by Mark Weston | Mar 31, 2011 | Europe and Central Asia, Off topic
A joke told to me by an unemployed Spanish friend today:
Three government ministers go on a tour of Europe. One is from Britain, one from France, and the other from Spain. In London, the British minister takes his European colleagues to see the new lighting system that has been put in place to illuminate Big Ben. ‘You see our new lighting system?’ the minister says proudly. ‘It uses all the latest technology – solar power, lasers etc, and tourists love it. We invested £500,000 in it.’
In Paris the French minister takes his colleagues to see the new irrigation system which is watering all the capital’s parks. ‘You see our new irrigation system?’ the minister beams. ‘It’s ultra-modern. It recycles all the water it sprays out, and works a treat. It cost us a million euros.’
Finally they go to Spain. The Spanish minister takes his colleagues to the countryside outside Madrid. ‘You see our new motorway over there?’ he says, pointing straight ahead. The French and British ministers peer into the distance. ‘No, we can’t see anything,’ they reply, confused. ‘Aaaahh,’ the Spanish minister says with a satisfied wink. He pats his trouser pocket: ‘That’s because it’s all in here.’
by Claire Melamed | Mar 31, 2011 | Economics and development, Global system, Influence and networks
What future for international aid?
Just because something, like improving political systems, for example, is important to development, does that mean it’s the business of development organisations? I’m not sure.
Think about the events in the Middle East. The revolution in Egypt will, we hope, do more for development in that country than any amount of NGO programmes or official aid. And there was probably nothing that donors could or should have done to encourage it, or shape it. So even if we can all agree that political events will shape development, that really doesn’t mean that outsiders need to get involved.
What are donors actually good at? We had Charles Kenny of CGD presenting his new book ‘Getting Better’, at ODI recently. As the title suggests, it is a largely optimistic view of the world of development and poverty reduction. One of his arguments is that donors haven’t been very good at encouraging economic growth – basically no one really knows how to do it – and so they, and their resources, would be more usefully occupied working in areas where it’s clear how to make a difference – vaccination programmes, for example.
Our understanding of what creates ‘development’ – or what enables people to live happier lives – seems to be becoming more complex as we understand more about what makes change happen. But maybe the world of ‘aid’ needs to move in the opposite direction and be a bit more modest, or at least transparent, about what bits of this development can actually be helped along by what kinds of outside intervention.
Can a donor really promote ‘empowerment’ or ‘good governance’ in any meaningful sense? Are even things like ‘economic growth’ beyond the scope of international aid? Maybe it’s better for outsiders just to concentrate on things that aid does well, like health and education and leave the really hard stuff to the experts – people who are living the reality of these things in the country concerned.
This makes me wonder if it might be more honest and more useful, to separate out outside involvement in different aspects of change. So maybe official development aid should be a much simpler beast, less worried about economic growth or political change in the long term and instead focusing in on a few things that we know will make a difference to people’s lives right now – health, education, social protection, infrastructure.
Probably promoting economic change over time is best left to those inside the country. Maybe outsiders can help most by putting political energy into the negotiation and administration of global public goods, like global tax rules, or rules on intellectual property or attempts to limit the impact of climate change.
And maybe politics should be more, well, political. Should advocacy NGOs turn into more explicitly political solidarity movements (like those which supported the African liberation movements of the 1960s and 1970s, perhaps?), who take their cue from the actual politics of the country concerned, rather than more generalised ideas of ‘empowerment’ or ‘rights’?
This is thinking in process for me. Does outside involvement in the economics, the politics and the welfare aspects of development need to be separated out like this? Is it a sacrilegious turning back of the clock or a needed dose of realism? Answers, please…..
by Alex Evans | Mar 31, 2011 | Conflict and security
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by Alex Evans | Mar 30, 2011 | Economics and development, UK
Bravo to Philip Stephens for telling it like it is on HM Treasury in yesterday’s FT:
The inflationary bust of the early 1990s shredded the Treasury’s credibility in setting interest rates. Tony Blair’s incoming government promptly handed control to the Bank of England. The global financial crisis exposed the dire failures of the Treasury’s fiscal framework. David Cameron’s response has been to hand fiscal oversight to a new Office for Budget Responsibility.
