Role Of Development Assistance Research Articles

Aligning climate and sustainable development finance through an SDG lens. The role of development assistance in implementing the Paris Agreement

Climate change and development are strongly interconnected. An efficient use of financial resources would, thus require alignment between climate finance and development priorities, as set out in the context of both the Paris Agreement and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. In this paper, we investigate to what extent climate-related official development assistance (ODA) before and after the Paris Agreement adoption supports the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Moreover, we assess to what extent donors align this finance with recipient countries’ climate-related priorities as spelled out in their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). First, we find that climate-relevant ODA contributes to multiple SDGs, above all SDG 7 (energy) and SDG 11 (cities). Second, we find that there is substantial alignment between donors’ and recipients’ SDG priorities, but that this alignment has not improved in recent years, since the conclusion of the Paris Agreement. Third, we find that albeit climate-finance continues to be allocated more to climate-change mitigation than to adaptation, the difference became smaller in recent years. This reduced the misalignment with recipient countries’ NDC climate activities, which focus more on adaptation than mitigation. Overall, we identify coherence, gaps and opportunities for further alignment of climate and development actions, and related finance. Such an alignment is essential to increase the likelihood of implementation of the two international agreements and to ensure that action is guided by recipient countries’ needs.

The neoliberal workings of The Family Meal campaign: Unfortunate others, European citizens, and the branding of the EU

Due to increased privatization of development assistance, humanitarian communication is usually considered to be the domain of non-governmental organizations. However, (inter)governmental and (supra)national institutions still play an important role in development assistance. Notably, the European Union has become a leading development actor globally – and also actively brands itself as such. In this process of branding, the European Union not only celebrates its empathic recognition of vulnerable non-European Others, but also aims to promote a sense of European citizenship. In this article, we examine this process in the context of The Family Meal, a 2014 awareness campaign on food assistance led by the Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection Department of the European Commission. We argue that the campaign reflects both the logic of neoliberal humanitarianism and the quest for European citizenship. To develop our argument, we will assess The Family Meal in three steps. First, we discuss how the campaign mimicked post-humanitarian tendencies in non-governmental campaigns aimed at raising funds. Second, we demonstrate how The Family Meal not only reported on (helping) non-European Others, but also, and importantly, promoted a sense of European belonging. Finally, we introduce the concept of successional campaigns – that is, campaigns that follow up on the action taken rather than preceding it – to show that The Family Meal largely appeared as the result of the neoliberal trend toward administering accountability and branding organizations. Altogether, we consider the campaign, with the neoliberal branding of the European Union and its citizens at its center, as emblematic for humanitarian communication within the rise of New Public Management in the 21st century.

Post-2015: How Emerging Economies Shape the Relevance of a New Agenda

The rise of emerging economies has fundamentally changed the context in which negotiations on a post-2015 agreement take place. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were an agenda driven by traditional donors and North-South relations – a model of global relations that is outdated today. When the MDGs were negotiated at the end of the 1990s, they set a new basis for cooperation among industrialised and developing countries. By focusing on human development and orienting development aid to the poorest people, the MDGs allowed policy-makers and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to mobilise support among the broader public for increasing aid flows. Almost 15 years later, countries such as Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) play a major role on the global stage. A second group of emerging countries, such as Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria and Turkey, are rapidly gaining importance as economic and political players, especially in their respective regions. The rise of these countries shapes the nature of global development challenges and the instruments used to address them. While poverty remains a key concern, a new agenda has to take into account that the poverty landscape has changed considerably, as most of the world’s poor today live in middle-income countries. Issues of environmental sustainability and social inequality have become even more pressing today compared to the end of the 1990s. The role of development assistance as an instrument to engage with emerging economies is in a fundamental transition period. The post-2015 debate holds the potential to generate momentum for a “new bargain” among developing countries, emerging economies and industrialised countries. An international agreement that would integrate the MDGs and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), proposed at the Rio 20 Summit, could pave the way for a comprehensive agenda on sustainable human development. If a new agenda were to also set goals for industrialized countries and emerging economies, it would become a truly universal development agenda. Supporting a new international development framework that goes beyond poverty reduction and includes social, environmental and economic sustainability entails challenges for both industrialised and emerging economies. Dynamics in South-South cooperation currently provide limited incentives for emerging economies to actively support a new agenda. Development policy communities in emerging economies with an interest in pushing active contributions to a post-2015 agenda are weak. Moreover, institutions for cooperation among emerging economies that would be crucial in identifying common positions are still in their infancy. On the other hand, policy-makers in emerging economies may seize the opportunity to use a post-2015 agenda to address joint interests such as tackling inequalities and achieving environmentally sustainable development. Negotiations may provide an opportunity for China and others to strengthen their international “soft power”. For Europe, implementing a universal agenda will be equally ambitious, not least when thinking about goals for reducing social inequality or environmental footprints.Whether emerging economies decide to engage or not, they will fundamentally shape the relevance and scope of any global framework. Only if they actively support a universal agenda can a new bargain among developing countries, emerging economies and industrialised countries be struck. This gives important responsibilities to European countries, which need to make ambitious commitments and conduct negotiations towards increasing the attractiveness of a new agenda for emerging economies.

