Anver Versi, who chaired the debate, described Africa as the last big issue in the emancipation of mankind. Likening it to the abolition of slavery and the liberation of South Africa, he said powerful vested interests supported the status quo, but people of courage and humanity can nonetheless drive forward a positive agenda and achieve real change.

Myles Wickstead, Head of the Secretariat of the Africa Commission, insisted the timing of the Commission demonstrated it was an agenda for change that would see results within a year. As well as the UK’s chairing of the G8 this year, and the EU in the second half, the review of the UN’s Millennium Goals in New York this September will highlight Africa’s lack of progress, and the resumption of World Trade talks in December will purportedly deliver on development. The Commission’s legitimacy stems from its majority African membership, as well as the scale of its consultation, covering forty-nine of the fifty-four countries in Africa and many other countries. 80% of responses from both governments and civil society cited governance as the main issue, and the recommendations set out on the report are both clear and achievable.

Myles Wickstead asserted that Africa’s governance had improved significantly in recent years. As a continent, the creation of the Africa Union enabled intervention in places like Togo, to prevent the presidency becoming hereditary, and even in Darfur it had achieved results that would have been beyond the former Organisation of African Unity. It has effective peer review mechanisms, and at national level many countries have adopted poverty reduction strategies. There are now far fewer conflicts than twenty years ago and a greater prevalence of governments able to deliver peace and security. Through the development of effective health and education programmes, and support for the neglected areas of tertiary education, science and research, Africa could build its capacity to take charge of its future development.

Myles Wickstead attributed Africa’s weak economic growth to geography as well as governance, saying that its rail and road infrastructure reflected the colonial priority of delivering its natural resources to ports. Africa is not ‘joined up’, so there is little regional development and regional trade. The subsidies, access restrictions and tariffs imposed by rich countries are wrong, don’t work and should be changed, but Africa’s main constraint was weak infrastructure that curtailed its capacity for regional trade and development. The Commission proposed an infrastructure fund, as well as easier customs regulations within the continent. Meanwhile rich countries should give more and better development assistance that is not tied to trade deals, is integrated within national strategies and includes substantial debt relief. Within a year, Wickstead predicted, the Commission will have led to irreversible changes, including a French acceptance of reforms to agricultural subsidies, and increased US overseas development aid, or else it will have failed. Progress is already apparent moreover. Whilst no G8 country has yet ratified the UN’s Convention Against Corruption, the UK was now committed to doing so.

Lord Desai agreed that the timing of the Commission highlighted a remarkable commitment from the Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer, with Secretaries of State Short then Benn pushing at an unusually easy Treasury door. However whist the Commission’s report would inform the debate and help educate many people, the only criterion is whether it will reduce poverty in Africa, about which he is sceptical. Poor people must get out of their poverty, and rich countries and the paraphernalia of international bureaucracy like the G8 and EU have only a limited role. Government can only have a modest positive influence, although can impose negative impediments like immigration controls. He cited the exodus of one third of Europe’s population to America in the 19th century as a major source of poverty reduction in Europe, though emigration is now denied to Africans as an avenue out of poverty. Africa has not lacked international aid, having received more of it per capita than any other region of the last fifty years, but it lacks the mechanisms to get aid to the poor.

Lord Desai said that the report should have analysed how Asia had succeeded where Africa has failed over the last fifty years, overcoming the perceived obstacles of Buddhism and Confucianism, as well as civil wars and overpopulation. Whilst transparency and accountability could be attributed to democracy, governance is not the key issue. Asian governments are more responsive due to their tax structures and land reform. Africa’s particular colonial legacy was a thin bureaucracy that derived tax revenues from exports rather than from people who would demand something in return, whilst land reform stimulated growth, investment in education, and high domestic savings. Looting on the scale of Marcos in the Philippines was an exception in Asia but rather more the norm in Africa, while the collapse in commodity prices in the 1980s had was much more deleterious to the African tax base.

