UK accused of covering up G-8 failure in TB pledge

Development policy of the UK was attacked today in a medical journal. The writers say that the UK government is covering up the failure of the G-8 to keep its commitment in cutting the spread of tuberculosis.

The G-8 pledged to help cut TB deaths by 50 percent by 2010, but that deadline has passed with only an 11 percent reduction.

From UTV News, we read more about the accusations against the UK.

In a hard-hitting attack on UK policy, published by the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, three experts based in Bangladesh say the UK's strategy against the disease is aimed at preventing its spread to the west, rather than tackling the living conditions in deprived communities where TB is endemic.

Bruce Currey, Professor Quazi Quamruzzaman and Professor Mahmuder Rahman, all based at Dhaka Community Hospital in Bangladesh, accuse the UK's department for international development of glossing over the deaths of nearly half a million people.

The Department for International Development's (DfID) factsheet on progress towards the Millennium Development Goals, issued in December 2008, claims that in southern Asia, "progress in halting and reversing the spread of tuberculosis" is "almost met, or on target". It describes mortality as moderate.

"The Crown's term 'moderate mortality' covers up an annual tuberculosis death toll, estimated by WHO, of almost half a million people (460,003), mostly poor, in south Asia," say Currey and colleagues.

The three experts praise the UK's leadership at the G8 meeting in Okinawa in 2000, which pledged to "Reduce TB deaths and prevalence of the disease by 50% by 2010".

But, they say, the commitment was then watered down. The Millennium Development Goals, formulated by the United Nations in September the same year, put tuberculosis in a category with other infectious diseases and committed to "have halted and begun to reverse the spread" of all of them by 2015‚ " five years later than the target the G8 named".

Comment on G-8/G-20 aid disappointment

The disappointment in the conclusions to the G-8 and G-20 meetings have been varied and widespread. Many were hoping that Canadian PM Stephen Harper calls to restore accountability would be heard. They hoped that the leaders world restore their commitments to paying up on the aid they promised before. Instead, other items took up the agenda in the meetings.

From The Vancouver Sun, this commentary from Mark and Craig Kielburger sums up the frustration quite well. Craig and Mark are the co-founders of Save The Children.

Canadians are rightfully angry to hear that $1.2 billion is going missing from public coffers to pay for the G8/G20 summits. Too bad we've heard little about the missing $19.5 billion.

Five years ago, the G8 leaders shook hands with superstars such as Bono and Bob Geldof as they pledged $50 billion in aid to developing countries. At the 2010 deadline, they came up $19.5 billion short. That's the real scandal of the G8.

Maybe the security price-tag and the disruption to daily lives in Toronto would be worthwhile if the G8 and G20 actually delivered on commitments.

(Then again, maybe if the leaders followed through, the protests and security bill would be smaller.)

Unfortunately, it's security that shows up on balance sheets -not broken promises. Lack of accountability means commitments are usually forgotten soon after the Summits close.
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In 1970, world leaders agreed to a pledge tabled by former Canadian Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson to give 0.7 per cent of their gross domestic product to aid. Despite resuscitating that commitment twice in 1992 and 2002, Canada is less than halfway to reaching this goal and has no timeline to see it through.

On top of this, we started the century with the now off-track Millennium Development Goals. Among other issues, it addressed maternal health. Today, the 2005 Gleneagles commitments are also collecting dust.

Gleneagles was ambitious. It cancelled $40 billion in debt. The leaders seemed serious about keeping their promises to increase aid. Unfairly, they raised our hopes before falling back into the perpetual cycle of promise, pose and put aside.

Going into the G8 and G20 Summits, the wealthy nations had delivered only 61 cents on the dollar committed. Think about it. If it was your mortgage, you'd face foreclosure.

But, despite the financial crisis, something started by greed on Wall Street, pushing an estimated 100 million more people in developing nations into hunger, some wealthy nations are actually lobbying to do less. These countries are France and Italy, two nations that have gone drastically off-course on their commitments.

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/business/pledge+comes+short+Surprised/3210277/story.html#ixzz0sAdgTT3B

A round-up of items on today's G-8 meeting

Despite the claims that it is now an meaningless organization, here is a round up of items about the G-8 meetings that begin today.

From the CBC, here is an overview of the Canadian hosts greeting their guests.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has formally welcomed G8 leaders at the organization's annual summit in Huntsville, Ont., where they are expected to discuss global security, and Canada's key initiative on maternal and child health.

The leaders of the seven other Group of Eight leading economic powers — France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Britain, the United States and Russia — are gathering in the exclusive Deerhurst Resort near Huntsville before they join other G20 delegates in Toronto on Saturday.

Ahead of the formal talks, Harper praised Britain's new government for its recent spending cuts, saying British Prime Minister David Cameron's budget "highlighted the very fiscal consolidation" Canada was trying to steer the G20 toward at this weekend's summit in Toronto.

