"Small is Still Beautiful"

This book, by Joseph Pearce, appeared in 2001, one of a number of visionary works published around the turn of the millennium, which somehow seem to have been lost in the culture of size matters which has grown evermore in recent years. "Small is Still Beautiful" has a foreward by Barbara Wood, the daughter of E F Schumacher, who wrote the better known and certainly more influential "Small is Beautiful" in the 1970s. Yet Joseph Pearce's book is very well written, and endorced by key figures from the green, co-operative and social enterprise movements. In short, it is definitely worth a read, and it will certainly make you think.

For this reason (ie incitement to serious thinking), "Small is Still Beautiful" would not be welcomed in New Labour circles. As a the previous editor of the New Statesman, Peter Wilby, noted after his tenure there came to an end :

"New Labour welcomed ideas only within very tight boundaries, most of them technocratic rather than inspirational. New Labour is a tightly-corseted suburban party, and almost everyone connected with it - in academia as well as in Westminster - keeps the curtain tightly drawn lest the neighbours catch them running wild with ideas..." (Guardian 12.9.05)

However, this observation, I would suggest, applies not only to New Labour but also to wider society, including much of the environmental movement, with regard to green issues today.

Last year, whilst attending a planning inquiry a serious green man, whom I have known for many years, expressed the view to me that it was easier before the concept of "sustainable development" came into being. Whilst I find this concept useful, on the one hand, as something which encourages joined up thinking about environmental issues, and their relationship with economic and social considerations, I also found myself agreeing with my aquaintance.

I will use this analogy from the area regeneration context. On the radio last week, it was reported that representatives from UNESCO (?the United Nations Educational Science and Cultural Organisation) were to visit Liverpool to ascertain whether development proposals for the waterfront area were compatible with this part of the city's status as a World Heritage Site.
A man from the local preservation society spoke very eloquently on this theme - in fact the society had "called in" UNESCO - and also said, with some passion, that whilst he greatly welcomed "regeneration", funding associated with this seemed to have brought with it "a load of carpet baggers". The same, I feel, is true of funding associated with "sustainable development".

My feeling is that the "sustainable development" community (if there is such as thing), which began with strong links to the environmental and green movements now also plays host to "a load of carpetbaggers", which is not to say that, as with area regeneration, some excellent work is not being done.

Many environmentalists and greens have been suspicious - rightly so in my opinion - of large funding streams, whether from public or private sources, which may divert their "resources" from core areas of work. This is not to say that large projects and funding streams do not have their place.

However, in my view "Small is Still Beautiful" whether - and perhaps especially - in an over developed country such as our own, or in developing/less developed countries still very much applies. With regard to the latter, the award of the Nobel Peace Prize for 2006, divided into two equal parts, to Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank for their efforts to create economic and social development from below would surely have won the approval of E H Schumacher, and be hailed as good news by Joseph Pearce. Mohammad Yunus, an economist from Bangladesh, and the Grameen Bank which he founded, are world leaders in the provision of micro-credit.