by Alex Evans | Sep 23, 2010 | Economics and development, Global Dashboard, UK
Amid the whirlwind of papers published to coincide with the MDG Summit in New York this week, there’s one that you absolutely must read: this report by Andy Sumner from the Institute of Development Studies, which argues that most of the world’s poor people no longer live in poor countries (i.e. low income ones – which the World Bank defines as those in which annual per capita income is less than $995). Here’s the punchline:
In 1990, we estimated that 93 per cent of the world’s poor people lived in low income countries (LICs). In contrast, in 2007-08 we estimate that three quarters of the world’s approximately 1.3 bn poor people now live in middle income countries (MICs) and only about a quarter of the world’s poor – about 370m people – live in the remaining 39 low income countries, which are largely in sub-Saharan Africa.
Andy’s findings are a very big deal, because they directly affect the question of where the UK should concentrate its development resources – and strongly call into question a core pillar of DFID’s current approach.
When I arrived at DFID as a novice Special Adviser in 2003, the department was hugely enthusiastic about a target of spending 90% of the UK’s aid in low income countries (the so-called ’90-10 target’).
This was in turn based on research by two economists, David Dollar and Paul Collier, which argued that to get most bang for your buck with your aid, you should concentrate it on good-performing (as opposed to fragile) low income countries (see this 1999 World Bank paper of theirs for more). This argument got a warm reception among senior DFID officials and the main development NGOs – in particular because so many of them adhered to a development paradigm that emphasised spending money as the key means of delivering poverty reduction.
One corollary of the Dollar-Collier argument was that fragile or conflict-affected low income countries were seen as offering less good rates of return on aid. While DFID more or less bought that argument in 2003, it largely reversed its position after that as it internalised what conflict does to prospects for poverty reduction and development, particularly from DFID’s 3rd White Paper in 2006 onwards. (And, as Richard noted in a recent post, new International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell looks set to continue that process.)
But the other corollary of the Dollar-Collier thesis was that middle income countries were also seen as less effective places to target UK aid – an issue that came to a head in 2003, when DFID came under huge pressure from Number 10 to increase massively its spending in Iraq, a middle income country.
Hilary Benn had been in post as Secretary of State for literally a few hours when he faced the decision of which programmes would have to be cut – and, by extension, whether DFID would maintain the 90-10 target. The NGOs we consulted were categorical: if DFID dropped the target, they would regard it as an act of war.
So with Number 10 demanding cash for Iraq on one hand and NGOs demanding the 90-10 target on the other, there was only one way to satisfy both: a veritable bonfire of middle income country programmes other than Iraq. Many programmes had their budgets slashed to the bone; many more had their offices closed altogether (see this Guardian coverage from the time).
Of course, all this was seven years ago, back in those strange days immediately after the invasion of Iraq. But bear in mind that 2003 proved to be the starting gun on a process that has continued since then, and which will soon reach its logical conclusion – when DFID closes its China programme. Andy’s research poses the question: is this actually what we should be doing?
Of course, the obvious counter-argument is that that it’s ridiculous for the UK to be sending aid to, say, China when China has its own aid programme in Africa. And if – like Dollar and Collier in 1999 (or, one might argue, like Bono or Jeff Sachs today) – you think development is primarily about spraying money at poor countries, then that’s entirely logical.
But the point is that there’s more to development that just disbursing aid money. As I argued in a post last year (see also this one),
If we really want a full-spectrum approach to development, we need to place a bit less emphasis on aid and a lot more on political economy work in countries – the slow, steady process of using influence at the margins to work with progressive drivers of change towards pro-poor political outcomes in country.
That’s what DFID’s middle income country programmes were all about – and why it was such a tragedy to see them closed down. That’s why DFID needs to retain a sizeable staff presence in China, even if its budget there shrinks. And that’s why DFID’s people are as important as the size of its budget – and why it was so disastrous for DFID to lose one in six staff in “efficiency savings” under Labour, and why it will be nothing short of catastrophic if the same again happens under the current government.
Development policy needs to be about poor people, not just poor countries. Once we reframe our objectives in that light, we’ll find ourselves embarking on reconsideration of some fairly fundamental principles about how and where we do development.
by Richard Gowan | Sep 21, 2010 | Cooperation and coherence, Europe and Central Asia, Global system
Bruce Jones and I have just published a short piece on the Brookings website pointing out that (i) there’s a growing sense that UN reform, and especially Security Council reform, is urgently needed after the financial crisis, but (ii) it’s not clear who’ll lead it….
Unlike his predecessor Kofi Annan, who strongly advocated Council reform, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon isn’t inclined to lead on the issue. Ban is a conciliator, and his public statements suggest that he has an oddly ambiguous attitude to the U.N.’s global role. At times he insists that the organization is indispensable—at others, he is very realistic about its limitations. He’s also up for re-election in 2011. Seizing the banner of Security Council reform would make him enemies he can’t afford.