Lord Desai insisted that we should focus on what people can do, not what governments can do. He expects nothing from the G8: whilst debt relief is crucial, it is opposed by Japan, the US and Germany; the EU Common Agricultural Policy is a crime against humanity, but will remain unreformed; and there is little prospect that the arms industry will be curbed. Instead we should find new ways of getting money to the poor with minimal government interference. The current aid budget of $50bn would be better spent giving the poorest one billion people an extra dollar a week. Targeting that sum on the 100 million most vulnerable people in Africa, mostly orphaned children and the elderly, would cost just $5bn. He agreed that the lack of infrastructure is important, and although the drugs and arms trades thrived in its absence, legitimate business was not sufficiently profitable. Whilst a road and rail network would foster interregional co-operation and trade within Africa and raise incomes, the doubling of aid, as proposed by the Commission was unlikely. Existing projects would make little difference without effective ways of targeting money to the poor.

Myles Wickstead conceded that the responsiveness of governments and tax structures represent a key difference between Asia and Africa, as well as the mass looting of assets through Swiss and UK banks. However this is changing: there are still some kleptocrats but they are far fewer in number, and Africa is now increasingly democratic. However he argued that governments still have a very important role in developing frameworks to promote the rule of law and combat corruption, without which the private sector and people generally find it hard to survive. Africa needs systems for the delivery of health and education, which should be seen as primary duties of governments alongside defence. Africa needs more concessional resources, notably to finance projects to join up Africa’s existing infrastructure. Whilst the private sector might itself be ready to fund telecommunications, other areas such as building roads, rail and bridges did not generate a sufficient return for the private sector without some public money. He further argued that one dollar a week would not make Africa take off. He noted that several countries had recently demonstrated growth rates in excess of 5%, close to the 7% mark deemed essential for development.

In riposte, Desai said that the poorest 100 million needed immediate relief rather than infrastructure projects. Directing money towards the poor would ensure funds are used efficiently, whereas even in a reasonably well governed country like India, a great deal of aid was wasted with only 25c in every dollar reaching the poor. Health and education programmes should be directed at the grassroots, using civil society groups like churches where governments are too weak. He cited the experience of Malaysia, Singapore and even Indonesia in how responsive governments could further development, as well as the Communist Party in China.

A questioner highlighted the problem of off-shore accounts, saying that his estimate of the $11.5 trillion that appeared in the weekend press was an underestimate because of the lack of data for Africa. It exceeded 50% in Latin America and 70% in the Middle East, of all aid directed to those areas, and few doubted that capital flight in Africa would be similar. The absence of a domestic banking infrastructure meant that the former colonial powers dominated the banking, and transnational corporations were aggressive in tax avoidance. In the extraction and pharmaceutical industries, an estimated 60% of trade in and out of Africa was mispriced by more than 11%, representing 7% of total African trade, yet this was not mentioned in the report. Wickstead agreed that the UK was second only to Switzerland in money laundering, and even Switzerland had returned $300m in looted assets to Nigeria in recent weeks. However the problem lay in the capacity of Africa to provide adequate evidence of looting that would stand up in a court case. Even so, Lord Desai thought it pointless to pass laws closing tax havens and loopholes, and instead said that bonds should be issued at two per cent over base to encourage funds back to their home countries, no questions asked. Such incentives would prove more effective that prosecutions, and he highlighted the significant increase in funds flowing back to India following banking liberalisation.

Another questioner asked whether the commitment of Blair and Brown would be matched by Bush, particularly given that day’s acceptance by European governments of Wolfowitz’s candidacy to head the World Bank. Wickstead replied that the three basic pillars of the UN identified by Kofi Anan of development, human rights and security were shared by all G8 governments, even though they may accord them a different order of priority. Yet Lord Desai insisted that the absence of US support could scupper development, and that the main problem was not Wolfowitz per se, but that global institutions should be rebalanced to reflect the interests of the poor. In reply to a question about the need for greater accountability if aid flows doubled, as suggested by the Commission, Wickstead said that much of the conditionality of IMF aid should be removed. Whilst direct budgetary support for governments was most effective, funding projects directly is most appropriate were governance is weak. In response to a separate question, Desai insisted that no conditionality is necessary for small cash transfers.

An audience member expressed surprise that neither speaker had mentioned HIV. Wickstead pointed out that filling the gap in the Global Fund to combat Aids, malaria and tuberculosis was an important recommendation in the report, whilst Desai acknowledged its importance but said it was one of the most discussed problems that Africa faced.

