Diversidad cultural y desarrollo

El Informe sobre Desarrollo Humano, elaborado por el Programa de Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo, pone su atención este año en la diversidad cultural. El respeto a la diversidad resulta ser un factor crucial para el desarrollo pero, como apunta The Economist, la diversidad también presenta desafíos para los países en desarrollo.

Diversity and development might seem to sit oddly together. But they are intimately linked, and the report seeks to show that they are not related in the way many people assume. The UNDP’s press release says unambiguously that “there is no evidence that cultural diversity slows development”, and dismisses the idea that there has to be a trade-off between respecting diversity and sustaining peace. Some of the world’s richest and most peaceful countries are historically multi-ethnic, such as Switzerland, Canada and Belgium. And most of the world’s richest countries are now the destination of immigrants from around the world, making America, Britain and other wealthy nations hugely diverse.

But there is some evidence that diversity has costs. In a recent book, “The Size of Nations”, two economists show that managing ethnic diversity is expensive, as governments must deal with the demands of groups competing for scarce resources. In the United States, a study has shown that people are willing to pay more for services like education if they can live with people more like them in ethnicity and class. In other words, people place a value on being with others like them. Multi-ethnic nations have been breaking apart recently (the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia); few countries have merged during the same period, and those that have were ethnic mates (East and West Germany, North and South Yemen).

A quick look at the Human Development Index (HDI), released each year in the report, seems to support the idea that diversity has its costs. In the bottom 35 countries ranked as having “low human development”, all but three are in vastly diverse Africa, where borders drawn by colonialists showed no respect for tribal, linguistic or religious identities. Meanwhile, while single-ethnicity states are rare (just 30 countries in the world do not have a religious or ethnic minority that constitutes at least 10% of the population), they are strongly represented at the top of the HDI: places like Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, Japan, Ireland and Austria.

One of the authors of the report, Stefano Pettinato, acknowledges that diversity can be a source of problems. But the report’s intention, he says, is to reject the simple causal link that diversity hampers development. He points to rich countries that are also diverse, whether by history (Belgium, Switzerland, Canada) or massive immigration (America, most prominently). Yes, he says, ethnicity plays a role in the conflict and corruption that plague African development. But it is unscrupulous politicians who take advantage that are to blame—not diversity itself.