Rivers of hope
By Renato Redentor Constantino
Welcome address for the workshop Demystifying the Asian Development Bank
Phnom Penh, Cambodia, 25 June 2008
Greetings first of all to good friends, new friends and people I will meet and get to know very soon. A big hug, in particular, to Raingsey, and another advance beer to my good friend Leak.
Myself and my colleague, Avilash Roul, are here to represent the Secretariat of the NGO Forum on the ADB and he and I are mighty pleased to be with you on this special day.
This day for us marks the start of many beginnings, even though we are all surrounded by endings and middle-grounds. This is what happened to myself yesterday with Avilash, and it was great to stand on a ferry in moving water, right in the middle of common waters, bordered by Laos and Vietnam and somewhere a little farther, Thailand.
All rivers have an origin, and today our streams cross paths once again, hopefully to merge with others in the future. Avilash and I and all of you here -- we all come from lands filled with rivers that cut through our people's histories. We come from different countries, yes. We grew up in different soil, and our mother tongues are different. But the truth is, in a very big way, we are all from the same water. We have all sprung from the same source. And maybe that is why we find ourselves together today, here in this room in Phnom Penh.
Rivers give us life, and as people this is what we are doing just by being here - to share and learn from the things that other streams will bring. More pebbles of experience, for instance. More strategies that like plants, we hope will take root or spread its seeds. Ideas that can take the form of a big juicy fish, or the complex grace of a clam or snail.
I wish to start talking to you in this manner because our job is first of all one that we forget so easily: our job is to look for and find the stories that matter -- stories about people and the environment -- and to tell them so that others may know, so that others can wake up, so that together we can wake up those who are sleeping.
In a real sense, we should not be experts that operate above those whose lives are affected adversely by unfeeling, profiteering so-called development banks. We must recognize that a large part of the knowledge that we possess -- the knowledge that has brought us to the world of NGOs -- come from stories of ecosystems and communities who are too often forced to shoulder the very heavy burden of development aggression.
We are learned, yes, and we can thank formal education for this. But we are wise, or almost-wise, because we continue to listen to and absorb the stories of communities and ecosystems that bear the brunt of greed, incompetence and malice.
Whatever we do will always be insignificant, a smart person from Asia once said. Whatever we do will always be insignificant. However, said the smart man, it is very important that we do it.
We have assembled here for a number of things.
1. There is an event, a workshop about that big thing called the Asian Development Bank. This bank likes to pretend that its middle word - development - is what guides its programs. But memory tells us that this is not true, and that the word that is most valuable to the ADB starts with the letter B, or Bank. And a bank's job is to make money - lots of it. I am confident that this workshop will give you an idea about what really makes this institution run, how it is built, what its real aims are, where it intends to take the whole of developing Asia, and most importantly, the weak points that we can exploit to stop the rampaging ADB boat, or at least, for now, to cause it to change direction.
2. But we are also here because we have, like I said earlier, an opportunity to share things. This last one is quite important and it is something that we often neglect. Change rarely comes as huge, flooding waters. Change often comes in increments, in small measures. Sometimes even just in spoonfuls. We need to remind ourselves that our effort to bring our efforts together is just as important as the individual efforts that we exert.
Our effort should be less about diagnosing what is wrong with "them" and more about what is possible for "us," said the writer Rebecca Solnit, and I agree with her. Our responsibility is not just to critique wrong policies but to provide the vision that others can follow as well. We should be known more and more not just as people fighting against something, but as people fighting for a better future. People who convey hope.
If we do this, I believe we will be like water - as droplets that can merge and move forward into something bigger. We will confront obstacles, yes, but we will move around them and through them. And the things that block our path we shall break down -- as droplets or as a river, the way a river moves boulders or the way droplets reduce whole islands into sand.
Welcome everyone to this workshop! #
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