"I appreciate your responsible and difficult decisions in that regard," Harper told Cameron during the leaders' brief remarks to reporters at the G8 site.

Cameron replied he believed the spending cuts were what "needs to be done" and said he looked forward to working with other leaders at the dual summits to "address the imbalances that we have."

While some leaders are calling for continued stimulus spending in the wake of last year's financial crisis, Harper is expected to call on G20 leaders to cut their budget deficits in half within three years.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2010/06/25/g8-g20-huntsville-leaders.html?ref=rss#ixzz0rt8RTxEf

Reuters reporter Lesley Wroughton focuses on the broken aid commitments of the past and the calls for accountability int today's meeting.

Although the G8 cannot avoid talking about its own economic troubles -- namely the strength of the global recovery and the state of public finances -- the smaller group wanted to carve out some time to discuss problems facing poor countries, G8 officials said.

Canada, host of the G8 and G20 meetings, wants to ensure that donor countries follow through on their commitments.

The hosts also want mother-and-child health and the rebuilding of Haiti from a devastating earthquake to be the focus, officials said. Haiti was invited to attend the G8 meeting along with Jamaica and some African countries.

The United States is pushing for more agricultural investment in Africa and has created a fund to boost food production in poorer countries.

The G8 will discuss progress toward meeting the eight U.N. Millennium Development Goals, or MDGs, on poverty by 2015. The group will also review the $18 billion shortfall in reaching the $50 billion total pledged in 2005 at the G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland.

The Gleneagles meeting also promised to provide an extra $25 billion a year for Africa as part of the overall $50 billion increase in financial assistance by 2010. Citing figures from the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the World Bank said the G8 had provided just $11 billion of the $25 billion for Africa.

More on the G-8 not meeting aid pledges

From IRIN, here is more on the story of the G-8's own analysis on keeping it's aid pledges.

Leaders of G8 countries will meet in Canada on 25 June, with international development aid high on the agenda. Ahead of the summit, the G8 has issued the Muskoka Accountability Report outlining commitments met and not met, with mixed results.

At Gleneagles in 2005, donor members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) pledged to commit US$50 billion to overseas development aid by 2009. Thus far, they are $11 billion short.

Some donors are setting the pace: Canada and Germany pledged to double overseas development aid (ODA) between 2004 and 2010 and by 2009 had upped assistance by 54 and 59 percent respectively. But increases from the US, UK and France lag behind at 45 percent, Italy at 34 percent, and Japan just 6 percent.

Most donors fell short of targets to direct 0.51 percent of gross national income to overseas aid by 2010. The UK, which has steadily increased the proportion of its budget spent on aid over recent years, did achieve it, channelling 0.56 percent, but it is estimated that in 2010 the US will reach only O.2 percent; Italy 0.16 percent; Canada 0.3 percent; Germany 0.35 percent and France 0.47 percent.

While G8 donors promised to target their aid towards the most vulnerable, just 41 and 43 percent of Germany and France’s aid respectively goes to low-income countries versus 69 percent of Canada’s.

OECD donors promised to reach a $25 billion aid target for Africa by 2010, but have achieved less than half that, according to NGO Oxfam.

"Despite their best efforts to put a positive gloss on their progress, the G8 report shows clearly that the promise made in Gleneagles in 2005 to increase aid will be broken," said Oxfam spokesman Mark Fried. "The draft G8 communiqué conveniently ignores the commitment to increase aid by $50 billion, when it should have an emergency plan to fill the $20 billion shortfall over the next two years. These are not just numbers. They represent vital medicines, kids in school, help for women living in poverty and food for the hungry."

G-8 is short by 10 billion dollars from pledges

A self-produced report shows that the G-8 has given 10 billion dollars less than the amount it has pledged to poor nations since 2005. This year's chair of the G-8, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper wants to use this weeks G-8 conference to bring some accountability to the group.

From the Montreal Gazette, writer Juliet O'Neil tells us what is in the report.

The report said the Group of Eight countries account for about 70 per cent of official development assistance, suggesting the G8 share of the $10-billion shortfall from 2005 summit pledges in Gleneagles, Scotland, is about $7 billion.

The report prompted Oxfam, World Vision and other non-government agencies to call for the establishment of a clear plan to get back on track at the G8 summit Prime Minister Stephen Harper hosts in Huntsville, Ont., next weekend.

The G8 countries are Canada, the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia.

The report by G8 officials was designed to showcase “accountability” — a theme Harper has singled out to define the June 25-26 summit.

But other than the official aid shortfall, the nearly 90 pages did not contain much clear information on how close or how far the G8 countries are, as a group, from delivering on more than 50 development-related pledges and plans from past summits that it examined.

The report was partly an exercise in finding standard measures, language and currency to try to track G8 member progress.

Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/countries+have+fallen+short+commitments+report/3181349/story.html#ixzz0rWD9yr9l

Sachs calls for an accountable G-8

Jeffrey Sachs is calling on the G-8 to be accountable for it's string of broken promises, or else the institution and it's meetings will become meaningless. The G-8 plans on issuing an accountability report ahead of it's upcoming meeting, but Sachs doubts that even the report will change the minds.

From the Vancouver Sun, writer Juliet O'Neill recorded the teleconference that Sachs hosted on the subject.

If the G8 summit leaders don't make good on a litany of broken multi-billion-dollar pledges to help the world's poor, the credibility of the annual gathering of industrialized countries will be shot, renown economist Jeffrey Sachs said Wednesday.

His comments came as G8 officials prepared to release an "accountability" report, expected Sunday, in which summiteers come clean on dozens of empty or unfulfilled promises from past summits, ranging from doubling aid for Africa to establishing a food security fund for small farmers.

His blunt assessment of what Prime Minister Stephen Harper hopes will be remembered as the "accountability summit" in Huntsville, Ont. June 25-26 included some sharp words about Canada's own "disappointing" record on development aid dating back about eight years. He said Canada has not fulfilled its own targets or shown leadership.

A pledge at last year's G8 in L'Aquila, Italy for a new $20 billion fund for food security has less than $880 million in the pipeline, Sachs said. The pledge to double aid to Africa is $20 billion short by the G8's own accounting. A target of universal access to medicine for people with HIV by 2010 is not within sight.

"Frankly I'm not so sure whether the G8 is really going to hold itself accountable," Sachs, an adviser to the United Nations secretary general and director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University, told reporters in a teleconference from Washington. "That would be quite unusual for politicians and it remains to be seen."

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/business/needs+account+broken+promises+Critic/3163274/story.html#ixzz0r8EOnfnF

Canada will pledge 1 billion for maternal health

In a story that came out over the weekend, Canada announced it's development goal as host of the G-8 and G-20 meetings. The host country usually sets the agenda and a goal it would like to achieve during the meetings. Canada has said that it would pledge one billion dollars to fund maternal and child health, and will ask the other member countries to pledge big money as well.

From the Globe and Mail, we read more about the proposal and what may keep it from becoming a reality.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced in January that improving the health of mothers and their children in developing countries would be his signature initiative as host of the G8 summit next month.

Initially, the pitch was well received around the world. Concerns are on the rise that maternal health issues have been pushed aside in development assistance packages over the years.

But after Ottawa spent weeks sidestepping questions about whether the government would allow funding to go to groups or projects that encourage better access to safe abortion, Canada's maternal health idea lost momentum.

When G8 development ministers finally met in Halifax last month, they agreed on vaguely defined goals for the initiative, and made no mention of a target for funding.

Then Greece’s sovereign debt crisis spilled over its borders and dragged down Europe. The burgeoning deficits of G8 countries have now become a policy priority, prompting many anti-poverty advocates and experts to question whether the leaders would find the wherewithal to support a new aid project in poor countries.

“There’s nothing on the table. How serious are they about this?” NDP foreign-affairs critic Paul Dewar said last week.

Does the World Bank control the food security discussion?

Most everyone agrees that we need to help the under-developed world to grow more food, but the debate is on which way to do it. A recent summit in Dublin exposed the divide on how to increase food security as some civil service groups did not participate in the summit.

Those who refused to attend blame the World Bank and the G-8 for the current food crisis. They say that the rich nations and their banks have helped to cause the problem of food insecurity by dumping their surplus grain on the poor nations.

In a commentary from the Huffington Post, Eric Holt Gimenez from the Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy explains the division in food security solutions. Gimenez gives a dizzying away of acronyms of governing bodies in his explanation, so we encourage you to read the full commentary for more background.

Most of the participants in the Dialogue (as well as many of the organizers, and possibly even Dr. Nabarro himself) agreed with the need to curb global markets and prioritize investments in agroecology over GMOs. Most wanted agriculture out of the WTO and believe Southern countries need to protect their farmers from the U.S. and E.U's decades-long policy of dumping surplus grain on their national markets. Everyone is against land-grabbing and the spread of agrofuels. The IAASTD was frequently invoked.

But it became very clear that the Dialogue would not get the High Level Task Force to drop their assumptions. In their view, the global market is the solution rather than the cause of hunger, and prioritize the private sector rather than public institutions. The Task Force has yet to seriously address the rash of land-grabbing and seems unable to come to agreement on how to control the expansion of agrofuels. Despite the Dublin Dialogue, the HLTF is unwilling (or unable) to allow civil society--the thousands of farmers organizations and CSOs actually working on the ground--to play a lead role in the fight against hunger. Everything is up for dialogue, but as it turns out, few things can actually be negotiated.

