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If you take poverty alleviation, for example: fifty years ago, there was a theory that was saying that economic growth would eradicate poverty. And conditions of growth would be linked to infrastructure (roads, schools...). There was a lot of truth in that, but it did not help. In the late sixties, there was a real focus on the poor who became important in the debate. But there was a fallacy since governments thought they knew what people needed. Later, the seventies and the eighties opened an era of oil and liquidity crisis. We applied macroeconomic management that was short-term oriented and not development oriented. Today, poverty is being addressed from the point of view of the poor. So, there is a good chance to succeed eradicating poverty, if we adopt a more holistic approach. Poverty is not only material poverty. Poverty is also about environment degradation, health problems... The role of Civil Society is very important since we have to focus on the role it plays instead of looking at who is part of it. On what values should the Civil Society be based? I want fundamental changes in values. A revolution to change the course of humanity. We must bring humanistic values into economic activity, apply them to science – for instance, we have a moral and ethical dilemma when science does not try to find a treatment to a disease because only a few patients are concerned. Whether society is capable of maintaining these holistic values is fundamental. This is the great test! If we look at basic principles of religions, at platforms of political parties, at constitutions of any country or at the Chart of the United Nations, none says that we want to create poverty or racism. Theoretically, we agree that we need to have a set of values that will increase human well being. But there is a problem. Our societies are not capable of maintaining these holistic values when we go to development. We all agree, but when we look at the results of development, we find poverty. There is a breakdown in the system, which is caused by decisions. And these decisions are function of values that are at the beginning of the process. When television shows us results, it does not say anything about decisions or values. There is a very short-term oriented vision: politicians think that they are elected for a few years; I think that I will live for about thirty more years; and so on. Civil Society does not like results such as poverty or environment degradation. It wants to participate in order to change the decision-making. This governance structure is not only to be based on rules such as participation but it also has to have wisdom that is lacking today because rules and governance are based on the old system. To change the values is not sufficient. We have to provide wisdom, which enables new rules to operate. Wisdom is the fourth element in this chain-process and, today, few people are at this stage. For example, if democracy is to serve the market, it will produce wealth in the hands of a few. We must go to the wisdom of the rule. Values are a state of human being capable of yielding the right result. And these values are not just words. Peace, for example, is not a product, a commodity or something external – can you imagine: fighting for peace! Peace will come if we acquire a state of peace. In other words: we talk about self-realization of peace. Spirituality allows this because it is the path towards our own encounter. If bad results occur, blame yourself because those who decide are the mirror image of those who elected them. If values are a state of being, then we need to question the instruments that we use today, in order to search results that these instruments cannot attain. How do we do that? We must bring changes on three levels. On the institutional level, education must change. It should be based on being and not on knowing, having and doing. On the community level, we must start with a basic consensus: cultural elements that we all have such as the notion of family. We know what is at the source of us. On a personal level, we need to blend our inner growth. Our souls need food. Then, we will have a society with spiritual wealth. Today, we are going to a no hope situation, which corresponds to a material as well as a spiritual poverty, even in places where spiritual wealth has always been strong. We absolutely need to reconcile the material and the spiritual expressions of life. How do you conciliate this humanistic approach with your work at the World Bank? I believe that the World Bank is the most humanistic institution in the world. We have not been good at projecting it. The Bank is humanistic in the implementation of its programs because we put the people first. It is the empowerment of people. Yet, there is confusion: people judge the World Bank through its results. But we are not responsible for these results. The Bank cannot create new social architectures in countries where results are not satisfying. More than two thirds of our lending policy goes to education, health, nutrition, food security, etc. The Bank is not a foundation or a church; we play a role within development and we use material means as much as knowledge. We cannot maintain a set of humanistic values without material expressions such as schools, infrastructures, policies, money and so on. What about structural adjustments? People express discontent that mirrors discontent in our system: discontent with war, environmental degradation, unemployment, etc. We need to co-share responsibility. To assess the impacts of structural adjustments, we need to look not only at the results but also at the counterfactuals, at what was happening before structural adjustments: poor people were not getting benefit, countries were not in a good economic position... Those who are not satisfied with structural adjustments propose a new set of values such as empowerment, social justice, and participation. But if you fight for these values, you need huge adjustments in these societies.
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