An excerpt from blog post “Rural Alaska Fuel Tanks: Fill ‘em Up!” - April 30th, 2009

How do we bring money into the state while controlling development and its impact on the environment?

Rob Rosenfeld:
The short answer is: There is no quick fix solution. A few things are needed:

1) Strategic Planning in communities that involves Municipalities, Tribes, corporations and the average individual. Strategic planning is ongoing and needs to be driven by local people to have a sustained result.

2) Multi-community planning can be key to solving regional problems by encouraging communities to work together on economic development, fuel delivery and other matters.

3) National awareness. This discussion is contibuting to this and more can be done. We need to put the phrase “Appalachia of the North” out there in order to get necessary supports from the federal government.

4) Learn from the hundreds of mistakes of the development industry in Africa, Asia and South America. Development has often been top down and has failed in many places because the wrong people were driving the process with hidden agendas.

5) Adding value to all products that are removed from Alaska is also very important. We sell trees, chips, and more that goes to Asia and comes back to us in the form of cheap furniture that we buy at Fred Meyer. The state can offer incentives for business start ups that provide 10 or more jobs and that add value to Alaskan products. Value can be added to the fish industry by smoking fish and preparing the fish products in different ways. We can even make dog food and cat food with some of the lower quality by-catch if necessary.

6) Check out the Denali Commission. Senator Stevens convinced Congress of the substandard living conditions in rural Alaska with regards to sewer, water and high energy costs. The Denali Commisssion has received about 300 million per year and guess what? The development mistakes that I have spoken of have been repeated. The Denali Commission focused on building huge bulk fuel farms and health clinics that no one can afford to heat. Money was used to build sewage systems. High cost systems were built and about 25% have failed because they are not arctic appropriate and there was no operating and maintenence costs built in.
This money could have been spent on appropriate technologies and engaging folks in planning and determining their own future.

Read the books "Small is Beautiful" by E.F. Schumacher, "Rural Development" by Robert Chambers, and "Getting to the 21st Century" by David Korten.
After reading these books you will have a clear idea of how to support community-driven rural development solutions. A collective vision that improves lives is possible when we stop lining the pockets of big time contractors and work directly with the people at the grassroots.