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The Roma people, the largest minority group in Europe and in many European countries, trail other ethnic groups in almost every characteristic that defines well-being. Perhaps of greatest importance, the Roma are less educated than other ethnic groups. But they also suffer from excess health problems, high unemployment, poverty, and political weakness. The Roma population of Bulgaria is certainly no less disadvantaged than the Roma in other countries. An especially poignant example of Bulgarian Roma disadvantage is that the death rate among children under age 1, a prime indicator of children’s health in any nation, is 25 per 1,000 for Roma children as compared with 9.9 for children of Bulgarian ethnic origin. The mathematics of death almost before life gets started is a symbolic indicator of the Roma burden in Bulgaria. Similarly, research conducted for UNICEF by the University of York shows that the poverty rate among Roma children in Bulgaria is 92 percent, perhaps the highest poverty rate for any ethnic group in Europe. By contrast, the poverty rate among children of Bulgarian heritage is less than half as high at 43 percent.

It is not surprising, then, that over at least the past decade, the European Union (EU) and most European governments, joined by the Open Society Foundation, the World Bank, and other organizations, have created important initiatives to address all these problems. It is possible to think that now is an historic moment in which European governments and dominant ethnic groups, after eight or nine centuries of the most pernicious types of discrimination against the Roma, are finally, albeit often reluctantly, admitting the problems facing their Roma populations and their own role in creating and sustaining these problems. Equally important, most of the Central and Eastern European (CEE) governments, where discrimination against the Roma has been and continues to be particularly intense, are gradually adopting policies to address the problems.

To the extent that the moment of Roma opportunity has arrived, perhaps the most important force moving Bulgaria and other CEE nations in the direction of integration and inclusion is the EU. In the period leading up to the ascension of Bulgaria and other CEE nations to membership in the EU, all the new member states were required to meet a host of conditions required by the EU as the price of admission. Among these conditions were laws outlawing discrimination and requiring equality of educational opportunity. The CEE nations complied with the EU directive to pass such laws, but implementation of the laws in Bulgaria and other nations has been something less than aggressive.

Nor is EU ascension the only force driving the CEE nations to reduce discrimination against the Roma and other minorities. The Open Society, the World Bank, and a number of other private organizations, including several Roma nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), have initiated a sweeping program to promote inclusion of the Roma in the civil society of the CEE nations. Called the “Decade of Roma Inclusion” (2005-2015) the initiative is notable for getting all the CEE nations (plus Spain) to participate, to commit themselves to activities designed to promote inclusion and nondiscrimination, and to make a financial commitment to a fund administered by the World Bank to promote the initiative. As a part of the initiative, Bulgaria and the other participating nations originated ten-year action plans. The Bulgarian action plan, the purpose of which is to create a set of goals and activities that will promote Roma integration, includes proposals for education, health care, housing, employment, discrimination and equal opportunity, and culture.

An important part of the Decade program was the establishment of the Roma Education Fund in 2005. Eight nations (Canada, Greece, Ireland, Netherlands, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK), as well as several international agencies including the Open Society, pledged a total of 34 million Euros to support Fund activities during the Roma decade. The major goal of the fund is to “support policies and programs which ensure quality education for Roma, including the desegregation of education systems.”

By joining the EU, Bulgaria and the other CEE nations brought themselves into a well-developed culture of inclusion and a complex system of interlocking laws and agencies that not only outlaw exclusion and discrimination, but provide funds to implement inclusion policies and to monitor the extent to which EU nations are aggressively implementing these laws. The laws and directives include the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance, the Racial Equality Directive, and several others. It would be a mistake to conclude that every EU member, even the original 15 EU nations with relatively more advanced economies and longer histories as democracies than the CEE nations, faithfully implement every component of the various legal requirements of being an EU member. Even so, EU requirements and funds have initiated both profound legal changes and a host of programs to increase the social, economic, political, and cultural inclusion of the Roma as well as studies and evaluations that bring some light to the actual situation of the Roma and other minorities in member nations. Given the all but inevitable distance between the laws on inclusion and discrimination the CEE nations passed in order to join the EU and the actual implementation of those laws, studies commissioned by various EU agencies and NGOs illuminate the gaps between policies and implementation.

An excellent example of such illumination is a 2006 study commissioned by the Economic and Scientific Policy program of the European Parliament. The report is a hard-hitting assessment of the status of Roma throughout Europe with regard to their legal status and socio-economic conditions. The latter category includes assessments of Roma exclusion from employment, education, social services, health care, and community integration. The upshot of the report is that although there may be some progress in these important areas of integration, the Roma are still a second-class group throughout the CEE nations. Seemingly, good laws have not yet produced good results. Laws may be changed, but changing human behavior and culture takes longer.

CEE governments and their defenders are reluctant to admit the lamentable lack of progress in Roma integration. In part for this reason, the European Commission, based on extensive evidence from evaluations, surveys, and news reports of often ferocious discrimination against the Roma, felt the need to publish “An EU Framework for National Roma Integration Strategies up to 2020” in April 2011. The need for a new framework is a clear signal that the EU Commission believes the CEE governments in general and Bulgaria in particular are not achieving the results the EU hoped for when it approved these nations for EU membership and is therefore trying to push the governments of these nations into further action.

Following publication of the Framework, the Open Society released one of the most thorough and provocative reports on the situation faced by the Roma in Europe and strategies that should be adopted to attack the wide range of Roma disadvantages. Appropriately entitled “Beyond Rhetoric,” the Open Society report includes entire chapters on two issues that I will examine in more detail below.

First, the Open Society strongly recommends that nations collect ethnically disaggregated data. Logically enough, the report holds that it is impossible to document the effects of policy initiatives on the Roma and other groups unless outcome data, including measures of health, education, housing, employment, income, and death rates by age, are collected for individual ethnic groups. So important are ethnically disaggregated data that the report goes so far as to recommend that, if necessary, governments should change their statistical systems to “incorporate ethnic data components into regular statistical surveys.” A second recommendation that deserves special attention is the report’s emphasis on early childhood education and care. Virtually every report about the Roma emphasizes the vital importance of education in fighting Roma exclusion, but the Open Society report strongly recommends that nations implementing the EU Framework should “give urgent consideration” to establishing an early child development fund to “support innovative early development programs and allow for scale up of what works.”

Beyond these specific recommendations, the Open Society report emphasizes that the EU Commission stated explicitly in its Framework document that “member states do not properly use EU money for the purpose of effective social and economic integration of Roma. As if this judgment, which seems to represent the views of many EU agencies, the World Bank, the Open Society, and many Roma groups themselves, needed additional reinforcement, a United Nations expert on minority issues visited Bulgaria this summer and called upon the government to “turn its policies on Roma integration into concrete action.” She went on to give what seems to represent the views of all these groups on the flaws in the Bulgarian government’s approach to fighting Roma exclusion: “Many policies seem to remain largely only rhetorical undertakings aimed at external audiences – official commitments that are not fulfilled in practice.” The result, according to the UN expert, is that “all the evidence demonstrates that Roma remain in desperate circumstances at the very bottom of the socio-economic ladder.” In particular, she mentioned that the access of Roma children to quality education “remains overwhelmingly unfulfilled.”

If CEE nations are now entering a period in which governments will be working, often ineffectively or at a very modest pace, to improve the conditions of the Roma, judging by the efforts of other nations to reduce discrimination against minority groups and by the stately rate of progress so far in the CEE nations, it can be assumed that the fight for Roma equality in Bulgaria will be measured in decades. In the U.S., for example, the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s was largely successful. By the mid-1960s, vital court decisions had dismantled major parts of the system of legal discrimination against blacks and the federal government had enacted programs to ensure voting rights and other fundamental rights to blacks. To enhance the legal war on poverty and discrimination, the federal government also initiated an army of social programs designed to boost the education, health, employment, housing, and political participation of the poor in general and blacks in particular. Yet today, nearly half a century after achieving legal rights and the initiation of large-scale government inclusion programs, blacks (and Hispanics) still trail whites by large margins in education, income, housing, poverty levels, and health. Although achieving significant progress against discrimination may require decades or generations, discrimination will not diminish until strong legal, economic, and social forces are mobilized against it. Expecting a long struggle cannot be a reason not to begin.

If the history of making substantial progress in overcoming ethnic discrimination in the U.S. can serve as a rough comparison to the situation of the Roma in CEE nations, several factors are going to be vital in the fight of the Roma to overcome discrimination and exclusion in Bulgaria and throughout Europe. These factors include an antidiscrimination plan, aggressive implementation of the plan by all levels of government, leadership by the Roma themselves, educational progress by Roma children and young adults, political activism by the Roma people, a media committed to accurate reporting and fairness, and a civil society that reflects underlying public opinion favoring integration and opposed to discrimination. Most of these factors appear to be present in Bulgaria, often in rudimentary and brittle form, but present and in many cases moving in the right direction nonetheless. The progress that is just now beginning can be greatly enhanced by the efforts of groups that have the resources, the will, and the vision to roll up their sleeves and help promote Roma inclusion.

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ABSTRACT

In recent decades economists have turned their attention to data that asks people how happy or satisfied they are with their lives. Much of the early research concluded that the role of income in determining well-being was limited, and that only income relative to others was related to well-being. In this paper, we review the evidence to assess the importance of absolute and relative income in determining well-being. Our research suggests that absolute income plays a major role in determining well-being and that national comparisons offer little evidence to support theories of relative income. We find that well-being rises with income, whether we compare people in a single country and year, whether we look across countries, or whether we look at economic growth for a given country. Through these comparisons we show that richer people report higher well-being than poorer people; that people in richer countries, on average, experience greater well-being than people in poorer countries; and that economic growth and growth in well-being are clearly related. Moreover, the data show no evidence for a satiation point above which income and well-being are no longer related.

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Editor's Note: At a Zócalo Public Square* event, several experts were asked to weigh in on the following question: How should we most effectively measure happiness? Here is Carol Graham's response-

We must make it a measure that’s meaningful to the average person

Happiness is increasingly in the media. Yet it is an age-old topic of inquiry for psychologists, philosophers, and even the early economists (before the science got dismal). The pursuit of happiness is even written into the Declaration of Independence (and into the title of my latest Brookings book, I might add). Public discussions of happiness rarely define the concept. Yet an increasing number of economists and psychologists are involved in a new science of measuring well-being, a concept that includes happiness but extends well beyond it.

Those of us involved focus on two distinct dimensions: hedonic well-being, a daily experience component; and evaluative well-being, the way in which people think about their lives as a whole, including purpose or meaning. Jeremy Bentham focused on the former and proposed increasing the happiness and contentment of the greatest number of individuals possible in a society as the goal of public policy. Aristotle, meanwhile, thought of happiness as eudemonia, a concept that combined two Greek words: “eu” meaning abundance and “daimon” meaning the power controlling an individual’s destiny. Using distinct questions and methods, we are able to measure both. We can look within and across societies and see how people experience their daily lives and how that varies across activities such as commuting time, work, and leisure time on the one hand, and how they feel about their lives as a whole—including their opportunities and past experiences, on the other. Happiness crosses both dimensions of well-being. If you ask people how happy they felt yesterday, you are capturing their feelings during yesterday’s experiences. If you ask them how happy they are with their lives in general, they are more likely to think of their lives as a whole.

The metrics give us a tool for measuring and evaluating the importance of many non-income components of people’s lives to their overall welfare. The findings are intuitive. Income matters to well-being, and not having enough income is bad for both dimensions. But income matters more to evaluative well-being, as it gives people more ability to choose how to live their lives. More income cannot make them experience each point in the day better. Other things, such as good health and relationships, matter as much if not more to well-being than income. The approach provides useful complements to the income-based metrics that are already in our statistics and in the GDP. Other countries, such as Britain, have already begun to include well-being metrics in their national statistics. There is even a nascent discussion of doing so here.

Perhaps what is most promising about well-being metrics is that they seem to be more compelling for the average man (or woman) on the street than are complex income measures, and they often tell different stories. There are, for example, endless messages about the importance of exercising for health, the drawbacks of smoking, and the expenses related to long commutes. Yet it is likely that they are most often heard by people who already exercise, don’t smoke, and bicycle to work. And exercise does not really enter into the GNP, while cigarette purchases and the gasoline and other expenses related to commuting enter in positively. If you told people that exercising made them happier and that smoking and commuting time made them unhappy (and yes, these are real findings from nationwide surveys), then perhaps they might listen?