This is because Mr. Nabarro and the High Level Task Force (a self-admitted team of bureaucrats with no budgetary or decision-making power), for all their good intentions, cannot stray far from the mandates of the World Bank--who was conspicuously absent from the Dialogue. To do so would result in the rejection of the CFA. By whom? Most likely by the GAFSPF--The Global Agriculture and Food Security Program.

The GAFSPF is the multilateral trust-fund being set up by the U.S., Canada and Spain under the leadership of the World Bank to span the gap between the $40 billion a year needed to end hunger, the $20 billion promised by the G-8 countries, and the $14 billion that is actually forthcoming on these promises. The GAFSPF Framework Document of December 2009 is based on the Bank's 2007 World Development Report on Agriculture. In direct opposition to the IAASTD (which the Bank funded but now refuses to support) the 2007 Development Report recommends more global trade and more public money for the spread of new agricultural technologies, simply stated: signing the Doha Round and spreading GMOs across the Global South. It also laments that regions like sub Saharan Africa will need to experience significant "land mobility", which a euphemism for forcing small farmers off the land. Unable to win the Global South's support for these positions at the summits in Rome, Madrid, d'Aquila and Pittsburg, the formation of the GAFSPF reflects a strategic move by the Bank to shift the locus of the war on hunger from Rome and New York to Washington--firmly under the control of the World Bank. In the image of World Bank operations, the GAFSPF will divide support between the public and private sector, with the International Finance Corporation (IFC) in charge of long and short term loans, credit guarantees and equity to support private sector activities. In typical World Bank fashion, the results of the GAFSPF will never be directly measured in terms of reducing the number of hungry people or measurable improvements to livelihoods. Rather, success will be measured by the numbers of people participating in GAFSPF-supported programs. The heroic assumption is that doing more of the same--i.e., free markets & technology packages--with more people, will end hunger.

Some spins from the G-8 development meetings

The development ministers of the G-8 are done with their meetings to set up the agenda for their bosses later this year. The meetings didn't make any firm commitments, and had a "we'll have our people look into it and get back to you" sort of approach.

From The Toronto Sun, writer Laura Payton recieved a couple of spins on the meetings and critique from World Vision.

“We have agreed on a set of principles that will guide our work and a scope of actions that leave the needed flexibility for each country so that our delegates here can advise their leaders on how to build their basket of initiatives to support Canada's focus on mothers and children,” said Bev Oda, Canada's international cooperation minister.

The delegations agreed their efforts must include nutrition and disease prevention, Oda said. They've also agreed to be more accountable in reporting donor funding and finding more benchmarks to measure effectiveness.
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Glen Pearson, the Liberal party's international cooperation critic who was at most of the meetings, said a lot of points were sent to experts to report back, but he still thought they made progress.

“Because we're so close to (the June leaders' summit in Huntsville, Ont.) I'm just hoping we can come up with a plan of action,” he said.

“The issue for me on this thing was not to come out with false promises; it was to set up a framework by which they could achieve these goals.”

Caroline Riseboro, spokeswoman for World Vision Canada, says the agreement to focus on maternal and child health and the emphasis on nutrition are good signs.

“We have been pushing for consensus around the child and maternal health initiative, and details and new money behind it. It looks like that will come, but just the fact that consensus has been reached and this initiative will continue to push forward is critical in saving the lives of 8.8 million children dying every year,” she said.

OXFAM says fix aid then commit more money

To coincide with the G-8 financial ministers meeting in Canada, OXFAM is saying that international aid needs fixing and more money.

The development ministers of the G-8 nations are meeting in Halifax, Nova Scotia to set the agenda for when the heads of those states meet later this year. As chair of the G-8 this year, Canada wants to push aid development onto the forefront of the agenda, so OXFAM's report gives some suggestions.

OXFAM is now agreeing with those that say that international aid is broken, wasteful and need of repair. However, the charity does not agree with those who think we should get rid of it entirely. OXFAM is urging the G-8 to not only tackle the waste but then to commit more money to aid

From this Canwest News Service article that we found at Canada.com, writer Richard Foot tells us more about the statement from OXFAM.

Oxfam, an independent aid agency with decades of experience in the world's poorest regions, says rich governments need to drastically increase funding to maternal health care and numerous other social and economic aid projects.

In 1970, developed countries agreed through the United Nations to spend 0.7 per cent of their gross national income on foreign aid. Oxfam says that since 2008 only Denmark, Luxembourg, Holland, Norway and Sweden have met that goal, and that the global shortfall in aid commitments now amounts to roughly $3 trillion U.S..

Canada spends 0.33 per cent of its gross national income on foreign aid, mostly in Afghanistan, our largest aid recipient.

While calling for such spending to rise, Oxfam also acknowledges what a growing chorus of critics are saying: that foreign aid efforts are often beset by waste, corruption and outright failure.

