WATERLOO, Ont. -- The time has come, says a top UN advisor, to catapult development thinking out of the "largely linear and determinist" past and into a bold new-knowledge era.

At a lecture on Thursday, Feb. 15, to be held at University of Waterloo, visiting UW Prof. Naresh Singh will challenge the various stakeholders in global sustainable development to use the new tools he and other experts are creating. (The lecture is open to the public at no charge, but seating is limited. Please call to register: (519) 888-4973.)

"We have the tools to revolutionize traditional policy-making for optimum management of our environment," said Singh, who is also principal technical advisor in Poverty and Sustainable Livelihoods for the UNDP's Bureau for Development Policy.

All that is needed, he adds, is for the various stakeholders to come to the table, willing to listen, negotiate, and collectively put these new tools into practice.

"Recent developments in biology, economics, computer science and systems thinking and in social design and complexity theory are producing tools with phenomenal potential" for more innovative programs in sustainable development, he said.

In his role as Canada Trust/Walter Bean Visiting Professor in the Environment for 2001 at UW, Singh is challenging the various development stakeholders to come together and "close the gap" between policy theorists and policy-makers.

Singh's Canada Trust/Walter Bean Lecture is titled "Sustainable Livelihoods in Today's World: Insights from systems thinking and complexity theory."

He likes to tell the story about a successful young herbicide and pesticide salesman in the Caribbean countries. One of his most successful products, in terms of his own earnings, was effective in killing the weeds that choked canals.

But then this salesman began to wonder about the impacts of using the product he was selling. How were the fish who lived in the canal affected? And what about the health of people who caught and ate those fish? And the people who had once been employed to clear the weeds manually, who no longer had that work and income, how were they to survive?

And so the salesman became convinced that while the product was earning him good commissions, and certainly his employer benefited, possibly it was doing a great disservice to the health and livelihoods of the people who lived near the canal where it was used.

That young salesman was Naresh Singh. The questions he asked himself would lead to a turning point in his life, and eventually "to this path of development change I follow now," he said. That path began with a return to school.

As a graduate student, he investigated the effects of a pesticide widely used in the tropics to control a mite that attacks coconut trees, vital to island economies. While the pesticide resulted in no mites and large, perfectly formed coconuts, no one knew how much of the pesticide was getting into the coconut milk and ultimately into the consumers who drank it.

Singh demonstrated that the milk of coconut trees treated with this product contained concentrations of the pesticide that were six times higher than recommended for human tolerance, "and could be toxic at that level." After receiving Singh's findings, the manufacturer, a major European company, voluntarily removed the product from the market.

To Singh, both stories reveal "the unexpected -- that a product would do more than just kill weeds, but damage a whole community; that a company would recognize the potential for harm and stop selling what had been a successful product." And, in both stories, change came about only after the complex patterns of cause and effect on both people and environment were recognized.

Today, the challenge for all development stakeholders is in implementing policies that provide for future generations, and also for people who may be forced to do the opposite of those policies because "they are poor today" and thus don't have the luxury of planning for the future.

"We have to find the win/win options," he said. To do this, policy-making must be more inclusive. "We must let people recognize themselves at the heart of sustainable livelihoods," particularly those people whose lives are most affected by these policies.

This will require people in the developed world to let go of their "archaic concepts," such as the simplistic view that all poor people really need, regardless of where they live, is a job. (He sees the concept of "jobs" itself as out-dated.)

Rather, Singh suggests sustainable livelihoods as the "powerful construct" of three vital elements:

• work (skills to be able to do several jobs), plus

• entitlements (the social safety net, providing some protection from life's "shocks" such as loss of work or a disaster such as a major flood or drought), plus

• assets, including human and social capital, physical and economic infrastructure and environmental resources.

In traditional development debate, he said, assets, or the "four capitals" have been pitted against each other, resulting in a zero-sum game. But assets are synergistic, and must be engaged together. "We must build the asset portfolios of developing areas as the essential policymaking tool.

"Mere job analysis has never been useful (in successful development),"Singh said. "So we must broaden that to think of livelihoods, rather than just jobs. And the environment has to be able to support the livelihoods. We have to recognize that the environment is as important as the (other) assets or the work in the equation."

It is his mission to help policy-makers understand this insight and use it. "Why is it," he asks, "that currently, good academic thinking is not translating into policy? What must we do to bring all of the relevant disciplines together to sow the seeds for change? Why is there such a gap between the most enlightened thinking in sustainable development and what we are actually doing in the developing world," which, he added, often includes parts of developed countries, such as Canada's North.

The Canada Trust/Walter Bean Visiting Professorship "allows students a tremendous opportunity to 'look over the shoulder' of a ranking expert active in a field they hope eventually to join, " says Prof. James Kay, environment and resource studies.

Last November, Singh discussed the workings of the United Nations in a guest lecture at one of Kay's classes, answering questions about what it is like to work in development's political arenas.

As the CanadaTrust/Walter Bean Visiting Professor in the Environment for 2000/2001, Singh will spend a total of about six weeks on campus over the fall and winter terms.

During this time, he will meet with students and colleagues, guest lecture in classes, present the Walter Bean lecture in February for approximately 200 invited guests and continue his mission to build relationships and trust between environment and development experts and policymakers.

Born in Guyana and now a Canadian citizen, Singh was educated at University of Guyana, Indian Agricultural Research Institute (New Delhi) and University of the West Indies (Jamaica).

He was executive director of the Caribbean Environmental Health Institute before moving to Winnipeg to join the International Institute for Sustainable Development where he was program director for Community Adaptation and Sustainable Livelihoods and is now a senior fellow.

Since 1996, he has been a senior advisor and is now principal technical advisor in Poverty and Sustainable Livelihoods for the UNDP's Bureau for Development Policy.

Singh has served as an advisor to several organizations concerned with sustainable livelihoods policy development, including the Commonwealth Secretariat, Pan American Health Organization, Consortium of Caribbean Universities for Natural Resource management, Foundation of International Environmental Law and Development and Alliance of Small Island States.

He is the author of more than 100 articles, papers and books linking poverty, the environment and sustainable livelihoods and their impact on policy issues.

"Canadians spend over $2 billion each year in development aid. I believe Canadians have to demand better value for their money. We have to ask the hard questions," he said. "That money needs better thinking behind it."

On the plus side: "We have such a great opportunity; so many strengths, including this new knowledge. Now, we must bridge the knowing/doing gap by putting this knowledge into the policy."

Established in 1992 with a $1-million endowment, the Canada Trust/ Walter

Bean professorship honours the late Walter Bean, who was president of Waterloo Trust (which merged with Canada Trust) and is remembered for his commitment to youth, education and the community.

The professorship attracts outstanding research professors with international reputations in engineering, science and environmental studies.

"It allows us to get a tremendous visiting resource," says Kay. "Students, faculty, staff and the community at large, and that would include planners and government people at all levels, get this wonderful opportunity to interact with a respected expert, and possibly begin an ongoing relationship" leading to positive change.

Last year the post was held by Jeffrey Luvall, a senior research scientist at Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, whose specialty is the study of urban heat islands.

In earlier years, Joseph MacInnis, president of Undersea Research Ltd. of Toronto and advisor to the Titanic discovery team and David Schindler, one of Canada's leading researchers in freshwater environmental science and a professor at University of Alberta have held the Canada Trust/Walter Bean visiting professorship at UW.

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Release no. 4 -- January 9, 2001