These were scarcely votes of confidence. Most institutions would have asked themselves where they had gone wrong. Yet by the accounts of ministers and senior officials across Whitehall, the Treasury’s swagger is ever more pronounced. It does not do contrition.
Exactly. HMT is undeniably full of very smart people, but as anyone who has worked in government knows all too well, the sheer arrogance of the institution’s culture is breathaking – as its tendency to bully, hector and throw its weight around.
This isn’t just whingeing from someone who used to work in another part of Whitehall. This culture is a serious problem because it creates such ripe conditions for failure. Look at how the Treasury bullied the IMF into toning down warnings before the financial crisis about the UK’s vulnerability to financial risks – in effect, taking the batteries out of the smoke alarm.
To be sure, much of the blame here rests with ministers – especially, in the run-up to the financial crisis, Gordon Brown. But as Philip Stephens notes, “I struggle to recall the slightest hint of any official dissent from Sir Nicholas [Macpherson, Permanent Secretary at the Treasury] or his colleagues”.
Not so long ago there was a long public debate about how the Home Office was not “fit for purpose”, which eventually led to the department being broken up. It’s time we had a similar debate about the Treasury – a department whose dysfunctional culture has done all of us a great deal more damage than the Home Office ever did.
by Alex Evans | Mar 30, 2011 | Climate and resource scarcity, Economics and development, Influence and networks
Prepare for some downbeat news:
People in the UK understand and relate to global poverty no differently now than they did in the 1980s. This is the case despite massive campaigns such as the Jubilee 2000 debt initiative and Make Poverty History; the widespread adoption and mainstreaming of digital communication techniques and social networks; steady growth in NGO fundraising revenues; the entire Millennium Development Goal story; and the establishment of a Westminster consensus on core elements of development policy.
By many measures we have made amazing strides forward in recent years, but the public have largely been left behind. The result is that we operate within social and, by extension, political conditions that are precarious in the immediate term and incommensurate to the challenges of poverty and climate change in the medium and long term.
This is the blunt intro to Finding Frames (pdf, 120 pages; see also this Guardian post), a new report by Andrew Darnton and Martin Kirk, on ways to renew the international development narrative in the UK. They have some blunt advice for NGOs, too, notably that they need to
“shift the balance of NGO public engagement activities away from ‘transactions’ and towards ‘transformations’, [which means] placing less emphasis on ‘£5 buys…’ appeals and simple campaigning actions, and more emphasis on providing supporters with opportunities to engage increasingly deeply over time through a ‘supporter journey’”.
I think this is a really important point. I suspect that a lot of people are currently stuck in a situation in which they
a) mind deeply about global issues like development and climate;
b) are rightly sceptical about what they can achieve through party politics and elections;
c) are equally sceptical about how much difference it will make if they engage with NGOs on the terms that NGOs offer (sign this petition, give us a tenner a month), again with good reason; but
d) don’t want to become Climate Camp style activists either.
My hunch is that the key to engaging these kinds of potential activist is to recognise that they actually want to go a lot further than they’re being asked to by NGOs or by governments. Three memes that I think might catch:
1. Even as pressure on government aid budgets starts to increase, I think we might see big increases in giving from the most committed activists. Look at this year’s Comic Relief haul – a record £74 million. Look at this guy. These may be tastes of what’s to come.
2. A major upgrade in tools for calculating the impact of your lifestyle – think ecological footprint calculators on steroids, that can grab data direct from online shopping orders and electronic utility billing, and that link up with social networks, leading to much greater transparency and gradually increasing peer pressure on people to reduce the global impact of their consumption choices as the climate and development impacts of current energy use patterns, diets and so on start to become clearer.
3. A shift towards activists expecting to have a role in designing and running campaigns, not just being petition fodder (c.f. my ActionAid report, which argues that “civil society organisations should embrace a change that is coming anyway, and put their members in charge of their organisations – using technology platforms to ask them regularly what to campaign on, where, how to do it, and how they want to be involved”).
