economic system for all.
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Prevailing response
Essentially the modern relief and development sector is a welfare sector, with all the problems that come from a welfare approach to economics. In this model, more and more resources are needed where failure if the greatest, and the process of funding failure is never ending.
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A better response
Some situations justify welfare, but not many. Rather, effort should be diverted to helping to provide and fund opportunity, and then to have management information and accountability so that the wealth created from hard work and enterprise can be reasonably shared among all the stakeholders. With a wealth creating enterprise system, and an ethical framework, it is possible to fund local welfare without having to resort to international humanitarian relief or welfare.
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Issue
Wildlife
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Basic observation
Wildlife is a wonderful gift, but increasingly endangered.
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Prevailing response
The protection of wildlife by an international community of well-wishers is a start, but it cannot succeed without a lot of local interest and support. Generally speaking, wildlife is losing, though perhaps more slowly than at some times in the past.
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A better response
Wildlife in the context of history and habitat and wildlife tourism can become a profit center rather than a cost center in the overall relief and development scheme of things. There are ways in which wildlife and the environment can be brought into the socio-economic value equations to that everyone wins. Arguably, this is the best way.
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Issue
Wisdom
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Basic observation
Wisdom is valuable, but in rather short supply
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Prevailing response
Wisdom is not highly regarded, especially if it is contained in the body and brain of someone old and perhaps uneducated.
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A better response
Many people learn a lot, but few use what they learn to create wisdom. Wisdom is rare, but very valuable. It is the ultimate result of data ... that converts to information ... that becomes knowledge ... and ultimately wisdom. Decisions made with wisdom are perhaps the ultimate tool for the achievement of socio-economic development success.
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Issue
Women's rights
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Basic observation
Women's rights should be little more than the complete portfolio of human rights, with no limits based on gender.
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Prevailing response
Women have been marginalized in all sorts of ways by society, and the many institutions of society, including religious organizations. Women's role in society has become broader in the past few decades, but some of the progress is more perspective than tangible.
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A better response
Women's rights need to be integrated into the mainstream of society with no limit based on gender, and yet also with respect and consideration for the very central role that women do play in procreation and the role they play in forming future generations.
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Issue
Workers' rights
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Basic observation
Workers' rights played a big role in making the north rich and economically and politically stable.
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Prevailing response
Workers' rights are not getting a lot of attention from the relief and development sector actors, even though it should be clear that almost all wealth creation is built with worker involvement. The conditions of workers in many poor developing countries is disgraceful, yet it is not an issue ... in fact conditions are so bad in a lot of places that active efforts go on to keep the problems out of sight and out of the media.
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A better response
Community level management information can help to make worker conditions more visible, and for employers to be held to account. The goal is to have a universal reasonable standard of worker conditions ... and a workplace where competition does not drive standards down, but ensures that standards are universally acceptable.
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Issue
Workshops
(see also conferences and seminars)
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Basic observation
Workshops can help communication and facilities learning ... but it is not bound to happen.
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Prevailing response
Workshops are very common in the relief and development community ... they provide a very tangible way of demonstrating that something was done. It is less easy to demonstrate that the costs of the workshop were low relative to the value of the workshop ... in fact to demonstrate that the workshop had any value at all.
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A better response
Value destruction is the broad thematic reason why the relief and development sector has failed to achieve substantial socio-economic progress over the past 50 years. Activities are carried out that cost money, but in reality do little that results in durable value. Not many workshops are able to point at durable value, but without this, they are not worth running ... unless the goal is merely to entertain a lot of participants.
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From 'HUNDREDS OF ISSUES THAT IMPACT RELIEF AND DEVELOPMENT'
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To find this book, open the Lulu webpage ... then search for PETER BURGESS
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Open the Lulu webpage
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