Burkina Faso is one of the world's poorest countries. With per capita GDP at only $240 (1997), it's number 172 out of 175 countries in the UNDP's 1997 Human Development Index. Rates of literacy, life expectancy, and infant mortality are all among the lowest in Sub-Saharan Africa and the world. During the week I spent here, though, I noticed that market prices (both "mzungu" and local) were higher than I expected them to be. I’m usually a proponent of market economics, but I increasingly see the need for intervention in order to bring some level of subsistence to the general population of countries like this one. I'm sure it's the case that foreign aid represents the largest source of capital influx to the region, but I'm just as sure – despite people that protest world bank's and other agencies conditions and requirements, etc. – that they need help managing and arranging sustainable uses. I guess in a way it's hypocritical for us (meaning the western world, donor agencies) to think we can throw money at countries like Burkina Faso and say that it should be used to protect the environment in a sustainable way and be sustainable. Where we are today in the global evolution of energy markets and willingness-to-pay for natural resources like biodiversity, the value of products that result from the renewable energy systems that are set up or the wildlife ranches that are planned simply can't compete with the opportunity costs of some more rapacious use of the land or resources: slash & burn agriculture, cutting down trees at as fast a rate as possible, poaching, etc. The very nature of the term sustainable development implies that it should be profitable. If not so, then the only way to ensure that sustainability is to commit to ongoing and permanent financial support of these countries until such time (if it ever arrives) that the so-called sustainable use models we've imposed actually DO make sense and correlate with the global market value of its products.

I just finished a week here, working on a performance study of the Global Environmental Fund, and come out of it with the one overwhelming finding that no large-scale projects such as those funded by the GEF can be successful in the short-, medium-, or long-term unless they incorporate an element of development, i.e., poverty reduction, with the environmental goals that constitute the instrument's mission. I personally have no problem committing to a permanent reallocation of global financial resources, though I don’t most of my countrymen would agree with me. So a different model of structuring aid packages does make sense, and that’s what I've started thinking about; it's a tough slog, and I don’t know whether my opinion will ever count, but I guess I’m honing in on something here...