By Halina Ward

This is a post about terrorism, sustainable development, and the power of diaspora. And it’s a post that asks whether we might find ourselves in a different place now had Osama Bin Laden been poor.

There was a moment, back in September 2001 (but only the days that followed the 11^th of the month), when people active in the environment and development movements thought we might, just possibly, be about to have our day.

The common ground for proponents of ‘sustainable development’, which links environment to development concerns, is that as nations and societies we need to develop in ways that take account of economy, environment, and society in an integrated way.

Motherhood and apple pie? Apparently not, because wherever you might be reading this, it’s fairly clear that we’ve failed to tackle poverty and inequality on the scale necessary to ensure that we are able to meet the needs of the present generation. And we are clearly compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs as collectively we deplete resources, grow the world's population to levels that threaten our ability to feed ourselves, and alter the climate in ways that could prove profoundly harmful.

Like many others, the sustainable development movement was dazed (shocked and awed even) by the events of 9/11; and we were too weak for our shouts to rise above the din of invading forces in either Afghanistan or Iraq. And this despite the fact that many of us spent much of the next nine months or so following 9/11 engaged in preparations for the first ever World Summit on Sustainable Development, a once-in-a-decade milestone held in Johannnesburg in the summer of 2002.

Shout we did, though. Here, for example, are the words of the UK’s independent sustainable development watchdog, the Sustainable Development Commission, in a press release issued one year after 9/11: “In many parts of the Middle East, the kind of 'nothing to lose' despair brought on by chronic poverty, a degraded environment and the oppression of human rights, provides an all too fertile seed bed for the cultivators of terror”.

However correct this might be, the sustainable development movement wasn’t helped by the real world fact that Osama Bin Laden, member of a prominent Saudi family, could not be said to have been materially underprivileged.

This was an inconvenient truth for many of us as we prepared our narrative about the sinister outcomes of marginalisation, and the need to direct the world to a more sustainable future. Bin Laden’s apparent wealth got in the way of stories that sought to link marginalisation, deprivation, and social injustice to the extremism of terror.

And this brings me to the links between democracy and sustainable development. For however tempting it might be to suggest that authoritarianism or even benign dictatorship could allow for more rapid progress on issues like climate change, the messy reality is that democracy, with all its flaws, is so far the best system devised for respecting the dignity and rights of all human beings and allowing the insights and skills of all to shape society.

But it’s also a system that will need to evolve rapidly to stay resilient in the face of the kinds of environmental and social challenges that are now emerging: climate change, population growth and resource scarcity, to name but a few.

To use a rather culturally specific metaphor, the core problem is that 'turkeys don’t tend to vote for Christmas'. Current debate over climate change in the run-up to the Copenhagen Climate Summit shows that there are many people who believe that sustainable development makes a turkey of them. There is a perception that sustainable development compromises material wellbeing and therefore wider quality of life too.

And this brings me to diasporas. Diaspora financial remittances feed a great many feeble economies around the world. They can play an immensely important role in investment and rebuilding of communities, as in Afghanistan, where many ‘mainstream’ investors fear to tread.

Diasporas also act as political forces. Here in the UK, many activists were impressed and humbled by Sri Lankan Tamil protests, day in and day out, outside the Houses of Parliament during the Spring of 2009. Then there are the political roles played by Kurdish exiles, or Uighurs, or any number of disenfranchised or politically marginalised groups around the world. In 2008, Armenia, a country of 3 million or so with a diaspora of 6 million, created a Diaspora Ministry.

If there is something particular to diasporas in our interconnected world, what could be the role of diasporas in the pursuit of sustainable development in ‘mother countries’? How can the fact that diaspora citizens have feet in at least two nations be harnessed for development that is economically, environmentally and socially sustainable? And how could this be done in ways that allow democracy – real democracy – to flourish and evolve?

The point of course isn’t to suggest that diasporas should interfere improperly in the internal policy processes of other countries (though some do); rather that any kind of democratic vision of a global community working towards sustainable development ought to contain a distinctive vision of the role of diasporas.

In Britain alone, for example, there are almost a million British Pakistanis. How to hitch that fact to the sustainable development of Pakistan in the current time of rapid urbanisation, political instability and human insecurity?

There is a question about the role of diasporas in the struggle for environmental and social justice and the fight against inequality lurking in the shadows of The Samosa (if you’ll excuse the imagery) and in its pieces on social injustice and on environmental issues.

So I want to suggest that it might be useful to work through and shape a contemporary sense for how the UK’s diaspora communities could help to drive sustainable development; retaining a distinctive cultural role and contributing to sustainable development here in the UK whilst contributing with legitimacy, responsibility, and accountability to the sustainable development of other countries with which they carry a strong connection.

Fine words - but quite a task.

I hope that the pages of The Samosa will provide a space from which such a conversation could take root and flourish.

Halina Ward is Director of the Foundation for Democracy and Sustainable Development (www.fdsd.org) where this post has been cross-posted.