"Clearly it is impossible to argue that no aid is wasted," says the report, 21st Century Aid: Recognizing Success and Tackling Failure.

"Aid is touched by corruption . . . (and) aid dependency is an issue that needs attention."

Oxfam agrees that too much aid spending is determined by the wishes of donors, rather than the needs of recipients.

It says aid efforts also fail when development spending is coupled with military goals — such as in Afghanistan — or handed over without accountability to corrupt governments, or misspent on third-party consultants rather than actual projects on the ground.

Global Agriculture and Food Security Program launched

A big announcement was made today that fulfilled a pledge made by wealthy nations a year earlier. A new multi-million dollar fund was established today to fight world poverty and hunger. The United States and other nations that make up the G-8 pledged to create the fund at a meeting in Italy.

The fund will be administered by the World Bank. Canada and Spain have already made contributions to the fund. The United States says it will work on getting the other members of the G-8 to contribute.

From this AFP article that we found at the Raw Story, we find out more about the fund's purpose.

"A global economy where more than one billion people suffer from hunger is not a sustainable one," US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said in a ceremony launching the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program.

Canada, Spain, South Korea and the United States, along with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, have already pledged nearly 900 million dollars to the program, initiated as the global economic crisis leaves even more people affected by poverty and hunger.

"At a time of limited resources and large global challenges, this fund will leverage support from around the world to achieve lasting progress against hunger and bolster agricultural productivity and growth," Geithner said.

The fund was first discussed at the G8 meeting in L'Aquila, Italy last year, where 14 wealthy nations committed to contributing some 22 billion dollars to invest in agriculture in low-income countries.

It firmed up at the subsequent G20 meeting in Pittsburgh, where world leaders called for the World Bank and interested donor nations to set up a trust fund to help implement some of the pledges made at L'Aquila.

The United States said Thursday that 67 million dollars of its initial contribution to the fund will be transferred in the coming weeks to the World Bank, which will administer the fund.

Canada's chair of the G-8 brings hope for aid pledges

Out of all of the G-8 countries Canada has been the best in keeping their aid promises. So many poverty advocates are hoping that Canada will use their chairmanship of G-8 this year to put pressure on the other countries to live up to their own promises.

From this Canadian Press article that we found at Google News, we read more about the hopes that poverty fighting NGO's have for Canada.

Canada has largely lived up to its promises, and has put C$5 billion toward aid in 2010-2011, said Jessica Fletcher, spokeswoman for International Development Minister Bev Oda.

"We come out looking better than most," agreed Dennis Howlett, national co-ordinator of Make Poverty History, an umbrella group of large non-governmental organizations in Canada.

That's why Canada should use its moral authority, as well as its control of the agenda as host of the next G8 summit, to pressure other countries to pay up, Howlett said.

The NGOs won't stop there, however, in their lobbying of the G8.

Following up on Harper's decision to make maternal and child health a key theme, the NGOs want the G8 to commit meaningful money and agree to a "comprehensive" scheme that includes family planning and access to safe abortion in countries where it is legal, Howlett said.

The NGOs will also be pressuring the G8 to discuss climate change, but Howlett is not holding out much hope on that front. Ottawa has made it clear it would prefer to discuss climate change at the Major Economies Forum, and not at the G8 or G20.

The aid groups are also concerned that even if Canada and several other countries live up to their previous aid commitments, it's downhill from here.

That's because Canada and others have capped their aid budgets for future years, even as demands on that pool of money rise.

G-8 falling short of promises, again

A think tank that monitors international aid contributions says that the G-8 is falling way short of meeting their pledges. In the 2005 Gleneagles summit, the G-8 promised an extra 25 billion pounds in aid to poor countries, so far they have contributed less than half of that. The findings are in a published report just released by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development

From UTV Buisnees, we find out more about the survey and some reaction to it.

The OECD praised some countries – including Britain – for continuing to increase financial help to developing countries but said other rich nations were cutting back as a result of the deepest global recession since the second world war.

While the UK increased development assistance by 14.6% in 2009, budget cuts resulted in Irish aid being reduced by 19%, while Italy – already one of the least generous G8 countries – cut its support by 31%.

Overall, the OECD said there had been a 0.7% increase in aid once inflation was taken into account, but a much bigger effort was needed to meet the Gleneagles targets, which were set in order to meet the 2015 millennium development goals (MDGs) set by the United Nations for poverty relief.

To fulfil their pledges, the OECD said the west would have to increase development assistance, measured in 2004 prices, to £126bn this year, but current estimates by the thinktank put the likely total at £108bn. Africa will receive only £11bn of the £25bn promised five years ago.
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The OECD said there were wide variations in the level of support provided by rich countries. Sweden will provide just over 1% of national income in aid this year, while Britain will contribute 0.6% of national output, up from 0.36% at the time of the Gleneagles summit. By contrast, the United States and Japan – the world's biggest economies – will give 0.19% and 0.18% respectively.

