Gleneagles’ promise to make poverty history has yet to be delivered
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Version 0 of 1. Make Poverty History: even the phrase seems reminiscent of more innocent days when campaigners buoyed by idealism hoped they could change the world with a rubber wristband, and rock musicians believed the strains of We Will Rock You, floating on the summer air, could force the rich world’s politicians to fix Africa. This week marks the 10th anniversary of the Gleneagles summit, when Tony Blair convened his G8 colleagues, plus a smattering of African leaders, at the swish golf hotel in Perthshire, to sign up for what they called “a new vision for the continent’s future”. Blair dashed back to London to deal with the aftermath of the 7/7 bombings, but returned to Scotland to finish the talks. As Justin Forsyth, now Save the Children chief executive but then the prime minister’s right-hand man on development, recalls, Blair and his fellow leaders consciously saw their pledges – to double aid to Africa, and offer 100% debt write-offs for more than 30 countries – as a response to terrorism. “It was almost symbolic, that we as a world stand for something better, to help the poorest people on the planet; it was also a response to terrorism: the world standing together and saying what democracy was about.” The agreement was the culmination of years of work, inside and outside government, bringing together Gordon Brown’s strongly held commitment to development and Blair’s diplomatic verve. Their relationship was often fraught, but this was the pair’s partnership at its best. Brown and Blair's relationship was often fraught, but Gleneagles was the pair’s partnership at its best Today, the world looks a very different place. The G8 itself has fractured, with Russia ejected and subject to economic sanctions for its role in the war in Ukraine. The legitimacy of the anachronistic club – which includes Canada, but not China, India or Brazil – had already looked increasingly shaky; but since the credit crunch, the wider G20 group has become a more potent force. Money has been harder to come by since the global financial crisis. David Cameron should be applauded for sticking with the UK’s commitment – now enshrined in law – to spend 0.7% of national income on aid; among other countries, backsliding has been rife. Germany’s aid budget, for example, is still at 0.41% of national income; Italy’s just 0.16%. In some ways, the very project of trying to make poverty history also feels more complex. Multilateral, state-to-state loans have often been replaced by private-sector borrowing by both governments and companies, for example. That’s a sign of success, but it will make future debt crises hard to resolve. Even at Gleneagles, there was an acknowledgment that overseas aid was not a panacea. Leaders also pledged to work towards completing the Doha round of international trade talks, though their enthusiasm later evaporated when they looked at the sacrifices that might be required. The latest rash of multilateral trade deals focus on fostering trade between the US, Europe and Asia, with African markets lower down the list of political priorities. And while many countries have been encouraged to foster a more business-friendly climate and welcome foreign direct investment, it’s now increasingly acknowledged that without better global tax rules, too much of the benefit just leaks away. There are pressing questions about the strings attached to aid, too. Fascinating recent work by Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Michael T Clark at the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation shows that the tick-box standards of “good governance” many aid recipients have been asked to meet may have done more harm than good. “Experience over two decades shows that such directives provide little practical guidance for solving the technically, socially, and politically complex real-world problems of economic development”, they say. As Greece’s dire plight shows, economic reform is all but impossible to achieve by drawing up lists of institutions and rules that have evolved over decades in well-functioning economies and imposing them from outside. There are doubts, too, about whether the data used to drive aid targets is up to the task. A recent report by Liz Stuart at the Overseas Development Institute found, for example, that “some 133,000 women may have died from childbirth-related causes in 2013, or twice as many. We cannot be sure”. Yet some of these doubts and complexities are not reasons to ditch overseas aid, but ways to make sure it’s done better – and backed up by richer data, more coherent tax rules, a friendlier trade environment for the poorest countries and better global institutions, not least to rein in the excesses of financial markets. This month, representatives from scores of countries will meet in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, under the auspices of the UN, for the Financing for Development Conference – a chance for governments to say what they are willing to do and how much they will spend to ensure the successors to the millennium development goals (the sustainable development goals) can be met. The process has its flaws, not least that “17 goals with 169 associated targets” are probably too many. Yet the needs are still acute. As global campaigning body ONE puts it, “development assistance is, and will continue to be, crucial to providing basic services, including education and health, in the least developed countries”. It would like to see poor countries commit to minimum levels of spending on basic services (rather than a thicket of detailed targets) as part of a global pact that would include a significant boost to aid. With budgets tight in the aftermath of the credit crisis, it may be hard to rekindle the idealism of that Scottish summer day, and NGOs have never quite captured the public’s imagination in the same way. But as ministers from around the world prepare to meet in Addis, it’s hard to better the aspiration to “make poverty history”. |