Ten Years of Global Poverty Eradication:
Is Global Governance Failing the Poor?
David Hulme
Brooks World Poverty Institute
Chronic Poverty Research Centre
University of Manchester
Ideas matter – ‘global poverty’
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Ideas matter – over last 10 years the idea of global
poverty has been prominent, perhaps dominant
It evolved over the 1990s and crystallized around the
Millennium – several elements
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) – human
development meets results-based management
$1-a-day poverty measure provides a global yardstick ‘what counts is what can be counted’
Finance for Development – estimating and mobilising
funds for global poverty eradication
Sustainability – not impoverishing future generations
Ideas matter – but, so does
economic and political power
• Framing of global poverty focussed attention on
global actions for poverty reduction/eradication
• Institutions of global governance have engaged
– UN General Assembly, UN agencies, World
Bank, IMF, WTO, G7/8, G77, African Union,
social movements, NGO coalitions, etc
• But, the processes of ‘implementation’ reflect
international power relations more than the
promises of the MDGs and of policy reforms
• In particular, accountability has been weak
Ten years on - Is global
governance failing the poor?
• Many ways of judging this – an important
distinction between assessing ‘results’ or
assessing ‘process change’
• From a results perspective we have ‘impressive
achievements, major failures, many ambiguities’
– Joe’s summary
• China (impressive)…sub-Saharan Africa
(failure?)…sub-Siberian Asia (neglected?)
Sub-Siberian Asia
Global Governance - institutional
and process changes?
• Those driving the global poverty agenda, and
promoting MDGs were not naïve. They would
like goals to be achieved but they also set goals
to try to shift processes and institutions of global
governance
• Re-framing ‘development’ as ‘global poverty
reduction’ was a component of efforts to (i)
reform international institutions and strengthen
accountability (ii) make global rules and policies
more pro-poor (iii) coordinate poverty reduction
policies more effectively
The rise and stall of the global
poverty agenda?
• The millennium moment created an opportunity
to advance social justice - international
institutions and world leaders had to explain how
the new millennium would be better than the
past. Eradicating poverty was part of this vision
• But, the rise of the global poverty agenda –
Copenhagen Social Summit (1996), DAC’s IDGs
(1996), debt campaign (1997-99), Millennium
Declaration (2000), MDGs (2001), Monterrey
FFD (2002) – stalled in mid-2000s
• Attempts to re-vitalize it at the G8 (2005) and UN
(2008) had little effect…UN in 2 weeks time???
Promise change - but, business
almost as usual
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The evidence that signing up to the global
poverty agenda does not lead to major
institutional and process changes is mounting
Aid and FFD innovations
Trade and IPR reform
Reforms of IFI governance
Climate change – mitigation and adaptation
Improved governance in ‘poor’ countries
Official development assistance
and FFD innovations
0 .4 0 %
0 .3 5 %
0 .3 0 %
0 .2 5 %
0 .2 0 %
O D A minus debt re lie f, % of G N I
O D A minus debt re lie f and huma nita rian
as s is tanc e, % of G N I
0 .1 5 %
0 .1 0 %
0 .0 5 %
0 .0 0 %
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09
% of GNI
O D A , % of G N I
Trade, IPR, IFI reform, climate change and
national governance
• Trade reform – ‘Doha is worth … less than a penny a day, for each
person in the developing world’ (Ackerman 2005: 5).
• IPR reform – ‘TRIPS may still be inappropriate for most developing
countries … and in that larger sense the Doha Declaration offers
little relief.’ (Shadlen 2004: 98).
• IFI reform – ‘[World Bank President Robert] Zoellick ... came to be
president through the current, dysfunctional system and he remains
beholden, albeit in a haphazard fashion, to the current dysfunctional
board’ (Lawrence MacDonald, Centre for Global Development
2009).
• Climate change (Copenhagen 2009) – ‘Climate summit ends in
chaos and 'toothless' deal' (Daily Telegraph headline 19th
December 2009).
• Improved governance in Africa – ‘NEPAD has not done what it
was set up for.’ (President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal).
Global poverty&global governance
Report-card 2000-2010
Subject
Report
Aid/ODA
Early improvements faded away
FFD innovations
Interesting ideas but little action
Trade policy reform
No multilateral progress. Bilateral
deals increasingly regressive
IPR reform
Very limited progress
IFI governance
In 2010 the political interests of 1945
still set this agenda
Climate change
Much too little, much too late
Overall performance
Much promised but little achieved –
must try harder and do much better
Why has the global poverty agenda
stalled?
• Many reasons - up to 2008 there was a sloppy answer –
‘the Bush administration’. But Obama’s lack of
interest/action reveals the deeper structural factors in US
and rich world more generally – ‘We don’t care…enough’
• Poverty, particularly poverty in other countries, has little
political traction in powerful countries or associations–
US, Japan, G8, BRICs, G20 (even before ‘crisis’).
• Transition from G8 to G20 has not led to global poverty
moving up the international agenda.
• Political leaders can still make commitments and know
that they will not be held to account by those who are
doing OK (elites and middle classes)
Stalled or slow change?
• If one disaggregates and looks at national and regional
experiences then in some cases there is evidence of
progressive change
• UK – debt campaigns, IDGs, MDGs, FFD helped the
evolution of cross-party consensus on increasing
aid/improving aid quality. Behind this a belief that this is
a vote influencing factor (a social norm change for the
UK’s silent majority)
• EU – a regional norm - new members must have aid
budgets and institutions (however imperfect)…Estonia…
• For poor country governments national poverty and
bilateral negotiations with IFIs remain the main issues –
engaging with ‘global poverty’ may be a distraction
Lesson 1 - From setting targets to
diffusing a social norm
• 2000-2010 too much focus on direct changes to
policies, plans and targets. Neglect of changing
underlying socio-political determinants (public
attitudes, social norms) – Millennium Campaign
• 2010-2020 a greater focus on re-shaping social
norms (nationally and internationally) is needed
so that popular support for pro-poor policies and
effective institutions strengthens accountability
• The priority is diffusing the norm that ‘extreme
poverty in an affluent world is morally
unacceptable’ - as with slavery, apartheid,
blocking of votes for women
From setting targets to diffusing a
norm
• MDGs have been prominent in policy and
institutional debates but have been a relatively
weak vehicle for diffusing a new social norm
• Several reasons including MDG complexity, and
their not being effectively simplified or packaged
for mass audiences
• Post-2015 global poverty agenda must find an
idea that wins more attention from civil society
and the media. Front-runner - ‘stop children
dying now’. This captures much of MDGs 1 to 6
Lesson 2 - Global poverty reduction
as a support to national processes
• A big downside of the idea of global poverty has
been the exaggeration of the significance of
foreign aid and external actors
• Post-2010 (and 2015) the links between global
action and national action need to be clearer.
National targets, national budgets, national
policies and domestic actors (elites and
wider civil societies) are what matter. Global
targets, external finance and actors can only
support what happens at the national level
Lesson 3 – Can we care?
• The ‘international agenda’ can only
recognise a small number of issues
• Responsibility for global poverty – the
poverty of distant strangers
(geographically and socially) – may not
register
• Linking to issues that may register more
with elites and middle classes – climate
change? – may be an effective tactic
Conclusion
• The opportunity of the Millennium moment for
tackling global poverty is past…but, the idea has
made a little difference
• The next leg of the journey for global poverty is
reframing the idea to focus more on changing
national social norms (and thus international
norms) about the personal and public
responsibility to help eradicate poverty…rather
than creating a central plan for poverty reduction