Read other responses to this question at zocalopublicsquare.org »

*Zócalo Public Square is a not-for-profit daily ideas exchange that blends digital humanities journalism and live events. 

Many scholars have argued that once “basic needs” have been met, higher income is no longer associated with higher in subjective well-being. We assess the validity of this claim in comparisons of both rich and poor countries, and also of rich and poor people within a country. Analyzing multiple datasets, multiple definitions of “basic needs” and multiple questions about well-being, we find no support for this claim. The relationship between well-being and income is roughly linear-log and does not diminish as incomes rise. If there is a satiation point, we are yet to reach it.

Introduction

In 1974 Richard Easterlin famously posited that increasing average income did not raise average well-being, a claim that became known as the Easterlin Paradox. However, in recent years new and more comprehensive data has allowed for greater testing of Easterlin’s claim. Studies by us and others have pointed to a robust positive relationship between well-being and income across countries and over time (Deaton, 2008; Stevenson and Wolfers, 2008; Sacks, Stevenson, and Wolfers, 2013). Yet, some researchers have argued for a modified version of Easterlin’s hypothesis, acknowledging the existence of a link between income and well-being among those whose basic needs have not been met, but claiming that beyond a certain income threshold, further income is unrelated to well-being.

The existence of such a satiation point is claimed widely, although there has been no formal statistical evidence presented to support this view. For example Diener and Seligman (2004, p. 5) state that “there are only small increases in well-being” above some threshold. While Clark, Frijters and Shields (2008, p. 123) state more starkly that “greater economic prosperity at some point ceases to buy more happiness,” a similar claim is made by Di Tella and MacCulloch (2008, p. 17): “once basic needs have been satisfied, there is full adaptation to further economic growth.” The income level beyond which further income no longer yields greater well-being is typically said to be somewhere between $8,000 and $25,000. Layard (2003, p. 17) argues that “once a country has over $15,000 per head, its level of happiness appears to be independent of its income;” while in subsequent work he argued for a $20,000 threshold (Layard, 2005 p. 32-33). Frey and Stutzer (2002, p. 416) claim that “income provides happiness at low levels of development but once a threshold (around $10,000) is reached, the average income level in a country has little effect on average subjective well-being.”

Many of these claims, of a critical level of GDP beyond which happiness and GDP are no longer linked, come from cursorily examining plots of well-being against the level of per capita GDP. Such graphs show clearly that increasing income yields diminishing marginal gains in subjective well-being. However this relationship need not reach a point of nirvana beyond which further gains in well-being are absent. For instance Deaton (2008) and Stevenson and Wolfers (2008) find that the well-being–income relationship is roughly a linear-log relationship, such that, while each additional dollar of income yields a greater increment to measured happiness for the poor than for the rich, there is no satiation point.

In this paper we provide a sustained examination of whether there is a critical income level beyond which the well-being–income relationship is qualitatively different, a claim referred to as the modified-Easterlin hypothesis. As a statistical claim, we shall test two versions of the hypothesis. The first, a stronger version, is that beyond some level of basic needs, income is uncorrelated with subjective well-being; the second, a weaker version, is that the well-being–income link estimated among the poor differs from that found among the rich.

Claims of satiation have been made for comparisons between rich and poor people within a country, comparisons between rich and poor countries, and comparisons of average well-being in countries over time, as they grow. The time series analysis is complicated by the challenges of compiling comparable data over time and thus we focus in this short paper on the cross-sectional relationships seen within and between countries. Recent work by Sacks, Stevenson, and Wolfers (2013) provide evidence on the time series relationship that is consistent with the findings presented here.

To preview, we find no evidence of a satiation point. The income–well-being link that one finds when examining only the poor, is similar to that found when examining only the rich. We show that this finding is robust across a variety of datasets, for various measures of subjective well-being, at various thresholds, and that it holds in roughly equal measure when making cross-national comparisons between rich and poor countries as when making comparisons between rich and poor people within a country.

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Justin Wolfers, professor of Economics and Public Policy at the University of Michigan, re-joins Brookings, Vice President and Economic Studies Co-Director Karen Dynan announced today.  Wolfers was a visiting fellow from 2010-2011.

A world-renowned empirical economist, Wolfers will continue in his role as co-editor, along with David Romer of the University of California, of the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity (BPEA), the flagship economic journal of the Institution.  He will continue his focus on labor economics, macroeconomics, political economy, economics of the family, social policy, law and economics, public economics, and behavioral economics. His appointment as senior fellow will last 13 months.

Wolfers is also a research associate with the National Bureau for Economic Research, a research affiliate of the Centre for Economic Policy Research in London, a research fellow of the German Institute for the Study of Labor, and a senior scientist for Gallup, among other affiliations. He is a contributor for Bloomberg View, NPR Marketplace, and the Freakonomics website and was named one of the 13 top young economists to watch by the New York Times.  Wolfers did his undergraduate work at the University of Sydney, Australia and received his Master’s and Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University.  He is a dual Australian-U.S. national and was once an apprentice to a bookie which led to his interest in prediction markets. 

“We are pleased to re-welcome Justin back to Economic Studies,” said Dynan. “His work continues to challenge the conventional wisdom, and we look forward to collaborating with him once again.” 

“Justin is outstanding at communicating economic ideas to a wide audience, as evidenced by his regular writings for media as well as his large social media presence,” added Ted Gayer, co-director of Economic Studies.

“I have enormous affection for the Brookings Institution, which provides not only a home for deep scholarly research, but also an unmatched platform for engaging the policy debate,” said Wolfers.  “The Economic Studies program has a rich history of being the go-to place for policymakers, and I look forward to coming back and engaging in debate with my colleagues there.”

Abstract

We explore the relationship between agency and hedonic and evaluative dimensions of well-being, using data from the Gallup World Poll. We posit that individuals emphasize one well-being dimension over the other, depending on their agency. We test four hypotheses including whether: (i) positive levels of well-being in one dimension coexist with negative ones in another;and (ii) individuals place a different value on agency depending on their positions in the well-being and income distributions. We find that: (i) agency is more important to the evaluative well-being of respondents with more means; (ii) negative levels of hedonic well-being coexist with positive levels of evaluative well-being as people acquire agency; and (iii)both income and agency are less important to well-being at highest levels of the well-being distribution. We hope to contribute insight into one of the most complex and important components of well-being, namely,people’s capacity to pursue fulfilling lives.

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Event Information

2015 marked the 40th anniversary of China-European Union (EU) diplomatic ties, highlighting the achievements and continued cooperation in the fields of investment and trade. One of the primary issues in today’s world is green and sustainable development, and the European region has established itself as a central player in the practice of green design. This has become a key factor in coordinating EU relations, and China has been making headway towards the green design movement with energy saving practices, in addition to positive emission reduction commitments made in Paris in 2015.

On March 30, the Brookings-Tsinghua Center for Public Policy (BTC) hosted a public discussion featuring Jo Leinen, chairman of the European Parliament Delegation for Relations with China, and Qi Ye, director of the BTC. The discussion focused on the topic of the new pattern of the European Union under the green development and sustainable development goals of the United Nations. Leinen has been an elected member of the European Parliament since 1999 and the president of the Union of European Federalists since 1997. Since 2004, he has been a member of the Advisory Council of the Committee for a Democratic U.N. Prior to his time in the European Parliament, he was the minister of the environment in the state of Saarland, Germany and vice president of the European Environment Bureau in Brussels.

Leinen stressed the importance of global governance and international cooperation, which has been emphasized in recent years in order to maintain the stability of the financial system, protect the environment, fight against terrorism, and promote peace throughout the world. He discussed the progress that the China-EU trade relationship has made in the last year, with total trade reaching 400 billion euros, and expressed hope that China-EU relations can achieve new breakthroughs in the future. On the environmental side, Leinen affirmed China’s efforts in the development of a green low-carbon economy and contribution to the world in working to reduce emissions. He highlighted China’s crucial role at the climate change conference in Paris in 2015 and the country’s commitment to allow greenhouse gas emissions to peak by 2030, although he believes that may be a conservative estimate.

Event Information

The Building Bridges Coalition was launched at the Brookings Institution in June 2006 to promote the role of volunteer service in achieving development goals and to highlight research and policy issues across the field in the United States and abroad. Among other efforts, the coalition promotes innovation, scaling up, and best practices for international volunteers working in development.

On June 14, the Brookings Institution and the Building Bridges Coalition co-hosted a 10th anniversary forum on the role of volunteers in achieving the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals for 2030 and on the coalition’s impact research. General Stanley McChrystal was the keynote speaker and discussed initiatives to make a year of civilian service as much a part of growing up in America as going to high school.

Afterwards, three consecutive panels discussed how to provide a multi-stakeholder platform for the advancement of innovative U.S.-global alliances with nongovernmental organizations, faith-based entities, university consortia, and the private sector in conjunction with the launch of the global track of Service Year Alliance.

For more information on the forum and the Building Bridges Coalition, click here.

Video

• Welcoming remarks and featured speaker
• Panel 1 — Role of volunteer service in achieving the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals
• Panel 2 — Policy perspective: National and international service in the next administration
• Panel 3 — One million Americans in global service: The role of faith-based service

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• International volunteer service and the 2030 development agenda

Transcript

• Uncorrected Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

• 20160614_volunteering_development_transcript

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2016: The turning point

Policymakers and development practitioners now face a new set of challenges in the aftermath of the global consensus triumvirate Addis Agenda—2030 Agenda—Paris Agreement: [1] implementation, follow-up, and review. Development policy professionals must tackle these while at the same time including the three pillars of sustainable development—social development, economic growth, and environmental protection—and the above three global consensus’ cross-sectoral natures—all while working in a context where policy planning is still performed in silos. They also must incorporate the universality of these new agreements in the light of different national circumstances—different national realities, capacities, needs, levels of development, and national policies and priorities. And then they have to significantly scale up resource allocation and means of implementation (including financing, capacity building, and technology transfer) to make a difference and enhance novel multi-stakeholder partnerships to contain the surge of global flows of all kinds (such as migration, terrorism, diseases, taxation, extreme weather, and digital revolution) in a resolutely interconnected world. Quite an ambitious task!

Given the above complexities, new national and global arrangements are being made to honor the commitments put forth to answer these unprecedented challenges. Several African governments have already started establishing inter-ministerial committees and task forces to ensure alignment between the global goals and existing national planning processes, aspirations, and priorities.

With the international community, Africa is preparing for the first High-Level Political Forum since the 2030 Agenda adoption in July 2016 on the theme “Ensuring that no one is left behind.” In order to inform the 2030 Agenda’s implementation leadership, guidance, and recommendations, six African countries [2] of 22 U.N. Member States, volunteered to present national reviews on their work to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a unique opportunity to provide an uncompromising reality check and highlight levers to exploit and limits to overcome for impact.

Paralleling Africa’s groundwork, the United Nations’ efforts for coordination have been numerous. They include an inter-agency task force to prepare for the follow-up forum to Financing For Development timed with the Global Infrastructure Forum that will consult on infrastructure investment, a crucial point for the continent; an appointed 10-representative group to support the Technology Facilitation Mechanism that facilitates the development, transfer and dissemination of technologies for the SDGs, another very important item for Africa; and an independent team of advisors to counsel on the longer-term positioning of the U.N. development system in the context of the 2030 Agenda, commonly called “U.N. fit for purpose,” among many other endeavors.

These overwhelming bureaucratic duties alone will put a meaningful burden on Africa’s limited capacity. Thus, it is in the interest of the continent to pool its assets by taking advantage of its robust regional networks in order to mitigate this obstacle in a coherent and coordinated manner, and by building on the convergence between the newly adopted texts and Agenda 2063, the African Union’s 50-year transformation blueprint, with the help of pan-African institutions.

Besides national and global, there is a third level of consideration: the regional one. Indeed, the three major agreements in 2015 emphasized support to projects and cooperation frameworks that foster regional and subregional integration, particularly in Africa. [3] Indeed, common and coherent industrial policies for regional value chains developed by strengthened regional institutions and sustained by a strong-willed transformational leadership are gaining traction towards Africa’s insertion into the global economy.

