How can a post-2015 agreement drive real change? Please read and comment on this draft paper

The post-2015 discussion on what should succeed the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is picking up steam, with barely a day going by without some new paper, consultation or high level meeting. So I, along with Stephen Hale and Matthew Lockwood, have decided to add to the growing slush-pile with a new discussion paper. We want you to read the draft (see right) and help us improve it. Contributions by 5 November please, either as comments on the blog, or emailed to research[at]oxfam.org.uk.

The paper argues that there’s an urgent need to bring power and politics into the centre of the post-2015 discussion. To have impact, any post-2015 arrangement has to take into account the lessons of over a decade of implementing the existing MDGs, and be shaped by the profound global change since the MDGs were debated over the course of the 1990s and early noughties.  We’re hoping that this will be at the centre of this week’s discussions in London linked to the High Level Panel and in Berlin at the Berlin Civil Society Center on Development post 2015.

The most significant shift is that the new arrangements have to be designed to influence governments, whereas the main impact of the MDGs was on the aid system. Why the shift? Because aid is becoming less important, both because it is likely to decline in volume over the next few years, and because governments’ dependence on aid as a percentage of revenues is falling even faster than aid itself. In any case, aid is a pretty ineffective way of influencing government behaviour, beyond the actual expenditure of donor dollars.

So if influencing governments is the goal, what can we learn from the experience of the MDGs? The first thing to note is a startling lack of research. Many reviews blur the distinction between ‘MDGs’ and ‘MDG policies’/’MDG planning’ (in effect, social welfare). Analysis of the data on improvements in health, education, and other key sectors largely ignores the vital question of how much of that improvement can be plausibly attributed to the MDGs, rather than to other factors such as national politics, economic growth, or technological innovation. Given the substantial political and financial investment in the MDGs, and the need to design an effective post-2015 framework, being unable to attribute – with any certainty – progress due to the MDGs is a truly lamentable gap in our knowledge.

There is even less research on (and less anecdotal or circumstantial evidence for) the impact of the MDGs on the policies and behaviours of rich countries, beyond changes in their aid budgets. There is scant evidence that MDG 8’s commitment to a ‘global partnership for development’ has had any impact on rich country behaviour. Understanding this failure is vital, given that many proposals for the post-2015 regime seek to place more obligations on rich countries in areas such as climate change and resource consumption.

What we know is that some governments have adopted the language of the MDGs and have customized them to fit national priorities, while civil society groups have increasingly used them as advocacy tools.

Beyond that, many post-2015 participants seem to think it is not possible to give a more complete answer to the traction question because of the missing counterfactual (how can we know what would have happened without the MDGs?). Not so. It is certainly possible to know much more than we do about attribution through more rigorous qualitative research. For example, in-depth interviews with policymakers could investigate the traction exerted by a range of external and domestic forces on their decisions (avoiding any leading questions on the MDGs). We have yet to locate such research.

So much for the MDGs, what about whatever comes next? International instruments can exert influence in three key ways:

1. By changing national norms in areas such as women’s rights. However intangible, norms matter, leading to long-term changes in what society considers acceptable or deplorable, which then leads to changes to laws, policies and behaviours.
2. By directly influencing government decision making, through any of a number of possible carrots (aid, contracts, acceptance, approval) or sticks (sanctions, disapproval).
3. By giving civil society organisations and other domestic actors more tools with which to lobby, campaign, and secure action by their governments.

In most cases, the main drivers of change will be domestic – the result of national politics and culture. But international initiatives are second-order factors that can nudge things along. We identify six kinds of instrument at global and regional levels.

Big global norms: rallying cries intended to influence the underlying attitudes of decision makers and citizens, such as ‘zero poverty’ or ‘zero hunger’.

Global goals and targets: as encapsulated by the MDGs.

Regional goals and targets: the African Union has been particularly energetic in agreeing regional targets, setting out what its member governments should be aiming for on the Rights of Women (AU Protocol, 2003),or their allocation of spending to agriculture (Maputo Agreement 2003), health (Abuja Declaration 2001) and similar commitments on social protection, and water and sanitation.

Global league tables: the international community and/or civil society can simply collect and publish data allowing a comparison between different countries’ absolute situation and rate of progress, as in the UNDP’s Human Development Index. Anecdotal evidence (and long NGO experience) suggests that league tables can be effective both in attracting public and media interest, and in goading politicians into action – there is nothing a leader likes less than to be seen to lose out to a rival nation.

Data transparency: according to some architects of the MDGs, perhaps their greatest legacy will be the improved quality, collection and dissemination of social data. One option would be to make this the centrepiece of a post-2015 arrangement, and leave it to others (national or regional bodies, international institutions) to ‘mash up’ the data into different indices and use it to advocate for progressive policies.

International law: Most governments are already signatories to dozens, if not hundreds, of international conventions and the role and influence of international law appears to be on an inexorable upward curve, steadily encroaching on previously untouchable areas of state sovereignty.

What are the strengths and weaknesses of these options in influencing norms, decision making or civil society activism? Here we are basically into guesswork/gut feeling, captured in the table below. We’d be interested to hear your views, and very grateful for links to any relevant research.

Possible options for international instruments to drive change post-2015

Over to you for comments, links etc

How can the global system manage scarcity?

