The analogy was coined by Stephen Schmidheing, a Swiss entrepreneur and founder of the Business Council for Sustainable Development. (See Smith 1992, 75.)
Robert Deacon of the University of California at Santa Barbara examined the political and environmental records of 120 countries. The twenty high-deforestation countries (those losing 10 percent or more of their for- est cover between 1980 and 1985) are three times as likely to have mili- tary governments, four times as likely to have political assassinations, and twice as likely to experience general strikes, riots, revolutions, and regime changes. (See "Spectrum" in Environment magazine, November 1994, 21.)
The "ecological footprint" of the Netherlands, for example, is much larger than the country itself. Indeed, the Dutch require a land area fourteen to fifteen times larger than their country to support current domestic con- sumption levels. Economic analysis, based on money flows, is, Rees ( 1996) argues, particularly unsuited to understanding physical resource flows and transformations.
They may also be fundamentally different from GRSOs in their grassroots relationships. Islamic associations in Egypt, for example, have some char- itable functions and work in villages or urban neighborhoods, but in con- trast to most CRSOs, they have "replaced the traditional authority and control of local notables and bosses. . . . The religious networks make no effort to recruit local leaders onto their councils of administration, which consist exclusively of their own members" ( Zubaida 1992, 9).
Although they also exist in the Middle East, they have proliferated less rapidly than in the rest of the Third World and are more likely to be focused on religious or other traditional purposes than on development. (See Fisher 1993, 25.)
There are, however, areas such as Burma and parts of the Middle East and Africa where GRSOs are sparse or nonexistent (see Fisher 1993, 80-94). However, some countries of the Middle East, such as Jordan and the West Bank, have large and growing numbers of charitable organizations, including GRSOs that focus on community organizing and empowerment.
Whether or not private research centers are involved in grassroots research and support, they often become policy advocates on the issues that con- cern NGOs more generally. (See Levy 1996, chap. 5.)
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Questia, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. www.questia.com
Publication Information: Book Title: Nongovernments: NGOs and the Political Development of the Third World. Contributors: Julie Fisher - author. Publisher: Kumarian Press. Place of Publication: West Hartford, CT. Publication Year: 1998. Page Number: 32.
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