We Need to Open Our Eyes

There needs to be a balance between top-down and bottom-up approaches.

Question: When it comes to promoting sustainable business practices, do we need top-down approaches or bottom-up approaches?
Peter Brabeck: I think you need both.  I mean, governments have to put the frame.  Governments have to put the priorities, but especially on the water side.  The implementation will always be relatively local.  And you will only be able to overcome many of those things by convincing the local communities to do better.  I mean, if we want instead of open canal irrigation, you want to get to the next step which is irrigation, for example, which is of course, enormously more efficient than the other type, the old type of irrigation which was used by the Incas hundreds of years ago.  If you want to have this, you have to get, at the end of the day, down to the local community, you have to have a political frame where it allows them to make the necessary investments in order to get to irrigation, help them to better understand, help them to give them technical assistance in how to do that.  So, I think you need both.  You need, first of all the conviction from the top, which is government conviction, it's a political decision, and then afterwards, you have to work together with NGO's to work together with international institutions, that's why working with, for example the World Bank and then have to bring it down to the local community.  It's not either/or.  It is both.
Recorded on February 26, 2010

Question: When it comes to promoting sustainable business practices, do we need top-down approaches or bottom-up approaches?
Peter Brabeck: I think you need both.  I mean, governments have to put the frame.  Governments have to put the priorities, but especially on the water side.  The implementation will always be relatively local.  And you will only be able to overcome many of those things by convincing the local communities to do better.  I mean, if we want instead of open canal irrigation, you want to get to the next step which is irrigation, for example, which is of course, enormously more efficient than the other type, the old type of irrigation which was used by the Incas hundreds of years ago.  If you want to have this, you have to get, at the end of the day, down to the local community, you have to have a political frame where it allows them to make the necessary investments in order to get to irrigation, help them to better understand, help them to give them technical assistance in how to do that.  So, I think you need both.  You need, first of all the conviction from the top, which is government conviction, it's a political decision, and then afterwards, you have to work together with NGO's to work together with international institutions, that's why working with, for example the World Bank and then have to bring it down to the local community.  It's not either/or.  It is both.
Recorded on February 26, 2010