Africa has long made regional economic integration within its main “building blocs,” the eight Regional Economic Communities (RECs), a core strategy for development. The continent is definitely engaged in this path: Last summer, three RECs, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), the East African Community (EAC), and the Southern African Development Community (SADC), launched the Tripartite Free Trade Area (TFTA) that covers 26 countries, over 600 million people, and $1 trillion GDP. The tripartite arrangement paves the way towards Africa’s own mega-regional one, the Continental Free Trade Area (CFTA), and the realization of one broad African Economic Community. If regionalization allows free movement of people, capital, goods, and services, the resulting increased intra-African connectivity will boost trade within Africa, promote growth, create jobs, and attract investments. Ultimately, it should ignite industrialization, innovation, and competitiveness. To that end, pan-African institutions, capitalizing on the recent positive continental performances, are redoubling their efforts to build an enabling environment for policy and regulation harmonization and economies of scale.

Importantly, infrastructure, without which no connectivity is possible, is undeniably the enabling bedrock to all future regionalization plans. Together with market integration and industrial development, infrastructure development is one of the three pillars of the TFTA strategy. Similarly, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) Agency, the technical body of the African Union (AU) mandated with planning and coordinating the implementation of continental priorities and regional programs, adopted regional integration as a strategic approach to infrastructure. In fact, in June 2014, the NEPAD Agency organized the Dakar Financing Summit for Infrastructure, culminating with the adoption of the Dakar Agenda for Action that lays down options for investment mobilization towards infrastructure development projects, starting with 16 key bankable projects stemming from the Programme for Infrastructure Development in Africa (PIDA). These “NEPAD mega-projects to transform Africa” are, notably, all regional in scope.

See the full map of NEPAD’s 16 mega-projects to transform Africa here »

Supplementing NEPAD and TFTA, the Continental Business Network was formed to promote public-private dialogue with regard to regional infrastructure investment. The Africa50 Infrastructure Fund was constituted as a new delivery platform commercially managed to narrow the massive infrastructure finance gap in Africa evaluated at $50 billion per annum.

The development of homegrown proposals and institutional advances observed lately demonstrate Africa’s assertive engagement towards accelerating infrastructure development, thereby regionalization. At the last AU Summit, the NEPAD Heads of State and Government Orientation Committee approved the institutionalization of an annual PIDA Week hosted at the African Development Bank (AfDB) to follow up on the progresses made.

The energy partnerships listed below illustrate the possible gain from adopting trans-boundary approaches for implementation and follow-up: the Africa Power Vision (APV) undertaken with Power Africa; the ECOWAS Centre for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency (ECREEE) model accompanying the Sustainable Energy for All (SE4ALL) Africa Hub efforts; and the Africa GreenCo solution that is to bank on PIDA.

• Africa Power Vision: African ministers of power and finance gathered at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos in 2014 decided to create the APV. The vision provides a strategic template harnessing resources to fast-track access to modern energy for African households, businesses, and industries. It draws up a shortlist of African-driven regional priority energy projects mostly extracted from the PIDA Priority Action Program, which is the PIDA short-term pipeline to be completed by 2020. The game changer Inga III hydropower project, the iconic DESERTEC Sahara solar project, and the gigantic North-South Interconnection Transmission Line covering almost the entire TFTA are among the 13 selected projects. The APV concept note and implementation plan entitled “From vision to action” developed by the NEPAD Agency, in collaboration with U.S. government-led Power Africa initiative, was endorsed at the January 2015 AU Summit. The package elaborates on responses to counter bottlenecks to achieve quantifiable targets, the “acceleration methodology” based on NEPAD Project Prioritization Considerations Tool (PPCT), risk mitigation, and power projects’ financing. Innovative design was thought to avoid duplication, save resources, improve coordination and foster transformative action with the setting up of dual-hatted Power Africa – APV Transaction Advisors, who supervise investment schemes up to financial closure where and when there is an overlap of energy projects or common interest. Overall, the APV partnership permits a mutualization of expertise while at the same time, since it is based on PIDA, promoting regional economic integration for electrification.

• ECOWAS Centre for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency: U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon launched the Sustainable Energy for All initiative worldwide as early as 2011 with the triple objective of ensuring universal access to modern energy services, doubling the rate of improvement of energy efficiency, and doubling the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix by 2030. Since its inception, SE4ALL prompted a lot of enthusiasm on the continent, and is now counting 44 opt-in African countries. As a result, the SE4ALL Africa Hub was the first regional hub to be launched in 2013. Hosted at the AfDB in partnership with the AU Commission, NEPAD Agency, and the U.N. Development Program (UNDP), its role is to facilitate the implementation of SE4ALL on the continent. The SE4ALL Africa Hub 3rd Annual Workshop held in Abidjan last February showed the potential of this “creative coalition” (Yumkella, 2014) to deliver on areas spanning from national plans of action, regionally concerted approaches in line with the continental vision, to SDG7 on energy, to climate Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) made for the Paris Agreement. Above all, the workshop displayed the hub’s ability to efficiently kick-start the harmonization of processes for impact among countries. Forasmuch as all ECOWAS Member States opted-in to SE4ALL, the West African ministers mandated their regional energy center, ECREEE, to coordinate the implementation of the SE4ALL Action Agendas (AAs), which are documents outlining country actions required to achieve sustainable energy objectives, and from then Investment Prospectuses (IPs), the documents presenting the AAs investment requirements. As a result, the ECOWAS Renewable Energy Policy (EREP) and the Energy Efficiency Policy (EEEP) were formulated and adopted; and a regional monitoring framework to feed into a Global Tracking Framework, the SE4ALL measuring and reporting system, is now being conceived. The successful ECREEE model, bridging national inventory and global players, is about to be duplicated in two other African regions, EAC and SADC, with the support of the U.N. Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO).

• Africa GreenCo: Lastly, initiatives like Africa GreenCo are incubating. This promising vehicle, currently funded by a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, envisions itself as an independently managed power trader and broker to move energy where needed. Indeed, Africa GreenCo aims to capitalize on PIDA power projects: In its capacity as intermediary creditworthy off taker, it plans to eventually utilize their regional character as a value addition to risk guarantee. To date, Africa GreenCo is refining the legal, regulatory, technical, and financial aspects of its future structure and forging links with key stakeholders in the sector (member states, multilateral development banks, African regional utilities for generation and interconnection called Power Pools) ahead of the completion of its feasibility study in June 2016.

The above-mentioned partnerships are encouraging trends towards more symbiotic multi-stakeholders cooperation. As they relate to home-crafted initiatives, it is imperative that we do not drift away from a continental vision. Not only do Africa-grown plans have higher chance of success than the one-size-fits-all imported solutions, but consistent and combined efforts in the same direction reinforce confidence, emulation, and attract supportive attention. It implies that the fulfillment of intergovernmental agreements requires first and foremost their adaptation to local realities in a domestication process that is respectful of the policy space. Mainstreaming adjustments can be later conducted according to evidence-based and data-driven experiments. Between these global engagements and national procedures, the regional dimension is the indispensable link: Enabling countries to bypass the artificiality of borders inherited from colonial times and offering concrete options to eradicate poverty in a united-we-stand fashion. Regional integration is therefore a prelude to sustainable development operationalization within Africa and a key step towards its active partaking in the global arena. Regionalization can also trigger international relations shift provided that it encompasses fair multilateralism and sustainable management of global knowledge. Indeed, the resulting openness and the complexity encountered are useful parameters to enrich the conception of relevant local answers.

These success stories show the great potential for new experiments and synergies. To me, they inspire the promise of a better world. The one I like to imagine is characterized by mutually beneficial ecosystems for the people and the planet. It encourages win-win reverse linkages, or in other words, more positive spillovers of developing economies on industrial countries. It is a place where, for example, an African region could draw lessons from the Greek crisis and the other way around: China could learn from Africa’s Maputo Development Corridor for its Silk Road Economic Belt. Twin institutes performing joint research among regional knowledge hubs would flourish. Innovative Fab Labs would be entitled to strive after spatial adventure with e-waste material recycled into 3D printers. In that world, innovative collaborations in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) would be favored and involve not only women but also the diaspora in order to develop environmentally sound technical progress. Commensurate efforts, persistent willingness, indigenous ingenuity, and unbridled creativity place this brighter future within our reach.

Beyond the recognition of the African voice throughout the intergovernmental processes, Africa should now consolidate its gains by firmly maintaining its position and safeguarding its winnings throughout the preliminary phase. The continent should urgently set singular tactics with the greatest potential in terms of inclusiveness and creation of productive capacity. While doing so, African development actors should initiate a “learning by doing” virtuous cycle to create an endogenous development narrative cognizant of adaptable best practices as well as failures. Yet the only approach capable of generating both structural transformation and informative change that are in line with continentally own and led long-term strategies is … regional integration.

Click here to read the blog in English »

2016: une année décisive

Les décideurs politiques et les spécialistes du développement sont désormais confrontés à une nouvelle série d’enjeux suite à l’établissement, par consensus mondial, du triumvirat composé du Programme d’action d’Addis-Abeba, du Programme d’action 2030 et de l’Accord de Paris [1]  : mise en œuvre, suivi et passage en revue. Les professionnels des politiques de développement doivent aborder ces enjeux tout en y intégrant ces trois piliers du développement durable que sont le développement social, la croissance économique et la protection environnementale, sans oublier les trois volets intersectoriels du consensus mondial précités, tout cela en opérant au sein d’un contexte dans lequel la planification des politiques reste accomplie de façon cloisonnée. Ils doivent également incorporer le caractère universel de ces nouveaux accords en tenant compte des différentes circonstances nationales ; à savoir les divers besoins, réalités, capacités, niveaux de développement nationaux, de même que les diverses priorités et politiques nationales. Ils doivent aussi accroître considérablement l’allocation des ressources et les moyens de mise en œuvre (comme le financement, le renforcement des capacités et le transfert de technologies) pour changer les choses et améliorer les nouveaux partenariats réunissant plusieurs parties prenantes en vue de restreindre les mouvements mondiaux de toutes sortes (notamment la migration, le terrorisme, les maladies, la fiscalité, les phénomènes météorologiques extrêmes et la révolution numérique) dans un monde résolument interconnecté. Il va sans dire que la tâche est très ambitieuse !

Ces difficultés sont à l’origine de nouveaux accords nationaux et internationaux visant à honorer les engagements pris pour répondre à ces enjeux sans précédent. Plusieurs États africains ont déjà commencé à créer des comités interministériels et des groupes de travail pour assurer l’alignement entre les objectifs mondiaux et les processus, les aspirations et les priorités actuels. 

L’Afrique prépare, en collaboration avec la communauté internationale, le premier Forum politique de haut niveau depuis l’adoption du programme d’action 2030 qui aura lieu en juillet 2016 et dont le thème sera « Veiller à ce que nul ne soit laissé pour compte ». Afin d’éclairer le leadership, l’orientation et les recommandations relatifs au Programme d’action 2030, six pays africains [2] parmi les 22 États membres de l’ONU se sont portés volontaires pour présenter des études nationales sur le travail accompli en vue d’atteindre les Objectifs de développement durable (ODD), soit une opportunité unique de fournir un examen objectif sans compromis et de mettre en avant les leviers d’exploitation et les limites à surmonter afin d’avoir un impact.

Les Nations Unies ont déployé de nombreux efforts de coordination parallèlement au travail de terrain réalisé par l’Afrique : en premier lieu, la création d’un groupe de travail interinstitutions chargé de préparer le forum sur le financement du développement de suivi synchronisé avec le Forum mondial pour l’infrastructure, qui consultera sur les investissements en infrastructures, un aspect crucial pour le continent ; un groupe composé de 10 représentants nommés dont la mission consiste à soutenir le Mécanisme de facilitation des technologies aux fins du développement, du transfert et de la diffusion de technologies pour les ODD, soit un autre aspect très important pour l’Afrique ; et enfin une équipe de conseillers indépendants dont la mission consiste à fournir des conseils sur le positionnement à plus long terme du système de développement de l’ONU dans le contexte du Programme 2030 communément appelé  « UN fit for purpose », parmi tant d’autres efforts.

Ces obligations bureaucratiques écrasantes pèseront à elles seules lourdement sur les capacités limitées de l’Afrique. C’est la raison pour laquelle le continent à tout intérêt à regrouper ses ressources en tirant parti de ses robustes réseaux régionaux pour atténuer cet obstacle de façon cohérente et coordonnée et en capitalisant sur la convergence entre les textes nouvellement adoptés et l’Agenda 2063, le programme de transformation mis en place par l’Union Africaine sur une durée de 50 ans, avec l’aide d’institutions panafricaines.

