​Vadim Bolshakov

   When the U.N. Conference on Sustainable Development first met in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, its outcome document stated that the first and guiding principle of the conference was that “human beings are at the centre of concerns for sustainable development.”

At the time, it was a contentious statement. Yet it proved no less contentious when the U.N. convened a follow-up conference last month marking the twentieth anniversary of the original gathering. Popularly called Rio+20, the June 20-22 conference saw leaders of many Western nations argue that humanity is not so much a central concern as an obstacle or impediment to environmental protection and, therefore, to sustainable development.

For many, the term “sustainable development” is a nebulous concept. The U.N. documents identify three “pillars” of sustainable development — environmental, economic, and social. While the first two are usually given their fair share of attention, the social pillar often suffers neglect despite its obvious significance.

   Among the areas of development included within the social pillar is the essential role that the family should and does play in every society. Unfortunately, in this year’s Rio outcome document, “The Future We Want,” the only reference to the family is tied directly to family planning. Such an oversight can only be perceived as an intentional disregard of the critical role that the family has in ensuring the social development of any community or nation.

Regrettably, this should come to no surprise to family advocates who monitor the progress of U.N. and other international events. At the 2010 U.N. Millennium Summit, which was intended to review the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) developed a decade earlier, Susan Roylance of the Howard Center for Family, Religion, and Society was disturbed that “the role of the family or parents toward achieving important world goals” was not even mentioned in the outcome document. Along with various colleagues from the international community, Roylance partnered with the Doha International Institute for Family Studies and Development to release the 2012 book “The Family and the MDGs: Using Family Capital to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals” to serve as a practical manual to understanding how the family must be at the center of all development initiatives.

In surveying the U.N.’s 8 Millennium Development Goals — overcoming poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, promoting gender equality, ending child mortality, improving maternal health, combating HIV/AIDS and other diseases, ensuring environmental sustainability, and developing global partnerships — Roylance and her colleagues provide compelling evidence that respect for the family unit and family capital, in particular, will provide the long term solutions that everyone desires.

   Much is often made of the term “human capital,” and rightly so. But in this new book, readers are introduced to a new and equally valuable concept of family capital. “Family capital is the principle that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts,” according to Michigan State University. Whereas human capital focuses on the gifts and talents that a single person is able to contribute, family capital examines the contributions that entire families bring to the table—in a sense, a conglomeration of human capital.

   What does this mean in reality? Simply put, it means that often the family unit is able to do more when it combines it abilities rather than endeavor to tackle various challenges on an individual basis. Among the numerous examples offered in The Family and the MDGs, is the case of Mozambique, a southeastern African nation that suffers greatly from HIV/AIDS, poor education, insufficient food supply, and a lack of other basic resources, Yet it is there that an organization called Care for Life established the Family Preservation Program, which for the past seven years has helped train families in the most elementary of skills that those of us from developed nations take for granted. Among its outreach efforts, the Family Preservation Programs teaches families the importance of literacy and school attendance so that brothers and sisters learn to read and write alongside their mothers and fathers. In addition, mothers and fathers are taught the values of marital fidelity and non-violence within the home so that they can create an atmosphere that encourages positive home life, which in turn benefits their entire community.

   Then there’s the example of Seamay, Guatemala, where missionaries worked with local residents in a remote village that desperately needed access to a clean water supply. When the government refused to provide the necessary financial assistance, missionaries helped organize 323 families to each donate 15 quetzales (the local currency) each month and to each dig 20 feet of the six-mile-long ditch so that they could all have a fair share in obtaining and using the water supply. After the long process of working together toward their common goal, the local families were so united that they eagerly cooperated with the missionaries in launching new educational programs to improve local sanitation and adult literacy.

These two of the many anecdotes offered in The Family and the MDGs illustrate the critical role of the family in achieving real development within society. As world leaders after Rio+20 make plans for the drafting of Sustainable Development Goals to be launched in the near future, we can rightly be skeptical of any such efforts that fail to recognize the family as a basic building block for achieving real sustainable development. Let’s hope international policymakers give further consideration to the centrality of the family in building a future that is both worth wanting and also truly sustainable.

 

Christopher White is the International Director of Operations at the World Youth Alliance, an NGO headquartered in New York City that works to promote human dignity in policy and culture.