From an article in the November 2011 issue of National Geographic magazine on Africa’s Albertine Rift:
By the mid-1980s every acre of arable land outside the parks was being farmed. Sons were inheriting increasingly smaller plots of land, if any at all. Soils were depleted. Tensions were high. Belgian economists Catherine André and Jean-Philippe Platteau conducted a study of land disputes in one region in Rwanda before the genocide and found that more and more households were struggling to feed themselves on little land. Interviewing residents after the genocide, the researchers found it was not uncommon to hear Rwandans argue that “war is necessary to wipe out an excess of population and to bring numbers into line with the available land resources.” Thomas Malthus, the famed English economist who posited that population growth would outstrip the planet’s ability to sustain it unless kept in check by starvation, disease, or war, couldn’t have put it more succinctly.
More on Admitting Failure and Corporate Social Responsibility
Back in October, I wrote a long post about the seeming trend toward admitting failure (and learning from failure) among nonprofits. In that post, I made the point that admitting failure was the not-for-profit world equivalent of corporate social responsibility in the for-profit world.
The post generated quite a bit of buzz, and Valerie Bauman, a Seattle-based reporter, got in touch with me to discuss the idea of nonprofits admitting failure — and its relationship with corporate social responsibility.
Here is an excerpt from the article Valerie wrote at the time for the Puget Sound Business Journal:
Marc Bellemare, a development economist who teaches public policy and economics at Duke University, views admitting failure as a public relations move to enhance credibility and reputation, similar to touting corporate social responsibility efforts in the for-profit world.
“When I started hearing about admitting failure, it is very nice, but there’s nothing that prevents you from learning from your own failures without having to admit them,” Bellemare said. “For me, it really is a marketing tool more than anything.”
However, he said the move toward disclosure could eventually have a positive effect overall, when it reaches a tipping point and every nonprofit has to be more forthcoming about failure.
“We may soon be moving toward a new equilibrium where everyone has to admit failure, and say ‘where did we go wrong?'” Bellemare said. “Everyone has to look contrite in a way — or else they start looking suspicious.”
Still, disclosing the failure of a project or cost overruns is less scary for nonprofits than disclosing financial mismanagement or fraud, Bellemare said.
“That’s a whole different ball game,” he said. “I think it’s much more likely to scare away donors than failure of projects.”