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Birdsall on Clinton, Elevating Development, Taking Stock in 2010
January 11, 2010
By Lawrence MacDonald
I’m joined this week by Nancy Birdsall, president of the Center for Global Development. Nancy introduced Secretary of State Hillary Clinton when Clinton came to speak to CGD last week. On the Wonkcast, she shares her impressions of Clinton’s speech and places it in the broader context of U.S. development policy reform—including two ongoing assessments, the White House Presidential Study Directive or PSD and the State Department’s first Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review or QDDR.
In the second half of the interview, Nancy reviews the past year in development and offers a policy wish for 2010.
On Clinton’s speech, Nancy is enthusiastic about both the content and the significance of the messenger. “It was the first time that I can remember such a broad-ranging set-up of what development is, why it’s important for Americans, from a Secretary of State,” she tells me.
Clinton’s passion for the subject—combined with her unequivocal language calling development an “indispensible” strategic, economic, and moral imperative—lends hope that the secretary will champion efforts to eventually elevate development so that it is represented at an equivalent level to defense and diplomacy within American foreign policy.
As to the logistics of what that might look like, Nancy suggests a two-step approach. In the remainder of President Obama’s first term in office, she suggests that Clinton and new USAID administrator Rajiv Shah, guided by the findings of the PSD, ought to take a lead in untangling the difficult coordination problems within the government. As part of this, Shah should be empowered to deal with the larger strategic and policy issues that fall beyond merely implementing programs.
“Then perhaps… if there is a second term, the question with Congress could be addressed of whether there should be a more independent agency on development that includes foreign assistance but also includes this strategic and policy work.”
Nancy suggests that leaving a strong, institutional voice for long-term U.S. development policy would be a fitting legacy both for Secretary of State Clinton and for President Obama. (For more on the rationale for an independent development agency with cabinet-level status, see Birdsall’s introductory essay in The White House and the World.
A year ago, Nancy shared her policy wishlist for 2009 on our Views from the Center blog. Her original six wishes ranged from trade policy to climate legislation to the governance of the big international financial institutions. In the second half of this Wonkcast, we go through the list together and see how much was accomplished— and what remains undone.
At the very end of our conversation, Nancy adds one policy wish for the new year. She hopes to get more people talking about the vulnerability of the world’s poor to shocks of all kinds, whether from changes in commodity prices or from severe weather events.
No more “just lending countries money when their house burns down, having them build up more debt, and then having another shock and another round of vulnerability… That loop has to be escaped,” she says. One example of an alternative approach: insurance that pays out in the event of a major shock, such as a commodity price bust or hurricane. (For more on this idea, see Birdsall Urges Pittsburgh G-20 Summit to Prepare for Next Global Crisis.)
Listen to the Wonkcast to hear our conversation. Have something to add to the discussion? Ideas for future interviews? Post a comment below. If you use iTunes, you can subscribe to get new episodes delivered straight to your computer every week.
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3 Responses to “Birdsall on Clinton, Elevating Development, Taking Stock in 2010”
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January 11th, 2010 at 8:20 pm
Speeches are one thing; overall goals are still another.
1)Congressional red tape and partisan stalling has and will continue to prevent US aid agencies from receiving the right funds and dealing out policies for development. Unless US aid is considered as American aid and not Republican or Democrat aid, US foreign aid will never succeed.
2) Clinton’s speech contained elements of neo-liberalism and the question about free trade affirms the neo-liberal paradigm is still present in American economic thrusts overseas. So there can be as many USAIDs and MCCs, but with out a revamping of the overall idea, US foreign will never succeed.
3) US aid has been long with that of America’s foreign policy (not that bilateral aid can be removed from foreign policy). They should start studying DFID’s earl structure (not DFID’s current structure) to understand why development must be development and not for defensive purposes. the Ds policy has long left the last D dissolved within the first two.
4) Why should there be two agencies (or rather why should almost every US department deal with foreign aid?) it’s nice that there’s the promise of making USAID the premier development agency (which it has never been) but you might as well cancel it with the MCC.
