LONDON, United Kingdom (IRIN) – The development community has traditionally held the corporate world at arm’s length, either ignoring it or treating it with deep suspicion, but there are benefits to cooperation, specialists say.

Peter Davis, a research fellow at Britain’s Overseas Development Institute, said: “In development terms, the debate tends to be polarized between those of us who think the corporate sector can be broadly helpful in development and those who think it’s one step down from the devil himself.

“But look at Anglo-American. Their procurement spend in developing countries is broadly similar to the British government’s entire overseas development budget. A 2005 study of Unilever’s activities in Indonesia found the company created 5,000 jobs in the main business, but supported 300,000 jobs in the wider economy.

“So why don’t development plans for developing countries involve the corporate sector? The UN development framework for Azerbaijan, for instance, makes no mention of what BP does. Given that it provides something like 75 percent of the economic activity in the country, it seems curious, to say the least, that its activities are not involved in the development planning,” he told an audience in London’s Parliament on 7 September.

The suspicion between the two cultures is certainly mutual. Anton Mifsud-Bonnici, from BP’s strategy and policy department, described the development community as well-intentioned but inefficient. “Yes there is a rapprochement, at least ideologically speaking, between ODA [official development assistance] and FDI [foreign direct investment], at least the rhetoric is such. But last year at the European Development Days in Brussels, there was not even one corporate sector speaker invited to speak.”

He says what companies such as BP bring to the development process is not just huge resources but their willingness to take risks. “We take the risks that allow the government to spend money in health, education and housing, and not, for example, explore for oil and gas and find a dry hole. That is a true social service.”

Other companies contribute to development more directly. When ArcelorMittal took over the old LAMCO iron ore concession in Liberia, it had to rebuild infrastructure destroyed during the civil war, including 260km of railway line, and the export terminal at Buchanan. “We have spent US$800 million on this project,” says Charlotte Wolff, head of corporate responsibility. “We have spent far more of it in Liberia than we originally thought possible. And our presence also sends a clear signal that Liberia is open for business.”

Stronger institutions

So how can donors work with big business to get the best results for development? The obvious way might be in improving physical infrastructure, but for Wolff that is not the priority. “We would very much benefit if the donors, bilateral donors in particular, would focus their efforts on strengthening government institutions – the judicial system, health and safety regulator, environmental regulator… As a company it’s not an area we can support, it’s not our role to be involved in the judicial system, but it creates a better business environment if all those things are in place.”

LAMCO, the Swedish company that developed the iron ore mines in Yekapa, once provided cradle-to-grave facilities for the town – schools, clinics, housing, recreational facilities, even a swimming pool, now cracked and empty. Local residents who expected ArcelorMittal to do the same have been largely disappointed.

“I think those days have definitely gone for having that kind of enclave,” Wolff told IRIN. “We do run the old schools, but what we have to do is build the capacity of the local government, because if you do it all yourself you risk a repeat what happened with LAMCO. Our key objective is to reduce the country’s dependence on us, because otherwise it is too vulnerable. LAMCO left and look what happened.”

The knack in working with the corporate sector, says Davis, is to get a better understanding of what it will and will not do. “In the case of ArcelorMittal, they needed those 260km of railway, so that is something they were always going to do because there is a very solid commercial necessity for it. Then there are things they might do if there was a better framework in which to operate – and that could include things like better safety standards. There’s stuff they might do further down the line, and then there are things they are never going to do.”

Wolff’s plea for more effective regulation was met with some scepticism. Alex Prats, Oxfam’s former regional director for West Africa, said his experience had been that the private sector benefited from weak government – the weaker the governments, the better the contracts, the fewer taxes they pay, the less pressure to respect human rights. “My experience is that companies maximize their profits when governments are weaker.”

But Mifsud-Bonnici said any benefits from dealing with weak governments were only ever short term. “If you sign a contract with someone weak then it just gets renegotiated when the price changes, or when the government starts to enjoy the fruits and begins to think it can do better without you!”

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– Provided by Integrated Regional Information Networks.

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The Collection runs a series of exhibitions and themes across the year.

The Castle

Lincoln Castle was built on a site that was previously occupied by the Romans. Just after the battle of Hastings, William the Conqueror began building the castle in 1068.

The castle was used for 900 years as a court and prison with many people being executed on the ramparts.

Original features still remain and visitors get great views of the Cathedral, the city and the surrounding countryside from the wall walks.

Lincoln Castle is situated in the North centre of Lincoln. The nearest parking facilities can be found at The Lawn Visitor Centre offer the nearest parking with other places in Union Road, Lincoln and Westgate Carpark, Westgate.

The Museum of Life.

The largest and most diverse Community Museum in the County

Our rich and varied social history collection reflects and celebrates the culture of Lincolnshire and its people from 1750 to the present day. Exhibits illustrate commercial, domestic, agricultural, industrial and community life.

As the home to an authentic World War One tank named “Flirt” we also house the interactive galleries of the Royal Lincolnshire Regiment, which have won prestigious national awards. Perhaps you can find information about family members who served here?

Close to the museum you can visit the working 18th century windmill, Ellis’s Mill, run entirely by the museum’s volunteer millers (weekends only).