Max Lawson of Oxfam said aid had actually fallen in 2009 when compared with 2008 prices. "This lacklustre performance from donors is not close to meeting the needs of poor countries, who are suffering now from the impact of the economic crisis. It is a scandal that more than half of rich nations have cut their aid this year and are giving less of their income than last year – just 31 cents in every $100."

Oliver Buston, Europe director of the development organisation ONE, was highly critical of Italy, which gives a smaller proportion of national income in aid – 0.20% – than any other EU donor. "Prime minister Berlusconi should be thrown out of the G8," he said. "There are plenty of other leaders who could make a strong case for being at the table. There's no point in having someone at these summits who shows up, shakes hands, eats the banquet, signs the communiqué and then makes absolutely no effort to deliver on his commitments."

US to invest $3.5 billion in producing more food

The U.S. has announced that they will spend $3.5 billion dollars to help farmers in the developing world increase their yields. The announcement is part of a pledge fulfillment made by the G-8 to commit $20 billion dollars to the cause.

With more and more people going hungry and more people filling the earth, the investments in agriculture are greatly needed. From the Voice of America, writer Steve Baragona introduces us to one farmer that has benefited from farming improvements.

Grace Ndung'u may provide an example of what the aid could mean for developing-world farmers. Ndung'u farms about one hectare in Murang'a, Kenya, an hour or so outside Nairobi. She says that, like many African farmers, she used to grow just one crop: maize.

Success through diversification

That's a risky strategy that puts farmers at the whim of weather, insects, diseases, and fluctuating markets. But about three years ago, Ndung'u started working with a non-governmental organization that helps educate farmers and improve their productivity. With the program's assistance, she says, "I've diversified. [Before,] I was growing only maize. But now I grow beans….I also grow horticulture products [like] tomatoes, kale, indigenous vegetables, and also various types of fruit."

And she says she is growing more maize, too. "Before, I used to get about eight bags of maize," she says, "but currently, I'm able to get about 17."

And because of all this, Ndung'u says she's making more money – enough to buy another farm and hire more workers.

Experts say if you want to end world hunger and lift people out of poverty, this is the kind of program that deserves support. And they believe that investing in farmers does more to reduce the number of poor and hungry than any other investment.

Agriculture is a good investment

Joachim von Braun, Director-General of the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington, says if agricultural research and development were to increase from $5 billion a year to $15 billion, "10 years later we will have…300 million [fewer] people among the hungry poor. This is the largest benefit one can achieve with this type of investment."

But investments in agriculture have fallen sharply in recent decades. For example, international donors devoted about 17 percent of their aid budgets to agriculture in the 1970s, compared to about 5 percent today.

Lindiwe Majele Sibanda, heads the Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network, a non-profit consulting group. She says the decline in agricultural aid budgets is partly behind the recent food crisis in Africa.

"As a result of diminished resources and lack of funds for agriculture," she says, "we saw declines in productivity, we saw people moving out of farming to rely more on commodities like minerals, and rely more on imports of food rather than produce their own."

Food prices in parts of Africa today remain significantly higher than they were before the food crisis.

U.S. plans

Speaking at a summit on food security at the United Nations Saturday, Sept. 26, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the U.S. hopes to reverse the recent trend away from agriculture investment.

"International support for agriculture has declined, while contributions to emergency aid have increased," she said. "We will continue, of course, to invest in the crises and the emergencies. But we want to begin to try to alleviate the crises and the emergency by once again enabling people to feed themselves."

The strategy Clinton sketched out includes many of the elements experts say developing- world farmers need most: investments in research and development, access to improved seed and fertilizer, insurance programs for small farmers, as well as improved infrastructure such as roads and storage facilities to help farmers get their products to market.

The Obama administration's $3.5 billion commitment is part of a $20 billion pledge made this summer by G8 group of industrialized nations at their summit in Italy. Many in the agriculture community welcomed the declaration…to a point.

"It's not a big amount"

Ajay Vashee farms 1000 hectares in Zambia and is president of the International Federation of Agricultural Producers. When he heard about the G8 pledge, he says, "My reaction was, 'Great, at least it's on the agenda. People are thinking about it.'"

His wish list for agriculture aid lines up pretty well with what Secretary Clinton has said the U.S. wants to do. But he says the G8's pledge of $20 billion over three years won't be enough.

"If you look at the number of developing countries spread over the number of years this kind of money will be available," he says, "it's not a big amount. I'm not saying it in a condescending way or in a negative way, or being ungrateful. But what I'm saying is, the impact which people might think it's going to generate might not happen."

Vashee adds that climate change is expected to take a toll on African agriculture in particular. So while experts welcome the renewed interest from the United states and other countries, they say investments in agriculture must be both serious and sustained if the war on hunger and poverty is ever to be won.

