Climate change latest: the impact in China and leadership from Scotland, plus a new journal on CC and development

The amount of new climate change research, reports etc emerging in the run-up to Copenhagen summit already feels slight overwhelming, and the meeting is still five months away. Here are some recent bits and pieces:

China and Climate Change
An important new report from Oxfam Hong Kong and Greenpeace China unpacks the data on the impact of climate change on poor people in poverty.

‘The research finds that China’s poverty-stricken areas are also those areas that are most vulnerable to climate change-caused disasters. The proportion of the absolute poverty population that is affected by climate change reached 95% in 2005, and is expected to rise. Case studies from Guangdong, Sichuan and Gansu provinces show that global warming induces floods, snow storms, and landslides which are detrimental to ecologically sensitive areas and hamper poverty relief efforts.’

This kind of research could lead to a more productive debate within China. It places poverty at the centre of the domestic discussion on how to adapt, and once climate change is understood as anti-poverty, it becomes hard to present mitigation as simply a neo-imperialist plot to prevent China from developing, disguised in ‘China-as-bad-guy-emitter’ rhetoric. Outside China, it reminds us that the country still has 200m poor people, many of them on the receiving end of climate change.

That said, China does emit a hell of a lot of greenhouse gases (see graph) – a new analysis by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency  shows that in 2008, the developing world for the first time was responsible for over half of global emissions (mind you, it also accounts for over 2/3 of its people).

Scotland the Brave
Last week Scotland upped the ante when in a unanimous vote the Scottish Parliament agreed to cut the country’s emissions by 42% by 2020 and 80% by 2050 (compared to 1990 levels – an important detail). It also called for emissions from international aviation and shipping to be included, and an annual report on consumption-based emissions. The vote came a day after the US said that a 40% cut (demanded by many developing nations) was ‘not on the cards’.

The breakthrough is partly down to years of steady pressure from the Stop Climate Coalition Scotland coalition of 60 environment groups, development organizations including Oxfam, faith groups and trades unions, representing 40% of the Scottish population.

Scotland’s move echoes the kinds of leadership shown by Wales, the transition towns movement or those US state governments such as California that made the running while the White House was stuck in climate change denial. It’s an interesting example of how ‘power from below’ can also come from lower tiers of governance within state structures.

Can Scotland’s partly devolved government deliver? Only partly, according to the Guardian. Scottish ministers directly control only 30% of Scotland’s emissions, while the UK government has responsibility for a further 30% (via fuel taxation, low emission vehicles, VAT on energy efficiency and air taxes) and 40% is covered by the EU’s carbon trading agreement.

SCCS strongly disagrees with the Guardian’s numbers, arguing that reductions in excess of 40% by 2020 are achievable under devolved powers without altered EU or UK policies. In the last resort, achievement of an interim target of over 40% can be assisted by purchasing carbon credits. There is even greater potential for emissions reductions in Scotland if as seems likely, the EU raises its 2020 target to 30%, and amends the ETS in line with this goal. In these circumstances reductions greater than 50% become practical in Scotland.

New Climate Change and Development Journal
Finally, if you are hungry for more, check out Earthscan’s new journal, ‘Climate and Development’, edited by Richard Klein at the Stockholm Environment Institute. The first issue has a promising range of research, book reviews, and ‘viewpoint’ essays on everything from disaster risk reduction to renewable energy. Saving the planet doesn’t come cheap though – the institutional subscription is $640 a year, and the personal one $199. Wonder if they offer concessions to institutions in developing countries?

Lessons from depressions; the end of the American dream; happy days at the IMF; Treason, corn and the US climate bill and an 11 year old Liberian wins the development debate: links I liked

Christina Romer, the chairwoman of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, takes time out (how? when?) to reflect on the lessons of 1937’s false dawn for today’s green shoots spotters

Joe Stiglitz argues in Vanity Fair (where else?) that the crisis is driving developing countries away from the American dream

Still, at least the crisis is improving the IMF’s finances – it is projecting a $126m profit this year, compared to its initial projections of a $292m loss. Why the turnaround? A hefty boost in loans to crisis-wracked countries means accompanying improved interest payments.

Paul Krugman accuses the 212 people in the US House of Representatives who voted against the climate change deal of treason.

Still on the climate change bill, Alex Evans spots the hands of the US corn lobby in the horse trading prior to the vote.