Negotiating Peace Agreements with Anticorruption Provisions: The Role of International Development Assistance

Peace agreements that end internal conflicts are most likely to be sustainable when they include negotiated provisions that resolve corruption and governance abuses that were among the initiating causes of the conflicts. A four-staged process appears to be an underlying theme for the post-conflict period: essential to achieving effective results: ceasefire negotiations, negotiations over future governance and the reestablishment of integrity to government, implementation of the negotiated agreements with the support of development assistance, and continuing dialogue through post-agreement negotiations. Six recent cases of peace negotiation and their implementation are analyzed to yield lessons and recommendations for diplomatic and international development analysts and practitioners. In particular, the role of development assistance is considered both as an impetus to agreement and as an essential stimulant of the post-agreement period.

Development Assistance and Economic Growth: A Case Study of Botswana

This paper examines the role of development assistance in economic growth with the case study of Botswana, a country often cited as a success story in Africa.

Some Notes on the Role of Development in Psychoanalytic Assistance, Differentiation, and Regression

This paper outlines the role of development assistance as a therapeutic measure within the normal psychoanalytic technique. Freud's definition of assistance "that the analyst gives the patient ... the conscious anticipatory idea to grasp the unconscious material." This proposal is elaborated in the context of developmental differentiation and regression.

Violent Conflict Prevention and Development Co-operation: Coherent or Conflicting Perspectives?

Summary Olav Stokke, ‘Violent Conflict Prevention and Development Co-operation: Coherent or Conflicting Perspectives?’, Forum for Development Studies, 1997:2, pp. 195–250. Promotion of peace has become an objective in its own right for development co-operation, along with several others, such as democracy, human rights, good governance and environmental concerns. In this article, the particular role of development assistance in peace promotion and conflict prevention is explored and discussed. The main approaches are scrutinised; since aid as a lever to influence the policies of the conflicting parties is found both problematic and of limited use, the main focus is on the so-called positive measures strategy. By focusing development assistance more consistently on its ‘traditional’ objective of poverty alleviation and reduction of social, economic and political injustice, it would also serve a most fundamental role in conflict prevention, it is argued. The role of development assistance will decrease with an increasing conflict level (with the exception of relief aid); when a conflict reaches a high level of tension, other mechanisms, more adapted to crisis management, are needed. Norwegian policy norms and experiences in combining the peace and development objectives are reviewed. Policies in pursuance of ‘development’ and ‘peace’ objectives are seen as different expressions of humane internationalism. These aspects of the Norwegian foreign policy should be strengthened by an integrated effort which pools the resources of several ministries.

Trends in the organization and financing of livestock and animal health services

The world wide avalanche of change related to new political and economic paradigms has also affected animal agriculture. Changing views and objectives with respect to government support for agriculture in OECD countries, economic changes in Latin American and Africa countries, the GATT process and outcome, and interest in an ecosystems approach towards agriculture, are leading to a rethinking of the role of agriculture, as well as the role of development assistance. At the same time, developments in the former Soviet block and east Asia may cause a major shift in the geographical stratification of the world's intensive livestock industries which will increasingly be decided by the efficiency of production and marketing, by the availability and price of basic inputs, especially feed and fodder, and the proximity of markets. Old paradigms of livestock production may also change as advances in biotechnology increase the product mix of the livestock sector and includes outputs such as special proteins and vaccines. Major challenges facing the animal health sector, especially in developing countries, in this respect include: 1. (1) the need for active participation in the development of environmentally acceptable production systems; 2. (2) the redefinition of the role of the public sector in the provision of services, and the shift in financing animal health management from government to producers; 3. (3) the need for improvement of the quality of services provided by food animal veterinarians in order to further enhance the quality of food; 4. (4) the need to increase the efficiency of animal health through more efficient management of the supply of veterinarians, and better use of animal technicians and lay personnel. Many governments indeed are changing their policies (or contemplating doing so), and shifting responsibility for various aspects of animal production and health to the private sector. These changes are not without risk and complication. In general, the sector is trying to increase its efficiency through judicious use of manpower, drugs and equipment. Private animal health and production services, while common in the western world, are slowly emerging in developing countries and, more rapidly, in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union (FSU). This development then leads to a rethinking about the role of the public sector. This changing role is reluctantly accepted in many countries where government has played a dominant role in the last few decades. Major changes in policy development (including private sector input), privatization and commercialization of animal health services have implications for professional and lay staff as well as some of the financing consequences. The present development requires a much better assessment of the real cost of animal disease, either directly related to production or to society in general, and may lead to alternative approaches to animal health, comparable to the development of integrated pest management in plant protection.

A Gloomy Portrayal of Development Achievements and Prospects: China and IndiaFinancing Asian Development, Vol.2: China and India. Robert F. Dernberger , Richard S. Eckhaus

strengthen transpacific dialogue on such issues. Specific here are the marked changes over the past decade or so in flows of resources for financing development, and indeed in the growing scarcity of total resources for poor nations, including capital from overseas. Nations of Asia will need to adjust their development strategies and goals; these adjustments bear on important U.S. economic, political, and security interests in Asia. Dernberger and Eckaus's volume on India and China, the latest major publication in the society's project on Financing Asian Growth and Development, follows the 1986 report by G. M. Meier on broad patterns and trends of Asian development performance and financing and the 1987 publication by J. P. Lewis on the role of development assistance in Asian expansion. The Asia Society notes particular satisfaction in sponsoring this specific comparison of two major development experiences, their economic strategies and financing needs and prospects. There have been, the foreword explains, very few efforts by scholars to examine in the same framework, not to mention to compare directly, these two giant economies, which together support more than one-third of the world's total population and more than 40% of the population of the developing countries (indeed some 70% of those in Asia's developing lands). Given current views of the deterrent forces in Asia's expansion, the Dernberger-