No, this is not about Heidi Klum. God forbid! Neither it is about the German deputy development minister Gudrun Kopp (see picture for blond hair).
Just seven weeks ahead of Germany´s national
election, it is time to think about how German development cooperation should
be conceptualised in the forthcoming government. Five years ago, William
Easterly and Tobias Putze tried to get a handle at an ´ideal´ aid agency strictly
based on empirically observable parameters[1]
(rather than negotiated and vetted DAC peer reviews). Their study, covering 38
bilateral and several multilateral aid agencies, was based on criteria derived
from the bulging development aid literature:
·
Transparency
(a precondition necessary for any meaningful evaluation)
·
Specialisation
(avoiding fragmentation of aid supplies costly to recipients)
·
Selectivity
(focus on poor countries)
·
Efficient
delivery (avoiding tied aid, food aid, and technical assistance)
·
Administrative
loss (share of aid bureaucracy cost).
Among the bilateral aid agencies covered in the
Easterly/Putze study, Germany´s BMZ occupied the second last rank! German
cooperation was seen in particular as fragmented, bureaucratic and nontransparent
compared to its DAC peers.
·
The selective focus of aid needs to
shift from poor countries to poor people. Only just two decades ago, 93 percent of the world´s
poorest people lived indeed in the poorest (least developed) countries; today,
three fourth of the world´s poorest people survive in countries now classified
as middle-income countries (Ravi Kanbur und Andy Sumner, 2011)[2]. For humanitarian reasons, the aid
focus needs to reflect the new geography of poverty, even against populist
sentiment at home. In India, half a billion people remain in abject poverty,
200 million in China. Other countries that the BMZ should focus on, according
to the selectivity criterion ´number of poor people´, are Nigeria, Bangladesh
and Indonesia.
·
The
implicit reorientation of development cooperation from Africa to Asia would
also change the optimal mix of aid
finance, from grants toward soft loans. Often cash rich, emerging
countries´ poverty is their own prime responsibility. Western development
loans, however, can lever political choices in those countries while they are
less burdensome for fragile budgets in DAC countries, potentially more flexible
and delivered more speedily (at least if they follow the innovative Agence Franaise
de Développement model) conceived by Cohen, Jacquet and Reisen (2006)[3].
·
China´s
and other emerging countries´ proven contribution to global development and
poverty reduction, notably in Africa (African
Economic Outlook 2011), is forcing Western donors to reexamine their standards and to find ways to merge them with Eastern
cooperation modes. The merger of Western standards, which is heavy on declamatory
good-governance rhetoric, with project-oriented Eastern cooperation modes,
often nontransparent as based on barter deals, is yet to be designed, it seems
to me.
·
German bilateral cooperation excels
on implementation – and should ´sell´ itself so. Unlike Britain (remember Tony Blair?) and
France, Germany has relatively few spin doctors. But it has GIZ (the project
implementation agency) and KfW (the development bank). These institutions grant
Germany a comparative advantage in project delivery and completion. Germany´s
bilateral cooperation is thus defined by close links with programmes and
projects, creating high visibility for many German actors and facilitating
their financial monitoring. These traits of German cooperation, largely
undersold to DAC peers and multilaterals, make it a valuable partner for
trilateral South-South-North cooperation, in particular joint with China.
·
Help restore core finance for
multilateral development cooperation. Where -unlike in Germany - implementation
agencies are lacking, there is a tendency to use multilaterals via earmarked
funding. Germany has largely refrained from multilateral ´cherry-picking´ and
should work hard on its peers to stop this trend, which has weakened the UN
system ever since the US called to call the shots there, i.e. since the 1960s
when many countries became sovereigns independent from colonial rule. A
high share of earmarked finance in multilateral budgets causes permanent ´funds
shopping´ by management, thus diverting its attention and time; it raises
administrative overhead costs; and it intensifies the bureaucratic tendency for
mission creep and fight for mandates. The unproductive struggle among multilaterals
for G20 mandates provides a visible warning. Germany´s next government is
called for to clean the multilateral donor chaos; due to tutelage problems,
this task can´t be let to ministries – the Bundeskanzleramt
will have to deal with the problem[4].
It is questionable whether the current BMZ ministry
can confront these challenges in its current setup[5]. Where most of the extremely poor
people reside today, namely in large emerging countries, development
cooperation can only succeed by managing cross-cutting issues, integrating policy
fields as diverse as food security, basic welfare systems and green urbanisation.
[1] Easterly, W. und T. Putze (2008), “Where Does the Money Go? Best
and Worse Practices in Foreign Aid”, Journal of Economic Perspectives,
Vol.22.2, S. 29-52.
[2] Kanbur, R. und A. Sumner (2011), “Poor
Countries or Poor People? Development Assistance and the New Geography of
Global Poverty”, Cornell University, WP 2011-08.
[3] Cohen, D.,
P. Jacquet and H. Reisen (2006), “After Gleneagles: What Role for Loans in ODA?”,
OECD Development Centre Policy Brief
No.31.
[4] H. Reisen (2012), “Herausforderungen an die multilaterale
Entwicklungszusammenarbeit“, KfW Meinungsforum Entwicklungspolitik, Nr.4,
4.April 2012.
[5] J. Faust und D. Messner (2012), “Probleme globaler Entwicklung und die
ministerielle Organisation der Entwicklungspolitik“, Zeitschrift für Außen- und
Sicherheitspolitik“, Vol. 5, S. 165-175.
No comments:
Post a Comment