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The CGD Podcast
The Development Landscape in 2015 and Beyond – Nancy Birdsall
00:20:14
In our first podcast of the new year and my first podcast as new host, I speak with CGD's president Nancy Birdsall on her expectations for 2015 as they relate to global development. We cover growing inequality, the marquee moments for development in...
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- [00:00]
A
Foreign.
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B
Hello, and welcome to the first CGD podcast of 2015. I'm Rajesh Merchandani and I have just started as CGD's Senior Director of Communication and Policy Outreach. And I'm delighted to be here with you. As it's my first podcast and the first of the new year. It is fitting, I think, that I should be joined by our founding president and my boss, Nancy Birdsall. Nancy, thank you for giving me a job, first of all, and thank you very much for being with us today.
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Great to be here, Rajesh.
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Now, here we are racing through January in what will be a very important year for international development. It hasn't begun well. A few days ago, Oxfam reported on inequality in quite a startling way. Just 80 people in the world, Oxfam told us, now own as much as the poorest 3 1/2 billion. And by 2016, Oxfam predicts that the top 1% are on course to own more than half the world's wealth. It seems that the increasingly interconnected nature of our world is. Is not doing much to help its poorest citizens. Mr. Piketty would not be surprised, but are you, Nancy?
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A
No, I'm not surprised either. As you know, Rajesh, I actually read Mr. Piketty's book.
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B
All of it.
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A
All of it, yes. Because I did a review of Piketty's book, which our listeners can find on our website. So I was a little surprised by the magnitude and speed of the shift at the global level. But in terms of the overall system and the way it's working, not surprised. I think there are serious questions about the way globalization works, or not for not just the poor, which has been on the development agenda for a long time, but for the rest, the larger rest, the middle class, the working class, the strugglers, and the very poor in the world.
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B
Well, let's take that as our starting point at the beginning of the year. Looking forward to this important year in 2015. Let's take those problems of growing inequality as a starting point. You know, we'd like to come up with solutions. Here at cgd, you have your own ideas of what you would like to see in the coming years, and you've blogged about it recently. It's on our website for listeners to read if they'd like to. But in that wish list that you came up with a week or so ago, you said it was harder than ever to draw up a list of things that you'd like to see come to fruition in 2015. Why is that harder than ever.
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That goes to the heart of the challenge in development, which is it's a long term challenge. We can't necessarily expect big successes in one year like 2015. Development is about planting the seeds right of hoped for successes in the maybe one year, but also five years and even ten years and more. So we have to be hopeful, but it's still hard to have a list for one year.
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Nevertheless, there are these sort of three key moments coming up this year. We have the Financing for Development event conference summit meeting in Addis Ababa in the summer. There's the UN General assembly and the Sustainable Development Goals, where they'll be adopted and agreed in New York in September. And then of course there's the Paris Climate Conference in December. Three kind of marquee moments this year. Does that mean that you're not optimistic about achievement or progress there? Or if you are, what are you hoping that they will bring?
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A
Well, let me take the example of the ADDIS meeting. I think it's hard to be optimistic that there will be big messages coming out of Addis, particularly compared to the first UN Conference on Financing for Development in Monterrey, Mexico in 2002, when at least as an American, what I remember is that George W. Bush, first he was the president and he attended, and once the US President attends, many other heads of state attend. And second, that he announced the idea of the Millennium Challenge Corporation, which has turned out to be, I think, a win in quality for the way USAID works. I don't know that there will be anything quite as big, at least in terms of rich country policies. Nor necessarily should there be, because we're not in a world anymore of the big thing being aid transfers from, say, US or other advanced economies to poor economies. We're past that. We're now in a world of collective action on systemic issues. So in that sense, I'm not conventionally optimistic that there will be some major actionable event or announcement. On the other hand, I'm very optimistic that ADDIS will capture the reality that we are in a different world and that the framing of the issues already is clearly one that recognizes the increases in growth and income and the improvements in governance in developing countries so that there's more, more emphasis on domestic resource mobilization. I think we'll remember Otis for reasons of reframing associated with the Addis also being a run up, in a way to the Sustainable Development Goals discussion at the UN in September, and also to the reality that in 2015 you can't talk about the reframing of development without Thinking about the risks associated with climate change for the world, but especially for the poor and for developing countries that don't have the same resilience in terms of institutions of governance and democracy and responsiveness that the advanced economies have.