Outre les échelons nationaux et internationaux, il convient de tenir compte d’une troisième dimension : l’échelon régional. Ainsi, les trois principaux accords conclus en 2015 privilégiaient le soutien aux projets et aux cadres de coopération encourageant l’intégration régionale et sous-régionale, en particulier en Afrique. [3] C’est la raison pour laquelle des politiques industrielles communes et cohérentes relatives aux chaînes de valeur régionales formulées par des institutions régionales renforcées et portées par un leadership transformationnel volontariste s’imposent comme le meilleur moyen de favoriser l’insertion de l’Afrique au sein de l’économie mondiale.

L’Afrique considère depuis longtemps l’intégration économique régionale, partie intégrante de ses principaux « piliers », à savoir les huit Communautés économiques régionales (CER), comme étant une stratégie de développement de base.

Le continent s’est manifestement engagé dans cette voie : l’été dernier, trois CER, le Marché commun pour l’Afrique de l’Est et de l’Afrique australe (COMESA), la Communauté d’Afrique de l’Est (CAE) et la Communauté de développement de l’Afrique de l’Est (SADC) ont créé le Traité de libre-échange tripartite (TFTA) regroupant 26 pays, avec plus de 600 millions d’habitants et un PIB global de mille milliards de dollars US. Cet accord tripartite ouvre la voie à l’accord « méga-régional » de l’Afrique, la Zone de libre échange continentale (CFTA) et à l’instauration d’une vaste communauté économique africaine. Si la régionalisation permet la libre circulation des personnes, des capitaux, des biens et des services, c’est la connectivité intra-africaine accrue en découlant qui stimulera les échanges commerciaux au sein de l’Afrique, favorisera la croissance, créera des emplois et attira des investissements. Il devrait enfin faire démarrer l’industrialisation, l’innovation et la compétitivité. À ces fins, les institutions panafricaines, soucieuses d’exploiter les récentes performances favorables enregistrés par le continent, redoublent d’efforts pour créer un environnement propice à l’harmonisation des politiques et des réglementations et aux économies d’échelle.

L’infrastructure, sans laquelle toute connectivité est impossible, constitue indéniablement le fondement de tout futur plan de régionalisation. Outre l’intégration du marché et le développement industriel, le développement des infrastructures est l’un des trois piliers de la stratégie du TFTA. De la même manière, l’agence pour le Nouveau partenariat économique pour le développement en Afrique (NEPAD), l’organe technique de l’Union africaine (UA) chargé de planifier et coordonner la mise en œuvre des priorités continentales et des programmes régionaux, a adopté l’intégration régionale en tant que méthode stratégique pour l’infrastructure. Le NEPAD a d’ailleurs organisé, en juin 2014, le Sommet de Dakar sur le financement des infrastructures ayant abouti à l’adoption du Programme d’action de Dakar qui présente des options en matière de mobilisation d’investissements dans des projets de développement des infrastructures, en commençant par 16 projets bancables clés issus du programme de développement des infrastructures en Afrique (PIDA). Il est intéressant de noter que ces « mégaprojets du NEPAD visant à transformer l’Afrique » ont tous une portée régionale.

En complémentant les efforts du NEPAD et du TFTA, le Réseau d’affaires continental a été formé pour promouvoir le dialogue entre les secteurs public et privé sur la thématique de l’investissement en infrastructures régionales. Le Fond Africa50 pour l’infrastructure a été constitué en guise de nouvelle plateforme de prestation gérée commercialement en vue de combler l’énorme vide au niveau du financement des infrastructures en Afrique, un trou évaluée à 50 milliards de dollars US par an.

L’élaboration de propositions propres et les progrès institutionnels récemment observés témoignent de la détermination de l’Afrique à accélérer le développement des infrastructures, et donc la régionalisation. Lors du dernier sommet de l’UA, le Comité d’orientation des chefs d’État et de gouvernement a approuvé l’institutionnalisation d’une Semaine PIDA organisée par la Banque africaine de développement (BAD) en vue d’assurer le suivi des progrès accomplis.

L’élan des projets énergétiques régionaux en Afrique

Les partenariats énergétiques indiqués ci-dessous illustrent les avantages potentiels des méthodes de mise en œuvre et de suivi transfrontalières : l’Africa Power Vision (APV) réalisée avec Power Africa, le modèle du Centre pour les énergies renouvelables et l’efficacité énergétique(ECREEE) de la CEDEAO accompagnant l’initiative Énergie Durable pour Tous (SE4LL), une initiative mise en œuvre par la plateforme Africaine et la solution Africa GreenCo basée sur le PIDA.

• Africa Power Vision : Les ministres Africains de l’énergie et des finances réunis à l’occasion du Forum économique mondial (FEM) de Davos en 2014 ont décidé de créer l’APV. La vision fournit un modèle stratégique de mobilisation de ressources afin de permettre aux entreprises, aux industries et aux foyers africains d’avoir un accès plus rapide à l’énergie moderne. Elle dresse une liste de projets énergétiques basés sur des priorités régionales établies par l’Afrique et extraites en grande partie du Programme d’action prioritaire du PIDA, à savoir l’éventail de projets à court terme devant être achevés à l’horizon 2020. Le projet hydroélectrique Inga III qui changera les règles du jeu, l’emblématique projet solaire DESERTEC Sahara et la gigantesque ligne de transport d’électricité nord-sud couvrant la quasi-totalité du TFTA sont parmi les 13 projets sélectionnés. La note conceptuelle et le plan de mise en œuvre intitulés « De la vision à l’action » élaborés par le NEPAD, en collaboration avec l’initiative Power Africa dirigée par le gouvernement américain ont été approuvés lors du Sommet de l’UA de janvier 2015. Le paquet présente des mesures permettant de surmonter les impasses afin d’atteindre des objectifs quantifiables, la « méthode d’accélération » basée sur l’Outil de classement de projets par ordre de priorité (PPCT en anglais), l’atténuation des risques et le financement de projets d’électricité. Une conception innovante a été élaborée pour éviter les doublons, économiser des ressources, améliorer la coordination et encourager des actions transformatrices en établissant des Conseillers transactionnels Power Africa – APV portant deux casquettes, qui supervisent les plans d’investissement jusqu’à la clôture financière si et quand des projets énergétiques d’intérêt commun viennent à se chevaucher. Globalement, comme il est basé sur le PIDA, le partenariat APV permet de mutualiser les expertises tout en promouvant l’intégration économique régionale au niveau de l’électrification.

• Centre pour les énergies renouvelables et l’efficience énergétique de la CEDEAO : Le secrétaire général des Nations Unies, Ban Ki-moon a lancé l’initiative Énergie durable pour tous dans le monde entier dès 2011, dans le triple objectif de garantir l’accès universel à des services énergétiques modernes, doubler le taux mondial d’amélioration de l’efficacité énergétique et doubler la proportion d'énergies renouvelables dans le bouquet énergétique mondial à l’horizon 2030. Depuis sa création, SE4ALL a suscité un fort enthousiasme sur le continent et compte désormais 44 pays africains participants. Par conséquent, la plateforme africaine SE4ALL a été la première plateforme lancée en 2013. Organisée par la BAD en partenariat avec la Commission de l’UA, le NEPAD et le Programme des Nations Unies pour le développement (PNUD), son rôle consiste à faciliter la mise en œuvre de SE4ALL sur le continent. Le troisième atelier annuel de la plateforme africaine de SE4ALL tenu à Abidjan en février dernier a révélé le potentiel de cette « coalition créative » (Yumkella 2014) pour produire des résultats tant au niveau des plans d’action nationaux et des approches régionales concertées conformes à la vision continentale qu’à celui de l’ODD7 pour l’énergie et aux Contributions prévues déterminées au niveau national (CPDN) créés pour l’Accord de Paris. Avant tout, l’atelier a prouvé que la plateforme est capable de commencer efficacement à harmoniser les processus pour obtenir un résultat dans les différents pays. En dépit du fait que les États membres de la CEDEAO participent à SE4ALL, les ministres ouest-africains ont chargé leur centre énergétique régional, le CEREEC, de coordonner la mise en œuvre des Programmes d’action de SE4ALL (PA), qui sont des documents décrivant les mesures que doivent prendre les pays pour satisfaire les objectifs en matière d’énergies renouvelables et de là les Prospectus d’investissement (PI), les documents présentant les critères d’investissement relatifs aux PA. Par conséquent, la Politique relative aux énergies renouvelables (PER) et la Politique relative à l’efficacité énergétique (PEE) de la CEDEAO ont été formulées et adoptées. Un cadre de surveillance régional visant à enrichir un Cadre de suivi mondial, le système de mesure et de préparation de rapports SE4ALL, est en cours de conception. L’efficace modèle du CEREEC, en créant un pont entre les inventaires nationaux et les acteurs mondiaux, est sur le point d’être reproduit dans deux autres régions d’Afrique, la CAE et la SADC, avec l’appui de l’Organisation des Nations Unies pour le développement industriel (ONUDI).

• Africa GreenCo : Enfin, des initiatives comme Africa GreenCo sont en cours d’incubation. Ce véhicule prometteur, actuellement financé au moyen d’une subvention accordée par la Fondation Rockefeller, se veut à la fois un négociant et un courtier en électricité indépendamment géré dont la fonction consiste à déplacer de l’électricité là où elle est nécessaire. Ainsi, Africa GreenCo cherche à capitaliser sur les projets énergétiques du PIDA : en sa qualité d’acheteur intermédiaire solvable, elle prévoit d’utiliser à l’avenir son statut régional en guise de valeur ajoutée au niveau de la garantie contre les risques. À ce jour, Africa GreenCo continue à peaufiner les aspects juridiques, réglementaires, techniques et financiers de sa future structure et forge des liens avec des parties prenantes clés du secteur (États membres, banques de développement multilatérales, services publics africains de génération et d’interconnexion appelés pools énergétiques) avant l’achèvement de son étude de faisabilité en juin 2016.

Les partenariats précités indiquent des tendances encourageantes en direction d’une coopération plus symbiotique entre les différentes parties prenantes. Comme ils relèvent d’initiatives « faites maison », il est important de ne pas perdre de vue la dimension continentale. D’une part, les plans élaborés par l’Afrique ont plus de chances de réussir que des solutions importées uniformes et d’autre part, des efforts cohérents et combinés allant dans la même direction renforcent la confiance et l’émulation et attirent des soutiens. Ceci implique que pour remplir les accords intergouvernementaux, il est nécessaire avant tout de les adapter aux réalités locales à travers un processus d’intégration respectueux de l’espace politique. Cette intégration peut ensuite faire l’objet d’ajustements en fonction d’expériences fondées sur des données et des preuves concrètes. Entre ces engagements mondiaux et les procédures nationales, la dimension nationale demeure le lien indispensable : permettre aux pays de contourner le caractère artificiel de leurs frontières héritées de l’époque coloniale et leur offrir des choix concrets pour éradiquer la pauvreté dans l’unité. L’intégration régionale est donc le préambule à l’opérationnalisation du développement durable au sein de l’Afrique et une étape clé de son parcours en direction d’une participation active sur la scène mondiale. La régionalisation peut également faire évoluer les relations internationales, à condition qu’elle aille de pair avec un multilatéralisme équitable et une gestion durable des connaissances globales. C’est pourquoi l’ouverture qui en découle et la complexité rencontrée sont autant de paramètres utiles pour enrichir la conception de réponses locales pertinentes.

Ces réussites ouvrent de grandes perspectives en termes de nouvelles expériences et synergies. Elles représentent pour moi la promesse d’un monde meilleur. Celle que je me plais à imaginer est empreinte d’écosystèmes mutuellement bénéfiques pour les personnes et la planète. Elle encourage les liens inversés où tout le monde est gagnant, c’est-à-dire un monde où les économies en développement ont des retombées plus positives sur les pays industriels. C’est un monde où, par exemple, une région d’Afrique pourrait tirer des leçons de la crise grecque et vice-versa : un monde où la Chine pourrait tirer des enseignements du Corridor de développement de Maputo pour sa ceinture économique de la route de la soie. Un monde dans lequel des instituts jumelés effectuant des travaux de recherche conjoints dans les différents centres de connaissances régionaux prospéreraient, où des « fab labs » innovateurs pourraient ambitionner une aventure spatiale basée sur des déchets électroniques recyclés en imprimantes 3D. Dans un tel monde, des collaborations innovantes dans les domaines des sciences, des technologies, de l’ingénierie et des mathématiques (STEM) seraient encouragées. Celles-ci encourageraient la participation des femmes, et aussi celle de la diaspora en vue de développer des avancées techniques solides du point de vue écologique. Des efforts proportionnels, une volonté sans faille, une ingénuité autochtone et une créativité sans limites mettent cet avenir plus souriant à notre portée.