Another questioner wanted enforceable contracts on donors to fulfil their stated commitments, alongside conditionality for recipients. Wickstead agreed, suggesting the need for a new high level political mechanism to report regularly on whether rich countries are keeping to their commitments. A questioner insisted on the need for government, rather than civil society, to build capacity in areas such as healthcare, noting the divergence in countries like Ghana where provision is good in the south but poor in the north. However Desai thought that governments were not necessarily the best vehicle for building healthcare systems, noting the divergent performance in India, where the quality of state healthcare is high in Kerala yet poor in Bihar. Whilst acknowledging his own atheism, he argued that where governments fail, society goes on, and institutions of social solidarity such as religions can be suitable instruments for the delivery of basic services, citing the example in Congo of the Catholic church offering postal services.

The debate threw up starkly different points of view, and, unusually for such weighty matters, the outcome will be known within the year. And with both participants seemingly offering to a second debate to decide the issue in a year’s time, the opportunity to review whether rich governments will adopt the Commission on Africa’s recommendations may soon present itself.

31st March 2005

DEBATE ON 23RD MARCH 2005, DOES THE PUBLIC REACTION TO THE TSUNAMI INDICATE A GENUINE CHANGE OF PUBLIC PERCEPTION?

(the first speaker was Dr Edward Clay, whose contribution will be posted at a later stage)

Daleep Murkajee

I am taking the point of view of someone who is involved in an NGO working in the field. We had an unprecedented response. We raised some £300- million in the UK, plus enormous amounts in the North America and it must be said also in India and Sri Lanka. It embarrassed the Governments o of our own countries!

We have therefore an enormous responsibility to spend this money in the best possible way. Is there compassion fatigue? No, not on the evidence of this event. Just look at Comic Relief that was held two weeks after the main Tsunami appeal closed; it raised some 37 million.

We are now in the second phase; that of reconstruction. This will last perhaps 2- 3 years. You cannot spend that amount of money wisely in 6 months, in spite of the rules that were set up some years ago on DEC fundraising projects.

There are other problems that we encounter in the field. How can you go to one village and say to them “ we shall help you as you have lost everything” and ignore the village next door that has not lost anything but where there is obviously need and we should not help simply because it has not been wiped off. Look at the fact that schools inland are now overwhelmed; should not we enable them to cope with the children who have moved there from the littoral? The same question might apply to internally displaced persons; do we not help them to rebuild their lives if they have moved elsewhere in India or Sri Lanka or Indonesia?

The great advantage of Christian Aid is that it has a large number of local partners and it can thus mobilise them very rapidly. They were working on the ground with our financial help within a matter of 24 hours.

In that part of the world some countries have of course been used to typhoons, but that is not the case with all of them, like Sri Lanka for example. We thus need to start from scratch and build their own capacity to cope in the future should anything similar happen event again.

The key question of this debate of course is whether we have managed to raise concern for our fellow human beings at all. Have we managed to do something to raise peoples’ concern about Africa in general or perhaps even Darfur in particular? The appeal has raised perhaps some $800 per person who has been affected by the tsunami, but in Mozambique the terrible floods some years ago only managed to raise $14 per person. And every 3 seconds a child dies of preventable diseases in Africa. We assume that some 250,000 people died in the Tsunami in Asia, but roughly the same level of loss of human life occurs in Africa every month. We need to look at the problems of African development long term- that is where the solutions lie. As a Christian I would add that God uses us to find mechanisms to help one another.

David Loyn

It is interesting to note how Government Ministers are now talking note of the external interest in their country. They want to make sure that the world will see them in the right light – of concerned individuals. To that extent the spotlight turned on that part of the world has been very positive.

But I want to concentrate on what happens in the UK. I see three sorts of public; 1 is the group that cares about fair trade and indeed will come out in a wet evening to listen to a debate such as this one; 2 the people who do not care either way; 3 the people in the middle, those who gave an average of some £5 per head in the UK to the Tsunami appeal. There is great and possibly increasing concern in the UK about the wider world – and there is enormous ignorance also. People are still asking why there are people in Ethiopia starving so many years after Band Aid. At the same time there are also many more people who is that there are abuses in refuges camps, that perhaps ask why the giving of aid has not helped at all. They ask if this interference in the long run helps anyone. People know that Darfur is a man-made disaster, not something like the tsunami that was quite clearly a natural disaster. Should we give to Darfur? I believe that the problem is that the issue is not about compassion fatigue, it is about the fact that we are less certain and that there are many more doubts than there were some years ago.