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So in terms of concrete ideas for addis, if you want to talk about reframing development, if you want to talk about bringing climate change to the fore, what are the kind of things you hope might come out of that?
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Wow, that's a good question. I hate to go back to something that sounds like aid, but. Well, let me mention two things. One is what does sound a little bit like aid, but it is in a different context, and that is that there was a commitment in Copenhagen at the time of the climate conference in 2010, maybe or 2009. I'm not sure that there would be $100 billion on the table annually as transfers from the rich world to the poor world, including through the private sector, through private sector market mechanisms, compliance and so on with market arrangements. So one thing that I hope will be reiterated is, or at least alluded to, is that that's still on the agenda and that that is related to financing for development. That climate financing is still is in the bucket, I would say, of what matters for development. Second issue that I raised in the 10 wishes is something people don't think about very much in the financing area if they're development advocates, and that is the question of how well resourced and how ready is the IMF in the event of another global crisis or even in the event of another a downturn that's shared across the world because of demand stagnation? And how balanced is governance at the imf? To what extent is it still set up in a way that reflects sort of early mid 20th century arrangements in which there were mostly rich countries and mostly the US As a creditor and the rest of the world. So I'm very keen to see in Addis that there's some allusion, again, some reference to the need for the US to Congress in particular, to approve what's been on the agenda now for five years, a quota reform at the imf.
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And the point about that is that it's not new money.
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It's not new money, but it's money that's better embedded in the heart of the IMF than is the case now. And it also involves some reasonable adjustments that signal to countries like Brazil, China, India that they have rights and they also have responsibilities in a world where international cooperation on issues like climate is so important.
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And that small tweak would have a big impact.
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Do you believe it's become symbolic? Yes. It would have an impact on the way people in the financial community, as well as in the development finance community, think about the world recognizing it's far more multipolar. It's not a world, as we said already at the beginning anymore, of rich and poor. It's a world in which we're all in the same boat.
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B
Okay, Nancy, we'll be back in a few minutes to discuss more with you, get your take on what we hope will come out of the UN General assembly and its work on the SDGS later on in the year. You're listening to CGD's first podcast of 2015 with me, Rajesh Merchandani, talking to our founding president, Nancy Birtzel. Great to have you with us at the beginning of the year, Nancy, as we cast our eye down the future months and the big points in development this year, we've been talking about the Addis Ababa Financing for Development meeting in the summer. A key point in September is going to be the UN Climate Conference and the UN General assembly, where nations of the world hopefully will agree and adopt the Sustainable Development Goals. This is going to set the framework for development for the next 15 years as the Millennium Development Goals expire. Are there too many of them? First of all, what is it, 17 goals and 169 targets. That's quite hefty, isn't it? Is that a place to start? Do they need to trade some of those away?
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I thought about this a little bit because I was asked to speak to the group of countries who are having preliminary consultations at the United Nations. And I talked to a couple of people and I basically feel that it's okay to have 17 goals in particular. The first eight or nine actually reflect that, the spirit of the Millennium Development Goals. They're very focused on various services, so they're kind of a nice follow up, a sensible follow up to the Millennium Development Goals. Then there are additional ones, and the additional ones I think are reasonably bold, frankly, because they include this year, this time, unlike the last time, issues that are tough politically in rich countries as well as developing countries. I'm thinking of particularly inequality and climate. So there they are, you know, and it's an achievement of the Open Working Group, which is basically delegates from countries representing their countries to have put those two things on the agenda.
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I remember last summer there was a little bit of surprise that inequality actually made it in as a goal in itself.
