Official development aid. By Kjell Magne Bondevik and others.
The UN Conference on Financing for Development is an opportunity for world leaders to commit resources to fulfill the development goals adopted at the UN Millennium Summit in 2000.
Chief among these is reducing by half, by 2015, the proportion of people who live in extreme poverty. That is the yardstick by which the Monterrey summit conference will be measured. We mock our highest ethical values if we continue to tolerate that more than a billion men, women and children live and die in the most abject poverty. We will not find long-term solutions to common challenges such as environmental degradation, climate change and the despair that feeds political violence and crime unless we get more serious about eliminating poverty. We formed a strong coalition against terrorism. We need an equally strong coalition against poverty.
The Monterrey summit will take a comprehensive look at all sources of development finance, domestic as well as external, public as well as private, aid as well as trade, investment as well as debt relief. Official development aid (ODA) is but one of these sources. Total world ODA in 2000 amounted to some $56 billion. That represents an average of only 0.22 percent of the GNP of the industrialized countries, far below the 0.7 percent target adopted by the United Nations more than 30 years ago.
Only five countries – Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden meet or exceed the 0.7 target. This group of countries has demonstrated that it is perfectly possible to maintain broad public support for development assistance above the 0.7 target. It is an experience that we are happy to share with others. We urge the major industrialized countries to make an extraordinary effort to increase their ODA. For poverty to come down, total ODA must go up.
We warmly welcome the positive decisions on increase of ODA by the European Union and the United States. These are important steps in the right direction. The negotiated outcome document, the so-called Monterrey Consensus, demonstrates that we have never had greater agreement in the international community on what it takes to create development and reduce poverty. We know what works and what doesn't. What remains is the willingness to do what it takes. Poor countries must focus on the domestic preconditions for development, at the core of which is good governance. Without sound, pro-poor national development strategies and effective domestic resource mobilization, no amount of outside assistance will help. Without freedom, democracy, rule of law and human rights, the poor will remain trapped in poverty. For the rich countries, Monterrey is the occasion to take a hard look at policy coherence. At how our policies add up, or don't, in support of development.
A case in point is trade. Improved market access could bring far greater income to the developing countries. We should also consider untapped development resources, such as new private-public partnerships and innovative financial mechanisms. It is clear that the bulk of additional resources required to reach the Millennium Development Goals must come from sources other than ODA. We must continue to improve the quality of our development assistance. But continued focus on quality cannot hide the fact that underfunding remains a major problem. Investments in areas such as health and education, particularly girls' education, have strong development impact.
The Zedillo Panel, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, have estimated that we must double ODA to reach the development goals. That would still leave us well below the 0.7 target.
The Monterrey conference will be followed by a World Summit on Sustainable Development, in Johannesburg in September. There we should aim for a global partnership to make globalization work for sustainable development and to further the consensus from Monterrey. The consensus is good, but it does not deliver specific commitments on a substantial increase of ODA. Richer countries must do better. The stakes are high. The major stakeholders are the poorest of the poor. We should not let them down.
Kjell Magne Bondevik is prime minister of Norway. The co-authors are Prime Ministers Anders Fogh Rasmussen of Denmark, Jean-Claude Juncker of Luxembourg, Wim Kok of the Netherlands and Goran Persson of Sweden. They contributed this comment to the International Herald Tribune.