January 12th, 2010 at 12:13 pm
If only the human community could become as deeply curious and openly communicative about what the human species is doing in the world we inhabit as we are about the activities of wealthy and powerful people. Formidable human-induced global threats to human wellbeing and environmental health are just as evident as the conspicuous behaviors of the most greedy among us. To be a species with such remarkable self-consciousness, intelligence and other splendid gifts and to do no better than we are doing now is a source of deep sadness and occasional outbreaks of passionate intensity (likely signifying nothing).
Still I believe in remaining engaged in this worthwhile struggle, one in which so many human beings with feet of clay have been involved for a lifetime. For me, the first fifty years of life were lived, as you might imagine, as if in a dream world, the one devised by the greed-mongering Masters of the Universe among us. I had no awareness that a single adamant generation would irreversibly degrade Earth’s environs, recklessly dissipate its limited resources, relentlessly diminish its biodiversity, destabilize its climate and threaten the very future of children everywhere.
At least we can speak out loudly, clearly and often about these unfortunate greed-driven circumstances, even though they are discomforting and unwelcome, and in the process educate one another. Like many in the Global Development community have already reported, I do not have answers to forbidding questions related to the patently unsustainable ‘trajectory’ of human civilization in its present, colossally expansive form; but it seems our conscious denial of, and willful refusal to openly acknowledge, “what could somehow be real” means that the requirements of practical “reality” cannot be reasonably addressed and sensibly overcome. A colossal ecological wreckage of some unimaginable sort is likely to be the end result of our abject failure, I suppose, to respond courageously and ably to the looming global challenges that appear to have emerged robustly and converged rapidly in our time.
January 12th, 2010 at 9:45 pm
I believe that major universities are not providing the proper training or reference materials to students and social entrepreneurs who with to be effective in helping BOP personnel. For example, many of the world’s poorest people are subsistence farmers living on less than two acres of land. To help these people, social entrepreneurs should be very familiar with the following fields of study with emphasis on arid and tropical agriculture:
• Improving grain production
• Improving production of vegetables
• Improving fruit orchards and fruit nurseries
• Improving poultry production
• Improving small animal production such as goats and pigs
• Improving general purpose micro-farms
In urban areas, many of the poorest people are essentially migrant workers who are willing to go anywhere and do anything for a job: To help these people, social entrepreneurs should be very familiar with the following fields of study:
• Business process reengineering of small and micro businesses to make these business profitable (this is a field created by industry and is full of “industrial secrets”; university and Government personnel generally don’t know what industry does to make themselves profitable)
• Methods for creating jobs for people who currently earn $1-2/day including single mothers
• Development and maintenance of supply chains (How are you going to distribute 10,000 micro irrigation systems, fertilizer, and other supplies in Kenya without losing money? What high value food commodities are you going to grow in Kenya so that people will double their income each year? How are you going to repeat the UN FAO West Bengal India backyard poultry success in Kenya? (see “A Backyard Poultry Value Chain Increases Assets, Income and Nutrition” which can be found at http://sapplpp.org/goodpractices/small-holder-poultry/resolveuid/91b5e80af8e97248aff0138f168d083a
The proper textbooks and reference material are not being provided on subjects that can help BOP personnel. Instead, there are thousands of textbooks on “policy studies” that may be suitable for NGO fundraising but little else. I prefer to call these “policy studies” texts “political propaganda studies” due to their limited value to people working in the field.
By far, I believe that the organization that provides the most benefit to international development workers in the field is ECHO. The educational material they provide to thousands of aid workers working with BOP farmers in tropical and arid land areas is outstanding. In particular, ECHO supplies extensive material from world renowned experts translated from English to Spanish and French which is very beneficial to technology transfer in Africa and Latin America. Their seed network allows international development workers to experiment with new products that are well suited to the areas in which they work.
See
http://www.echotech.org/mambo/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=89&Itemid=122
http://www.echotech.org/mambo/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=63&Itemid=140)
ECHO tests and demonstrates appropriate BOP technology. I believe major universities may want to conduct similar demonstrations and tests of BOP technology.
See
http://www.echotech.org/mambo/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_view&gid=511&Itemid=68
To see how I use this ECHO material in Colombia see my website at http://home.comcast.net/~prigter/site/