Multilateral Development Agencies Research Articles

Have Natural Disasters Become Deadlier?

The present study seeks to build on earlier work by identifying the factors associated with the frequency of natural disasters and the resulting mortality. Drawing together the main findings, some observations are made from a policy perspective to focus on key elements of a disaster reduction strategy. Countries that were prone to natural disasters in the previous decade (1970-79) continued to be so in the next two decades. Geophysical factors (e.g. whether landlocked, distance to coast) had an important role in explaining inter-country variation in the occurrence of natural disasters. However, income did not have any effect. Deaths varied with the number of disasters; they also varied with (lagged) deaths in the previous decade, pointing to (presumably) persistent government failures in preventing deaths where the deaths were high; poor countries suffered more deaths, controlling for these and other effects; larger countries suffered more deaths. The pay-off from learning from past experience is high, as reflected in the elasticity of deaths to disasters. Even moderate learning can save a large number of deaths (e.g. through early warning systems, better coordination between governments and communities likely to be affected). Growth acceleration would also help avert deaths through more resources for disaster prevention and mitigation capabilities. A combination of the two-learning from past experience and more resources for disaster prevention and mitigation-would of course result in a massive reduction in deaths from disasters. Attention is drawn to segmented and shallow disaster insurance markets; the Samaritan's dilemma in providing emergency assistance to poor countries that neglect investment in protective measures; need for mainstreaming of disaster prevention and mitigation among multilateral development agencies and governments, as also growth acceleration ; why short-term relief must be combined with rebuilding of livelihoods and reconstruction, and the potential for public-private partnerships; and, above all, the need for building ownership of local communities and preservation of social networks. A challenge for development assistance is to combine growth acceleration with speedy relief and durable reduction in vulnerability to natural disasters.

Transformation or continuation? A critical analysis of the making of the post-2015 education agenda

As the target date of 2015 draws near for both the Education for All and Millennium Development Goals, consultations are well-underway to begin defining the shape and scope of the post-2015 development agenda. Between September 2012 and March 2013, UN Member States, private sector representatives, multilateral development agencies, epistemic communities and non-governmental organisations participated in the Global Thematic Consultation on Education in the Post-2015 Development Agenda. Participants involved emphasised education as a societal good and a fundamental human right. Participants also highlighted the importance of education in addressing broader global challenges, stating that ‘education and learning should be transformative and foster global citizenship, thereby assuming its central role in helping people to forge more just, peaceful, tolerant and inclusive societies’. Such discourse suggests a shift in the objectives and priorities of global education in the post-2015 context. Is it possible that the post-2015 education agenda will represent a counter-hegemonic vision for global education? This paper engages in discursal analysis of the Global Thematic Consultation on Education in the Post-2015 Development Agenda to offer a preliminary answer to this question.

Consensus and contention in the priority setting process: examining the health sector in Uganda.

Health priority setting is a critical and contentious issue in low-income countries because of the high burden of disease relative to the limited resource envelope. Many sophisticated quantitative tools and policy frameworks have been developed to promote transparent priority setting processes and allocative efficiency. However, low-income countries frequently lack effective governance systems or implementation capacity, so high-level priorities are not determined through evidence-based decision-making processes. This study uses qualitative research methods to explore how key actors' priorities differ in low-income countries, using Uganda as a case study. Human resources for health, disease prevention and family planning emerge as the common priorities among actors in the health sector (although the last of these is particularly emphasized by international agencies) because of their contribution to the long-term sustainability of health-care provision. Financing health-care services is the most disputed issue. Participants from the Ugandan Ministry of Health preferentially sought to increase net health expenditure and government ownership of the health sector, while non-state actors prioritized improving the efficiency of resource use. Ultimately it is apparent that the power to influence national health outcomes lies with only a handful of decision-makers within key institutions in the health sector, such as the Ministries of Health, the largest bilateral donors and the multilateral development agencies. These power relations reinforce the need for ongoing research into the paradigms and strategic interests of these actors.

Korea's Development Cooperation with the Mekong Region

A regional cooperation project centered on a long river way passing through several nations, in addition to ensuring agreement between the nations involved, requires cooperation from the international community as a whole. This is because of potential conflict that may inevitably arise during the course of such a project; the types of conflict that the states get involved in may not be able to resolve on their own. The Mekong’s upper reaches is located in China, and five other developing nations of Southeast Asia are sharing its middle and downstream sections, which has made mutual agreement quite difficult. However, due to the high demand for development in the region, those involved have continued to adjust their positions accordingly and cooperate with each other in spite of the difficulties involved in developing the Mekong region. Support from multilateral development agencies and advanced nations have kept development moving forward up to this point, in terms of hardware infrastructure. Nations in the region have been active participants in the ADB-sponsored Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) program that began in 1992, which resulted in rapid buildup of physical infrastructure in the region. They are also cooperating through the Mekong River Commission (MRC) for projects to develop Mekong’s water resources, and also bolster human capital in the region through the Mekong Institute (MI). Connectivity between different regions around the Mekong have been strengthened recently; to promote the flow of goods, services, investments, capital and labor that would expedite development in the region.