And an 11 year old Liberian wins the development debate hands down

Paul Collier on post conflict reconstruction, independent service authorities, how to manage natural resources and the hidden logic of the G20 London Summit

Paul came to give a talk to Oxfam’s big cheeses last week based on his new book War Guns and Votes (see my review here) and they invited me along. Here are some highlights:

Post Conflict Reconstruction: The conventional sequence is ‘build the politics first, then the economics will follow’. Collier thinks the order should be reversed. Conflict is a zero sum game, he says – someone else’s gain is your loss. It takes a decade of steady growth to shift politics to the positive sum game of mature democracies, and to weed out the bad guys who were attracted to politics under the old regime.

The key to cleansing the political system via the economy is to focus on a small number of essential things: jobs (especially for young men) and essential services, with possibly food security as a third component, but no more complicated than that. Post-conflict states are highly uncompetitive so target non-tradables rather than export industries – construction ticks all the boxes (jobs for young men, non tradable etc), but don’t ask the Chinese to do it (they bring their own workforce). Governments should identify bottlenecks that increase prices in the construction sector (skills, land, cement, finance etc) and concentrate on freeing them up.

Independent Service Authorities (ISAs) for Essential Services: State-building in post independence Africa was based on a 1950s European model of a single all-providing state in education, health etc. It didn’t work. The answer is to unbundle that state model into
a) setting policy (stays with government)
b) allocating money to providers (ISAs)
c) service delivery (all welcome – churches, not for profits, private sector etc)

The debates and doubts largely surround the intermediate role of ISAs. Paul sees them as free standing, with boards made up of government, donor and civil society representatives. ISAs can ‘spot winners and scale them up, fire as well as hire and pay people properly’. See here for his latest paper on the ISA proposal.

The discussion on ISAs revolved around what happens to a short term fix as the years go by. There have been lots of questions on an exit strategy – would ISAs eventually pass control back to a strengthened central government, or would they become entrenched as a parallel system? Collier responded ‘there doesn’t have to be an exit strategy. This may be the right way to deliver services in the long term’. i.e. it may not about moving from Liberia (fragile state, ISA created to channel donor funds) to Ghana (effective state, donors hand over money to the government). You create a mechanism that may never graduate, a parallel system that lasts for ever.

And what about power? ISAs will control the money, so the powerful and corrupt will gravitate towards them – what’s to prevent them being captured by vested interests, doling out the goodies to their allies, and becoming even less accountable than governments? Paul puts his hopes on donors to discipline the ISAs and prevent capture. ‘At the heart of this is that the ISA must take good decisions, and donors have to keep it so, at least for the first few years.’ This smacks of the desperate search of the technocrat to somehow magic away messy issues of power and politics that get in the way of good decisions.

Although he thinks civil society organizations should sit on ISAs, there is little sense of countervailing power from below in holding governments (or ISAs) accountable– is this the missing piece – an Independent People’s Authority rather than an ISA? On ISAs I came away from the discussion more sceptical, not less. They sound a bit like food aid – a seductive, short term solution that can easily turn into a long term trap.

Resource Charter: Paul calls his work on this his ‘biggest pride’. Resource transfers are an order of magnitude larger than aid, but receive far less attention. The problems are much greater, as is the dispersion of performance in different countries (from Botswana’s excellent management of diamond wealth to Nigeria’s lamentable performance on oil and gas). He concludes ‘we need to get a range of decisions right over a generation in everything from how to explore to how to spend the revenue.’

The resource charter group has come up with 12 ‘precepts’ that offer guidance on the key decisions that governments face, with different levels of details for decision makers, policy wonks, and civil servants. The Charter has a technical group chaired by the nobel laureate Mike Spence, who also chaired last year’s Growth Commission, and is soon to announce a board of 3 eminent people from natural resource countries (he didn’t divulge names, sorry).

Global Economic Crisis: ‘The G20 deal in April looks bizarre until you recognize that the guiding principle was that anything agreed must not add to the spending figures of G20 governments’. So the deal to increase the IMF’s finances through a new issue of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) was ‘quantitative easing on a global scale’. To the World Bank, the G20 said ‘take more risk – lend more on same capital base’. i.e. exactly the opposite of their advice to the commercial banks. No new money was agreed for bilateral aid agencies like DFID, because that would count as spending.

Are we witnessing Decoupling 2.0? China and India rising fastest from the global wreckage

Earthquake analogies and tectonic plates have been one of the most ubiquitous clichés of the global crisis, but they remain apt. The last week has thrown up further signs of the historic geopolitical shifts that are under way.

