Basic Needs Approach (BNA)

The need to address basic needs in development is not an entirely new concept. Biblically, Christ entreated Christians to often recite the ‘Lord’s Prayer’, a part of which reads ‘Give us today our daily bread’. He also fed 5,000 people with five loaves of bread and two fish (Bible, 1982, p. 2114). The prayer and the miracle performed in feeding the people are surely invocations of minimum satisfaction of basic material needs. It is also posited by Gultang (undated) that Marx’s entire theorizing were actually based on thinking about needs while Gandhi, deeply inspired by Christianity together with his Hindu background, often worked with the intent of improving the lot of those in most need.

There have been several works on BNA. These according to Alkire (2002) include Maslow (1943, 1954, 1968, 1971) on the hierarchy of needs; Martha Nussbaum (2000) on basic human capabilities; Manfred Max-Neef (1991) on the axiological and existential categories of needs; Deepa Narayan et al. (2000) on dimensions of well-being; Shalom Schwartz (1994) on universal human values; and Robert Cummins (1996) on quality of life domains. The following section discusses the works of Maslow (1943, 1954, 1968, 1971), the earliest of such theorizing, which have had tremendous influence on the BNA discourse.

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1.3.1 Abraham Maslow (Hierarchy of Needs Theory)

The pioneering, popular and one of the most recognized works on BNA was that of Abraham Maslow. Maslow (1943, 1954) conceptualized five levels of needs which he deemed necessary for the attainment of human well-being. These are physiological, safety and security, belongingness and love, esteem and self-actualization needs. In 1971 they were expanded with the addition of self-transcendence—which is about the need to connect with something beyond one’s own self. Quite recently Maslow and Lowery (1998) further extended the concept to include cognitive need (that is, the need to know and understand) and aesthetic need (the need for beauty, symmetry and order).

McGregor (2010) stipulated that Maslow captured his needs as a hierarchy. This means that the attainment of those above (influence, personal development and growth) is dependent on the attainment of those below (physical and emotional well-being). The needs are also so hierarchically related that the people remain unconcerned with the attainment of the higher order needs as long as the lower order needs remain unmet. Based on Maslow’s conceptualizations, the lower four layers of needs are termed the deficiency or deprivation needs. These needs are so critical that failure to meet them leads to a compromise in individual well-being. These are security, food, shelter, personal safety, air and water and emotional needs which are deemed necessary for human existence. The upper four layers are termed the actualization needs—the quest for knowledge, leading to character development. The realization of these needs lead to a greater sense of wholeness and fullness on the part of individuals. On the attainment of transcendence, people develop deeper relationships with the unknown and the unknowable. People are driven more and more to connect to the world beyond their immediate self, gaining wisdom and enlightenment in the process. The need to address actualization needs is not driven by lack, but the quest for personal growth and the attainment of everything that is within human reach and capabilities (McGregor, 2010).

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McGregor (2010) further posits that Maslow’s two layers, deficiency and actualization, are strongly related. The hierarchy adopted simply proposes that lower level needs must be met before higher order needs can influence one’s behaviour. Huitt (2007) recategorized Maslow’s eight needs under three broad levels—self-existence, relatedness to others (personal identification with groups and significant others) and growth (of self- knowledge, competencies, character and relationships with the unknown and unknowable). Figure 1 depicts Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

1.3.1.1 Implications of BNA for land reforms

In the first place classification of some human requirements as ‘needs’ is mind boggling not to mention the fact that a qualifier ‘basic’ is added. Indeed these definitions fail to meet the elementary economic meaning of the word ‘need’. I am of the conviction that something can be termed a need only and only when its absence in one’s life could be deemed to be life threatening. So things such as food, shelter, water and air are basic needs beyond doubt but I cannot understand how aesthetics as discussed by Maslow could

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constitute ‘basic needs’. While human beings may occasionally want to take part in leisure activities or enjoy aesthetics, there are also several people who do not value the relevance of such things to their existence. And it can be categorically stated that these activities are not basic to human existence.

This notwithstanding, the BNA can be helpful in our understanding of poverty in the land reform space. This is so because land itself is an extremely important natural resource that could be classified as a basic human need. Indeed the case is made that land is the original inheritance of the human species and its alienation by one group of persons from the other is unjust. While land itself may not be seen as a basic need, it is required in the strife to address such needs. Constructing a home, putting food on the dining table and meeting other related human needs require land in one form or the other. In the developing world the relevance of land in addressing the basic needs of the poor is even more pronounced. This is so because the poor depend on land to graze their animals, gather fruits, harvest fuel wood, harvest timber and other non-timber forest products and produce basic staples.

Given this understanding, land reformers need to often ensure that the approaches employed to transform the access rights and use of land resources do not inhibit the ability of the poor to access the resources they require to meet their basic needs. I, however, do not buy into pro-poor land policies fashioned along BNA. This is so because policy measures inspired by BNA alone would not be capable of addressing human poverty. Such policies inspire land ‘redistribution through populist transfers’ which do not lead to sustained reduction in poverty (Birdsall & Londono, 1997, p. 33).