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Failing to deliver***

by IdiotSavant Thu Jun 29th, 2006 at 03:55:14 AM EST

From No Right Turn - New Zealand's liberal blog:

Last year, the worldwide Make Poverty History campaign put the leaders of the rich G8 nations on the spot, and forced them to pledge to do more to help poorer nations.  The final communique, while disappointing in many ways, at least promised something: an increase in aid spending (though far lower than claimed), better access to HIV drugs, and debt relief for the poorest nations, So, a year on, has the west lived up to those promises?

From the front page - whataboutbob

In a word, no. According to a report [PDF] from Action Aid, the rich countries have failed to deliver on their promises - betraying both their own citizens, and the world's poor. In Germany and the UK, foreign aid spending has actually fallen, once debt relief is excluded. A major fund to provide universal access to HIV treatments is in danger of failing, because donors simply haven't put their money where their mouth is. Economic "conditionalities" such as open markets and asset sales are still being attached to debt relief.  And there has been absolutely no progress on the real solution to third-world poverty: opening first-world markets and ending first-world farm subsidies.

Basically, our governments have lied to us, spun us a line of bullshit in the hope that we'd go away, and then continued business as usual. They cannot be allowed to get away with this.

Meanwhile, Tony Blair is making excuses in The Independent, saying that "We could never make poverty history overnight". But the issue here isn't the failure to solve the problem overnight; it's the failure of his government and others to do what they had agreed to. But rather than admit that, it seems that Blair would rather tilt at strawmen...

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Failing to deliver*** | 32 comments (32 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)
Re: Failing to deliver (none / 0)
Talk is cheap..."making poverty history" is just a PR stunt, it seems...

"Once in awhile we get shown the light, in the strangest of places, if we look at it right" - Hunter/Garcia
by whataboutbob on Mon Jun 26th, 2006 at 02:44:15 AM EST
Re: Failing to deliver (none / 1)
In Germany and the UK, foreign aid spending has actually fallen, once debt relief is excluded.

Why is debt relief being excluded in that figure?

The truth is that Make Poverty History made for a lovely series of commercials.  But, while I love Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie (especially the latter) as much as the next guy, the campaign was really a joke from beginning to end.  It is, once more, an example of people believing that, just as with the American education system, throwing money at the problem will make it go away.  That might work, if you're trying to quiet-down the press, but the problem remains.  Africa is still impoverished, and American schools are still run by incompetent, unionized, monopoly-granted teachers and administrators.

It might make us feel better to cut a few billion dollars out of African nations' debt, but that's not going to turn Africa into the next China or India.

Debt relief means nothing if they're simply going to borrow more.  (If Visa wiped out your account balance, what would yu do?  Most people will simply spend more.)  Development aide means nothing if trade barriers are not lowered.  Opening first-world markets is great, but third-world markets need to be opened, as well.  I'm with you all the way on agricultural subsidies.  It's just a matter of convincing America and Europe to stop pretending that our farmers are somehow more special than those in other countries (as well as other workers in our own countries).

Even if Blair had done everything the Make Poverty History campaign demanded, we would be in roughly the same position today, because the campaign was pushing ideas that were worthless.  Nobody wants to acknowledge that, but we all need to.

Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country.

by Drew J Jones (pedobear@pennstatefootball.com) on Mon Jun 26th, 2006 at 03:57:04 AM EST
Re: Failing to deliver (none / 0)
In Germany and the UK, foreign aid spending has actually fallen, once debt relief is excluded.

Why is debt relief being excluded in that figure?

I can think of no reason for that, really.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon Jun 26th, 2006 at 04:23:13 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Failing to deliver (none / 0)
Why is debt relief being excluded in that figure?

From Oxfam Press Release - 03 April 2006:

Key findings include:

The UK, France, Germany and Italy together counted a staggering €8.47 billion debt relief for Iraq and Nigeria as part of their Official Development Assistance (ODA).
Austria, which currently chairs the EU presidency, is likely to have inflated its aid figures by as much as 50% in 2005.
Italy is set to miss its aid target and the country's official ODA level is close to new member states like Malta, Slovenia and the Czech Republic.
"The credibility of the EU as a world leader in giving aid to poor countries is at stake. NGOs are watching closely in all countries to hold their governments to their pledges," said Han Verleyen on behalf of 11.11.11 and the Belgian platform of CONCORD.


And:

While technically permitted under OECD rules, European Union governments' insistence on accounting for this debt cancellation in their ODA figures contravenes the United Nation's 2002 agreement in Monterrey. The agreement calls for debt cancellation to be funded additionally to Official Development Assistance (ODA).