The Economist has an excellent essay on the back of the first BRICs summit, exploring the sharp economic rebound in China and to a lesser extent, India and Brazil since the turn of the year (the fourth BRIC and summit host, Russia, remains stuck in deep gloom). Some highlights:

‘A study last year by Ayhan Kose of the IMF, Christopher Otrok of the University of Virginia and Eswar Prasad of Cornell University [found that] the business cycles of America and Europe converged. The business cycles of India and China converged. [But] the business cycles of rich and emerging markets had decoupled.’

‘Recovery in the BRICs is coinciding with recession in the developing world as a whole.’

Why are China, India and Brazil rebounding faster than others?
· They were cautious in liberalizing their financial systems, and so avoided contagion from the anglo-saxon meltdown
· A massive (14% of GDP) fiscal stimulus in China, plus a huge programme of state-owned bank lending (ditto Brazil and India, though on a smaller scale)
· Their large size means they have diversified economies and millions of domestic consumers to target in order to boost demand, unlike most other developing countries, which are more dependent on trade

The legacy of this high level of state intervention will be a big rise in the size of the government and large state-owned firms (reversing moves in recent decades towards more market-based economies).

Which all helps to explain the mood music at an International Growth Centre seminar at the LSE on 18 June, where the gallows humour of the European and American speakers contrasted with the confidence displayed by Yu Yongding (Chinese Academy of Social Sciences) and Surjit Bhalla (Oxus Research and Investments, New Delhi).

Yu Yongding summed up his presentation as ‘Chinese economy, so far so good and no big deal’. Even with the fiscal stimulus, China’s fiscal deficit will only be 3% of GDP this year (Britain’s is in double figures), and their debt/GDP ratio will still be less than 20% (much less than Britain’s). But he was worried that some of its longer term weaknesses (eg overinvestment and underconsumption, which aggravates the global imbalances between net consumers like the US and net producers like China) have been exacerbated by the crisis. In the middle of a global slowdown, Chinese investment is growing at 33% a year and has now reached 50% of GDP – an astonishingly high figure that more or less guarantees fast growth and a big surplus (since consumption is suppressed by all the wealth going into investment instead).

Surjit Bhalla took the long view. Over the 500 years up until decolonisation, ‘Chindia’ (China + India) went from having the global average of GDP per capita to having just a fifth of that average. By 2020 they will have rebounded, with 40% of the world’s people and 40% of its economic output.

Oh, and by the way, the world’s two most profitable banks last year were Chinese (Industrial and Commercial Bank of China came first with profits of $21.3bn, followed by China Construction Bank – Britain’s RBS was bottom of the heap with losses of $59.3bn and is now majority state-owned). Can you hear those tectonic plates grinding their way towards the next earthquake?

War, Guns and Votes: what to make of Paul Collier’s latest book?

War, Guns and Votes builds on the strongest section of Collier’s best selling ‘Bottom Billion’ – his investigation of the ‘conflict trap’ that afflicts a disproportionate number of the poorest counties, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa (Collier’s real passion). The book is in equal measure hugely stimulating and deeply exasperating. Stimulating because he is an original thinker and a brilliant communicator, as well as a policy entrepreneur who always tries to get back to the ‘so what’ on any issue. He defies easy left/right pigeon-holing – he is a free trader, yet admires Julius Nyerere (if not his economic policies) and is a fan of UN peacekeeping.

Frustrating because of his eccentric attitude to evidence: he looks for statistical relationships, runs dozens of cross country regressions, establishes correlations between different variables (income, conflict, geography etc) and plausible directions of causation, but then blithely ignores other disciplines or qualititative research methods and as he freely admits, ‘guesses’ about the explanations for them. You could sum up his method as ‘correlate, then speculate’. To be fair, he may be doing all sorts of reading in other disciplines and just keeping it to himself, but the absence of footnotes makes it impossible to say.

So what’s his basic argument? That the international community has got overly obsessed with elections, which can actually set back the process of post-conflict reconstruction (he wanted to call the book ‘Democracy in Dangerous Places’, but for some reason the publishers vetoed it), and that a new approach to international intervention is required to drag bottom billion countries, most of them in Sub-Saharan Africa, out of their various traps (poverty, conflict, commodity dependence etc).

Here’s some of the detail:

Above a per capita GDP of $2700 per annum, democracy systematically reduces the risk of politial violence (riots, political strikes, assassinations, guerrilla insurgencies, civil war and coups). But below that level, democracy makes the society more dangerous. ‘Democracies get safer as income rises, whereas autocracies get more dangerous.’

