The road to Busan

This post first appeared on OECD Insights.

An editor I once worked for had a golden rule for his reporters and editors: We don’t do process. By that he meant that news stories should focus on what had happened, not the tedious ins and outs of how it had happened. Not bad advice it you want to write a vivid story, and many journalists would probably subscribe to it. Indeed, it may help to explain why there’s such a gap in public awareness regarding two of the landmark development declarations of the 2000s.

The first, the Millennium Development Goals, is known worldwide. Under eight main headings, it sets down a series of anti-poverty goals to be attained by the year 2015, including a memorable pledge to cut by half the number of people living on less than a dollar a day.

The second declaration is less well known, in part, perhaps, because it’s all process. While the Millennium Development Goals are about what development should seek to achieve, the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness is about the processes developing and developed countries should follow to achieve those goals. The language of the declaration and its five core principles can be a little obscure, but the message basically boils down to this: Development won’t happen sustainably unless developing countries themselves – and not donors – take the lead in setting priorities and coordinating activities.

Since it was adopted in 2005, the Paris Declaration has been widely credited with helping to reshape relations between donor and developing countries – development expert Homi Kharas describes the process that created the declaration as a “watershed”. But whether enough has really changed is a matter for debate: It’s probably fair to say that developing countries still feel their donor partners could do more.

How much more? That question, and many others, will be keenly debated at a major conference on development and aid effectiveness in November in the Korean city of Busan. The issues on the table are previewed in an article by OECD colleague Stephen Groff in the latest issue of Global Asia.

As Steve points out, this forum – the latest in a series over the past decade – “will be the first international meeting of its kind to focus on aid in the new development landscape”. That landscape is, indeed, new: Traditional donors in North America and Europe are facing squeezed budgets and rising pressure to get value for money for their aid budgets. Newer donors, like China, India and Brazil, are becoming ever more important players in development. And there’s the evolving political and social situation, in which, as the Arab Spring has shown, things can change in a heartbeat.

Busan will look back at what the Paris Declaration, and other agreements, have and have not achieved. But, as Steve points out, it will also look forward. “In Busan, there is the opportunity to build a fresh — and flexible — global development partnership that will include today’s diversity of actors and approaches,” he writes. “In these times of economic uncertainty, the world simply cannot afford anything less than effective aid and Busan is a critical milestone on the path to more effective development.”

Measuring Development Effectiveness: Measuring Progress?

A couple of weeks ago the OECD's Development Co-operation Directorate organised a meeting about how we measure the results of aid, for what purpose and for whom? Representatives came from donor country governments and developing countries, and various civil society organisations comprising both producers and users of data. It was (by OECD standards at least) a lively meeting and I am not the only there who was so pleased to see civil society and others invited alongside the usual suspects.

What was of most interest to me were several of the themes that came out of the meeting. Themes very strongly linked to the ideas of measuring progress.

One recurring theme was that those who provide money for aid want to measure the effectiveness of their aid programmes - both to account to tax payers, account to the citizens of countries who receive the aid, and also to learn what approaches work well and what don't. But there are some problems. What outcomes are donors trying to achieve for instance? Different donors have different ideas, but, really, should it not be the recipient countries themselves who decide what they want development to look like and to define the key goals they want to achieve? Should that not be the basis for the reporting system? Well yes, I think it should and so did many others there. This is the key idea behind countries designing their own (bottom up) sets of progress or development measures - which is a fundamental part of the Global Project on Measuring the Progress of Societies' platform. Several people noted that this approach would also bring benefits of strengthening national statistical systems in developing countries.

Another theme was the difficulty different donors have in trying to demonstrate how their particular spending makes a difference. Progress in the field of health, in Uganda say, might arise from a mixture of donor aid (from different countries and NGOs), work by the Ugandan government, broader societal changes and a myriad other factors. If you are looking at a broad outcome like increased longevity it is pretty much impossible to unpack who is responsible for what. And do we even need to? I don't know the answer to this question but do think having some smarter measures of progress - measures that focus on key development outcomes that are tailored to specific countries - might inspire some cleverer, more joined up, reporting systems.

And a third theme was the poor quality of statistical reporting on all this. Users felt it was often too complicated, too detailed, over qualified and just plain badly communicated. Nothing new to those who have worked with the OECD on the statistics, knowledge, policy theme that underpinned the Palermo, Istanbul and Busan World Forums. But it was nice to see it emerge (without prompting) among a different group of users of data and policy makers.

The OECD and others are still digesting the discussion at the meeting and discussing next steps. But it does seem that the momentum around measuring progress continues to increase and spread to new communities of practice.

Jon Hall