By Marty Logan
MONTREAL, Jul 26 2004 (IPS)

Instead of speculation about which countries will fail to achieve which of the world’s development goals by 2015, Michael Clemens would like to hear more talk about the nations that are developing faster than any others in history.

Instead of speculation about which countries will fail to achieve which of the world’s development goals by 2015, Michael Clemens would like to hear more talk about the nations that are developing faster than any others in history.

You might be surprised to learn their ranks include Burkina Faso, Mali, Madagascar and Nicaragua.

Clemens, a research fellow at the Centre for Global Development (CGD) in Washington, DC, co-authored a recent paper that argues the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that world leaders endorsed at an unprecedented gathering in New York in 2000 risk causing all sorts of harm to the global aid regime.

The eight goals set clear targets for reducing poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation and discrimination against women, all but one of them by 2015.

For example, they require the world to cut by half the number of people who live on less than a dollar a day, and to ensure that girls get the same educational opportunities as boys at all levels.

Clemens and co-authors Todd Moss (also a CGD fellow) and Charles Kenny of the World Bank argue that the increasing focus on what for many nations are the MDGs’ unrealistic goals ignores the impressive achievements of those countries.

They also fear that obsession with 2015 is setting up the international community for negative reactions if the targets are not achieved: donor fatigue in the case of rich nations and finger-pointing by developing world leaders, who could accuse the West of not adequately financing their efforts.

The authors blame numerous studies that speculate on a price tag for the MDGs for fuelling a misunderstanding of the development process.

“The way that the public has interpreted the studies (on the MDGs’ price tag) – and there have been scores of them … is that if we can come up with 50 billion dollars (a repeated estimate) and spend it the right way, these things (health, education, etc) can be purchased,” says Clemens.

“What we’re trying to point out is that if you look at the historical experiences of developing countries on the indicators that are relevant to the MDGs – child mortality, primary school completion, maternal mortality – progress on those indicators tends to happen in a certain range (and) for the vast majority of countries the typical rates of progress are much much slower than (in the MDGs).”

For example, Burkina Faso, Mali, Madagascar and Nicaragua have boosted school enrolments much faster than now rich countries like the United States did in the course of their development, he adds, “and yet probably won’t meet the goals.”

“The MDGs perform a crucial service which is (to show) where we want to be and how far we are from it,” he continued.

“However, they send a message not just to Washington but to (the general public) also, which is, ‘look at all these African countries that are probably not going to be successful’, when in fact by the standards that are meaningful to me … many of them are extraordinarily successful and deserve our long-term support.”

But one expert believes the MDGs have helped the international donor community focus on how to spend its money.

“It’s the first time that we’ve had time-bound quantifiable targets,” says Roy Culpepper, president of the Ottawa-based North-South Institute. “Up till now the whole development community was more input driven (believing) if we thrown more money at this, if we mobilise and allocate more resources, then we’ll get there.”

“By the year 2000 it was quite clear – at least on the 0.7 percent target – that this was a pretty futile mission. So without giving up altogether on how much aid you should allocate to the development enterprise, the focus has been shifted to ‘what is it that we’re trying to achieve’?”

Rich nations have since the 1970s pledged to boost their spending on development to 0.7 percent of their gross national product (GNP) but only four nations – Norway, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands – have consistently hit that target. In fact, many have devoted a declining proportion to aid in recent decades.

Last week, United Nations special adviser Jeffrey Sachs welcomed promises from the United Kingdom and France to double their official development assistance (ODA) in 2005, and called on other rich nations to finally fulfil their pledges to spent 0.7 percent of GNP on aid.

At a briefing for journalists, Sachs, director of the U.N. Millennium Project, also urged developing countries to draw up concrete action plans that would tackle their particular needs – how to get their crops to market, permit their children to go to school, or produce three instead of one ton of crops per hectare, for example.

Clemens welcomes that approach but says a visit to the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) website reveals that country-specific goals are lacking. “There’s no contextual objective for the donor community or for citizens of those countries to use as a meaningful yardstick by which to judge success or failure,” he adds.

Culpepper, whose group will devote its 2005 report to the MDGs, believes the goals have played a role in another important shift.

“We’ve moved away from a singular fixation on growth as measured by GDP (gross domestic product) … We’re now at a point where we acknowledge that economic growth pure and simple is important but it’s not sufficient in order to reach some of these social targets. I think the MDGs have helped us along that path.”

Clemens and his colleagues presented their paper on the shortfalls of the MDGs to the strategy and policy unit of the executive office of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan earlier this month. It was followed by a three-hour discussion, “hammering it out with many people,” who stressed that the goals have inspired people, says Clemens, who repeats that he agrees the MDGs have galvanised support for aid.

“What we’re concerned about is what’s going to happen in 2012, 2013; what message is going to emerge from the MDGs then? Is it going to be a message of success or is it going to be a message of falling short and ‘the sky is falling’? We’re unsure that (saying) ‘the sky is falling’ is more effective than stimulating a sustained engagement.”