Elections don’t necessarily lead to democracy, not least because autocratic leaders in the bottom billion countries are increasingly adept at playing the system: ‘In the typical election in one of the developed (OECD) countries, the incumbent government has a chance of reelection of about 45%. In the average election held in a society of the Bottom Billion, despite the fact that voters usuallly have many more grounds for complaint, it is 74%. In the worst governed BB countries, it is 88%.’

Small and ethnically diverse countries are most at risk from conflict: ‘elections tend to work better in societies that have larger populations and fewer ethnic divisions. They also tend to work better in polities with checks and balances on the power of government, and in particular where the elections are properly conducted. Elections without properly enforced rules of conduct in small, ethnically divided societies, typically retard reform rather than accelerate it.’

Aid donors and others should pay particular attention to the months and years after a conflict ends: ‘the post-conflict decade is dangerous and there seems to be no clear political quick fix. In particular, elections and democracy, at least in the form found in the typical post-conflict situation, do not bring risks down. Economic recovery works, but it takes a long time. The one thing that seems to work quickly is international peacekeeping for the length of time needed for the economy to recover…..Post-conflict aid is significantly more effective than aid at other times.’

He’s a big fan of peace-keeping by the UN and other organizations: ‘An annual expenditure of $100m on peacekeepers reduces the cumulative ten-year risk of reversion to conflict very substantially from about 38% to 17%. The ratio of benefits to costs is better than four to one. Peacekeeping looks to be very good value.’

He’s particularly impressed by what he calls ‘over the horizon guarantees’ such as Britain’s role in Sierra Leone, or the old French ‘informal security guarantee’ to its former colonies. The French guarantee reduced the risk of conflict by about 75%.

Coups are a much cheaper and preferable alternative to war (he’s long abandoned his youthful fascination with ‘armed struggle’) – they cost on average about 7% of GDP before the economy reverts to normal, whereas wars cost far more. ‘Unless the rebels are unquestionably a whole lot better than the government, then the cost inflicted on the society for the one-in-five chance that the rebellion will lead to the government being overthrown is far too high, and so the rebellion should be discouraged. But coups are a different matter: they have to be judged predominantly by whether they improve governance.’

He has a fascinating historical essay on the rise of European states (which suggests he does in fact read pretty widely), arguing that hundreds of microstates came together through war. The only way to fund wars was through taxation + borrowing. The only way to raise that money was by conceding successful greater levels of political accountability to tax payers or lenders – ‘the consequence of warfare was the spread of fiscal accountability.’ So the evolution of the modern state was driven by the twin logic of violence and fund-raising. ‘Step by step, the predatory ruler of the mini-state had evolved into the desperate-to-please, service-promising, modern vote –seeking politician.’

Contrast this with Africa’s post-colonial proliferation of ministates, with fragmentation more common than amalgamation. Why have they not followed the Europe’s path of integration through war and accountability? Perhaps easy access to natural resources and aid has obviated the need to raise taxes and concede accountability. Even when Mobutu or Mugabe run out of cash, they prefer the printing press to taxation, for that very reason.

But these days, following the European war-driven route to state building with modern military technology would be a bloodbath. ‘So what are the realistic options? Surely the best is the route taken by President Nyerere of Tanzania: political leadership that builds a sense of national identity. Astonishingly, Nyerere achieved this without resorting to the notion of a neighbouring enemy: indeed, he emphasized a Pan-African as well as a national identity.’ But ‘unless the states of the Bottom Billion can forge themselves into nations, they will need some deus ex machina that introduces accountability.’

And so we come to Collier’s proposals for what should be done about all this:

1. Smart external intervention: For countries below the $2,700 per capita threshold, ‘key members of the international community [US, UK, France] would make a common commitment that should a government that has committed itself to international standards be ousted by a coupe d’etat, they would ensure that the government was reinstated, by military intervention if necessary.’ [comparing with post-war Europe, the proposal is more NATO than Marshall Plan].

And conversely, if the government reneges on its promises, the international community would rescind its promise, essentially sanctioning a coup against the government.

2. Privatization of essential services by separating overall policy (which stays with government), the allocation of money to specific activities (by a new independent agency bringing together donors, government and civil society), and the actual supply of activities (open to churches, NGOs, local communities, philanthropists and presumably – though he doesn’t specify – the private sector).

3. Donors should tax military spending by bottom billion governments ‘each dollar of increase would be taxed by a 40% reduction in aid, which would be redistributed to other countries, and each cut in spending would be correspondingly rewarded.’

Of the three proposals, (1) has been rubbished as ‘deeply dotty’ by Peter Preston in the Observer and worries the boss of Human Rights Watch too, but I think is at least worth thinking about. Option 3 is interesting but surely there’s a level of military spending which is legitimate for any government? (See this recent Oxfam paper on what this might be). But I’m very concerned at number 2, simply because history shows that in the end universal essential services have to be steered, but also largely provided by, the state, and there seems no plausible exit strategy for folding Collier’s proposed ‘independent services authorities’ back into the relevant ministries. Instead the proposal would create honeypots for the powerful and corrupt, and create new constituencies that would then lobby like mad to prevent that happening (look at the opposition President Obama currently faces on his health care reform proposals from the US health industry).

Paul gave a great talk at Oxfam last night, which touched on some of these issues. I’ll return to that tomorrow.

All the latest stats on the development impact of the global crisis

My colleague Richard King, an indefatigable number cruncher, has pulled together this handy summary of the latest stats. All updates welcome.

Unemployment (ILO)
· Gender impact of the economic crisis in terms of unemployment rates is expected to be more detrimental for females than for males in most regions of the world and most clearly in Latin America and the Caribbean (only regions where expected to be less detrimental for women are East Asia, developed economies, and non-EU south-eastern Europe and CIS)
· Global unemployment could rise to 220 million people (6.8 per cent) in 2009, up 39 million on 2007.
· Number of working poor (people unable to earn enough to lift themselves and their families above the poverty line) could rise to 1.3 billion ($2/day), 746m ($1.25/day).
· Under a worse case scenario, global unemployment could be as high as 239 million (7.4 per cent) in 2009.
· Under a worse case scenario, the number of working poor could rise to 1.4 billion ($2/day), 857m ($1.25/day).

Economic Growth (IMF / UN-DESA / World Bank)
· World economic output is expected to contract by 1.3 [2.6] {2.9} per cent in 2009, down from growth of 3.2 [2.1] {1.9} per cent in 2008, and 5.2 {3.8} per cent in 2007 (IMF [UN-DESA] {World Bank}).
· Economic output in emerging and developing economies [{developing economies only}] is expected to grow by 1.6 [1.4] {1.2} per cent in 2009, down from 6.1 [5.4] {5.9} per cent in 2008, and 8.3 {8.1} per cent in 2007 (IMF [UN-DESA] {World Bank}).

Bank Bailouts (IMF / calculation for Oxfam by James Henry)
· As of February 2009 headline support to the financial sector by advanced economies had reached 43 per cent of their GDP, compared with 2 per cent in emerging economies (IMF).
· On a worldwide basis, as of January 2009, banks and other financial service firms have already digested at least $8.7 trillion of state sponsored financing ($903 billion of government capital injections, $661 billion of toxic asset purchases, $1.38 trillion of subsidized loans, $5.76 trillion of debt guarantees). N.B. This is not all upfront cash – guarantees reflect the value of the insured assets (James Henry).

Fiscal Stimuli (ILO)
· Total fiscal stimulus packages are currently (March) 3.16 per cent of global GDP.

Poverty Impacts (UN-DESA)
· Between 73 and 103 million more people will remain poor or fall into extreme poverty in comparison with a situation in which pre-crisis growth would have continued.
· Most of this setback will be felt in East and South Asia, with between 56 and 80 million likely to be affected, of whom about half are in India. The crisis could keep 12 to 16 million more people in poverty in Africa and another 4 million in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Remittances (World Bank)
· Officially recorded remittance flows to developing countries were estimated to be $305 billion in 2008, up 8.8 per cent from $265 billion in 2007; but in real terms, remittances are expected to fall from 2 per cent of GDP in 2007 to 1.9 percent in 2008.
· In 2009, remittances to developing countries are expected to fall by 5.0 per cent to $290 billion – 1.8 per cent of developing countries’ GDP.
· Considering that remittances registered double-digit annual growth in the past few years, an outright fall in the level of remittance flows as projected now will cause hardships in many poor countries.
· The persistence of the migrant stock will contribute to the persistence (or resilience) of remittance flows in the face of the crisis.
· South-South remittances from Russia, South Africa, Malaysia and India are especially vulnerable to the rolling economic crisis. Also the outlook remains uncertain for remittance flows from the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Countries) countries.

