United Nations
DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMIC
AND SOCIAL AFFAIRS
Preparing for the 2010 Development Cooperation Forum
2nd Vienna High-level Symposium
12 – 13 November 2009
Vienna
Policy Coherence
The new development frontier
Robert Picciotto
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What is policy coherence for
development (PCD)?
• Coherence: “the quality of being logically integrated,
consistent and intelligible”.
• Policy coherence: “looking for synergies and
complementarities and filling gaps among different
policy areas so as to meet common and shared
objectives”.
• No ‘here’ in policy coherence unless all partners
agree on what success means and voluntarily strike
judicious trade-offs among means and goals.
• Choices are often constrained by inadequate
knowledge, time pressure and limited analytical
capacity.
• Only second best outcomes may be feasible but
solutions achieved at the expense of one or more
parties (e.g. through coercion) are not legitimate.
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It is a response to the integration
of the global economy
• Developing countries’ exports (about $4
trillion) are more than 40 times the level of
official aid flows.
• Remittances from migrants ($282 b) are three
times as large as aid flows.
• Private capital inflows ($961 billion) are more
than ten times as large as aid flows.
• The reverse flow from intellectual property
royalties is broadly comparable to aid flows.
• The damage to poor countries caused by rich
countries’ environmental practices is huge.
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It is consistent with the
Millennium Declaration…
• PCD originally saw the light of day in the Maastricht
treaty (1992) but it is now embedded in the historic
poverty reduction compact agreed by all United
Nations members at the turn of the century.
• Millennium Development Goal 8 specifies that
developed countries have an obligation to provide
more and better aid, to accelerate debt reduction and
to level the playing field of the global economy.
• The notion that development cooperation extends
beyond aid was confirmed by a Ministerial Statement
of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD) in 2002.
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It extends beyond aid…but aid
remains critical to the poor
• Aid is a life line for low income countries where 1.3
billion people live (average: 5% of GNI; 15-30 % in
some cases).
• Of the 84 countries with available data only 45 are on
track to meet the MDG poverty reduction target.
• The rest including 75% of African countries and 10
out of 12 fragile states are not.
• The most serious gaps are in sanitation, child and
maternal mortality, education and hunger.
• Aid is affordable: 0.28% of the GNI of developed
countries (vs. the official target of 0.70%).
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It has four main dimensions
• Internal coherence: consistency between goals,
objectives and modalities of a single development
policy carried out by an OECD government (e.g. aid).
• Intra-donor (whole of government) coherence:
consistency among several aid and non-aid policies
of an OECD government in terms of their
development impact.
• Inter-donor coherence (harmonization): consistency
of aid and non-aid policies across several OECD
countries in terms their development impact; and
• Donor-recipient coherence (alignment): consistency
of policies adopted by OECD countries and poor
countries individually or collectively to achieve
shared development objectives.
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Development aid has not
amplified the voices of the poor
• It has concentrated on the internal
coherence of aid operations (results
chain).
• It has downplayed the impact of
distorted policies (aid and non aid) on
outcomes.
• It has assumed that all donor goals are
“owned” by recipients.
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It is time to put the spotlight on
global policy dysfunctions
• Agricultural policies in OECD countries benefit very few of
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their citizens and undermine equitable growth in the developing
world.
The highest OECD tariffs on industrial goods affect labor
intensive products critical to developing countries
Protection of intellectual property rights restricts
access to knowledge intensive products and services in poor
countries.
Immigration restrictions discriminate against the poor,
hinder the growth of remittances and aggravate labor
shortages in OECD countries.
Fishing subsidies absorb $15-20 billion a year and deplete
fish stocks on which poor countries’ coastal fisheries depend.
Climate change: industrialized countries (home to 20% of
the world’s population) account for 63% of carbon dioxide that
has accumulated in the atmosphere since 1900.
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It is time to add human security
to the development agenda
• We will not ‘make poverty history’ without
‘making war history’.
• Violent conflict is the single most important
factor that explains slow growth.
• The risk of war is three times higher for
countries with per capita incomes of $1,000
vs. per capita incomes of $4,000.
• Conflict is twice as likely for a growth rate of
-6% compared to a growth rate of +6%.
• Only the United Nations has the mandate to
overcome both freedom from fear and
freedom from want.
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It is time for DCF to address PCD
• It should tackle global policy dysfunctions
• It should incorporate human security in
human development
• It should make globalization work for the
poor through aid for trade, aid for sound
migration, etc.
• It should hep increase aid and its
effectiveness (Paris declaration)
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Improve aid targeting and coordination
Reduce aid fragmentation
Address aid volatility
Improve aid efficiency
• It should forge broader development
coalitions.
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If you agree, let us do so -beginning right here and right
now…
…and thank you for your attention…
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