Let us look back at the appeals of the 80s; they never referred to the context of the civil wars. They were not mentioned. But then Amartya Sen made the famous comment; “ Famines do not occur in democracies” and people started to wonder about the quality of government. The better NGOs have moved out of food distribution and have gone into the advocacy field, which is one way of making sure that our government and others tackle the real long term causes of famine and disasters.

The Government is now making a determined appeal to double aid, particularly to Africa. The very same group that will support that appeal and care, also will have doubts and will demonstrate for change.

Points from the questions and answer with the floor;

1) I want to ask a question about advocacy. If the response is not on the scale of the disaster, for example the Tsunami fundraising has been enormous and not to scale of the disaster, then can’t Dfid just save the extra money and use it for other disasters?

Dr Ed Clay: 2 weeks ago in Washington, congress increased the amount of aid to the Tsunami disaster to $1billion. Per year the US gives $2million in food aid, so you could say the tsunami aid was disproportionate. But when people have lost a loved one, even if they are from a rich community, we should recognize their desperate conditions. Perhaps not enough is being done elsewhere, as opposed to too much for the tsunami victims.

David Loyn: Actually Oxfam did ask donors that if they received enough money for the disaster, would they want the extra money to go to other Oxfam projects in Africa. The overwhelming response was no.

Daleep Mukaraji: People do have influence over these issues. CAFOD, Oxfam and Jubilee 2000 have influenced government to double overseas aid. People need to come to the G8 meeting on the 2nd July. We need to examine the causes of poverty, what are the systemic reasons, why are rich countries taking advantage of the poor?

2) How will Christian Aid make sure that untouchables are helped, as they are excluded from their own communities.

Daleep Mukaraji: It is a reality in the cultural context of India. When there is a disaster they very sadly get left out. Christian Aid has a bias for them and we have projects to help the Dalits and strengthen them and their position in the community. We are trying to change attitudes of people and the government and trying to change that system.

3) In terms of reporting, it seems to me that the way something is reported has a direct effect on the public response, especially on the TV.

David Loyn: We are looking for what people are interested in watching, as well as sometimes putting something unpalatable in front of people. I wished we covered Congo more, it is the worst ongoing disaster, and 4 million have died. But disasters are easier to cover than complex situations of war.

4) This issue of natural disasters are just easier to cover than man made ones id just an excuse. The only reason the tsunami got such coverage is because so many westerners died.

Daleep Mukaraji: There is something in what you say. There is some general knowledge of the region, so I think it was that. Many people have gone on holiday there, on gap years. Also though, there are a lot of immigrants from those countries here and also it was Christmas, everyone was sitting at home watching TV. So I think there were a lot of factors.

5) If you want to volunteer in those areas, what is the best way to go about it?

Daleep Mukaraji: Christian Aid uses volunteers over here because there is much expertise over in the effected countries. We should employ the locals. Sometimes we send people over there to set things up in the short term, but we pay them.

David Loyn: Actually lots of little non-governmental organisations descended on Aceh, many of them from Muslim countries. Not that Oxfam and big NGO’s are better, but they just complicated the aid giving and so it was not as effective as it should have been.

6) How do you think compassion fatigue can be overcome?

David Loyn: I think we need to move from compassion to solidarity. I criticise a bit Red Nose Day because it is not serious development assistance – it does not raise enough to make a big impact. Trade Justice is much better. But where comic relief does come in is to target the people who do not generally give money. It brings in positive stories and personalises the issues and tries to bring people together and bridge the divide. Overall it has a good effect in fostering solidarity.

Daleep Mukaraji: What I think is important to for people to go beyond just giving money and actually become more involved campaigning, pressuring the G7 to cancel debts – because they can make a massive impact. The G7 can do in one action, what all the NGOs could do in 1000 years. Our aid is just an entry point. We need to get the IMF and WTO to do things in the interests of developing countries. We are trying to educate people about all these issues of fair trade and debts. Jubilee 2000 was successful, but it took us about 8 – 9 years to get there.

Dr Ed Clay: I think we have all gone a long way. Now political parties are using aid and help to developing countries as a campaigning issue, which has never happened before.

7) How much US aid to going to help the Indonesian government, who have been fighting separatists in Aceh for years, and how much of the aid is conditional?

David Loyn: It is troubling that the Indonesian armed forces are using the aid money for their own purposes. There are daily engagements with the rebels in the jungle in Aceh. When I was there I was sitting in a café at 10pm with NGO workers and the World Vision worker said that until now there had been a 6pm curfew and you would never see anyone out on the streets. Now everyone has come out and the secret police do not know who is who and there is not this tight control anymore.

PDF technical, "Tsunami 3 months on"

The domestic politics of International Aid

With a general election expected in seven weeks time, the three main parties came to debate international aid. Labour’s Hugh Bailey MP, Chairman of the Parliamentary Africa Committee stood in for Tony Colman who was unable to attend, and was joined by Alan Duncan MP, the Conservative Party spokesman on International Affairs and his Liberal Democrat counterpart Tom Brake, MP.

Hugh Bailey began by recalling how his private members bill some eight or nine years ago to break the link between aid and export contracts had been met with derision. Yet government aid is now untied, and has almost doubled in real terms. Moreover money is now targeted at the poorest countries, and Britain is urging the EU, the world’s largest aid donor, to do the same. As well as writing off the unilateral debts that the poorest countries owe Britain, our share of multilateral debt would now also be written off by July. However vast sums are still owed to other countries. He insisted the government would go further in persuading countries to cancel debt, although he recognised that Germany is currently under severe budgetary constraint, whilst Japan opposes debt cancellation on principle.

The government has placed Africa and international development at the top of the agenda as it chairs the G8 in 2005, and in its turn as President of the European Union in the second half of the year. The radical agenda set out by the Africa Commission, a majority of whom are from the continent, combined with Britain’s commitment to implement its recommendations, is increasing pressure on other rich countries to respond to the needs of the poorest. When they came to power in 1997, the worlds largest economies, including the US, Canada, Japan, Germany, France were all cutting their aid budgets, but Britain bucked this trend and is leading by example. Moreover it persuaded the EU to adopt an aid target of 0.35% by 2007-8, which, whilst just half of the United Nation’s official target, still represents progress on the current position.

Tom Brake said the Liberal Democrats adopted a constructively critical approach to the government’s international development policies, and supported the main principles. Voters were now much more engaged, placing it ahead of issues like Europe, transport and Iraq for the first time in opinion polls. He supported the government’s move to three-year budgets, saying that more reliable, longer-term aid flows would facilitate planning, and said there was further agreement between the parties over the need for more money from rich countries and the need for better government in many developing countries. He lamented the 2003 decision to cut spending on middle income countries such as Peru, where aid projects were curtailed in order to fund reconstruction in Iraq. He added that the Africa Commission should have included deadlines for countries to meet the UN 0.7% target, and he was concerned that the two people charged with reviewing progress each year lacked any powers of enforcement.

Whilst broadly supporting the government, Brake said Britain should do more. Emphasising the importance of good governance, he said that the UK still hadn’t ratified the UN Convention on Corruption, and cited a report in the Times that only £46bn of an estimated £250bn laundered through UK banks has been recovered. Stronger measures were needed against people like former president Sani Abacha, who passed an estimated £1bn stolen from Nigeria through London. Moreover Britain is the world’s second largest arms exporter, and he proposed greater parliamentary scrutiny of export licences, and better ways to track weaponry.

Alan Duncan cited how the recent Tsunami had raised an awareness that would hopefully be sustained into the future. He too highlighted the cross party consensus, saying that the moral challenge had never been greater, nor the importance of developing a national, constant policy on international development. He endorsed the UN Millennium Goals, but insisted they would take decades to achieve, and highlighted the terrible effects both of TB and of Aids, with only 1% of sufferers receiving anti-viral drugs. He said the most effective aid projects were small-scale, and large, prestige projects had a history of failure. He applauded the priority given to Africa by the Prime Minister, but said that the Commission’s report placed too much responsibility on countries like the US and not enough on partnership with developing countries. He said the litmus test of a collective commitment to good governance in Africa would be if the continent’s leaders pressurised Mugabe into reversing his appalling policies in Zimbabwe.

Duncan deplored the €20bn spent by the UK on trade subsidies, which he said were bad for us and destroyed the economies of developing countries. He insisted free trade should be fairer, and fair trade should be freer. Developing countries would need time to open up their markets, whilst rich countries had the infrastructure to cope. He agreed on the need for further debt relief, continuing a process begun by former Conservative Chancellor Nigel Lawson, but insisted on conditionality to ensure the money went on health and education, rather than the military. ‘Forceful persuasion’ was needed to resolve conflicts in Sudan, Uganda, and the Great Lakes region, for prosperity to have a chance. Moreover the Conservative Party would support an international arms trade treaty, saying that most conflict deaths were due to small arms, and also called for ‘responsibility audits’ in UK firms to enforce development standards.

Despite some areas of disagreement, there was a general feeling that Britain, at least, had seen some progress, and was leading world opinion. International development had moved up the political agenda, all parties were committed to increasing aid, emphasised in equal measure the need for good governance, and condemned the export subsidies in rich countries as hypocritical and immoral. We no longer have a Conservative Party that would prostitute the aid budget in return for arms contracts, as it did over the Malaysian Pergau Dam project, and they now want to see aid money focused on the poorest countries. The Conservatives now disown their policy that saw aid fall from 0.51% of GDP in 1979 to 0.26% in 1997. Labour’s increase to 0.35% receives cross-party support.

Indeed on such a critical issue, it was hard to differentiate between the parties’ platforms. The Liberal Democrats would meet the UN 0.7% target a little sooner, in 2011 rather than Labour’s commitment of 2013, which has been matched by the Conservatives. When questioned why we could not move to 0.7% directly, they all pointed to the political difficulty of any single budget getting a substantial increase. Brake likened turning the aid budget around to a supertanker, and said his party had rejected moving to 0.7% by 2008 because that would mean prioritising overseas development spending over domestic concerns like pensions. Duncan insisted that the Conservatives would spend more and better, although the ‘more’ depended on identifying savings within the budget which would then by ploughed back in. He also hinted at repatriating some aid spending from Brussels but did not elaborate, perhaps indicating less confidence in Britain’s ability to raise international development up the European agenda. The Liberal Democrats want to exert more influence on how the European aid budget is spent, although the accelerated aid target risks alienating some partners, being funded by cutting back Britain’s Eurofighter order.

There was disagreement about whether more aid money should be spent through non-governmental organisations (NGOs), as proposed by Alan Duncan, arguing that they were often the best avenue available. Brake insisted that NGOs have axes to grind like anyone else, and should be transparent and accountable. This reiterated the view of the questioner, himself member of an NGO, who said that some NGO employees were young and under-qualified, whilst limited geographical reach risked exacerbating inequalities within countries. Brake also highlighted the risk that NGOs can distort local markets, with pay rates that might attract teachers to become drivers. Moreover he said that some NGOs were outbidding each other in the efforts to provide relief to the Tsunami victims, rather than co-operating. Bailey pointed out that the £300m raised by UK NGOs in response to the Tsunami was equivalent of the GDP of Malawi, and such sums required high standards of accountability.

Another disagreement was over the government’s proposed International Finance Facility (IFF). Bailey insisted it would kickstart development in the poorest countries. However Brake said that under the proposal, countries would again be replaying more than they received in ten years time, and that most of the 50 or so countries who support the plan are would-be recipients. Duncan doubted the wisdom of the IFF, likening it to a one-off mortgage advance, and pointed out that it was still opposed by the United States. Brake suggested that President Chirac’s proposal of funding development through a tax on aviation fuel could offer an alternative source of funds.

Taking up an example cited by Brake about a mothballed tomato-canning factory in Ghana that left farmers vulnerable to much lower prices for perishable goods, a questioner highlighted the problem of European subsidies that made Senegalese tomatoes uncompetitive. But the panel rejected the suggestion that it was wrong of the WTO to prevent Senegal from imposing tariffs to offset the subsidies. Bailey said it was more effective to reduce all subsidies, and highlighted the problem of protection within Africa, where countries imposed much higher tariff on each other than either developed countries impose on African goods and vice versa. He said developed countries spend seven times more on subsidies than they do on aid, a position that was both grotesque and unacceptable, with EU cows receiving $2.50 per day, more than most Africans have to live on. Duncan agreed with this and reiterated that trade was the main route out of poverty.

On conditionality, the panel recognised the need to ensure aid spending was not wasted, stolen, or put to other uses. A questioner raised the issue of Uganda and the conflict with the Lord’s Resistance Army, concerned that aid could be siphoned off by the military. Bailey supported the Africa Commission’s view that some conditionality is acceptable, but that this should not be extended to areas such as forced privatisation. Brake agreed, saying the canning factory had been mothballed after Ghana was forced to privatise it when there were no buyers. Duncan said there was a trade-off between sovereignty and conditionality, but that we had an obligation to ensure our aid money was used effectively, which would require on-going monitoring and a system of carrots as well as sticks. However he also highlighted the problem of qualified medical staff being attracted by the high wages paid in developing countries, saying this exacerbated skills shortages.

All three speakers supported the government’s aid towards helping poor countries negotiate in the WTO, with the UK being the largest donor towards advocacy programmes. Brake commended the efforts of development countries to develop a common negotiating position as an effective means to improve their bargaining position, and said that trade liberalisation should not necessarily be reciprocal, but should allow developing countries more time. Moreover, in response to a question regarding higher tariffs on chocolate than cocoa, Baileys deplored such tariff escalation, saying the Doha Round at the WTO must address such issues.

Finally, asked for one way in which British companies could help development, Brake proposed new financial product similar to the current ISAs but focusing on development assistance to meet the Millennium Goals. Duncan highlighted the need for property rights to encourage foreign investment. And Bailey highlighted the need for more capital in Africa, suggesting that the success of microfinancing of small initiatives could be extended through the VISA network to encourage greater entrepreneurship.

Global Development Forum 9th March 2005

WARS OVER WATER?

Will a shortage of water provoke military conflicts? Is the risk one of actual shortage, or failures in distribution? Is there a single model that works, or must the provision of water and sanitation reflect local circumstances? There was an encouraging consensus among the three panellists that traditional military conflict over water would remain rare. Indeed, in response to a question, Richard Aylard of Thames Water highlighted cases in Africa where co-operation over water continued despite military conflict. However Erik Swyngedouw, professor of Human Geography at Oxford University, insisted that water shortages provoked serious conflicts within communities, sometimes generating conflicts along ethnic or caste lines. Intense social movements demanding access to water undermined social cohesion, particularly in cities, but the conflicts rarely spilled over international borders.

Ravy Narayanan, the executive director of WaterAid, began by drawing important geographical and sectoral distinctions. Latin America is well endowed with water per capita, whereas some regions in China, India and Sub Saharan Africa experience acute need. Moreover direct human consumption accounted for only 8-10% of water use, with agriculture and industry claiming the rest. Unless we can achieve an appropriate balance between competing demands for water, addressing issues of equity, efficiency and sectoral balance, he feared that there would not be enough water for everyone.

The UN Millennium Goals set the target of halving the proportion of people without access to safe water by 2015, as well as halving the proportion without sanitation. However Narayanan insisted that the problems and the solutions vary considerably around the world. In Sub Saharan Africa the primary problem is water, whereas in much of Asia it is sanitation. Whilst solutions require finance, governance and technology, solutions must be catered to suit the particularly constraints faced in different communities. More aid is needed, more of it must be directed to the poorest, and it should be put to more effective use. Technology and good management must be combined with political will and better governance. However whilst decentralisation of decision-making can help to bring in the poor and dispossessed and make them part of the solution, this also presented new problems. In many countries, decentralisation transferred responsibility downwards, but not authority or control over natural resources. There is a need for greater accountability, better co-ordination, and better data. And in order to achieve the right balance between the competing needs of people, agriculture and industry, there is a need for political leadership, with human needs ring-fenced to protect vulnerable communities.

Richard Aylard, whose company supplies water to 70 million consumers, primarily in the UK, US and Germany but also the developing countries, marvelled that we can plan to send people to look for water on Mars yet 1.1 billion lacked access to clean water here on Earth. Water is a low political priority, in part because the 6,000 children who die of water-borne diseases every day largely belong to informal communities that are unwelcome to the authorities, where people are neither taxpayers nor voters. The tradition concession model of the private sector will not work in most cases: water requires high capital investment and provides commercial returns only over the very long term. Moreover, such investment is ‘top-down’ whereas the solutions need to be ‘bottom-up’. Privatisation allowed governments to offload their obligations to provide water, leaving the poor to buy water from street vendors charging between 10 and 100 times the price of water from pipes. Instead there needs to be a partnership, with private water companies providing technological and managerial expertise, whilst NGOs such as WaterAid are best placed to negotiate and co-ordinate with local communities. The efforts of French water company Suez to sell water in Buenos Aires resulted in considerable losses for the company’s finances and reputation, highlighting that even in comparatively developed economies the concession model does not work.