Trade Flows (Bloomberg / IMF / World Bank)
· The Baltic Dry Index (a benchmark indicator of shipping costs, which serves as a proxy for world trade flows):
o Is 58 per cent lower than its one year high in June 2008
o Has recovered from its one year low in Dec 2008 (93% below June ’08 peak)
· IMF expects world trade volumes to contract this year, falling by 11.0 per cent 
· World Bank expects world trade volumes to contract this year, falling by 9.7 per cent 

Foreign Direct Investment (Institute of International Finance / World Bank)
· Volume of net private capital flows to emerging markets is likely to decline dramatically to $141 billion in 2009, after an estimated $392 billion in 2008, and a record volume of $888 billion in 2007 (IIF).
· A modest revival of flows is now starting to become evident and the IIF projects that the 2010 volume will reach $373 billion (IIF).
· Net private capital inflows to developing countries fell to $707 billion in 2008, a sharp drop from a peak of $1.2 trillion in 2007. International capital flows are projected to fall further in 2009, to $363 billion (World Bank).          

Vulnerable Countries (World Bank / IMF / Economist)
· According to the World Bank, 43 developing countries are highly exposed to the poverty effects of the crisis (with both declining growth rates and high poverty levels).
· The IMF identifies 26 highly vulnerable low income countries.
· The Economist identifies 17 vulnerable emerging-market economies on the basis of current account, short-term debt, and banks’ loan/deposit ratio.

Food and Oil Prices (FAO)
· Are now on the rise again after bottoming out in Jan/Feb.

Seizing the Moment: A Successful Campaign on Domestic Violence in Malawi

Here’s an example of successful advocacy at national level, which is becoming an increasingly important part of Oxfam’s work. In 2005, Oxfam’s Malawi programme along with its partners mounted a campaign to eliminate gender based violence which led to the passing of the Prevention of Domestic Violence Bill in Parliament in April 2006.  How did it happen?

In 2002, the Malawian chapter of a regional women’s rights NGO, Women in Law Southern Africa (WILSA) was leading some work on domestic violence with the aim of developing a bill against domestic violence.  The Bill was drafted but the process completely stagnated when the bill got into government offices. 

Three years down the line, towards the end of 2005, the media started reporting incidents of violence from across the country. Between January and March 2006, the Daily Times and The Nation newspapers reported over 80 cases, ranging from wife killing, wife battering to grievous bodily harm and rape.

After two weeks of such brutal stories, Oxfam decided to put out a press statement condemning the violence and calling on key leaders (the Government, Judiciary, Police, Chiefs, and Church leaders) to take action.  The statement struck a chord, resulting in calls from a range of different groups, commending the initiative and offering to be part of a solution to the problem.  The most striking response was from the Malawi Police in Blantyre – they arrived at Oxfam’s offices in a van with loudspeakers on the top, broadcasting messages against gender based violence.  NGOs and the government’s Ministry of Gender also got in touch.

Within a month of its press release, Oxfam was ready to move to the next level of action.  With the Malawi Police, it mounted public campaigns in over half the districts in Malawi to disseminate the current legal provisions against gender-based violence (GBV), and the existence of Victim Support Units.  It worked with media partners to hold radio and television debates with different stakeholders on all the radios in Malawi. Every weekday for two weeks, radio stations were blocked from 5 to 6 pm with debates on GBV, and everyone from judges and lawyers to chiefs, church leaders, women’s rights NGOs and government officials took part.  Public reaction was mixed, but one thing was clear – the silence on violence against women and children was broken.

With public opinion now mobilised, Oxfam staff and the Ministry of Gender spotted an opportunity to reintroduce the abandoned Prevention of Domestic Violence Bill. Working with allies, they identified the people that needed to be influenced, tried to understand their feelings about GBV, and how they were likely to react if approached.  The Members of Parliament were the primary targets.  They were aware of the issues, but most of them held traditional views that condoned domestic violence.  The general consensus was that MPs were more likely to listen if approached by the Ministry of Gender rather than a civil society organization.  Members of Parliament also respect chiefs, who were in some cases sympathetic on GBV issues, so a well-connected NGO volunteered to lobby the chiefs to attend Parliament on the day the bill was to be tabled.  The charismatic Minister of Gender Hon Joyce Banda, personally lobbied alongside the President to garner support from cabinet colleagues, and arranged a meeting with the Leader of the Opposition.

Activities included working dinners with MPs, individual lobbying of MPs during the sitting of parliament, mobilisation of chiefs, translating briefs on the Bill into Chichewa, and public campaigns through faith-based groups, media, women’s rights NGOs and women lawyers. The Ministry and Oxfam staff also developed technical notes and lobby materials on GBV to support MPs in their debates for the Bill. The Malawi Police even produced fliers in support of the Bill that were circulating among parliamentarians.