Au-delà de la reconnaissance de la voix africaine tout au long des processus intergouvernementaux, l’Afrique doit désormais consolider ses avancées en maintenant fermement sa position et en protégeant ses gains tout au long de la phase préliminaire. Le continent doit de toute urgence définir des tactiques spécifiques offrant le plus grand potentiel en termes d’inclusion et de création de capacités de production. Parallèlement, les acteurs du développement africain doivent démarrer un cycle vertueux d’apprentissage par la pratique en vue de créer une philosophie de développement endogène prenant en considération les meilleures pratiques adaptables et les échecs. Néanmoins, la seule approche capable de produire à la fois une transformation structurelle et un changement informé conformes aux stratégies à long terme propres au continent et dirigées par lui est… l’intégration régionale.  

[1] Issus respectivement des négociations intergouvernementales à l’occasion de la Troisième Conférence sur le financement du développement (FFD3), l’Agenda du développement post 2015 et la Conférence des Nations Unies sur les changements climatiques (COP21).

[2] Égypte, Madagascar, Maroc, Sierra Leone, Togo et Ouganda

[3] Comme précisé au Programme d’action d’Addis-Abeba par exemple : « Nous engageons instamment la communauté internationale, notamment les institutions financières internationales et les banques multilatérales et régionales de développement, à accroître leur soutien aux projets et aux cadres de coopération qui favorisent cette intégration régionale et sous régionale, notamment en Afrique, et qui améliorent la participation et l’intégration des entreprises et notamment des petites entreprises industrielles, en particulier celles des pays en développement, dans les chaînes de valeur mondiales et les marchés mondiaux. »

Event Information

China’s meteoric rise lifted its economy but damaged its environment, and it has new aspirations to leadership on the global stage. Africa has enormous natural capital and is hungry for development. How can they collaborate? Their interests may intersect within a model of development that invests in natural capital instead of prizing only extraction.

On July 11th, the Brookings Tsinghua-Center, in collaboration with GreenPoint Group and School of Public Policy and Management at Tsinghua University, hosted the panel Sustainability within the China-Africa Relationship: Governance, Investment, and Natural Capital. The panel was moderated by SMPP Associate Professor and IMPA director Zheng Zhenqing, and featured Mr. Peter Seligmann, chairman and CEO of Conservation International; Professor Qi Ye, director of the Brookings Tsinghua-Center; Honorable Minister Anyaa Vohiri of the Environmental Protection Agency of Liberia; Professor Pang Xun, expert on official direct assistance and the politics of aid; and Mr. Rule Jimmy Opelo, Permanent Deputy Secretary of the Ministry of Environment, Wildlife and Tourism of Botswana.

Professor and Dean of School of Public Policy and Management Xue Lan gave the opening remarks, highlighting that both China and Africa face the challenge of balancing development and sustainability. Minister Vohiri then presented on the challenges and great potential of Africa's vast, untapped renewable energy resources before Professor Zheng opened the panel. Framing China and Africa as global partners with the common aspiration of growing sustainable, the panelists discussed the need for developing economies to recognize that the health of their environment is inseparable from the health of their economies.

Questions concerning the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and Millennium Development goals presented conservation as a global issue requiring global governance. Mr. Seligmann forwarded the idea that sustainable development as enlightened self-interest has entered mainstream thought, asserting that the challenge now lies in crafting region-specific policies and plans of implementation. The importance of cooperation surfaced as a common theme. Mr. Opelo examined the possibilities of South-South cooperation, and Professor Qi provided a history for the emergence of natural capital as a concept before underlining the need for government to collaborate with civil society and the private sector.

The highlighted benefits of Sino-African cooperation ranged from the greater political freedom afforded to aid recipient countries when there is donor competition to Africa's potential "leapfrog" development to a green economy if it obtains sufficient investment. Professor Qi spoke of the lessons provided by China’s evolution from a parochial developing country into the world’s leader in sustainable development. Professor Pang emphasized the benefits both to China and to African countries when the influence of conditional aid from the United States is diluted by Chinese competition. Minister Vohiri and Mr. Opelo discussed the challenges of balancing conservation enforcement with the provision of basic needs, concluding that China's capital and knowledge could help Africa develop its economy in a sustainable direction. The panelists closed by addressing questions from the audience that problematical transparency problems with China's current model of development in Africa, the sustainability of green energy subsidies, the threats of mining and poaching, and Africa's role in addressing a global environmental crisis to which it largely did not contribute.

Xue Lan gave the opening remarks

Minister Vohiri delivered keynote remarks

Transcript

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The Venezuelan opposition Movement for Democratic Unity (or MUD by its Spanish acronym) won a major victory over pro-government parties in the December 6 legislative elections. Updated official results show 107 seats for the MUD, 55 for the governing party, 3 representing indigenous communities, with 2 still undecided.

This is remarkable considering the extent to which the government manipulated electoral rules and conditions ahead of the elections. There were a number of reported problems on election day, the most serious of which was to keep polling stations open for up to two additional hours so government supporters could scour voter rolls to find eligible voters who had not yet cast ballots and take them to polling stations. The result was a record 74 percent turnout for legislative elections, with 58 percent voting for the opposition and 42 percent for the government—the mirror image of electoral results in almost all elections since former President Hugo Chávez first took office in 1999. 

In the end, electoral dirty tricks were not enough to prevent an opposition landslide, and President Nicolás Maduro was forced to concede defeat shortly after midnight on December 7. Although the final number of opposition-held seats in the legislature is not yet certain, there are three main questions that should focus our attention over the coming weeks and months:

Venezuela’s legislative election rules are designed to over-represent the majority party and rural areas. This traditionally favored Chavista parties, but in this election, they have given the opposition a boost in the number of seats they won relative to the popular vote. The opposition has already achieved a three-fifths majority, which enables them to pass laws, approve government-proposed budgets, censure and remove government ministers and the executive vice president, and name new appointees to lead the national electoral authority and new magistrates to the Supreme Tribunal. The MUD has already promised to pass an amnesty law for political prisoners aimed at liberating a number of opposition political leaders imprisoned by the Maduro administration. It has also pledged to move legislation designed to promote economic recovery.

The opposition appears to be within striking distance of securing a two-thirds majority (112 seats), which would allow them a much wider array of powers: to remove the existing electoral authorities (with the support of the Supreme Tribunal), submit legislation to approval by popular referendum, and the equivalent of the “nuclear option” for Venezuelan legislators: convene a Constituent Assembly to write a new constitution. But with a few remaining seats in play, it appears that the MUD has more work to do to clear this hurdle and then to maintain discipline among legislators to keep a razor-thin two-thirds majority.

Either way, there is a dangerous gap between the euphoric expectations created by the elections and the actual power of the National Assembly. Not only are legislatures in Latin America typically weak, but the legislative branch has not operated independently thus far during the Chavista period. So many of its potential powers have not been exercised in practice. 

Before the vote, there was a general consensus among analysts that President Maduro would try to limit the power of the legislature in the event of an electoral loss. The tactic has many precedents, with the governments of Presidents Chávez and Maduro previously gutting the power and budgets of opposition-controlled elected offices at state and local levels.

One possibility is that the outgoing Chavista-dominated National Assembly that leaves office in January 2016 will simply pass an enabling law (Ley Habilitante) that would allow President Maduro to rule by decree for the rest of his term. There are plenty of precedents for this in Venezuela, although an enabling law that lasted for the remainder of the presidential term would be exceptional. But others have suggested that given the overwhelming opposition victory, such an approach may run too blatantly contrary to public opinion and consolidate popular sentiment against the government.

Instead, the government may simply use the Supreme Tribunal to invalidate opposition-initiated legislation. Of the 32 magistrates appointed to the highest court in Venezuela, 13 judges are retiring. Together with 5 empty seats, that will allow the outgoing legislative assembly to approve 18 new judges. These will join 12 magistrates appointed by the Chavista-controlled legislature in December 2014. With the government appointing so many members of the Supreme Tribunal, it will likely be easy for the Maduro administration to block inconvenient legislative proposals. The question for the opposition then becomes whether it can figure out how to use control of the legislature to affect the composition of the court and dilute the power of pro-government magistrates, something that would undoubtedly set off a struggle among the various branches of government.

It seems unlikely that the Chavista movement will simply accept divided government, something unknown to Venezuela since 1999. There are simply too many in the Chavista movement who cannot afford an “accountability moment” due to alleged participation in official corruption; waste, fraud, and abuse; or drug trafficking. Others will be ideologically opposed to allowing so much power to flow to an opposition-dominated national assembly.

The Chavista movement spans from the military to the governing party to armed pro-government militias and gangs (colectivos). Former President Chávez was adept at keeping the movement together. President Maduro is not nearly as skilled, and with this stunning electoral loss, his leadership within the movement (already damaged by poor economic results) is likely to come under further pressure. 

In a normal country, one might imagine some incentives for both sides to negotiate—the legislature and executive could work together to avert the coming economic catastrophe, for one. And the weakening of President Maduro’s leadership may lead to more open disagreement within Chavismo about the way ahead, allowing the possibility that moderates on both sides will find room to work together. But as journalist and long-time Venezuela observer Francisco Toro has argued, Chavismo is a machine for not negotiating; the selection process for top leadership has been designed to winnow out anyone who would consider sitting down to talk with the opposition. And in such a polarized situation, moderates always run the risk of being targeted by radicals from their own side if they negotiate with opponents.

Get the house in order

All Venezuelans should feel proud (and relieved) that these highly significant elections have been carried out peacefully. But a lot of work remains to be done. 

First, the outside study missions and electoral accompaniment missions need to remain focused on the tabulation process to ensure that the few undecided legislative seats are allocated according to electoral rules and the votes cast rather than government fiat. 

Second, Venezuela is entering a period of divided government, one that will potentially be riven by conflict among the branches of government. The outside actors that have thus far played a positive role—such as regional multilateral institutions, civil society, legislators across the hemisphere, and governments interested in supporting democracy—will need to continue to pay attention to and support favorable outcomes in Venezuela even when the country is out of the international headlines. 

And third, Venezuela’s economy is in very serious trouble now that oil has fallen as low as $35 a barrel. Further economic contraction, poverty rates not seen since before Hugo Chávez took office, and inflation in excess of 200 percent are all expected in 2016. If the government (both Chavistas and opponents) come to their senses and agree to a negotiated plan on how to address the economy, they will need the support of both traditional multilateral financial institutions and non-traditional sources of financing (such as China). 

As the opposition celebrates this major electoral win, it will undoubtedly dwell on the political implications of its victory over Chavismo. But it should not lose sight of the mandate it has now been given to make needed policy changes as well.

Update: As of December 9, 2015, media are reporting that the opposition party has won at least 112 seats, achieving a two-thirds majority in the National Assembly.

The votes have been counted in the presidential and legislative elections that Taiwan held earlier today. The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) won a sweeping victory in both contests, displacing the Kuomintang (KMT).

There will no doubt be extensive and useful analysis on what the election means, particularly on the underlying preferences of the Taiwan public. But attention is already shifting to the policies that the new administration will pursue, and whether they will complicate relations on the three sides of the Taiwan-China-United States triangle.

By the numbers

On the election itself, Tsai Ing-wen, the DPP’s chairperson and presidential candidate, won with 56.1 percent of the vote, with virtually all polling places reporting. Eric Chu, the leader and candidate of the more conservative KMT, received 30.1 percent. James Soong, chairman of the People First Party (PFP), a small spinoff from the KMT, got 12.8 percent. This is the second time that the DPP candidate won in an open contest; Chen Shui-bian was the first to do so, in 2000, but only with 40 percent of the vote in a previous three-person race. 

For the elections for the Legislative Yuan (LY), voters cast two ballots. One is for a candidate to represent their geographic election district, of which there are 78. The other is for the voter’s preferred political party—that outcome produces 35 legislators, drawn from party lists. Final results are not yet available for all of the 78 geographic seats, but the Central News Agency reports that the DPP will have at least 60 seats, enough for an absolute majority. We do know the final result in the party vote: DPP with 44.1 percent; KMT with 26.9 percent; PFP with 6.5 percent; New Power Party with 6.1 percent; the pro-unification New Party with 4.2 percent; and the pro-independence Taiwan Solidarity Union with 2.5 percent.