Excerpt:

By Marty Logan
MONTREAL, Jul 26 2004 (IPS)

Instead of speculation about which countries will fail to achieve which of the world’s development goals by 2015, Michael Clemens would like to hear more talk about the nations that are developing faster than any others in history.

You might be surprised to learn their ranks include Burkina Faso, Mali, Madagascar and Nicaragua.

Clemens, a research fellow at the Centre for Global Development (CGD) in Washington, DC, co-authored a recent paper that argues the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that world leaders endorsed at an unprecedented gathering in New York in 2000 risk causing all sorts of harm to the global aid regime.

The eight goals set clear targets for reducing poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation and discrimination against women, all but one of them by 2015.

For example, they require the world to cut by half the number of people who live on less than a dollar a day, and to ensure that girls get the same educational opportunities as boys at all levels.

While it is now expected that some of the overall goals will be met – largely because of impressive growth in the world’s two largest countries, India and China – it is believed that many nations, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa, will not come close to meeting the MDGs.

They also fear that obsession with 2015 is setting up the international community for negative reactions if the targets are not achieved: donor fatigue in the case of rich nations and finger-pointing by developing world leaders, who could accuse the West of not adequately financing their efforts.

The authors blame numerous studies that speculate on a price tag for the MDGs for fuelling a misunderstanding of the development process.

“The way that the public has interpreted the studies (on the MDGs’ price tag) – and there have been scores of them … is that if we can come up with 50 billion dollars (a repeated estimate) and spend it the right way, these things (health, education, etc) can be purchased,” says Clemens.

“What we’re trying to point out is that if you look at the historical experiences of developing countries on the indicators that are relevant to the MDGs – child mortality, primary school completion, maternal mortality – progress on those indicators tends to happen in a certain range (and) for the vast majority of countries the typical rates of progress are much much slower than (in the MDGs).”

For example, Burkina Faso, Mali, Madagascar and Nicaragua have boosted school enrolments much faster than now rich countries like the United States did in the course of their development, he adds, “and yet probably won’t meet the goals.”

“The MDGs perform a crucial service which is (to show) where we want to be and how far we are from it,” he continued.

“However, they send a message not just to Washington but to (the general public) also, which is, ‘look at all these African countries that are probably not going to be successful’, when in fact by the standards that are meaningful to me … many of them are extraordinarily successful and deserve our long-term support.”

But one expert believes the MDGs have helped the international donor community focus on how to spend its money.

“It’s the first time that we’ve had time-bound quantifiable targets,” says Roy Culpepper, president of the Ottawa-based North-South Institute. “Up till now the whole development community was more input driven (believing) if we thrown more money at this, if we mobilise and allocate more resources, then we’ll get there.”

“By the year 2000 it was quite clear – at least on the 0.7 percent target – that this was a pretty futile mission. So without giving up altogether on how much aid you should allocate to the development enterprise, the focus has been shifted to ‘what is it that we’re trying to achieve’?”

Rich nations have since the 1970s pledged to boost their spending on development to 0.7 percent of their gross national product (GNP) but only four nations – Norway, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands – have consistently hit that target. In fact, many have devoted a declining proportion to aid in recent decades.

Last week, United Nations special adviser Jeffrey Sachs welcomed promises from the United Kingdom and France to double their official development assistance (ODA) in 2005, and called on other rich nations to finally fulfil their pledges to spent 0.7 percent of GNP on aid.

At a briefing for journalists, Sachs, director of the U.N. Millennium Project, also urged developing countries to draw up concrete action plans that would tackle their particular needs – how to get their crops to market, permit their children to go to school, or produce three instead of one ton of crops per hectare, for example.

Clemens welcomes that approach but says a visit to the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) website reveals that country-specific goals are lacking. “There’s no contextual objective for the donor community or for citizens of those countries to use as a meaningful yardstick by which to judge success or failure,” he adds.

Culpepper, whose group will devote its 2005 report to the MDGs, believes the goals have played a role in another important shift.

“We’ve moved away from a singular fixation on growth as measured by GDP (gross domestic product) … We’re now at a point where we acknowledge that economic growth pure and simple is important but it’s not sufficient in order to reach some of these social targets. I think the MDGs have helped us along that path.”

Clemens and his colleagues presented their paper on the shortfalls of the MDGs to the strategy and policy unit of the executive office of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan earlier this month. It was followed by a three-hour discussion, “hammering it out with many people,” who stressed that the goals have inspired people, says Clemens, who repeats that he agrees the MDGs have galvanised support for aid.

“What we’re concerned about is what’s going to happen in 2012, 2013; what message is going to emerge from the MDGs then? Is it going to be a message of success or is it going to be a message of falling short and ‘the sky is falling’? We’re unsure that (saying) ‘the sky is falling’ is more effective than stimulating a sustained engagement.”

Excerpt: