At 'accountability' summit, litany of unmet aid promises

By Anindita Ramaswamy Jun 22, 2010, 10:48 GMT

Washington - This was to be the year when the world's wealthiest nations would deliver on ambitious poverty-reducing promises. But as leaders meet in Canada for the G8 and G20 summits it's clear that many countries have fallen short, by a few billion dollars, to foster development in the poorest regions.

Host Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has called the G8 an 'accountability summit,' emphasizing the importance of the group's past pledges of funds to eradicate diseases, lift people out of poverty, send more children to school and feed the hungry.

The Group of 8 (G8) leading industrial nations and Group of 20 (G20) wealthy and developing countries meet in the middle of a pivotal year for global development - 2010 marks the deadline for commitments made at the G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland in 2005.

It also marks the tenth anniversary of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a set of global targets outlined in 2000 and agreed to by 192 UN member states, which include halving extreme poverty by 2015; battling AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria; improving maternal health; reducing child mortality; promoting gender equality.

At Gleneagles, the G8 pledged an extra 50 billion dollars in aid to poorer countries by 2010, with 25 billion dollars for Africa alone.

The group released an accountability report Sunday that said the G8 and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) nations are about 10 billion dollars short of their Gleneagles' commitments.

'The G8 has acted as a force for positive change and its actions have made a difference in addressing global challenges,' the report said, adding that 'it has further to go to fully deliver on its promises.'

Despite significant investments, the report said, polio has still not been eradicated; maternal deaths remain at a high of 536,000 annually; and under-five deaths in sub-Saharan Africa increased by 400,000 between 1990-2007.

Earlier this month, a leaked draft summit communique failed to mention what was committed to at Gleneagles. The glaring omission was allegedly because of lobbying from France and Italy, which lag far behind in meeting their aid targets for this year.

'In my view this would essentially be the end of the G8 as a credible instrument,' economist Jeffery Sachs said.

'If the G8 tries to skirt the fact that it has ... repeated specific time-bound commitments for 2010 and then not only holds a summit called an accountability summit, but fails to even note the specific commitments it has taken for this year, it would be pretty dismal.'

The European Union had said its official development assistance (ODA) spending would rise to 0.7 per cent of gross national income (GNI) per year by 2015, and was to have reached 0.56 per cent this year.

But current figures put the combined EU total at a woeful 0.42 per cent of GNI for 2010. ODA contributions from key EU states such as Italy fell in 2009 because of the financial crisis.

The G8 also takes place two-thirds of the way towards the 2015 deadline for the MDGs, and world leaders will meet at the UN in September to review progress towards the MDGs.

The millennium goals have often been criticized for being seriously flawed, with unrealistic targets for many countries. Some say it doesn't make sense for all nations to have the same development goals, which cannot be universally measured.

The MDGs oversell what aid can achieve and therefore add to the pessimism over aid, says Todd Moss of the Centre for Global Development, a Washington thinktank.

They are problematic because they hold no one accountable, 'instead we are likely to get just finger pointing and whining about 'broken promises',' Moss said. Thus, donors blame recipients for not implementing changes, recipients complain about not receiving money, and NGOs criticize both.

The reality of development aid is likely to change even more with the debt and deficit problems in traditional, wealthy donor countries, which also makes it likely that the G8 will look to the G20 for increased aid commitments.

South Korea is to host a G20 summit in November with development firmly on the agenda.

'It is not so easy for the G20 to discuss development because 'development' has traditionally been a topic for the G8, and the G8 seems to be reluctant to give up this role,' wrote Homi Kharas, who leads a project on aid agency effectiveness at Brookings Institution.

But given that the G20 has a more rounded view of development 'that is more relevant to a diverse group of emerging and developing countries than just the poorest aid recipients,' Kharas concluded that it's 'time to pass the development football from the G8 to the G20.'

Money has never been the problem, Sachs emphasized.

The US is 'spending 100 billion dollars this year in Afghanistan, 750 billion dollars on the military, the bankers are taking home perhaps 30 billion dollars in bonuses,' Sachs noted.

'There's no question that the money's available many times over to do this right, if we prioritize better.'