Not a fluke

Several tentative implications flow from these results.

The DPP victory is similar to the KMT’s in 2008, when voters rejected the eight-year presidency of DPP leader Chen Shui-bian. Tsai’s percentage this time is slightly less than the 58 percent that Ma Ying-jeou won in his first election in eight years ago (in 2008, the KMT won 81 legislative seats). Both elections have a “throw the bums out” flavor.

Although Tsai will not have a totally free hand, she has gained significant political capital and freedom of action. The question now is how she will use them. She has the scope to address a number of domestic problems that were on voters’ minds when they went to the polls. I suspect that she will want to conduct her presidency in a way that helps ensure that the DPP will be Taiwan’s majority party for a long time to come. Whether succeeds will depend a lot on the response of the Legislative Yuan, including the DPP caucus, to her agenda and whether the legislature is willing to undertake reforms that would make it a more effective institution.

Although Tsai will not have a totally free hand, she has gained significant political capital and freedom of action. The question now is how she will use them.

The size of the DPP victory should induce Beijing to reconsider the hardline stance that it has taken during the run-up to the election. It said, in effect, that Dr. Tsai would have to accept its own parameters preserving the status quo if she is to secure mutually beneficial cross-Strait relations. But today’s result was no fluke. It occurred not because of Tsai’s “cool” charisma or the DPP’s skill at mobilizing its supporters, although those were not trivial. It was the result of the public growing more skeptical about Ma Ying-jeou’s policy of engaging China, at least economically—a skepticism grew that throughout Ma’s second term. If Beijing can adjust its strategy and Tsai is willing to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping half way, a mutual accommodation between them is not impossible. But it will not be easy.

Cross-Strait shifts?

The open question, which only future developments can answer, is whether today’s result reflects a more fundamental shift in political attitudes than simply dissatisfaction with Ma Ying-jeou’s policies and their consequences. Such a more fundamental shift would not only change the balance of power within Taiwan but also the continued feasibility of China’s approach to reaching its goal of unification. If so, should Beijing offer more and different carrots to better “win the hearts and minds” of Taiwan people? Or would it consider greater reliance on sticks?

The open question...is whether today’s result reflects a more fundamental shift in political attitudes than simply dissatisfaction with Ma Ying-jeou’s policies and their consequences.

The implication that the U.S. government drew from the election results is captured in the statement the State Department released today: 

“We share with the Taiwan people a profound interest in the continuation of cross-Strait peace and stability. We look forward to working with Dr. Tsai and Taiwan’s leaders of all parties to advance our many common interests and further strengthen the unofficial relationship between the United States and the people on Taiwan.”

It is worth noting that Taiwan is the only ethnic Chinese society in the world in which genuinely competitive elections pick senior political leaders. The powers that be in China, Hong Kong, and Singapore all seek to preserve control over the outcomes of their leadership selection processes. Taiwan is the one system where the outcome reflects the preferences of over 12 million voters. Moreover, this is Taiwan’s third peaceful transfer of power through direct elections, and it should further consolidate Taiwan’s democracy. Finally, that Taiwan has elected its first female president signals the removal of one more significant social barrier to talented people holding the island’s highest political office.

The GOP presidential primary process has taken us to places we couldn’t have dreamed mere months ago. Donald Trump’s apparently ever-growing lead—and the foundering of more mainstream candidates like Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and John Kasich—carries serious implications for America’s role in the world. As top Republican strategists and political pundits alike toss around ideas for slowing Trump’s momentum—in part due to major concerns about how he’s staked out his foreign policy—I’ll add one more idea into the mix: convince Rubio and Kasich to agree, now and in public, to share a Republican ticket.

It would go like this: John Kasich would drop out of the presidential race before Tuesday, March 15—when winner-take-all votes occur in both Florida and Ohio—and encourage his supporters to vote for Marco Rubio (who performed better than Kasich on Super Tuesday). Rubio, appearing with Kasich at that press conference, would accept Kasich’s endorsement and then promise him the vice presidential spot on the ticket if he (Rubio) were chosen to be the Republican presidential nominee. This Rubio-Kasich team would be promised to the voters even as the primary process marched on. A vote for Rubio would henceforth be viewed (by the candidates and their allies at least) as a vote for Rubio-Kasich together.

The March 15 votes constitute perhaps the last best chance to stop Trump’s march to the nomination. More to the point here, they’re a chance of ensuring that a Republican candidate with a traditional internationalist worldview remains in the race until the convention. Even Hillary Clinton supporters should arguably welcome such a voice on the GOP side, as it could keep the national political discourse more constructive and less demeaning as November approaches.

To be somewhat more specific: Trump is known for his views critical of Mexico, many Muslims, immigration, refugees, trade, and U.S. allies like Japan and South Korea (in light of their purported unwillingness to share the burden of the common defense). He is also known for cozying up to President Vladimir Putin of Russia, and for vague but emphatic talk of getting America back in the habit of winning again. In addition, he advocates more extreme and ruthless measures in the war on terror. 

Whatever the risks, it certainly seems more promising than the path either one of them is on now.

While Rubio is no dove, he has wrestled with the intricacies and complexities of foreign policy during his time in the Senate, and much more than has Trump. He has serious views on the use of force and defense policy, seasoned by reality. Most centrally, he has a Reagan-like view of America’s place in the world—as a country that is stern and unyielding towards its enemies, but open and welcoming to the vast majority of foreigners and foreign nations. This positive, internationalist outlook is in marked contrast to Trump’s worldview. Kasich’s views are much closer to Rubio than to Trump, of course, though he may be more measured and moderate in some of his pro-defense views than Rubio. 

In many foreign policy issues and beyond, Rubio seems more conservative than Kasich. But of course, some divergence of views is inevitable for any eventual presidential ticket—it is even healthy, to an extent. And the kinds of expertise the two men bring to the national debate are largely complimentary, since Kasich has focused more on domestic policy in recent years and Rubio more on national security matters. In other ways, like their strong religious faiths, they seem natural teammates.

Shake it up

Of course, the goal of this Rubio-Kasich ticket would be to win both Florida and Ohio in March. These are not only delegate-rich, winner-take-all states in the nominating process, but key swing states in general elections. Whether or not the Democratic nominee could ultimately best that ticket come November, the Rubio-Kasich team would have a powerful call on super-delegates at any brokered Republican convention if it already had wins in the nation’s two most important swing states under its belt. It would have demonstrated strength in two states that the GOP nominee will badly want to win in the November election.

Polls show that Kasich is stronger than Rubio in Ohio and Rubio is stronger than Kasich in Florida; both trail Trump in both places. However, their combined tallies match up reasonably well with Trump. Beyond that, the shock effect of this kind of partnership—between an accomplished sitting governor and a bright young senator—could change the race’s dynamics enough to bring them even more votes. It will raise eyebrows and cause many to take a second look at the race. Whatever the risks, it certainly seems more promising than the path either one of them is on now.

The preemptive formation of a Rubio-Kasich presidential team in early March would be a highly unusual step. But it’s already a highly unusual year. Put differently, desperate circumstances call for desperate—or at least dramatic—measures. This kind of a true structural change in the primary process promises a greater likelihood of shaking GOP voters up than big speeches by Mitt Romney or warnings from other parts of the GOP establishment. Kasich and Rubio should consider it.

A months-long political crisis in Kiev came to an end on April 14, when Ukraine’s Rada (parliament) approved a new prime minister. Expectations that the government will move on needed reforms and anti-corruption measures, however, are low.

Kamikaze prime minister?

The previous prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, had served since the Maidan Revolution in February 2014. Early on, Yatsenyuk equated his tenure to a kamikaze mission, noting that the reforms the government would adopt would carry heavy political costs. He proved right. By early 2016, his National Front party, which won over 22 percent in the October 2014 party-list vote in the Rada elections, polled in the low single digits. 

Reports of a widening rift between Yatsenyuk and President Petro Poroshenko grew last autumn, though they still had reason to stay together. The National Front party and Poroshenko Bloc formed the core of the majority coalition in the Rada, and neither party could expect to fare well in early parliamentary elections.

Early on, Yatsenyuk equated his tenure to a kamikaze mission, noting that the reforms the government would adopt would carry heavy political costs.

The crisis took a twist in mid-February, when the Rada passed a resolution expressing disapproval of the work of Yatsenyuk and his cabinet…but then failed to pass a vote of no-confidence that would have led to Yatsenyuk’s dismissal.

Speculation nevertheless intensified over his looming replacement, with American-born Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko mooted as a possibility. Volodymyr Hroysman’s name also came into play. Hroysman, a member of the Poroshenko Bloc, is closely connected to the president. He had a reputation as a reformer and effective mayor of the city of Vinnytsia, though his performance as Rada speaker was mixed. For example, he opposed the finance ministry’s proposed tax reform, even though it was a requirement of Ukraine’s program with the International Monetary Fund. 

When Yatsenyuk announced his resignation on April 10, Hroysman appeared the front-runner to succeed him. His appointment took longer than expected, however, as he reportedly rejected some suggestions from the president’s camp for ministers, seeking to put in place his own people instead. Backroom negotiations and a fair amount of horse-trading as parties jockeyed for ministerial positions took place April 11 to 13. Finally, the Rada approved Hroysman on April 14.

Low reform expectations

At first glance, the composition of the new cabinet is a far more political group than its predecessor, which comprised many technocrats. It is devoid of names with established reputations for pressing reform or fighting corruption. My conversations on the margins of the Kiev Security Forum on April 14 to 15 turned up few expectations that the new cabinet will proceed with the kinds of reform actions and, in particular, measures to combat corruption that the country needs.

The International Monetary Fund will watch the cabinet’s actions before it considers releasing an additional tranche of funding for Ukraine. One unsettling sign: The incoming finance minister suggested that some adjustments might be sought in the IMF’s criteria. Historically, when Ukrainian finance ministers seek adjustments to IMF criteria and programs, they do not aim for changes that will accelerate reform.

At first glance, the composition of the new cabinet is a far more political group than its predecessor.

Some in Kiev worry about the close relationship between Hroysman and Poroshenko. But that relationship may have one upside: it ties Poroshenko more closely to the prime minister and his success or failure. Too often in the past, Ukrainian presidents have stood some distance from the prime minister, positioning themselves to escape responsibility for difficult government policies rather than throwing their full political weight behind the prime minister’s efforts.

Poroshenko did not fully back Yatsenyuk. As one Ukrainian observer put it, the president often seemed more interested in explaining or rationalizing the status quo rather than trying to change it. Now, if Hroysman and the new cabinet fail to deliver, it will reflect more directly on Poroshenko.

A friendly push

If my Ukrainian interlocutors are correct, the new government will pursue the needed reforms at best only half-heartedly. Among other things, that could leave in place the current system in which oligarchs exercise outsized and unhealthy political influence. That will impede Ukraine’s prospects of getting on the path to becoming a modern European state. 

The International Monetary Fund, United States, and European Union should help the Ukrainian president and prime minister make the right decisions: to press forward a program of genuine reform and, at long last, a real anti-corruption campaign. The West should make clear that further assistance will depend on such actions. 

“It’s probably the most interesting presidential election I’ve seen in my lifetime,” I said to an American friend the moment I arrived to Washington. My friend was upset. “For you it’s interesting,” he said. “For us it’s painful.”

“What you’ve just said rings a bell,” I said. “This is exactly, word for word, what I keep saying to foreign journalists who come to Israel to write a story.” Covering politics in Israel is like covering a professional wrestling fight: the rivals exchange numerous hits, shout at each other, humiliate each other, disregard every rule, but in most cases the outcome is known in advance.

Covering politics in Israel is like covering a professional wrestling fight...in most cases the outcome is known in advance.

Americans are supposed to play their political game in a cooler way. At least, this is the impression a foreign correspondent get when he lands here, directly from the boiling quarrels of the Middle East. 

I had the opportunity to cover almost all the U.S. presidential campaigns since Jimmy Carter’s victory over Gerald Ford in 1974. I loved it—I loved the town halls and the rallies in remote places, where people are kind and willing to answer every clueless question from a foreign reporter; I loved the access to the candidates, weeks and months before the secret service builds a wall between them and real life; I loved the hectic atmosphere, described so well in the “Making of the President” books by Theodore H. White; I loved to see how little-known candidates like Bill Clinton or Barack Obama evolve, grow, and flourish; and I enjoyed every chapter: the spins, the buzz, the role played by big money.