Nicolas Sarkozy, himself facing elections in 2012, thinks he may be the man for the job. France is hosting both the G-20 and the G8 next year, and Sarkozy has announced he’ll take this opportunity to launch sweeping reforms of international financial institutions—and that the changes could spur an overhaul of the Security Council as well.
Sarkozy’s vision has been criticized as over-ambitious and designed to win him kudos at home. This isn’t entirely fair. At a minimum, the French president has laid out a coherent vision of what a grand bargain on multilateral reform would look like. If he can catalyze serious inter-governmental debate on the issue, it will be a major step forward. But it’s unlikely that France will manage to win consensus on a dramatic package of reforms in a year.
So who can lead on UN reform these days? Our answer is here.
by Richard Gowan | Sep 21, 2010 | Africa, Cooperation and coherence, Economics and development, Influence and networks, UK
Gordon Brown is angry. Very angry. About international development.
Speaking in New York, Mr Brown said he wanted to “press, inspire and push” people to see the virtues of education. Ensuring education for all was an issue of “security, anti-poverty and health”, he added.
“I’m angry because we made commitments that we would meet these Millennium Development Goals,” he told the BBC at a meeting to review progress towards them.
Exactly how angry is the former prime minister? His current level of crossness knows no precedent, as he noted in an op-ed in yesterday’s FT about backsliding on aid for education in the developing world.
I have taken a new role with the Global Campaign for Education because I am angrier than ever about the injustice and waste in denying education.
Uh-oh. Where could this intensely bad mood lead?
“Quite frankly, if I don’t see progress on education in the next year, it’s going to be slobbering beast-man time. And you won’t like that,” the premier told an audience in New York.
Oh, all right, I made that last one up. To be serious: (1) anyone who cares about the politics of development should be glad that Brown is back in the game already, as he’s such a heavy-hitter on the issue; (2) the Global Campaign for Education is a great cause for the former PM to promote; but (3) is it really wise for a politician with a reputation for gigantic rages to use “anger” as his trademark in post-premiership life?
By chance, the BBC has just published an account of GB’s time in Downing Street:
“Gordon would shout and be exasperated and angry about things, but it was always for the right reasons,” says his Director of Strategy, David Muir. “His boss is the British public and he’s got to be demanding of his team, and if that meant he lost his temper, sometimes he lost his temper.”
Fair enough, but it might be useful to pursue good causes out of office in a calmer fashion. An angry prime minister is one thing. An angry elder statesman is another, and potentially less influential. There is a risk of going too far down the Bob Geldof route of outraged advocacy… impassioned, yes, but so cross that the public just gets used to it. If Brown wants use occasional anger to “press and push” for action, showing some temper may be a useful tactic. But if his goal is to “inspire” as well, as he told the BBC, then he should reach for finer adjectives than “angry”.
by Richard Gowan | Sep 21, 2010 | Influence and networks, North America, Off topic
NYU’s Center on International Cooperation – where I’m an associate director and Alex and David are fellows – has launched a facebook page. Access it here for updates on all our brilliant, cooperative thoughts. Go there now, and you can see a video of me using the words “America” and “decline” in the same sentence on Fox News…
by Richard Gowan | Sep 17, 2010 | Cooperation and coherence, Europe and Central Asia, Global system
This week, a resolution granting the EU a special status at the UN was postponed by a vote of 76 states to 71 (the rest abstained or didn’t vote). European diplomats have been working hard to get this resolution since the Lisbon Treaty passed. What went wrong? EUobserver has the story:
The European Union’s surprise upset in New York this week in its attempts to win expanded rights at the United Nations was a result of “ramshackle” strategy that even disgruntled some of the bloc’s closest allies, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, according to diplomats close to the proceedings.
“One word describes how the EU acted there: Confusion, overall confusion,” one diplomat told EUobserver. “It was a ramshackle, pretty disorganised EU strategy,” the official continued. “The process fell apart. It was not thought through properly and their people just did not consult widely.”
“They did not really consider the possible objections, especially from the Caribbean, and thought they would just die away.” Another diplomat described it as “an absence of tactical nuance”.
Oops! The basic accusation here – that the EU’s members have lost the art of gaming the UN system – echoes the conclusions of a report for ECFR by Franziska Brantner and myself in 2008. Back then, some European officials whole-heartedly agreed with our criticisms. Others insisted that their coordination and outreach were just fine.
Funnily enough, we’re publishing an update to that report next week. I can’t give away the conclusions… let’s hope that this week’s set-back, which may prove ephemeral, means that people notice what we say.