New statistics from the UN

The United Nations has a new report out today that says that pledges in aid from the G-8 have not been fulfilled. The report from the Millennium Development Goal task force was put together for the General Assembly. The task force also says that there are now 1.3 billion people around the world below the poverty line.

We go to two different sources for this post as each story covers different aspects of the report. First, from this IRIN story that we found in Reuters Alert Net, we read more about the unfulfilled pledges.

The report, Strengthening the Global Partnership for Development in a Time of Crisis, by the UN Millennium Development Goal (MDG) Gap Task Force, highlighted an annual gap of US$35 billion in the 2005 pledge made by the Group of Eight (G8) industrialized countries at a summit in Gleneagles, United Kingdom.

This amount includes a $20 billion annual shortfall in its commitments to Africa, even though 2008 saw the highest levels of development assistance to the continent.

In a preface to the report UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon recognized that since the adoption of the MDGs in 2000 there had been "great progress" in reducing poverty and hunger, and promoting access to education and health services.

This New York Times story that we found at the Dallas Morning News has stats on the global recession's impact on the poor.

Other grim statistics:

• As many as 222 million workers run the risk of joining the ranks of the working poor.

• Remittance flows, which reached $328 billion in 2008, will drop by 7.3 percent in 2009, the World Bank says.

• Hunger rates are up in every region in the world, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization.

Jeffrey Sachs warns of red tape tying up the G-8 food security pledge

In his latest commentary, Jeffrey Sachs applauds the G-8 decision to put 20 billion dollars into agriculture.

A few years ago, research conducted by the UN's Millennium Project found that food production could dramatically increase if small, peasant farmers are given good seeds and fertilizer to grow with. So the G-8 pledge of money hopes to give more of these inputs to small farmers.

However, Sachs says that a lot could stand in the way of getting the inputs to the farmers. Sachs warns against the aid money being tied up in bureaucracies and red tape. We found his latest commentary at the Business World Online.

A consensus has now been reached on the need to assist smallholders, but obstacles remain. Perhaps the main risk is that the "aid bureaucracies" now trip over each other to try to get their hands on the $20 billion, so that much of it gets taken up by meetings, expert consultations, overhead, reports, and further meetings. "Partnerships" of donors can become an expensive end in themselves, merely delaying real action.

If donor governments really want results, they should take the money out of the hands of 30 or more separate aid bureaucracies and pool it in one or two places, the most logical being the World Bank in Washington and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) in Rome. One or both of these agencies would then have an account with several billion dollars.

Governments in hunger-stricken regions, especially Africa, would then submit national action plans that would provide details on how they would use the donor funds to get high-yield seeds, fertilizer, irrigation, farm tools, storage silos, and local advice to impoverished farmers. An independent expert panel would review the national plans to verify their scientific and managerial coherence. Assuming that a plan passes muster, the money to support it would quickly be disbursed. Afterward, each national program would be monitored, audited, and evaluated.

This approach is straightforward, efficient, accountable, and scientifically sound. Two major recent success stories in aid have used this approach: the Global Alliance on Vaccines and Immunizations, which successfully gets immunizations to young children, and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria, which supports national action plans to battle these killer diseases. Both have saved millions of lives during the past decade, and have paved the way to a new more efficient and scientifically sound method of development assistance.

Not surprisingly, many UN agencies and aid agencies in rich countries fight this approach. All too often, the fight is about turf, rather than about the most effective way to speed help to the poor. Obama, Rudd, Zapatero, and other forward-thinking leaders can therefore make a huge difference by following up on their pledges at the G-8 and insisting that the aid really works. The bureaucracies must be bypassed to get help to where it is needed: in the soil tilled by the world’s poorest farm families.

G-8 pledges $20 million for food security

Many expected a pledge of $15 billion, instead the G-8 surpassed that by pledging $20 billion dollars to fight hunger throughout the world. The $20 billion will come from the eight wealthy nations over the next 3 years. Italy will contribute 480 million, Japan and the European Union will each contribute $3 billion.

The G-8 is still trying to catch up from failing on previous pledges. Many analysts say that G-8 surpassed expectations on food security because they did not come up with an agreement on climate change.

More on the new pledges that we hope they keep from the Financial Times and reporter Guy Dinmore.

Management of the fund had not been finally decided but there would be close cooperation between the World Bank and the Rome-based UN food agencies, the minister said.

On the final day of the three-day G8 summit in L’Aquila, central Italy, leaders of the G8 club of rich countries were joined by heads of African governments and international institutions to finalise the multi-billion dollar food security fund for agriculture.

Barack Obama, US president, sat at the same dinner table on Thursday night with Muammer Gaddafi, Libya’s leader, invited to the summit by Italy in his role as head of the African Union.

US deputy national security advisor Denis McDonough told reporters that the US contribution to the fund would be about $3bn over three years. He said late on Thursday that pledges were still “bouncing around”.