From the production of rules to seed production: Global Intellectual Property and local knowledge

This paper analyzes the links and overlappings between traditional knowledge and biodiversity in the context of ecological family farming in southern Brazil. The data presented are part of an ethnographic study carried out among a network of ecological farmers, Ecovida, in the west of Santa Catarina state. The current global patent regime, most prominently the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) of the World Trade Organization (WTO), has had direct effects on seed production and agricultural food crops. In a scenario of increasing creation of patents, patent regulations, provisions on cultivars (plant varieties and seed breeding) and a number of other global trade control mechanisms, family farmers and other related social actors have rejected the multilateral development agencies' notion of life as "resource". This study has a two-fold aim: first, it approaches the international context of the intellectual property regime on biodiversity and knowledge production; second, it examines the actions taken by farmers participating in the Ecovida network toward creating alternative ways of managing knowledge to produce "free" seeds. As an outcome, there is a parallel political action of criticism and resistance to the current narrowing of agriculture's genetic base, and organized efforts to multiply seeds, know-how and knowledge through networks, banks and centers of agro-biodiversity. Our central argument is that all these social actors - who make up the so-called ecological network and who seek, in their activities, to carry on the multiplication and variability of seeds and promote the diversity of knowledge to produce diverse seeds - are also creating collective strategies of social resistance vis-à-vis the prevailing global modes of controlling knowledge, seeds and food production.

PROTOCOL: The Impact of Land Property Rights Interventions on Agricultural Productivity in Developing Countries: A Systematic Review

PROTOCOL: The Impact of Land Property Rights Interventions on Agricultural Productivity in Developing Countries: A Systematic Review

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation: Business Versus Bureaucracy in International Development

New forms of aid, including “philanthrocapitalism” such as The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, are rapidly altering the international aid architecture for health. These organisations have financial power, actively shape agendas and influence policy. The rise of non-traditional donor organisations creates opportunities and has implications for Australia as it scales-up its aid program. AusAID could collaborate, complement, compete with, or copy these organisations. Arguably the biggest strategic implication is that they expand AusAID’s programming choices. This increased flexibility could be used to leverage and accelerate further reforms in the UN and elsewhere. But choice is a two way street. Developing countries may prefer large, grant financing from non-traditional aid organisations and choose to bypass traditional multilateral and bilateral development agencies.

Mistaken identity

Newly independent Republic of Moldova joined the World Bank and the IMF in 1992. The World Bank designated it a ‘middle income’ country, a status it retained for Bretton Woods lending until 1997. The middle income designation implied that the government of Moldova was not eligible for concessionary finance from the multilateral and major bilateral development agencies. After demonstrating that assigning middle income status to Moldova was a mistake, this article investigates the consequences. A simple procedure is used for calculating counterfactual scenarios of Moldova being assigned low income status in the early 1990s. The counterfactual scenarios suggest that the development and welfare costs of the mistake were extremely high: a much greater fall in income per capita than would otherwise have been the case, with associated increases in headcount poverty and lower life expectancy. Had Moldova been designated a low income country in the early 1990s, by the mid-2000s it would have been a middle income country instead of the poorest in Europe.

Rights Based Approaches to Development: Implications for NGOs

The rights-based approach (RBA) emerged as a new development paradigm in the late 1990s. Within ten years, it had swept through the websites, policy papers and official rhetoric of multi-lateral development agencies, bi-lateral donors, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) throughout the global development assistance sector. Today, specialized consultants and advisors are elaborating and mainstreaming the paradigm through reports, workshops, and project evaluations, ensuring that rights-based thinking will continue to proliferate for years to come. Many view this trend with excitement, highlighting the normative and practical value of injecting human rights principles into standard development thinking and practice. These commentators hope rights-based approaches will empower marginalized groups, focus attention on inequality, and boost state and donor accountability. Skeptics, however, fear the emergence of yet another development fad. What, then, is really happening? Is the rights-based approach having observable impacts? This Article proposes five hypotheses about the likely impact of rights-based approaches on the work, structure, and number of NGOs involved in the development process. If the rights-based paradigm is having real effects, we should be able to observe its traces in the work and activities of development-related NGOs that accept overseas resources and aid.