Following a very difficult debate in parliament, with opponents accusing the bill’s supporters of attacking Malawi’s culture, the Bill was passed.

What did Oxfam learn?

1. Spot opportunities for change and seize them

2. Engagement with non-traditional partners, (like the Malawi police) can deliver real results, especially if you can build a coalition with a shared sense of purpose

3. Knowing when to let go is crucial – if some other organization is better placed to approach a particular target, you have to take a back seat and forego the glory

4. Power Analysis: campaigners needed to understand where the MPs stood on the issue, how they felt about each one of us, and what/who would influence them to change. 

5. Get the campaign tactics right: The adoption of a non-confrontational style and language (not always the case with NGOs in Malawi), and placing various organisations in roles they would play best, helped in building the dialogue with MPs and ensuring that a sense of mutual respect prevailed. 

To which I would add a couple of things I recognized from the other episodes of social and political change I explored in From Poverty to Power:

- dusting off an existing proposal for legislation can save huge amounts of time, allowing a campaign to build momentum rapidly (as in the case of India’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Act)

- getting insider champions on board is often crucial

It’s Our Turn to Eat; withering green shoots; the first advanced market commitment; aid and Africa; the BRICs’ first summit and dreams of success in Copenhagen: links I liked

Chris Blattman loves ‘It’s Our Turn to Eat’, Michela Wrong’s book on corruption in Kenya

Martin Wolf pours cold water on talk of green shoots and argues that the recession is only just beginning and that policymakers have to stay the course on reflation

Owen Barder hails the first ‘Advanced Market Commitment’ in which aid donors guarantee a market for new drugs aimed at the ‘diseases of poverty’. First up is pneumococcal disease, which kills 1.6 million people in the world a year, the majority of them young children in the developing world. 

Chris Roche of Oxfam Australia muses on the future of aid, plus an eclectic set of links. 

Some useful updates on Africa and aid: From the One Campaign comes its 2009 data report, plus some choice abuse for the Italian leadership from Bob Geldof in the run up to the G8 in Italy. From the Africa Progress Panel, (a great and good group chaired by Kofi Annan, which follows progress on the Gleneagles G8 promises and Africa Commission report of 2005) a good annual overview of developments in the region, including infrastructure, health, and the impact of the global crisis. Lots of thought provoking graphics, including this one showing that the age gap between leaders and led is 43 years in Africa, compared to 16 years in the G8 – (African people are younger and its leaders are older)

The BRICs held their first ever summit, but it went almost unnoticed (in the UK at least) thanks to the upheavals in Iran. Catch up on what they talked about. (The acronym was first dreamt up by Goldman Sachs’ Jim O’Neill in 2001. As the Financial Times noted, this is ‘almost certainly the first multilateral nation bloc to be created by an investment bank’s research analysts and their sales team’).

And finally, Greenpeace plays fantasy football with the Copenhagen climate summit.  Well we can always dream.

Trade v climate change: what should developing countries be asked to do?

Last week, Oxfam published its proposals on how the burden of reducing carbon emissions should be shared between countries, both rich and poor. What struck me was the contrast with the stance Oxfam and other NGOs have taken in their advocacy on trade at the WTO and numerous other trade agreements. There, they have focused on what the rich countries must do (cut their subsidies, remove barriers to developing country exports), while stressing the importance of  retaining ‘policy space’ for developing countries to protect infant industries and generally practice an active industrial policy. The case for treating rich and poor countries differently is justified by history – industrial policy is an essential part of virtually all successful development take offs, as Dani Rodrik and Ha-Joon Chang have argued. But even though ‘developing countries’ in the WTO include everyone from Singapore to Mali, NGOs have assiduously avoided getting into discussions of ‘differentiation’ between different groups of developing countries, as this is seen (with good reason) as a divide and rule tactic practiced by the North.

Climate change is different, because (unlike trade) there is an absolute ceiling on the amount of emissions that the atmosphere can absorb without catastrophic warming. That means all significant emitters, even poor ones, will have to share the burden of reducing their emissions. Now Oxfam has bitten the bullet and laid out some ideas on how developing countries could be expected to contribute. Here are the bones of the argument set out in the paper:

‘Until developed countries take a leadership role consistent with their responsibility for emitting the vast majority of the atmospheric build-up of CO2 over the last century, and show that economic well-being and welfare can be maintained while drastically cutting emissions, developing countries cannot be expected to take the same kind or level of action as developed countries. Countries such as the UK and Germany have shown that it is possible to maintain economic growth while reducing emissions; other developed countries must also set this example.’

