Ten Years of Global Poverty Eradication: Is Global Governance Failing the Poor?

David HulmeBrooks World Poverty Institute

Chronic Poverty Research CentreUniversity of Manchester

Ideas matter – ‘global poverty’

• Ideas matter – over last 10 years the idea of global poverty has been prominent, perhaps dominant

• It evolved over the 1990s and crystallized around the Millennium – several elements

1. Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) – human development meets results-based management

2. $1-a-day poverty measure provides a global yardstick -‘what counts is what can be counted’

3. Finance for Development – estimating and mobilising funds for global poverty eradication

4. Sustainability – not impoverishing future generations

Ideas matter – but, so does economic and political power

• Framing of global poverty focussed attention on global actions for poverty reduction/eradication

• Institutions of global governance have engaged – UN General Assembly, UN agencies, World Bank, IMF, WTO, G7/8, G77, African Union, social movements, NGO coalitions, etc

• But, the processes of ‘implementation’ reflect international power relations more than the promises of the MDGs and of policy reforms

• In particular, accountability has been weak

Ten years on - Is global governance failing the poor?

• Many ways of judging this – an important distinction between assessing ‘results’ or assessing ‘process change’

• From a results perspective we have ‘impressive achievements, major failures, many ambiguities’ – Joe’s summary

• China (impressive)…sub-Saharan Africa (failure?)…sub-Siberian Asia (neglected?)

Sub-Siberian Asia

Global Governance - institutional and process changes?

• Those driving the global poverty agenda, and promoting MDGs were not naïve. They would like goals to be achieved but they also set goals to try to shift processes and institutions of global governance

• Re-framing ‘development’ as ‘global poverty reduction’ was a component of efforts to (i) reform international institutions and strengthen accountability (ii) make global rules and policies more pro-poor (iii) coordinate poverty reduction policies more effectively

The rise and stall of the global poverty agenda?

• The millennium moment created an opportunity to advance social justice - international institutions and world leaders had to explain how the new millennium would be better than the past. Eradicating poverty was part of this vision

• But, the rise of the global poverty agenda – Copenhagen Social Summit (1996), DAC’s IDGs (1996), debt campaign (1997-99), Millennium Declaration (2000), MDGs (2001), Monterrey FFD (2002) – stalled in mid-2000s

• Attempts to re-vitalize it at the G8 (2005) and UN (2008) had little effect…UN in 2 weeks time???

Promise change - but, business almost as usual

• The evidence that signing up to the global poverty agenda does not lead to major institutional and process changes is mounting

1. Aid and FFD innovations

2. Trade and IPR reform

3. Reforms of IFI governance

4. Climate change – mitigation and adaptation

5. Improved governance in ‘poor’ countries

Official development assistance and FFD innovations

0.00%

0.05%

0.10%

0.15%

0.20%

0.25%

0.30%

0.35%

0.40%

% o

f G

NI ODA, % of GNI

ODA minus debt relief, % of GNI

ODA minus debt relief and humanitarianassistance, % of GNI

Trade, IPR, IFI reform, climate change and national governance

• Trade reform – ‘Doha is worth … less than a penny a day, for each person in the developing world’ (Ackerman 2005: 5).

• IPR reform – ‘TRIPS may still be inappropriate for most developing countries … and in that larger sense the Doha Declaration offers little relief.’ (Shadlen 2004: 98).

• IFI reform – ‘[World Bank President Robert] Zoellick ... came to be president through the current, dysfunctional system and he remains beholden, albeit in a haphazard fashion, to the current dysfunctional board’ (Lawrence MacDonald, Centre for Global Development 2009).

• Climate change (Copenhagen 2009) – ‘Climate summit ends in chaos and 'toothless' deal' (Daily Telegraph headline 19th December 2009).

• Improved governance in Africa – ‘NEPAD has not done what it was set up for.’ (President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal).

Global poverty&global governance Report-card 2000-2010

Subject Report

Aid/ODA Early improvements faded away

FFD innovations Interesting ideas but little action

Trade policy reform No multilateral progress. Bilateral deals increasingly regressive

IPR reform Very limited progress

IFI governance In 2010 the political interests of 1945 still set this agenda

Climate change Much too little, much too late

Overall performance Much promised but little achieved – must try harder and do much better

Why has the global poverty agenda stalled?

• Many reasons - up to 2008 there was a sloppy answer – ‘the Bush administration’. But Obama’s lack of interest/action reveals the deeper structural factors in US and rich world more generally – ‘We don’t care…enough’

• Poverty, particularly poverty in other countries, has little political traction in powerful countries or associations– US, Japan, G8, BRICs, G20 (even before ‘crisis’).

• Transition from G8 to G20 has not led to global poverty moving up the international agenda.

• Political leaders can still make commitments and know that they will not be held to account by those who are doing OK (elites and middle classes)

Stalled or slow change?

• If one disaggregates and looks at national and regional experiences then in some cases there is evidence of progressive change

• UK – debt campaigns, IDGs, MDGs, FFD helped the evolution of cross-party consensus on increasing aid/improving aid quality. Behind this a belief that this is a vote influencing factor (a social norm change for the UK’s silent majority)

• EU – a regional norm - new members must have aid budgets and institutions (however imperfect)…Estonia…

• For poor country governments national poverty and bilateral negotiations with IFIs remain the main issues – engaging with ‘global poverty’ may be a distraction

Lesson 1 - From setting targets to diffusing a social norm

• 2000-2010 too much focus on direct changes to policies, plans and targets. Neglect of changing underlying socio-political determinants (public attitudes, social norms) – Millennium Campaign

• 2010-2020 a greater focus on re-shaping social norms (nationally and internationally) is needed so that popular support for pro-poor policies and effective institutions strengthens accountability

• The priority is diffusing the norm that ‘extreme poverty in an affluent world is morally unacceptable’ - as with slavery, apartheid, blocking of votes for women

From setting targets to diffusing a norm

• MDGs have been prominent in policy and institutional debates but have been a relatively weak vehicle for diffusing a new social norm

• Several reasons including MDG complexity, and their not being effectively simplified or packaged for mass audiences

• Post-2015 global poverty agenda must find an idea that wins more attention from civil society and the media. Front-runner - ‘stop children dying now’. This captures much of MDGs 1 to 6

Lesson 2 - Global poverty reduction as a support to national processes

• A big downside of the idea of global poverty has been the exaggeration of the significance of foreign aid and external actors

• Post-2010 (and 2015) the links between global action and national action need to be clearer. National targets, national budgets, national policies and domestic actors (elites and wider civil societies) are what matter. Global targets, external finance and actors can only support what happens at the national level

Lesson 3 – Can we care?

• The ‘international agenda’ can only recognise a small number of issues

• Responsibility for global poverty – the poverty of distant strangers (geographically and socially) – may not register

• Linking to issues that may register more with elites and middle classes – climate change? – may be an effective tactic

Conclusion

• The opportunity of the Millennium moment for tackling global poverty is past…but, the idea has made a little difference

• The next leg of the journey for global poverty is reframing the idea to focus more on changing national social norms (and thus international norms) about the personal and public responsibility to help eradicate poverty…rather than creating a central plan for poverty reduction