The Museum is regularly described by its many visitors as “a Lincoln gem” and “Excellent value for money”.

We are pleased to offer a wide range of services including exhibitions in our community gallery, a vibrant special events programme, and education sessions linked to the National Curriculum. We also have a number of ‘loans boxes’ which can be hired by community organisations or schools and offer the chance to discover and handle object from the past.

The museum is fully accessible to wheelchairs users and has a tearoom, gift shop and free parking for cars and coaches.

The Cathedral

Looking at the West front of Lincoln’s fine Cathedral Church of St.Mary, past the pageant of ancient buildings outside the castle walls, the view of its historic soaring towers is awesome. This is the cathedral which John Ruskin called ” the most precious piece of architecture in the British isles” in this Ruskin was right, its sheer beauty is simply magical and its towers can be seen from all around the city.

The Norman cathedral was begun in 1072, and parts from this period can be seen at the west end of the building, where three elaborate portals are surmounted by an exquisite sculptured frieze from 1145. Mostly the cathedral is Gothic in style, and much of the church dates to after an earthquake of 1185. It has been little altered since this time.

The choir was rebuilt in 1192, this was followed by the rebuild of the western part of the church. The Angel choir, so called for its magnificent decoration and huge expanses of stained glass, was added between 1256-80. There-after only minor additions were made.

Local government leaders already were concerned when President Obama’s fiscal …

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Berlin, Germany (Community News) – By: Babs Verblackt

Louder voices and more demand for new tools against tuberculosis (TB) from people and communities are needed to push the fight against the airborne disease, participants of the 41st Union World Conference on Lung Health in Berlin, Germany (November 11-15) stressed.

“Governments don’t support TB research and development enough. We have to empower communities with more knowledge on TB issues to move governments to do something,” Lucy Ghati, Community Representative to the Stop TB Partnership’s Working Group on New TB Vaccines and Program Officer of the National Empowerment Network of People Living with HIV and AIDS in Kenya remarked at a press briefing on the state of TB vaccine development. “Without being pushed governments won’t do anything,” she added. “But we need new commodities to address TB and HIV: new diagnostics, better drugs and – if we want to have a long term solution – new vaccines.”

The current diagnostics, drugs and vaccine against TB are outdated and not efficient enough. Peg Willingham, Senior Director External Affairs at the Aeras Global TB Vaccine Foundation, presented the example of TB vaccines in a separate media meeting held to brief journalists on key issues on the conference agenda. BCG, the only currently available vaccine against TB, is partly effective against severe forms of childhood TB but fails to prevent the most prevalent form, pulmonary tuberculosis in adults. Researchers around the world are working to develop new, more effective and safe vaccines, which will be affordable and available worldwide.

“It is important that the community is involved in the research. Therefore, our clinical trial research partners in the countries where we test new vaccines do a lot of community outreach,” Willingham explains in an interview with CNS, citing different ways to engage and inform people such as through radio programs, outreach to schools, and comic books.

It is also essential to consider the perspectives of the decision makers at national levels who will play the leadership role in rolling out future new vaccines. “We want to make sure that what we are doing is what countries want,” Willingham said. Aeras works to involve communities at all levels of society, as demonstrated by a recent market study done among national-level decision makers in high TB burden countries. The study, still in preliminary form, showed that TB is considered a significant health problem that does not get the attention it deserves.

“It would be a kind of a virtuous circle if people from the community said new vaccines are something they want,” said Willingham, explaining that community engagement helps build demand for vaccine research and development, and it fosters clinical trial recruitment. Local involvement and demand is essential to building government support for research.

An added challenge to building demand for vaccines is that prevention is often overlooked. As Willingham explained, vaccines administered in childhood that have worked in preventing illness are quickly forgotten. The cause and effect relationship of vaccines and the disease they prevent are not immediate, as with medication that quickly provides relief.

Stigma surrounding people with TB and the lack of advocates willing to add their voices to public calls for new TB vaccines also contributes to the lack of awareness about the inadequacies of BCG and the need to improve or replace it.

“People are always surprised to hear still two million people die of TB every year,” Willingham says. “More people need tell to their personal stories and provide the face of people with TB. We have to figure out a way to reduce that stigma, figure out how to get people to feel safe and brave to speak up because otherwise people will keep dying quietly, behind closed doors, and it will never get any better.”

Joris Vandeputte, Senior vice president advocacy and resource mobilization at TuBerculosis Vaccine Initiative (TBVI) reaffirmed the need to deal with stigma at the TB vaccines press briefing. “Stigma has consequences for advocacy efforts and resource mobilization for TB as well,” he said, at the same time acknowledging the achievements made with the (limited) funding available. “There are currently 12 vaccine candidates ready to be translated into vaccines that are globally accessible as well as promising diagnostics and treatment avenues. We have to work hard to translate these into products ready to be used in the field. For vaccine candidates to be translated, financial resources must be multiplied by 3 to 4 compared with the present effort. To overcome this huge challenge, we will have to be innovative.”

Babs Verblackt – CNS

(The author is a journalist writing for Citizen News Service (CNS) and Associate Communications at TuBerculosis Vaccine Initiative – TBVI. Website: www.citizen-news.org )

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