‘Yet even if industrialised countries were to cease all emissions from today, developing-country emissions alone would overshoot the 2°C pathway by 2020 on current trends. We now face a far greater climate challenge than when the Kyoto Protocol was first agreed over 10 years ago. Unbridled emissions growth in developing countries is no longer an option.’

‘A pathway to keep warming well within 2°C demands both that emissions in industrialised countries are reduced, well below the 1990 baseline adopted by the UN Climate Convention, and that emissions growth in developing countries be limited below ‘business-as-usual’ trajectories.’

‘The next commitment period that is agreed in Copenhagen needs to be a trust-building period that, as Stern argues, ‘…rewards developing countries for reducing emissions, but does not punish them for failing to do so’.’ So we’re not proposing ceilings for developing countries yet – rich countries first have to show good faith in cutting their own emissions.

Until that happens, the key to developing countries reducing their emissions is cash from the rich countries: ‘In order to receive funding, developing countries would create and submit a national mitigation plan. The national mitigation plan would identify the mitigation actions that the country proposes, the incremental costs of these actions, and the tonnes of carbon emissions that will be avoided (reduced) as a result.’ Developing countries should be financed on a sliding scale – the poorest countries should be 100% financed, the less poor ones partially financed.

By how much should developing countries reduce their emissions? Obviously that depends on whether the rich countries do their bit. If rich countries were to reduce their emissions by 40% below 1990 levels, that would provide sufficient ‘space’ to allow developing countries to continue to increase their emissions, albeit at a slower rate (something like 30 per cent below ‘business-as-usual’, although only a handful of experts have published relevant estimates).

Politically, this is pretty sensitive. The danger is that it feeds into efforts by opponents of climate change action to turn the negotiations into a ‘you go first’ stalemate between the rich countries and the big emitters in the South. But I think the emphasis on funding during a prior stage of trust building strikes a nice balance between the politics and the science.

Does aid work? Ask Nepalese women.

Ok I’m getting tired of picking holes in the arguments of aid sceptics, so here’s something positive – a specific example of what aid can achieve in a country like Nepal, which is recovering from a decade of conflict with devastating consequences for the delivery of basic services. One third of its population lives below the poverty line and one woman dies every two hours during pregnancy and childbirth.

Together with other donors, the UK gives money directly to the Nepalese government for the health sector, allowing it to scale up and strengthen its public health system. In January 2008, aid helped the government of Nepal to abolish user fees in health care. Nepal has made impressive progress. In just 5 years the under five mortality rate was reduced by around a third and since 1996 the maternal mortality rate has fallen by 50%. Nepal is on target to meet the Millennium Development Goal on child mortality before 2015 if present trends can be sustained.

The Safe Motherhood Programme is an example of co-ordinated support for the government health system, with a specific focus on saving women’s lives. The UK has provided £20 million over five years to finance the programme, which trains doctors and nurses, improves health care facilities, provides equipment and encourages women to give birth in hospitals where qualified health workers can oversee their delivery and deal with any complications.

The Programme incorporates the innovative Maternity Incentives Scheme, which pays women to give birth in a hospital or health centre. Transport costs in Nepal are high, and there are very few good roads in the most mountainous provinces. In the past, these factors have prevented many women from travelling to a hospital or health centre to give birth. All across Nepal, women who give birth in a hospital or health centre now receive an average of 1,000 rupees (£7.50) after the birth of their first and second children. In most cases this is enough to cover transport costs and may even leave some money over to buy essential items for the new baby. Another aspect of the scheme is the payment to health workers of 300 rupees for each birth that they attend. This includes home deliveries, and is therefore an added incentive to make the sometimes arduous journey to rural areas to attend births.

What has been the impact?  As well as the impressive decrease in the maternal mortality rate, over the last decade the percentage of births attended by a doctor, midwife or nurse has increased by 10% and in the past year an extra 60,000 women were able to give birth in health facilities.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s still a long way to go, especially on maternal (rather than child) mortality. Nine out of ten mothers still deliver their babies at home without a doctor, midwife or nurse. It is estimated that health spending in Nepal (both public and private) is around a half ($14 per person) of that recommended for developing countries by the Commission on Macroeconomics and Health ($34 per person). The share of government health expenditure is less than $5 per person.

For more on this and other case studies of aid effectiveness, see here. For a powerpoint on the Nepal Safe Motherhood Programme see here.