The struggle of man against tyranny is the struggle of memory against forgetting.(Kundera)
by Elco B (elcob at scarlet dot be) on Mon Jun 26th, 2006 at 07:55:36 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Failing to deliver (none / 0)
Is "foreign aid" to be understood as synonimous with "official development assistance"?

I feel the topic of comparing foreign aid is going to require the same kind of deconstruction as comparing unemployment statistics.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon Jun 26th, 2006 at 07:58:39 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Failing to deliver (none / 1)
There are a pile of assumptions in that that I'd love to see you unwrap and justify. Why would opening third world markets help? Would reducing first-world agricultural subsidies help the people in developing countries or just make foreign landowners and food companies much richer? If so, why?

I'm not convinced that economics has much to offer Africa: it seems to be primarily a political problem.

by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Mon Jun 26th, 2006 at 08:02:15 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Failing to deliver (4.00 / 3)
The assumptions in question are:

  • Opening first world agricultural markets would have the effect of making a large number people in Africa richer. That's a complicated chain of effects. I thought most of the effect would be felt in South America, not Africa?

  • That there exist theoretical conditions where opening local markets would be good for the economy AND that those conditions pertain in the local markets. The second part of that seems unlikely.
by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Mon Jun 26th, 2006 at 08:24:53 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Failing to deliver (none / 0)
How could reducing first-world agricultural subsidies hurt them, at this point?  If it only produced large agricultural firms in the sector, at least there are jobs gained and a chance at not starving to death, not to mention the opportunity for redistribution is various forms.  After all, countries need a tax base if they're to have welfare programs and well-funded education and health systems.  And that's working with the assumption of Africa under an agricultural sector in which large corporations take over.

More so than anything, opening up both first- and third-world markets would allow African countries to import knowledge, as China, Japan and the other Asian economies have done with the help of America and Europe.

Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country.

by Drew J Jones (pedobear@pennstatefootball.com) on Mon Jun 26th, 2006 at 12:11:34 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Failing to deliver (4.00 / 2)
Why is debt relief being excluded in that figure?

Because when governments promise to boost aid and forgive debt, you expect them to do both, not count one as the other.

And debt relief has had real effects in the countries it was granted to. According to this BBC report, the money freed up from debt servicing has allowed Zambia to provide "[f]ree health care... better roads and more secure food supplies". This makes a real difference, and its not something we should begrudge them.

I agree that the real problem is trade barriers, and it was the primary focus of the Make Poverty History campaign, precisely because it would provide such enormous benefits to poorer nations (some stats: The poor world already gains thirty-two times as much revenue from exports as it does from aid. Oxfam has estimated that increasing their share of world trade by only 5% would deliver them an extra US$350 billion a year - seven times more than they currently receive in aid. And the effects would be dramatic: it is estimated that every 1% increase would reduce the number of people in extreme poverty by 128 million).  This section of the message was ignored by the leaders of the G8, because their countries benefit from the current unequal trade relationships.  The markets of poorer nations are open (having been leveraged open by neo-liberal conditionalities attached to IMF assistance for decades).  It's the rich nations which haven't kept up their end of the bargain.

by IdiotSavant on Mon Jun 26th, 2006 at 08:07:40 AM EST
[ Parent ]
On debt reduction (none / 0)
Debt reduction means little if it only formalises the fact that these debts were not paid anyway - i.e. they change nothing in practice, even if they change formal obligations.

It would have a real impact if it applied to debt currently being serviced and if the money was allocated to other, worthy, uses.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Mon Jun 26th, 2006 at 08:58:28 AM EST
Re: On debt reduction (none / 0)
What is the proper way to deal with debt that was never paid (and will never be)?

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon Jun 26th, 2006 at 09:07:59 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Failing to deliver (none / 0)
One of the people who has made a career over the issues of debt relief and foreign aid is William Easterly.

I suggest reading his latest book, his thesis has been that most foreign aid has failed to achieve it's objectives. His analysis of debt forgiveness is equally harsh. Since he worked at the World Bank for many years he can provide an insider (minority) point of view.
 

Policies not Politics
---- Daily Landscape

by rdf (robert.feinman@gmail.com) on Mon Jun 26th, 2006 at 09:19:31 AM EST
Re: Failing to deliver (none / 0)

 "One of the people who has made a career over the issues of debt relief and foreign aid is William Easterly.
... his thesis has been that most foreign aid has failed to achieve it's objectives. His analysis of debt forgiveness is equally harsh."

 I fear that Western-based debt relief and foreign aid have "achieved their (real) objectives" which I see as presenting a consistent illusion of doing something positive about the matters while in fact seeking to push off indefinitely the day when these matters are really effectively dealt with--and, especially, the honest facing of the underlying political realities which ensure that gross poverty and economic injustice, to the benefit of the world's wealthy nations and the detriment of the world's poorest nations, continues and no more than lip-service is paid.

