Sustainable Development, Poverty Reduction, and Agricultural Sector Privatization in the Developing World: Whether the Complementarity

The conceptual and operational dimensions of sustainable development, poverty reduction, and privatization strategies have recently emerged on the world scene as central issues in the debate on lesser developed countries' (LDCs) development prospects for the twenty first century and beyond. The paper seeks to clarify conceptually, the nature of the economic relationships between and among the three strategies, relative to explicit or implicit development objectives. Attention is focused on three economic elements of the strategies-economic growth, equity improvement, and environmental assets - particularly as these elements might converge or diverge with respect to development objectives. The paper concludes that economic growth, equity improvement, and environmental quality parameters do not necessarily move in lock-step with each other. By extension, neither do sustainable development, poverty reduction, and privatization strategies. Privatization can be a powerful vehicle for generating high economic growth rates. High and sustained economic growth rates are the conduits for attaining complementarity among economic growth, equity improvement, and an environmental quality objectives. However, the sources and patterns of economic growth factors resulting from privatization activities can cause non-complementary effects among the welfare enhancing elements of the three strategies. The major determinants of non-complementary forces associated with growth are market and or policy failures and the orientation of the technological practices.