The election campaign seems to be different this time: It looks different; it sounds different. The key word is anger—anger dominated the selection process in both parties. Angry voters elected angry candidates. If a candidate was not angry enough—e. g. Jeb Bush—the voters judged him unfit for the job.

The election campaign seems to be different this time: It looks different; it sounds different. The key word is anger.

An accidental tourist like me pauses here for a long list of questions: how do we quantify anger? Is it limited to the ballots or can it evaporate at some point and turn into violent acts, as Donald Trump has insinuated time and again? Is it a reflection of the bitterness of specific, limited constituencies or is it something much more widespread, an outrage of a generation or a class of Americans who feel that they were betrayed by the political and business elite, by the establishment? How to explain the Trump phenomenon, the Sanders phenomenon? 

The obvious answer is the economic collapse of 2008: the people who fell victim to the 2008 crisis, who lost a home or a job or had to give up college for their children are now in revolt. Why now and not earlier? Because four years ago they were struggling to survive; they were busy. Politicizing emotions is a long process; sometimes it takes years.

Tip O'Neill, speaker of the house in the second half of the previous century, taught us that all politics is local. There is a lot of truth in it even today, but is it the whole truth? In the flat world of 2016, local politics are executed in a global way. All politics are local and global at the same time. Political actions spread from country to country like the Zika virus, using social media as carriers.

The young Sanders supporters I met in Brooklyn, during the last Democratic debate, were not much different from the young Israelis I met in Tel Aviv in the summer of 2011, when hundreds of thousands of Israelis took to the streets. Those Israelis complained about similar things: high prices, loss of employment security, difficulty getting a decent job, and the ever-growing gap between expectations and reality. They were promised to live in the land of opportunity; the opportunity was not there—not for them.

Politicizing emotions is a long process; sometimes it takes years.

They complained bitterly about the banks and the major corporations. They became so big that the government has no choice but to subsidize them when they lose money. And the people who run them get huge salaries and bonuses on the expense of the shareholders and the general public. Israel used to be a social democratic society, with a strong middle class and a relatively narrow gap between rich and poor. Now the rich are very rich and get richer, and the less fortunate are left behind.

The protest was fueled by social media: another similarity between Tel Aviv and the young voters in Brooklyn and elsewhere. The brazenness, the bluntness, the rudeness of the social media culture affected the political discourse. It became less cordial and more personal. 

Israelis were not alone. The Arab Spring predated the Israeli Summer. Greece and Spain followed. Occupy Wall Street, a smaller, more radical protest movement, appeared on the streets of major American cities in the fall of 2011. It was inspired by the protests in the Arab countries and in Spain. The demonstrators faded away after a while, but they left their mark: political agendas have changed dramatically, governments fell, conventions were shuttered. It remains to be seen if and how they will contribute to social justice and equality.

In Israel, the demand for social justice captured a prominent place on the national agenda; several activists in the protest movement were elected to the Knesset; the rhetoric has changed, priorities didn't. Not really. Most Israelis were not prepared for a revolution, not even a moderate revolution, Bernie Sanders-style. 

I have no way to know what lies ahead for the American society. What I can see so far is a unique electoral season, characterized by unusual, almost bizarre candidates, their qualification for the job questionable, and a long, destructive battle over votes. For many Americans it is painful. People in other countries can only wonder: is it the best America is able to produce? 

Editors’ Note: For the United States to succeed in its mission in Afghanistan, it is essential that the Obama administration sustain the current level of U.S. forces there. Recognizing this, John Allen spearheaded a move to ask President Obama to do so, in the following open letter to which former leaders from the military and diplomatic corps signed on. This letter originally appeared on The National Interest.

Washington, DC

June 3, 2016

Dear Mr. President,

We are writing, as Americans committed to the success of our country’s Afghanistan mission, to urge that you sustain the current level of U.S. forces in Afghanistan through the remainder of your term. Aid levels and diplomatic energies should similarly be preserved without reduction. Unless emergency conditions require consideration of a modest increase, we would strongly favor a freeze at the level of roughly ten thousand U.S. troops through January 20. This approach would also allow your successor to assess the situation for herself or himself and make further adjustments accordingly.

The broader Middle East is roiled in conflicts that pit moderate and progressive forces against those of violent extremists. As we saw on 9/11 and in the recent attacks in Paris, San Bernardino and Brussels, the problems of the Middle East do not remain contained within the Middle East. Afghanistan is the place where Al Qaeda and affiliates first planned the 9/11 attacks and a place where they continue to operate—and is thus important in the broader effort to defeat the global extremist movement today. It is a place where Al Qaeda and ISIS still have modest footprints that could be expanded if a security vacuum developed. If Afghanistan were to revert to the chaos of the 1990s, millions of refugees would again seek shelter in neighboring countries and overseas, dramatically intensifying the severe challenges already faced in Europe and beyond.

In the long-term struggle against violent extremists, the United States above all needs allies—not only to fight a common enemy, but also to create a positive vision for the peoples of the region. Today, aided by the bipartisan policies of the last two U.S. administrations, Afghans have established a democratic political system, moderately effective security forces, a much improved quality of life, and a vibrant civil society. Afghans are fighting and dying for their country, and in our common battle against extremism, with more than five thousand police and soldiers laying down their lives annually each of the past several years.

Afghanistan is a place where we should wish to consolidate and lock down our provisional progress into something of a more lasting asset. It is a Muslim country where most of the public as well as government officials want our help and value our friendship. Afghanistan is also a crucial partner in helping to shape the calculations of Pakistan, which has been an incubator of violent extremism but which might gradually be induced to cooperate in building a regional order conducive to peace and economic progress.

You have rightly prioritized Afghanistan throughout your presidency and have successfully achieved several crucial objectives. You have prevented the reemergence of a terrorist sanctuary in Afghanistan, from which attacks on Americans might emanate. You have helped Afghanistan develop security forces so that it is principally Afghans who are defending Afghanistan, thereby enabling a 90 percent reduction in the U.S. military presence relative to its peak (and a two-thirds reduction relative to what you inherited in 2009). You have established a long-term strategic partnership with Afghanistan that can address common threats from extremist groups based in Pakistan. To our minds, these are significant accomplishments. They have established much of the foundation for pursuing the ultimate goals of stabilizing Afghanistan and defeating extremism in the region.

To be sure, there have been significant frustrations in Afghanistan along the way. All of us have lived and experienced a number of them. All of us have, like you, deeply lamented the loss of each American life that has been sacrificed there in pursuit of our mission objectives and our national security.

Yet, though the situation is fraught, we have reason to be confident. President Ghani, Chief Executive Abdullah, and many brave Afghans are working hard to rebuild their country. NATO allies and other partners remain committed to the mission. The level of support we must provide to enable continued progress is much lower than in earlier periods.

Our group is taking full stock of the situation in Afghanistan and will make a broader range of recommendations available to the next U.S. president on the interrelated subjects of governance, the economy, and security. But as an interim measure, and with the NATO Warsaw summit as well as other key decision points still looming on your watch, we urge you to maintain the current U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan through the end of your term. Based on longstanding experience in the country as well as recent trips to Afghanistan by some of us, this step would be seen as a positive reaffirmation of America’s commitment to that nation, its people and its security. It would likely have helpful effects on refugee flows, the confidence of the Taliban, the morale of the Afghan military and Afghan people, the state of the Afghan economy and perhaps even the strategic assessments of some in Pakistan. Conversely, we are convinced that a reduction of our military and financial support over the coming months would negatively affect each of these.

Sincerely,

Ambassadors to Afghanistan

Ryan Crocker

James Cunningham

Robert Finn

Zalmay Khalilzad

Ronald Neumann

Military Commanders in Afghanistan

John Allen

David Barno

John Campbell

Stanley McChrystal

David Petraeus

Special Representatives for Afghanistan/Pakistan

James Dobbins

Daniel Feldman

Marc Grossman

Editors’ Note: International relations almost never progress in a linear fashion. In this excerpt from a new Brookings India briefing book titled “India-U.S. Relations in Transition,” Tanvi Madan examines some of the high-impact but low-probability events that may affect the relationship in the future: so-called “black swans.”

U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter recently said that the U.S.-India defense partnership would become “an anchor of global security.” But in an increasingly uncertain world, the partnership between these two large and relatively stable democracies can also potentially be a critical anchor of stability more broadly. Here are some black swans—low-probability, high-impact and, in hindsight, predictable events—that could exacerbate regional and global uncertainty and instability, and affect both countries’ interests and, potentially, their relationship. 

• Regional Assertiveness: What might be the impact of greater Chinese or Russian assertiveness—even aggression? How might Russian actions against Ukraine, Georgia, or even a NATO member change not just U.S. calculations, but India’s as well? How will it affect their bilateral relationship? What about a China-U.S. confrontation over Taiwan or in the South China Sea? Or Chinese action against a country like Vietnam, with which India has close ties and which the United States is increasingly engaging? What if there is a sudden or serious deterioration of the situation in Tibet, perhaps in the context of a leadership transition? 
• Chaos in India’s West: What happens if there is political uncertainty in Saudi Arabia, a country with which the United States has close—albeit tense—ties, and which is India’s largest oil supplier and home to millions of Indian citizens? How will the United States and India react if Iran, after all, decides to acquire nuclear weapons? What about the chain reaction either of these scenarios would set off in the Middle East? Closer to India, what if Afghanistan relapses into a total civil war? Or if there is a sharp downturn in stability within Pakistan, with the establishment challenged, the threat of disintegration, and challenges posed by the presence of nuclear weapons? 
• Shocks to the Global Economy: What if a confluence of circumstance leads to a major spike in oil prices? What will the impact be of a major economic crisis in China, not just on the global economy or Chinese domestic stability, but also in terms of how Beijing might react externally? How will the United States and India deal with this scenario? And what if the eurozone collapses under the weight of refugee flows, Britain’s threatened exit, or national financial crises? 
• The Epoch-Defining Security Shock: Both the United States and India have suffered major attacks relatively recently—the United States on September 11, 2001 and India on November 26, 2008. But what if there is another major terrorist attack in either country or on the two countries’ interests or citizens elsewhere? Or a major cyber incident that takes down critical infrastructure? 
• Environmental Challenges: What if rising sea levels cause a catastrophe in Bangladesh resulting in thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, crossing over into India? And then there are the various climate change-related challenges that can perhaps be considered “white swans”—more-certain events, whose effects can be more easily estimated. 

In addition, one could think of domestic black swans in each country and some in the bilateral context. These might include dramatic domestic political developments, or a spark causing a major backlash against immigrants in the United States or American citizens in India. 

As the U.S.-India partnership has developed, and India’s regional and global involvements have increased, the U.S.-India conversation—and not just the official one—has assumed greater complexity. This will help the two countries tackle black swans in the future. So will the further institutionalization of discussions on global and regional issues of the sort already underway. Amid the day-to-day priorities, there should be room for discussing contingencies for black swans in dialogues between the U.S. Deputy Secretary of State and the Indian Foreign Secretary, in the two countries’ dialogue on East Asia, and in discussions between the two policy planning units.

The development community issued a collective sigh of relief last week when the U.S. Senate, after a seven-month delay, finally confirmed a new Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). In addition to dealing with the many global development issues, Gayle Smith also has the task of making good on the Obama administration’s commitment to make USAID a preeminent 21st century development agency.

While a year might seem a short time for anyone to make a difference in a new government position, Gayle Smith assuming the lead in USAID should be seen more as the capstone of a seven-year tenure guiding U.S. global development policy.  She led the interagency process that produced the 2010 Presidential Policy Determination on Development (PDD), and has been involved in every administration development policy initiative since, including major reforms inside USAID.

The five items below are suggestions on how Smith can institutionalize and take to the next level reforms and initiatives that have been part of the development agenda of which she has been a principal architect.

The PPD lays out key elements for making our assistance programs more accountable, including “greater transparency” and “more substantial investment of resources in monitoring and evaluation.”

USAID staff have designed a well thought out Cost Program Management Plan to advance the public availability of its data and to fulfill the U.S. commitment to the International Assistance Transparency Initiative (IATI). What this plan needs is a little boost from the new administrator, her explicit endorsement and energy, and maybe the freeing-up of more resources so phases two and three to get more and better USAID data into the IATI registry can be completed by the end of 2016 rather than slipping over into the next administration. In addition, the fourth and final phase of the plan needs to be approved so data transparency is integrated into the planned Development Information Solution (DIS), which will provide a comprehensive integration of program and financial information. 