Realizing rural electrification in Southeast Asia: Lessons from Laos

The Lao People's Democratic Republic, a least developed land-locked country in Southeast Asia, was able to quadruple its electrification rate from 16% in 1995 to 63% in 2009. This has been achieved due to a series of projects undertaken by the government in conjunction with multilateral aid organizations. This study examines one such project undertaken recently by the Lao government and the World Bank called the Rural Electrification Project Phase I (REP I). Based on field research and research interviews conducted in Laos, the focus of this study is to understand this project's design and implementation, key success factors, and shortcomings. The authors derive lessons for both developing countries and those giving energy aid (such as multilateral financial institutions and development agencies) by laying out the dilemmas the project faced and emphasizing how key challenges were overcome. The study concludes by arguing that geographic and socio-economic data should be collected before electrification programs proceed, that programs must focus on the commercial viability of electricity suppliers, that fee-for-service models hold great promise, and that outsourcing can improve the efficiency and efficacy of electrification efforts.

Sustainability, Food Security, and Development Aid after the Food Crisis: Assessing Aid Strategies across Donor Contexts

The most recent global food crisis has forced development agencies in the global North to rethink the nexus between agricultural development, food aid, and food security, and how development assistance strategies can enhance food security to more effectively respond to or prevent such crises in the future. Central to this rethinking is the concept of sustainability, though the term has shifting and imprecise meanings across different institutional and strategic contexts. Analyzing the strategic response of major state and multilateral development agencies to the global food crisis, this paper examines the diverse and slippery meanings and uses of sustainability in the post-crisis development assistance architecture.

Assessing Institutional Development for Livestock Market Participation of Traditional Cattle Keepers in Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya

The potential of keeping livestock as a poverty reduction strategy cannot be fully exploited in rural Africa because of the low levels of market participation that characterize mixed and grassland-based farming systems dominating much of Africa. In a set of three former British colonies (Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya), an analysis was conducted to assess differences in institutional development, policy incentives and levels of livestock market participation. Livestock market participation has historically been higher in Kenya and Tanzania than in Uganda. National documents and official reports were subjected to qualitative content analysis. The findings suggest that Kenya has developed an institutional environment that is more conducive to the market participation of traditional cattle keepers than Tanzania and Uganda. The insights obtained from this study are important in redirecting governments, donors and multilateral development agencies from predominantly input-driven livestock development interventions to increased emphasis on institutional and policy support.

The emergence of global health partnerships as facilitators of access to medication in Africa: A narrative policy analysis

Over the last decade global health partnerships (GHPs) have been formed to provide a better policy response to Africa's health problems. This paper uses narrative policy analysis to explain the historical processes and challenges facing national and global health policy in facilitating access to medication in African countries. An overview of the historical context of events leading to the creation of GHPs is followed by a content and context analysis of two GHPs – Roll Back Malaria partnership and the Accelerating Access Initiative. The historical narratives implicitly reflect the context in which policy decisions are produced and implemented. The deployment of GHPs in Africa reflects a convergence of the competing and conflicting narratives, in relating to strategies previously promoted by various multilateral and bilateral development agencies, international civil society organizations, and the private commercial industry to facilitate access to medication.

Implementation and imbalance: dealing with hangover from the Uruguay Round

The Uruguay Round agreements impose bound obligations to implement, but provide only unbound promises of assistance—is there a legal solution within the WTO legal system, i.e. can implementation assistance be made a legal obligation? The author concludes that the Doha negotiations on trade facilitation and on aid for trade demonstrate that such a legal arrangement cannot be constructed. This is not, however, a problem; the international community has provided extensive trade-related assistance through bilateral and multilateral development agencies. Regarding the overall Uruguay Round imbalance (developing countries gave more than they got), failure of the international community to acknowledge that the imbalance stems in major part from the WTO agreement on intellectual property (TRIPS) has retarded a general making-up.