Alex Evans is on a bit of a roll at the moment, with an excellent new paper on ‘Globalization and Scarcity: Multilateralism for a World with Limits’. It’s a great summary of the problems created by the threat of scarcity of food, land, water, energy, and ‘airspace’ (for greenhouse gas emissions). He confines his solutions to the implications for the multilateral system, rather than equally important responses from citizens, nation states or the private sector. Here’s a summary of the summary. First the problem:

“Globalization has improved the living standards of hundreds of millions of people – but growing resource scarcity means it risks becoming a victim of its own success.
 
On food, projections suggest that production will need to increase by 50% by 2030 (and 100% more by 2050), to meet forecast demand. Yet there are already signs that the productivity gains of the Green Revolution are running out of steam, even as significant amounts of crops are being diverted to biofuels. The 2008 food price spike provided a taste of what may be to come.

On land, competition between different land uses is increasing fast – both globally (between land uses including food, feed, fuel, forest conservation, carbon sequestration and growing cities), and in hotspots where land degradation, desertification, fast growing populations and weak systems of land tenure create the risk of political discord or violent conflict.

On water, demand will rise by around 25% by 2025, but even existing consumption levels are already beyond sustainable levels. Water scarcity will intensify over the next decade as groundwater depletion continues in many regions. Declining water availability is also projected to be probably the most significant impact of climate change over the next decade, with particular impacts on regions dependent on glacial meltwater and trans-boundary freshwater resources.

On energy, the International Energy Agency estimates that investment of $26 trillion is needed between now and 2030 to meet projected demand – a figure that rises to $36.5 trillion once the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is factored in too. However, current investment totals are nowhere near this level.

Climate change, finally, will intensify all of the above challenges, reducing food and water availability, driving massive shifts across energy and agricultural systems and causing a range of other shocks and stresses. A particular challenge facing policymakers is the fact that climate change impacts are likely to be highly unpredictable, non-linear, and hallmarked by sudden shifts as key thresholds are passed.

These scarcity challenges need to be understood as an integrated whole, not as separate issues. All of them present the greatest risk to poor people and countries, who have the least capacity to cope with shocks or adapt to new realities.

Scarcity issues could emerge as an important catalyst for collective international action to tackle global challenges – in the process helping to ensure that a globalization that is already efficient also becomes more sustainable, equitable and resilient. The paper focuses in on four key policy areas:

Development and Fragile States
Climate change and resource scarcity will hit poor people and countries hardest – not only for geographical reasons (e.g. that climate impacts will impact disproportionately on low latitudes), but also because of their high vulnerability. Environmental shocks are often part of the reason people become poor in the first place; poor people and countries spend high proportions of their incomes on food and fuel; the institutional and political weaknesses of fragile states can make them more susceptible to conflict risks arising from scarcity (although scarcity issues will usually be threat multipliers, rather than stand-alone conflict risk drivers).

Multilateral actors are already massively involved in issues of development, state fragility and conflict response, and this – together with the fact that poor people and countries are most vulnerable to scarcity – means that the multilateral system will have no choice but to take account of scarcity in its work in developing countries, whether in humanitarian assistance, conflict mediation, peacekeeping, long-term development partnership or support in international forums.

Finance and Investment
The key areas in which investment is needed as a result of climate change and resource scarcity are (a) energy systems, where the policy challenge is to deliver both energy security and climate stabilization at the lowest possible cost; (b) agriculture, where there is a need to finance increased crop production, again in a way that addresses climate stabilization, and with far lower input levels than today’s agriculture; and (c) the costs of financing improved resilience (for example, through social protection systems), especially in developing countries.
 
Three roles stand out for multilateralism. Collective action is needed, first, to correct market failures, such as environmental costs that are not reflected in prices; second, to provide ‘signals from the future’ that can improve long-term predictability for private sector investors; and third, to protect poor people and poor countries from the effects of scarcity by financing enhanced resilience.

International Trade
The food and fuel price spike demonstrated the risk of acute trade shocks such as price spikes, and how these can lead to knock-on social, economic and political consequences. At the same time, such impacts risk leading to countries losing confidence in open international trade, while the potential for unilateral use of ‘carbon tariffs’ risks leading to a slide towards tit-for-tat protectionism. Over the longer term, increasing energy scarcity or tight emissions controls could impede international supply chains and reduce the overall volume of international trade.

Effective multilateral cooperation can help to head off these risks by creating trust between countries that they can rely on the trade system to meet their needs.

Strategic Resource Competition
Finally, increasing scarcity will create new strategic resource competition between states – at worst, involving the risk of inter-state conflict.158 of the world’s 263 international river basins lack any kind of cooperative management framework, with projected glacial melting an especially important risk driver in the future. Already, both developed and emerging economies are engaged in a scramble for energy resources in numerous regions, and a similar dynamic may be emerging in the context of land and food access deals. Climate impacts, especially rising sea levels, will create new political disputes over newly available resources and sea lanes, whilst challenging existing legal infrastructure (for example, water sharing agreements).

Multilateral cooperation is needed not only to contain worst case scenarios, such as the risk of inter-state conflicts over resources, but also the risk of a generalized shift away from international cooperation, and towards zero sum competition.”

The paper provides specific short and medium term suggestions for how the multilateral system can better handle scarcity in each of these areas. As is often the way, the recommendations are not quite as powerful or original as the diagnosis, often reading like pretty standard development policy (increase aid and R&D spending, educate girls, build social protection systems), but the paper as a whole is incredibly useful.