Need For A ‘Searcher’s Approach’ For An Incentive Framework Towards Sustainable Development
The concept of the ‘Searcher’s Approach’ is an approach focused greatly on contextual learning, indigenous knowledge, and locality-specific research for policy-making in sustainable development, in a diverse, heterogeneous, inequality-ridden country like India, (which has to make integral choices in poverty alleviation and environmental protection). It is now important to understand why the concept can be applied towards policy creation, and more specifically policy creation which intends to be an ‘incentive framework for sustainable development’.
While William Easterly clearly states that the Planners and Searchers approach are mainly approaches that are used to determine recipients and functioning of foreign aid plans aimed towards certain ‘goals’, with the distinction made by Easterly between Planners and Searchers, we can see how it can be applied towards program and agencies which craft environmental and poverty alleviation programs specifically in creating these incentive frameworks. Easterly thoroughly criticizes centralized, planners approach as a Utopian, and even goes on to state that words such as ‘goals, frameworks, strategy, framework’ as words used by multilateral, failing international organizations such as the UN, which he critiques as an agency which lacks accountability in terms of the large goals it declares and their ‘litany of failure’ in achieving those goals.
An incentive framework is basically a program or a policy where participants get incentives for verified, accountable eco-friendly behavior, such that not only is there a very small marginal reduction in impact on the planetary thresholds, but also there is a very small marginal increase in some areas of the social foundation. Therefore let us first understand the distinction between a planner’s approach and a searcher’s approach as Easterly describes in the context of foreign aid, and use it to apply to a sustainable development program/ policy.
With reference to poverty alleviation programs and those programs which aim to work towards a better social foundation, Easterly distinguishes that ‘historically, poverty has never been ended by central planning’ and that a searcher’s approach which works on ‘trial and error’ and ‘feedback mechanisms’ which create accountability is a far more superior approach in allotting foreign aid and utilizing it. While distinguishing between both the approaches in economic and political thinking, he lists the searchers as those who ‘find those products and public services which satisfy customers and votes’, ‘find things that work and get some reward’, ‘accept responsibility for their action’, ‘find out what is in demand’, ‘adapt to local condition’, ‘find out what the reality is at the bottom’, ‘find out if the customer is satisfied’. As opposed to a planner’s approach which approaches problems as he says as a ‘technical engineering problem’ and solves it through a single dimensional approach, a searcher thinks of the problem as one where the ‘answers are not known in advance’ but rather a multidisciplinary problem with a ‘complex tangle’ of political, social, institutional, cultural, ecological, technological (and so on), especially when we consider the problems of sustainable development. Therefore, a policy in sustainable development through this searcher’s approach which is based on ‘trial and error experimentation’ and ‘home-grown’ contextual, indigenous knowledge, we can finally begin to conceptualize of the incentive framework which is geared towards sustainable development.
With this sort of bottom-up intervention to craft environmental and social policies, many of the downfalls of top-down planner’s intervention are rid of, such as the problem of ‘isomorphic mimicry’ which is a ‘camouflage’ or ‘copy-paste’ of ‘organizational forms which were successful elsewhere’ but may fail due to its lack of adaptation to local, context-specific, indigenous factors. In the realm of sustainable development, many environmental and social programs which may work in some specific ecosystem may not work elsewhere, thus reinforcing the searcher’s approach in crafting policy in this arena. In the context of India, a searcher’s, multidisciplinary approach becomes even more important, given that it is the melting pot of different ecosystems, culture, practices, people.
With India’s unique position in the global climate dynamics, and the fact that it has a rapid pace of environmental degradation (on every planetary threshold), as well as an abysmal standing in the Human Development Indicator ranks (thus a low level on the social foundation as well), it has to craft unique sustainable development policies which adapt to the plethora of ecosystems and cultures which define the country, hence using indigenous knowledge (searcher’s approach), it can frame effective incentive frameworks towards sustainable development. A joint study by Chinese Academy of Environmental Planning (CAEP) and The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) on the development and environment of India and China concluded that ‘population pressures, changing lifestyles, and rising energy consumption’ in both countries pose a daunting challenge for the environment. As the study summarizes that “Both countries with their rising ecological deficits and high economic costs of environmental degradation are experiencing severe threats to their natural resource base. Though India and China may differ in the basic structure of their political governance, environmental protection has always been an important part of the overall governance structure in the two countries. Both countries have an extensive legal and regulatory framework in place for environmental governance though enforcement remains a concern. Overlapping roles of various institutions and departments addressing similar environmental concerns (for example, water sector) have led to inefficacies and delays in environmental management. Moreover, lack of vertical coordination has resulted in conflicts. So far there has been limited use of economic and fiscal instruments in both the countries, but there has been a growing recognition and emphasis on utilization of these tools for effective environmental governance”
It is evident that a centralized planning approach for environmental governance, accountability or mass action will not be sustainable given the bureaucratic tangles of the existent governance structures, and a searcher’s approach towards crafting an incentive framework in the Indian context can better results.
Whether India requires foreign injections or FDI inflows to form an environmental fund to solve its various environmental issues and social issues (land degradation, waste management, water pollution, non-renewable resource depletion, biodiversity loss, air-pollution, income and gender inequality, agroforestry all of which have implications on the Planetary Boundaries/Areas of Social Foundation), or whether it has the raise the money through other means, it has to deal with its dilemma in the global climate change dynamics soon. The fund can be created through the COD process (Cash on Demonstrated Success), for an incentive framework which in the long term will have intangible benefits). A searcher’s approach through a multidisciplinary mindset, using academic dispersion to generate indigenous knowledge can be used to create an incentive framework in India for sustainable development, especially given how diverse India is, enforcing a searcher’s, multidisciplinary approach (with trial and error, experimentation, academic dispersion, with funding on demonstrated success) as opposed to a planner’s, single dimensional, centralized approach.