"In such an environment it is not surprising that the ills of technology should seem curable only through the application of more technology..." John W Aldridge

by proximity1 on Mon Jun 26th, 2006 at 10:38:45 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Failing to deliver (none / 0)
I'm never quite sure why keeping other people poor is meant to be good for the West. How does that work?
by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Mon Jun 26th, 2006 at 10:45:47 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Failing to deliver (none / 0)
The answer is in today's breakfast:
The psychologist Oliver James said ... "Studies of monkeys and humans show that their serotonin levels are raised by increased status," he said. "If someone's status changes for the worse, their serotonin levels fall. ..."


A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon Jun 26th, 2006 at 10:48:15 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Failing to deliver (none / 1)
Except we don't care about the status of remote people really, as far as I know.
by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Mon Jun 26th, 2006 at 11:19:37 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Failing to deliver (none / 0)
That's because we know they exist and have a lower status, which we want to maintain.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon Jun 26th, 2006 at 11:32:36 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Failing to deliver (none / 0)
I don't believe that: I don't believe that those people are real enough to count in our status calculations and I'm sure what research I've read agrees with me. Which, given the amount of crap I've stuffed into my head in the last eighteen months means almost nothing. Do you have contradictory research or are you just running on intuition as well?
by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Mon Jun 26th, 2006 at 11:35:16 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Failing to deliver (none / 0)
I don't have anything to go on here.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon Jun 26th, 2006 at 11:38:34 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Failing to deliver (none / 0)
Which means my tenuous belief that I read something that contradicts you wins. Yay for me. I can feel the serotonin flowing...
by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Mon Jun 26th, 2006 at 11:40:30 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Failing to deliver (none / 0)
But I'm not your neighbour!

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon Jun 26th, 2006 at 02:09:37 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Failing to deliver (4.00 / 2)
You just spend half your time on the same block, er, blog...
by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Tue Jun 27th, 2006 at 03:33:18 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Failing to deliver (none / 0)
But why don't I explain my intuition, and what I think I read, anyway.

We don't (in the main) really compare our status against people in remote countries (if we did their plight would might be bad enough to trigger our altruistic instincts). We compare ourselves to our neighbours. We don't even compare ourselves to very rich celebrities - though we might get a status bump by considering ourselves to know them and thus considering ourselves peripheral members of their in-group. Primate status instincts don't carry over to abstract people: it's too primitive for that.

by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Mon Jun 26th, 2006 at 11:44:23 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Failing to deliver (none / 1)
My intuition is it's more like a bell curve. There are people who have the brain wiring and/or environmental reinforcement to be very concerned at one extreme, and people who lack any concern at all at the other. In the middle are a majority who are somewhat concerned but unlikely to want to do much about it unless it affects them personally or they get a major news story to chew on.

The huge volume of personal donations that follows any major disaster suggests that there's enough altruism to make a difference. But structural issues in the world economy make practical expression of that instinct very difficult.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Mon Jun 26th, 2006 at 01:31:44 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Failing to deliver (4.00 / 4)
 "I'm never quite sure why keeping other people poor is meant to be good for the West. How does that work?"

  Here in over-simplified form (for the more full-detailed exposition, please refer to the works listed in  my recommended reading list(s) ) :

 Something like this:

  Briefly, the fact that unscrupulous, greedy and ambitious people who shall stop at nothing to get what they want, often or almost always push their way into the positions of control.

 and, in slightly more elaborated  form, we have--

  As the rich folks, it we who decide and others --in particular, the un-rich, who follow our lead.  

  There are lots of things we need and want; chief among these are

 1) easy, uninterrupted and as-cheap-as-possible-access to the world's vital resources,

 and

 2) the continued and effectively unchallenged right to set the world's social, political and economic priorities in our own interests, of course.

 To get these and keep them we need a certain amount of willing or enforced cooperation from the rest of the world which, if it started having its own ideas about poverty, wealth, justice, rights to property, the matter of fairness in the distribution of the Earth's natural bounty, etc., could present us with myriad nuisances which could only be settled by the expenditure of still more cash and blood.

 Thus, wherever possible, the means to dupe or cheat the rest of the world into sufficient cooperation is always to be preferred to constant use of brute force.  Though, where deception can't serve, force shall have to, our own or by proxies which we hire.

  If people were treated better, and allowed to enjoy an even break at in life's contests for material gain and survival, they could get lots of inconvenient ideas and, if they progressed socially, economically and politically--all of which contribute to material and technological progress, they might even one day arrive at the point where they could rival and seriously threaten our control of pretty much everything that counts.