Erik Swyngedouw argued that lack of water reflected a lack of political power. Whilst it may not be a source of military conflict it is a formidable military weapon, with one of the first targets of the recent invasion of Iraq being Baghdad’s water supply, which still today has not been fully repaired. Lack of water is a form of genocide. As the leading cause of death in the world, it eclipses even the worst fatality scenarios due to Climate Change, but is not given the political priority it deserves. He forecast that the Millennium Goals would not be met, expecting instead the proportion without access to safe water will rise by 50% rather than fall. Whilst a neo-liberal ideology is written into the Millennium Goals, water provision in developed countries is overwhelmingly public, so the myth of the failure of state provision is false. Yet we seek to impose privatisation on others when we reject it ourselves. Far from a shortage of water, it is the most abundant compound on earth, but access to it depends on political power. 800 million people live in conditions whereby no profit can be drawn from water provision, so privatisation cannot be the solution. The politics of neo-liberalism evaporates the politics of democracy, effectively privatising democracy rather than building it. Even NGOs like WaterAid are not democratic and therefore not accountable. To stop the genocide, we must recognise water as our most important environmental challenge, it must be politicised and democratised, and resources must be transferred from the wealthy to the poor to ensure its provision.

The panel was asked how to empower the poor regarding their basic needs such as water. Narayanan said that the process of democracy, information and universal education was slow but central. Gandhi’s concept of village democracy could work under conditions of independent autarkic communities, but more complex societies with unequal water provision required a centralised control that could be disempowering. Yet decisions about where to locate a pump, or whether a pump is preferable to a well, should remain local. Swyngedouw insisted that the evolution of democracy is not inevitable and must be fought for. China demonstrates that the market does not necessarily foster democracy, which was important at the national and sub-national level, but also for supranational institutions like the World Bank. However Aylard said that the urgent need for water could not wait for democratisation. However he added that issues of whether water should be provided twenty-four hours a day, whether there should be standpipes, whether it should be metered by the house or by the town, should be local ones, and that such decisions could contribute to the democratisation process.

Further questions highlighted the myth of communities, which are most often complex power relationships in which the elite decides and the poor are disempowered. Narayanan agreed there was a tendency to romanticise communities, assuming a shared purpose and solidarity and disguising a reality of ethnic and caste divisions. Thus governments must ensure that the needs of the poor are recognised within a framework of dialogue and open disclosure, with communities being a genuine part of government. Swyngedouw agreed, but insisted it was not enough to involve the communities without also sufficient finance, and that the World Bank’s loan conditions requiring privatisation was a significant problem. He cited a community in Ecuador were co-operative delivery using tankers had cut costs of water, with the proceeds invested in local education. Aylard agreed on the need to empower communities, arguing that the top-down World Bank approach was doomed to failure. Instead, low-technology solutions were the best, whereby both maintenance and on-going financing, as opposed to the initial capital outlay, remained within the local community.

In response to the question of an actual water shortage, rather than problems of distribution and access, Narayanan insisted that there should be enough to meet health needs, but that profligate water use would place severe strains on provision. Regarding our ability to regulate firms, Aylard insisted that water is a human right, and that regulations should be tight and consistent. Thames Water has several regulators, regarding price, quality and the environment, and provided regulation was clear and predictable, it was not problematic.

The last question turned on how to raise water up the political agenda. Narayanan suggested that requiring the G8 to review water provision on an annual basis would raise its profile, whilst Swyngedouw emphasised the role of civil society, arguing that groups like WaterAid should adopt Amnesty International’s approach, politicising the issue rather than being involved in actual provision. Aylard observed the success of campaigns like Make Poverty History in mobilising public opinion, stressing that more children die every month from waterborne disease than died in the Boxing Day tsunami.

Global Development Forum 2nd March 2005

IS THE NORTH IMPOSING UNACCEPTABLE ENVIRONMENTAL STANDARDS
ON THE SOUTH?

Should rich countries help poor ones to leapfrog industrialisation and move straight to clean technologies and a less polluting lifestyle? Does responding to Climate Change impede growth, or is sustainable development the only option? Can rich countries expect any effort from the poor given the North’s long history of emissions, and slow response to Climate Change? Both Charlie Kronick of Greenpeace and Tony Juniper, Director of Friends of the Earth, stressed the North’s responsibility for Climate Change, as well as the need to provide positive examples of low emission development for countries in the South to adopt. Geoffrey Lean, the Environment correspondent of the Independent on Sunday, was unavoidably detained.