Find the new article The Conversation by Vincent Pradier, PhD student at the Sorbonne Business School !
Formerly colonized countries are among the most vulnerable to anthropogenic climate change. These environmental hazards fuel the economic and social vulnerabilities they already face. This state of affairs poses a number of questions for international aid agencies and Western NGOs, whose model is often considered highly carbon-based and sometimes neo-colonial. In the current context, also marked by a drastic reduction in dedicated budgets, what practices have French NGOs put in place to transform their management?
In 1899, Rudyard Kipling, the British author of The Jungle Book, published a poem entitled The White Man's Burden, quickly perceived as a hymn to Western colonial imperialism. In it, he enjoined Western colonizers, particularly the United States, to send "the best of (their) offspring (the colonists) (...) to watch, in heavy harness, over a wild and savage people (...) half demon and half child" (the colonized peoples). This poem supported the definition of a particular concept, characteristic of certain practices in the international aid sector, entitled the "white savior syndrome" or white saviorism.