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I think it did because the un, particularly the undp, did an extensive series of consultations worldwide. So that's the second thing about the SDGs. In contrast to the MDGs, which could be seen as having come out of a kind of donor club conversation, the SDGs come out of extensive conversations around the world with people. So they reflect a broader level of engagement. And that's a big difference in this century. I think they're the sort of beginning of the 21st century where citizens matter.
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It's rather than top down, it's sort of bottom up.
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Exactly. And where what people are saying around the world matters more than what the financing fund folks in the rich world come up with in terms of money. The SDGs are sort of symbolic of moving from a world in which development was about aid, as we were saying earlier in this podcast, to a world in which we face big issues at the collective level, where cooperation is absolutely Central. And the SDGs kind of capture the spirit of, if not a full consensus, cooperation, collaboration at the level of the governments involved, reflecting views of citizens around the world.
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That's certainly the hope. I mean, I remember looking at the raw data from the crowdsourcing exercise that the UN did, the My World survey, which has now, I think, surveyed more than 7 million people around the world. What are your priorities? What are the things you would like to see the most? And, you know, when I used to work as a journalist, we traveled the world and we'd look at the differences in people. But actually, it wasn't the differences in people that struck me. It was the sameness. People around the world want the same things. They want good jobs for their families so they can provide for their families. They want education for their children. They want health for their children as well and their families. And it's amazing that there was this consensus which hopefully will now be reflected in the Sustainable Development Goals.
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Right. I think particularly on the inequality issue. It's a funny word. It doesn't capture really what people want. I think they want a sense of fairness and justice. And it sounds sort of Jeffersonian to say, but the people often are right, and they're often ahead of the more academic or political international conversation. So the fact that a lot of people raised in one form or another inequality, has to do with the reality that there is not yet justice in the world and that people perceive something wrong with the system within countries and across countries. We can't imagine adequate progress on the traditional goals, education, a good job. In a world where there's a political reaction against the idea of, say, globalization we have global markets now. We need some of the rules and conventions and protocols that you associate with national governments at the global level. Call it a global polity. That's better. Richer. Richer in terms of its discussion.
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Let me just ask you, can you give us something to be optimistic about in 2015? In the world of development, I'm optimistic.
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That more countries will publish the contracts they make for services like getting a road built. Even if one or two more countries do it. Right now, the UK does it, Colombia does it. I think Slovakia does it. They're showing the way. There's pressure in Tanzania to publish the contracts that that country's making now with firms that will be exploring for natural gas. So that's a kind of, that's an example where globalization is changing expectations about what is normal behavior. It's slow, but once that gets going, great. I think we're going to see more development impact bonds which involve the private sector as well as the public sector and are outcomes based. So that's more responsibility to citizens for showing what's getting done. I think we see already the first few countries with the decline in the price of oil reducing their fuel subsidies, which is, you know, going in the direction of a carbon tax. At least it's not taxing yet, but it's taking away a negative tax. So Indonesia, with a new precedent, reduced its subsidies to fuel. That's a really important thing. It's good for climate. Reduces inequality because subsidies generally end up benefiting those who use a product more like with their big cars, more than people on scooters. Right. With a fuel subsidy, I think we're going to see more work on empowering women and human rights. I think we do a lot of work on how to reduce deforestation and the benefits of that for climate and for biodiversity here at cgd. And I think at the climate negotiations in Paris in December, forests will be more prominently than ever on the agenda with more resources available to pay countries for an outcome of reducing of their reduced deforestation.
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B
Well, let's hope that we do have something to be optimistic about in 12 months time. Nancy, great to talk to you. Thank you very much for sharing your wisdom with us here in this first CGD podcast of 2015. All of Nancy's ideas for this new year can be found in her blog, which is on our website, www.cgdev.org. i'm Rajesh Merchandani and I look forward to joining you again.
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A
Thank you. Let me interrupt and say welcome, Rajesh, I know you're going to take us to new heights on our communications and outreach work. It's delightful to have you here.
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B
Okay, it's on the record now. You put that on tape. I'll hold you to that in 12 months time. Nancy, lovely to be here. Thank you very much indeed.
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A
Thank you.