Aid organisations will be carefully scrutinising the pledges to make sure that the funding represents new money and has not been stripped from existing budgets elsewhere. Also to be hammered out is what agency or agencies will administer the trust fund. The World Bank is a prime candidate.

The G-8 talks about aid

In the G-8 meeting in Italy the world's eight biggest economies opened the table to other emerging economies. The invites are seen by many as admission that the eight countries alone cannot solve all the worlds problems.

Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa pressed the G-8 on reopening the Doha round of global trade talks. The hope is that a free trade agreement that removes barriers would open more markets to the goods of the under-developed world.

For the focus of our snippet, this Associated Press article tells us what the G-8 said about aid to the underdeveloped world. Writer Colleen Barry made the trip to Italy.

On the issue of aid, Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi said Wednesday that the leaders have decided they need to change the way they help Africa, and introduce a mechanism of accountability to review efforts.

"We want our funds to go to precise investments, schools, buildings and so on," Berlusconi told reporters.

On the issue of aid, Berlusconi has said the G-8 was looking into establishing an agricultural development fund for Africa, to shift away from giving handouts to the poor to helping them grow their own food.

Italy has been under intense criticism going into the G-8 summit for having maintained only 3 percent of its aid pledges of $3.5 billion to Africa made at a 2005 G-8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland. The G-8 at that time promised to increase aid to sub-Saharan Africa by US$25 billion a year by 2010.

Berlusconi has acknowledged Italy's failure to respect its Glenagles aid pledges, but has said it only was a delay and that he had no other choice but to cut aid because of Italy's mounting debts and the global financial crisis.

"I'm sorry we didn't keep our promises," he said in an interview over the weekend with Bob Geldof, musician and head of the anti-poverty group ONE, which has shamed Italy for its poor performance.

U.S. to seek a $15 billion dollar pledge from G-8

Reuters has scooped a U.S. plan to seek a new pledge from the G-8. The U.S. government has drafted a proposal that would have the G-8 pledge $15 billion dollars to be given to food security needs in the under-developed world. However, the money would go to a new fund to be operated by the World Bank.

From Reuters, writers Silvia Aloisi and Darren Ennis explain the proposal.

The declaration said Washington was ready to mobilise $3-4 billion and wanted other partners to match that commitment to reach the $15 billion target.

"The funds...would be earmarked for investment in low income countries to implement agriculture development strategies, to finance agricultural infrastructure, land and water management, risk mitigation actions," the declaration said.

It said they would be pooled in a global agriculture and food security trust fund managed by the World Bank. It voiced concern for the impact of the economic crisis, food price volatility and under-investment in agriculture on poverty.

The United States is the world's largest food aid donor, mostly of domestically grown food bought from U.S. farmers.

The European Union has welcomed U.S. President Barack Obama's pledge for new funds, and EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said on Monday the bloc would commit another $1 billion per year on top of the money it has already promised -- estimated at around $7 billion to date.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who will host the G8, said he expected the meeting to slate between 10 and 15 billion dollars for world food security. But the EU is sceptical about the need for a new mechanism, such as the proposed trust fund.
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Aid campaigners are also worried about the lack of details about the funds to be pledged by the G8 summit.

"The devil is always in the detail. Is this new money? Are they including loans as well as grants, bilateral as well as multilateral commitments? The G8 needs to be absolutely transparent about what it is doing," said Oliver Buston of anti-poverty campaign ONE.

Britain aims to press the other rich nations on aid in G-8 meeting

Britain has gone on record to say that they will not cut aid to the under-developed world despite the global economic recession. The International Development Secretary for Britain said they will also press the other rich nations to do the same during the G-8 meetings in Italy this week.

Britain is going to begin targeting their aid to several countries. They named the countries Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Nepal, Nigeria and Yemen will receive half of all of their aid budget.

From Reuters, we read more of Britain's goals for the G-8 meeting.

International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander said Britain was on track to raise foreign aid to the U.N. target of 0.7 percent of gross national income by 2013 but other countries were lagging behind their promises.

Britain will raise the matter at this week's G8 summit in Italy, he said.

"We will be looking to create the opportunity for countries which are off-track to make commitments that will bring them back on track," Alexander told journalists.

"It is not a surprise that the policies of the host will be closely scrutinised at the end of the week."

Aid groups have singled out Italy for criticism, with anti-poverty campaigner Bob Geldof grilling Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in a weekend interview, saying he had slashed, not raised, aid to Africa since 2005.

"I am sorry, we made a mistake," Berlusconi responded, saying Italy's debt mountain and the economic crisis had forced the cut.

At their 2005 summit the G8, which comprises the United States, Britain, Germany, Italy, France, Russia, Canada and Japan, promised to more than double aid to Africa by 2010 and to aim for the 0.7 percent target.