 That would be a problem--perhaps the #1 problem--which we want, at all costs, to prevent.

  We aren't nice people and we aren't fair people.  And those who want to or who try to press these points about us we're quite ready and quite able to kill or punish back into a state of minimally acceptable submission.

 (suggestion: print and save for future reference)

"In such an environment it is not surprising that the ills of technology should seem curable only through the application of more technology..." John W Aldridge

by proximity1 on Mon Jun 26th, 2006 at 11:07:21 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Failing to deliver (none / 1)
So that would be the short-term, stupid interpretation of "good" then? Just checking.
by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Mon Jun 26th, 2006 at 11:18:57 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Failing to deliver (none / 1)

"So that would be the short-term, stupid interpretation of "good" then? Just checking."

 When you ask, as you did in the citation below,


 I'm never quite sure why keeping other people poor is meant to be good for the West. How does that work?

 you should be prepared for the definition of "good for the West" to follow from the interests of those who do define for most of the world what "good for the West" means.

 If you have a different idea of how to define "good for the West", then you're going to have to take that up with people such as Frank Carlucci, who have their own ideas about how that phrase is to be defined and the means to enforce those ideas.

 The rationales for how and why "keeping other people poor is meant to be good for the West" are to be sought and found among the Frank Carlucci's of the world, not the good, the just, the meek and the mild--since these are not the people who define such things until and unless real and meaningful enlightened democratic rule comes about.

 So far, we have only unreal, meaning-less, and un-enlightened pseudo-"democratic" rule, which is just fine with the Frank Carluccis of the world.

"In such an environment it is not surprising that the ills of technology should seem curable only through the application of more technology..." John W Aldridge

by proximity1 on Mon Jun 26th, 2006 at 11:35:55 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Failing to deliver (4.00 / 3)
On a trip to Australia a few years ago I was bumped up to business class - not a bad thing on a trans-pacific flight - and spent slightly too much time reading the work of the oil company employee in the adjacent seat.

Most of it was a folder full of reports and memos about the political situation on one of the islands in the South Pacific, and how the situation was being manipulated to make it possible for 'we' - as in the oil company - to get and maintain access to the local natural resources.

It's really quite blatant and deliberate at that level.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Mon Jun 26th, 2006 at 01:25:05 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Failing to deliver (none / 1)
 The fact that the SciAmerican article astutely lists controls for the prevention of capital flight as an essential for any realistic and successful program should tell you a very great deal about why the rich get richer and the poor, poorer, so much of the time.

 People who have and who use every advantage, fair and unfair, to get their wealth, are not interested in sticking around under regimes which arrive to enforce some fairness in the repartition of life's opportunities and rewards.

 They want the "freedom" to leave such places and to take what they've stolen along with them when they go.

"In such an environment it is not surprising that the ills of technology should seem curable only through the application of more technology..." John W Aldridge

by proximity1 on Mon Jun 26th, 2006 at 11:22:11 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Failing to deliver (4.00 / 2)
Free movement of capital is not free trade of goods and services.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon Jun 26th, 2006 at 11:31:49 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Failing to deliver (none / 0)

  "Eppur si mouve!"

"In such an environment it is not surprising that the ills of technology should seem curable only through the application of more technology..." John W Aldridge

by proximity1 on Mon Jun 26th, 2006 at 11:37:18 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Failing to deliver (none / 0)
One thing that hasn't been looked at enough is the role of charities (NGO's) in the developing world. Yesterday Warren Buffet announced that he was giving $30+ billion to Bill Gates' charity. I assume this will be focused on more health care issues.

The problem is that many (most?) of the largest charities are devoted to humanitarian aid not structural aid. So the Red Cross, or Oxfam or any of many others, will supply food or medicine or help rebuild after a disaster, but the underlying conditions which produce perpetual poverty are not addressed.

Many charities, like the Ford Foundation, are afraid of seeming to take sides in foreign affairs and so won't make structural grants. If the cause of poverty (take Zimbabwe or Sudan, as examples) is corrupt leadership than ignoring this fact means that the aid, while useful to those in need, is, from a long-range point of view, being wasted. Eventually when things get bad enough a military force is usually sent to restore some sort of order (Liberia, Rwanda), but it is always too late.

If the continual failures to fix the social problems in the developing world is going to change, donors are going to have to face up to this reality.


Policies not Politics
---- Daily Landscape

by rdf (robert.feinman@gmail.com) on Mon Jun 26th, 2006 at 04:21:17 PM EST
Failing to deliver*** | 32 comments (32 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)


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