Panel discussion at the Global Solutions Summit 2019

Date and Venue

18 March 2019, 15.00 – 15.50 hrs; European School of Management and Technology (ESMT),

Schlossplatz 1, 10178 Berlin, Germany

Background

The development landscape in the recent period has undergone dramatic shifts since the international community first agreed on a set of principles for assessing the effectiveness of aid flows in Paris in 2005. The discussion subsequently evolved during the Accra (2008) and Busan (2011) high-level fora from aid effectiveness to a broader understanding of development effectiveness.

While new actors entered the scene making a wider set of development finance instruments available to developing countries, the changing profiles of recipients also significantly altered allocation, terms of delivery and expected outcomes of the flows. The launch of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with its core principle “leaving no one behind” make new demands on the effective use of these resources. New challenges demand refashioned conversations on assessing the effectiveness of development cooperation within a larger frame of reference.

Meeting the financing gap is probably the most crucial challenge in achieving the 2030 Agenda. Official Development Assistance (ODA) flows as a share of GNI from traditional providers such as members of the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC) have been discouraging recently. Providers are far from meeting assistance of at least 0.7% of GNI – which they recommitted to in the 15-years Addis Ababa Action Agenda in 2015. Moreover, less and less ODA is being disbursed as Country Programmable Aid (CPA) due to an increase in in-donor country spending (such as ODA funds for hosting refugees) and aid to global public goods (like climate change mitigation). There are also more fragile contexts among recipient areas so that more and more ODA is being spent on the management of humanitarian crises (again, assistance to refugees, but also emergency shelter). The question of how to do more with less is gaining increasing pertinence.

Development assistance from non-traditional providers (beyond DAC) are somewhat filling up the financing gap. However, Southern development cooperation varies substantively in terms of guiding principles, operational modalities, and perceptions about outcomes. China in particular extended its cooperation extensively, particularly in building infrastructure. There is yet to be a systematic assessment framework to capture the effectiveness of South-South flows.

The private sector is instrumental in ramping development financing from “billions to trillions” in meeting the SDGs. Innovative instruments like blended finance are increasingly gaining momentum for leveraging the private sector. Private philanthropy also emerged as an important factor. But again, efforts to assessing these flows in terms of their effectiveness have been inadequate.

Understanding the Political Economy perspectives – especially with regard to the power dynamics between providers and recipient countries in areas of ownership, capacity, predictability, transparency and accountability – is crucial. Further, there is an urgent need for a shared understanding of the principles, processes and outcomes of development effectiveness among traditional and new actors in the field.

Goal

Against this backdrop, the proposed panel hopes to bring fresh perspectives from both the South and the North in elucidating the necessity of adequate instruments to assess the effectiveness of development investments of all kinds in the recipient countries. The panel will discuss features and challenges of the evolving external financing landscape, interface of external financial flows with domestic resource mobilization and finally country/region (Africa) specific issues related to trends in development cooperation. The aim is to achieve:

  • Improved understanding of the evolving complex scenario of development finance
  • Stronger integration of Southern perspectives in the concerned discourse
  • Greater clarity about the points of interventions for greater effectiveness of financial flows for SDG delivery

This session is organized by Southern Voice, a network of 50 Think Tanks from Africa, Asia and Latin America, and the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) Global Policy department Berlin.

Format

The panel discussion will be in English and consist of an interactive exchange with panellists followed by a general discussion, and questions from the audience.

Panellists

Chair, Southern Voice Network; Distinguished Fellow, Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD);

Focus: Development finance landscape and emerging challenges for development cooperation, SDG financing

Chair, Action Aid Uganda

Focus: human rights-based approach to development, domestic resource mobilization (DRM), illicit financial flows, regional perspective on Africa

Director, Research and Statistics Center, Fundación Salvadoreña para El Desarrollo Económico y Social (FUSADES), El Salvador

Focus: SDGs implementation, regional perspective on Latin America

President, Australian Labor Party (served as the Treasurer of Australia for nearly six years); Chair, UN-ESCAP Eminent Expert Group on Tax Policy and Public Expenditure

Management for Sustainable Development; member, ICRICT (Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation)

Focus: Global financial crisis, financing Sustainable Development, tax policy and public expenditure management

Principal Research Fellow, Overseas Development Institute (ODI)

Focus: Global financial crisis and developing countries, development prospects, financing Sustainable Development (blended finance)

Moderator

Ms. IMOGEN FOULKES, BBC Correspondent UN/ Geneva

Contact

Ms Elisabeth Bollrich

Coordinator Dialogue on Globalization

Global Policy and Development Department

Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) Berlin

Email: Elisabeth.Bollrich@fes.de

Find the full programme of the Global Solutions Summit 2019 here.

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