Portfolio screening to support the mainstreaming of adaptation to climate change into development assistance

The need to mainstream adaptation to climate change into development planning and ongoing sectoral decision-making is increasingly recognised, and several bilateral and multilateral development agencies are starting to take an interest. Over the past years at least six development agencies have screened their project portfolios, generally with two goals in mind: (1) to ascertain the extent to which existing development projects already consider climate risks or address vulnerability to climate variability and change, and (2) to identify opportunities for incorporating climate change explicitly into future projects. As each portfolio screening was conducted independently, the broader lessons emerging from the screenings have not been systematically analysed. In this paper we assess the screening activities to date, focusing on both the results and the methods applied. Based on this assessment we identify opportunities for development agencies to expand their current focus on the links between climate and development. Most agencies already consider climate change as a real but uncertain threat to future development, but they have given less thought to how different development patterns might affect vulnerability to climate change. The screenings undertaken have shown the need to take a comprehensive approach to adaptation and its integration into development planning and sectoral decision-making, and a number of policy initiatives have been taken to promote such integration. We provide some initial guidance as to how portfolio screening can be carried out in a way that would allow agencies to assess systematically the relevance of climate change to their ongoing and planned development projects.

The impact of soil conservation and output diversification on farm income in Central American hillside farming

AbstractThis article analyzes the determinants of farm income among hillside farmers participating in natural resource management projects in El Salvador and Honduras. The farm income function was evaluated using a system of equations in which income is determined simultaneously by the farmer's decision to adopt soil conservation technologies and by the level of diversification (number of agricultural activities) on the farm. The database used comes from surveys administered to 678 beneficiaries of these projects during 2002. The econometric results suggest that all the variables related directly to land use (i.e., output diversification, soil conservation practices and structures, and the adoption of forestry systems) have a positive and statistically significant association with farm income. Also, farmers who own land enjoy higher farm incomes than those who do not. The results indicate that when investing in natural resource management projects, governments and multilateral development agencies should pay close attention to output diversification, land tenure, and human capital formation as effective instruments in increasing farm income.

Re-examining “Displacement”: A Redefinition of Concepts in Development and Conservation Policies

Social research has generated large bodies of empirical findings proving that many population groups, including but not limited to tribal groups, are materially impoverished and made worse off by the introduction of restriction of access to natural resources, either under some development projects or by establishing parks and protected areas (PA) for biodiversity conservation. This convincing social and environmental evidence has long been overlooked by Governments and development agencies. However, a significant change, still little known, has recently taken place. This change, analyzed further, consists in a conceptual and policy revision adopted by the multilateral development agencies (e.g., the Asian Development Bank, the World Bank, and others). Grounded in empirical evidence, this policy development has direct relevance for the condition of tribal and aboriginal populations inhabiting remote areas, for national Governments, and for many international development and environment programs. The revised policy conceptually redefines restricted access to certain natural resources as a form of involuntary displacement, even if the affected groups are not physically relocated. This redefinition

Reform Follows Function

Reform Follows Function

Translations of health sector SWAps—A comparative study of health sector development cooperation in Uganda, Zambia and Bangladesh

Introduction Sector-wide approach, or SWAp, is an increasingly popular approach to development cooperation for many bilateral and multilateral development agencies. While much has been published about the SWAp model itself, there is still limited research conducted on how it is applied in practice. This study aims at showing how the SWAp is translated as it is adopted in different local settings and it shows how these translations trigger changed practice in different ways. Methodology A three-layered comparative study of exemplary texts, country policies and interviews, was conducted in Uganda, Zambia and Bangladesh. An international literature review, comprising research articles, consultancy reports and government policy documents was undertaken. Also, a total of 64 interviews were conducted with representatives from the government, development partners and NGOs. Finally, 18 policy and donor meetings at national and district levels were attended and observed. Results The study showed that the definitions of the SWAp model are general and vague in character. Furthermore, it was observed that in all three countries, no serious effort has been made to define SWAp in country policies. Finally, the study revealed that partners in development translate SWAp differently in daily practice. The variations in understandings were found both between and within countries. Conclusions The SWAp is a clear label with unclear content. The meaning of SWAp is formed by the recipient government and its development partners through an active process of translation as the SWAp is adopted in a specific context. The introduction of the SWAp has limited potential to transform standards for how development aid should be pursued and practiced as much of the administrative structures in each country are still formed in line with a project focused approach. It is concluded that in order to create change, partners in development must work, not only on defining SWAp, but also on influencing the context surrounding the SWAp.

The same story or new directions? Science and technology within the framework of the African Union and New Partnership for Africa’s Development

The newly formed African Union (AU) and the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) special programme have recommitted Africa to the development and application of science, technology and innovation towards socio-economic development and transformation of the continent. This paper looks at the AU/NEPAD policy frameworks for promoting S&T development. The paper argues that the AU/NEPAD frameworks now provide new direction for Africa. The revival of S&T initiatives in the various sub-regional organisations and the interest and commitment shown by some countries, such as South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt and other architects and supporters of NEPAD S&T initiatives, including the intention of some bilateral and multilateral development agencies to improving S&T capacity building, have added fresh impetus to the new direction. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.