Clare Short on International Development and Aid

Clare Short MP

Clare Short gave a very interesting lecture, last night, which kicked off the 2012 St Wilfrid Lecture Series Questions of Right and Wrong at Ripon cathedral. The gist of her argument was that giving development aid alone is not enough, to be both effective and morally pure, it has to go hand in hand with foreign policy and a development policy which puts the needs of the country to which aid is given before the gains of the country giving aid. She gave us many examples of aid which is tied to trade and aid which is less effective than it could be because each donor country imposes conditions of their own which may look nonsensical on the ground. (For example where three separate countries give ambulances and spare parts from their own country, making it difficult to run the ambulance service coherently.) 

A foreign policy which creates markets in which developing countries find it difficult to participate or which promotes the sale of arms to unstable governments negates the positive effect of aid. Aid which simply provides a service and then withdraws is not really going to solve a country's problems - much better to work with local projects to educate and empower local populations. Where governments are corrupt, it may be better to give aid to local leaders who will ensure that it is used to transform their own community. These were some of the many challenges to change our approach to aid about which she spoke. There has, she stressed, to be a coherence between policy and, local strategy and action, 'You can’t be doing the wrong thing over here and the right thing over there.'

She used Jesus' parable of the sheep and the goats to reflect on the moral imperative to give aid but said that she would understand the threat of hell, about which the parable so graphically speaks, as continuing to see a conflict ridden world of suffering in which we draw a protective circle around ourselves and what we have in order to protect ourselves from the turbulance, trouble and terrorism that will undoubtedly overtake us if we do not learn to share resources and live in sustainable ways. Moral imperative and intelligent self interest are thus brought together; she gave lots of examples of how governments fail to grasp this.

The lecture was peppered with insights from her years as Secretary of State for International Development and from her struggles with both the Blair government and the Cameron government to get them to adopt consistent approaches to foreign policy and aid. She is certainly a politician who 'walks the talk', often to her own cost - a thinker who knows the subtleties of her own field and is therefore able to speak with authority.

I look forward to the rest of the series. menawhile, if your conscience or interest has been aroused by any of this, you might like to look on the Africa Humanitarian Action website http://www.africahumanitarian.org/  whose whole approach to aid is based on sound scholarship and a holistic approach to what are usually complex situations.

A New Manifesto

It is forty years since the Sussex manifesto was published, having an effect on the thinking of the UN and other world organisations. It argued that investment in world development should utilise the insights of science and technology; that science and technologically driven innovations have major roles to play in solving some of the most intractible problems of disease and hunger.

The Social Technological and Environmental Pathways to Sustainability Centre (STEPS) has now published a new manifesto http://www.anewmanifesto.org/
suggesting fresh ways to link investment, science, technology and sustainable development. Its contents are being acclaimed as a 'new politics.'  Annual spending on development research is now more than one trillion dollars. In this context, the manifesto sets out a three dimensional approach to innovation. Every area of development (health, education, agriculture, trade, energy, distribution, military and so on) presents infinite possibilities for innovation and often these can be suggested and led by local agents rather than imposed from outside. It is also the case that continent-spanning infrastructures employ strategies that need to be scrutinised for new directions and and that these are best identified and prioritised by approaches which include insights from science and technology, distribution and politics. Of every development possibilty, at every level, questions must be asked about what different strategies and innovations will mean for justice and equity. The manifesto calls for governments to create platforms for science and technology to work more directly for social justice, poverty alleviation and to lessen environmental destruction. It also looks for a world where  scientists work more freely and creatively with framers, users, customers and businesses to find innovative solutions to problems and to create new ways of working that are more in tune with local situations. If it hasn't been done before, it might be worth investigating!     

To take an example, in parts of Africa where global markets have pushed populations to concentrate on growing only one type of crop, increased agro-biodiversity with the growing of many crop types, chosen by local farmers, makes for a far better fit with local agricultural practices and social contexts. Plant varieties are selected and tested by farmers and local businesses are innovative in finding ways to opening for their produce in the markets, finding niches among the uncertainties of global markets and climatic changes. This is driven locally and, despite flying in the face of conventional market-driven wisdom, these ventures often work and are providing sustainable solutions to 
problems of local food supply, employment and trading.

All very complex indeed and hard to grasp, but the Manifesto is well worth a look. 
 www.anewmanifesto.org/manifesto_2010