Meanwhile, in January 2011 USAID adopted an evaluation policy that was praised by the American Evaluation Association as a model for other government agencies. In FY 2014, the agency completed 224 evaluations. The new administrator could provide leadership in several areas that would raise the quality and use of USAID’s evaluations. She should weigh in on the sometimes theological debate over what type of evaluation works best by being clear that there is no single, all-purpose type of evaluation. Evaluations need to fit the context and question to be addressed, from most significant change (focusing solely on the most significant change generated by a project), to performance evaluation, to impact evaluation.   

Second, evaluation is an expertise that is not quickly acquired. Some 2,000 USAID staff have been trained, but mainly through short-term courses. The training needs to be broadened to all staff and deepened in content. This will contribute to a cultural change whereby USAID staff learn not just how to conduct evaluations, but how to value and use the findings.

Third, evaluations need to be translated into learning. The E3 Bureau (Bureau for Economic Growth, Education and Environment) has set the model of analyzing and incorporating evaluation findings into its policies and programs, and a few missions have bought evaluations into their program cycle. This needs to be done throughout the agency. Further, USAID should use its convening power to share its findings with other U.S. government agencies, other donors, and the broader development community.

Current USAID processes are considered rigid and time-consuming. This is not uncommon to large institutions, but in recent years the agency has been seeking more innovative, flexible instruments. The USAID Global Development Lab is experimenting with what is alternatively referred to as the Development Innovation Accelerator (DIA) or Broad Agency Announcement (BAA), whereby it invites ideas on a specific development problem and then selects the authors of the best, most relevant, to join USAID staff in co-creating solutions—something the corporate sector has been calling for—to be involved at the beginning of problem-solving. Similarly, the Policy, Planning, and Learning Bureau is in the midst of redesigning the program cycle to introduce adaptive management, allowing for greater collaboration and real-time response to new information and evolving local circumstances. Adaptive management would allow for more customized approaches and learning based on local context.

Again, the PPD calls for “innovation.” As with accountability, an expression of interest and support from the new administrator, and an articulation of the need to inculcate innovation into the USAID culture, could move these endeavors from tentative experiment to practice.

Gayle Smith has been immersed in guiding U.S. policy in unstable, fragile states. She knows the territory well and cares. The U.S. has been an active participant and leader in the New Deal for Fragile States. The New Deal framework is a thoughtful, comprehensive structure for moving fragile states to stability, but recent analyses indicate that neither members of the G7+ countries nor donors are following the explicit steps. They are not dealing with national and local politics, which are the essential levers through which to bring stability to a country, and are not adequately including civil society. Maybe the New Deal structures are too complicated for a country that has minimal governance. Certainly, there has been insufficient senior-level leadership from donors and buy-in from G7+ leaders and stakeholders. With her deep knowledge of the dynamics in fragile states, Smith could bring sorely needed U.S. leadership to this arena.

The PPD calls for “robust policy, budget, planning, and evaluation capabilities.” USAID moved quickly on these objectives, not just in restoring USAID former capabilities in evaluation, but also in policy and budget through the resurrection of the planning and policy function (Policy, Planning, and Learning Bureau, or PPL) and the budget function (Office of Bureau and Resource Management, or BRM). PPL has reestablished USAID’s former policy function, but USAID’s budget authority has only been partially restored.

Gayle Smith needs to take the next obvious step. Budget is policy. The integration of policy and budget is an essential foundation of evidence-based policymaking. The two need to be joined so these functions can support each other rather than operating in isolated cones. Budget deliberations are not just about numbers; policies get set by budget decisions, so policy and budget need to be integrated so budget decisions are informed by strategy and policy knowledge.

I go back to the model of the late 1970s when Alex Shakow was head of the Policy, Planning, and Coordination Bureau (PPC), which encompassed both policy and budget. Here you had in one senior official someone who was knowledgeable about policy and budget and understood how the two interact. He was the go-to-person the agency sent to Capitol Hill. He could deal with the range of issues that always unexpectedly arise during congressional committee hearings and markups. He could effectively deal with the State Department and interagency meetings on a broad sweep of policy and program matters. He could represent the U.S. globally, such as at the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) and other international development meetings.

With the expansion of the development agenda and frequency of interagency and international meetings, such a person is in even greater need today. USAID needs three or four senior officials—administrator, deputy administrator, associate administrator, and the head of a joined-up policy/budget function —to cover the demand domestically and internationally for senior USAID leadership with a deep knowledge of the broad scope of USAID programs.    

The arguments for the need to reform U.S. food assistance programs are incontrovertible and have been hashed hundreds of times, so no need to repeat them here. But it is clearly in the interests of the tens of millions of people globally who each year face hunger and starvation for the U.S. to maximize the use of its resources by moving its food aid from an antiquated 1950s model to current market realities. There is leadership for this on the Hill in the Food for Peace Reform Act of 2015, introduced by Senators Bob Corker and Chris Coons. Gayle Smith could help build the momentum for this bill and contribute to an important Obama legacy, whether enactment happens in 2016 or under a new administration and Congress in 2017.

Gayle knows better than anyone the Obama development agenda. These ideas are humbly presented as an outside observer’s suggestions of how to solidify key administration aid effectiveness initiatives. 

This week, the richest business leaders and investors from around the world will gather in Davos, Switzerland, for the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum. In keeping with tradition, a small portion of the agenda will be devoted to global development and the plight of people living at the other end of the global income distribution.

Philanthropy is one way of linking the fortunes of these disparate communities. What if some of the mega-rich could be persuaded to redistribute their wealth to the extreme poor?

This question may feel hackneyed, but it deserves a fresh hearing in light of a dramatic reduction in the global poverty gap over the past several years (Figure 1). The theoretical cost of transfers required to lift all poor people’s income up to the global poverty line of $1.90 a day stood at approximately $80 billion [1] in 2015, down from over $300 billion in 1980. (Values expressed here are in 2015 market dollars.)

Source: Authors’ calculations based on OECD, World Bank

This reduction can be unpacked into two parts. The first is a steep decline in the number of people living below the global poverty line. This is increasingly recognized as one of the defining features of the era. A U.N. goal to halve the poverty rate in the developing world between 1990 and 2015 was nearly achieved twice over. The second and lesser-known factor is the shrinking average distance of the world’s poor from the poverty line. In 1980, the mean daily income of those living below $1.90 was $1.09. In 2012 it was 25 cents higher at $1.34. (Values expressed here in 2011 purchasing power parity dollars.)   

Despite this good news, global poverty still demands attention. Hundreds of millions of people continue to suffer this most acute form of deprivation. In several countries, the prospects for ending poverty over the next generation, in line with a recently endorsed successor U.N. goal, appear challenging at best.

Figure 1 illustrates that in 2006, global aid flows exceeded the cost of the global poverty gap for the first time. This suggests that the elimination of extreme poverty should be possible simply through a more efficient allocation of aid. However, this confuses foreign aid’s goals and functions. The bulk of official foreign aid is used in the provision of public goods, such as physical infrastructure and strengthening institutions. Only 2 percent is directed to social payments and their administration. If the elimination of extreme poverty is to be achieved through targeted transfers, it depends on sources other than foreign aid.

The main source of transfers to the poor is welfare programs run and financed by developing countries themselves. These social safety nets have emerged as an increasingly prominent instrument in the toolkit of developing economy governments. Eighty-three percent of developing economies employ unconditional cash transfer programs, although many are small in scale. Several countries are in the process of building the apparatus for more accurate targeting and authentication through the assembly of beneficiary registries and the rolling out of identity programs. In at least 10 developing countries, social safety nets have succeeded in establishing a social floor by lifting all those people under the poverty line up above the threshold. In the vast majority, however, safety nets are insufficiently targeted or generous for that purpose, reflecting not only resource constraints, but also political choices that can be resistant to change.

A complementary approach is to consider the role of private mechanisms and wealth. NGOs were among the original pioneers of cash transfers in the developing world. More recently, the NGO GiveDirectly has designed a compelling new method of charitable giving that sends money directly to the poor using digital monitoring and payment technology. Its approach has received strong endorsements from independent charity assessors and has been validated by impact evaluations. Yet the scale of its existing donations remains tiny relative to the global poverty gap.

This is where Davos’s global elite could come into play: What difference could a philanthropic donation from the world’s richest people make?

To explore this question, we begin by identifying those developing countries that are home to a least one billionaire. (Our analysis is restricted to billionaires by data, not by the potential largesse of the world’s multi-millionaires. We focus our attention on billionaires in the developing world given the traditional focus of philanthropy on domestic causes.) Let’s assume that the richest billionaire in each country agrees to give away half of his or her current wealth among his or her fellow citizens, disbursed evenly over the next 15 years, roughly in accordance with the Giving Pledge promoted by Bill Gates. That money would be used exclusively to finance transfers to poor people based on their current distance from the poverty line. Transfers would be sustained at the same level for the full 15-year period with the aim of providing a modicum of income security that might allow beneficiaries to sustainably escape from poverty by 2030.

Table 1 summarizes the key results. In each of three countries—Colombia, Georgia, and Swaziland—a single individual's act of philanthropy could be sufficient to end extreme poverty with immediate effect. Swaziland is an especially striking case as it is among the world’s poorest countries with 41 percent of its population living under the poverty line. In Brazil, Peru, and the Philippines, poverty could be more than halved, or eliminated altogether if the billionaires could be convinced to match Mark Zuckerberg’s example and increase their donation to 99 percent of their wealth.

Source: Authors’ calculations based on Forbes, International Monetary Fund, PovcalNet, and the World Bank. Poverty rates post-transfer calculated based on average distance of the poor from the poverty line.  

In other countries—Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda, and Angola—the potential impact on poverty is only modest. A number of factors account for differences between countries, but two factors that penalize African countries are especially noteworthy. First, the depth of poverty in Africa remains high, with 15 percent of the population living on less than $1.00 a day; and second, Africa has relatively high prices compared to other poor regions, which means more dollars are required to deliver the same amount of welfare.  

For those nations that have more than one billionaire, an alternative scenario is that the country’s club of billionaires makes the pledge together and combines resources to tackle domestic poverty. This would end poverty in China, India, and Indonesia—countries that rank first, second, and fifth globally in terms of the absolute size of their poor populations. The last two columns of Table 2 describe the results.

Table 2. The potential impact on poverty of collective billionaire giving pledges

Source: Authors’ calculations based on Forbes, IMF, PovcalNet, and the World Bank. Poverty rates post-transfer calculated based on average distance of the poor from the poverty line.

This exercise is of course laden with simplifying assumptions. [2] It is intended to provoke discussion, not to provide definitive figures. Moreover, it is open to debate whether transfers represent the most cost-effective way of sustainably ending poverty, the extent to which transfers ought to be targeted, the efficacy of building private transfer programs alongside public safety nets, and whether cash transfers represent the most appropriate use of billionaires’ philanthropy.  

What is less contestable is that a falling global poverty gap presents an opportunity for more systematic efforts for poverty reduction. This raises the question: How low does the poverty gap have to fall before we explicitly design programs to bring the remaining poor above the poverty line? We would argue that we are already beyond this point, not least in countries that remain a long way from ending poverty. Were a billionaire at Davos to commit to using his or her wealth in this fashion, it could trigger a powerful demonstration effect of innovative solutions—not just for other billionaires, but for countries that are currently at risk of being left behind.

[1] The cost of the global poverty gap in 2015 is an overestimate compared with the World Bank’s tentative poverty estimate for the same year. This is due to a different treatment of Nigeria. For this exercise, we rely on data from the 2009/10 Harmonized Nigeria Living Standards Survey reported in PovcalNet, despite its well-documented problems, whereas the Bank draws on the 2010/11 General Household Survey.

[2] Simplifying assumptions include: zero administrative costs in identifying the poor, assessing their income, and administering payments with no leakages, or no portion of those costs being borne by billionaires; the efficacy of administering miniscule transfers to those who stand on the margin of the poverty line; and no change in the cost of closing the poverty gap in a country over time, whether due to population growth, an increase or decrease in poverty, or a change in prices relative to the dollar.   

Once upon a time, long ago, the development industry was fixated on measuring aid from richer to poorer countries. They called it ODA, standing for Official Development Assistance. For decades this aid has been codified, reported, and tracked, mostly by the Development Assistance Committee of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (DAC/OECD), a club of advanced economies. In advance of the Spring Meetings of the IMF and World Bank, the DAC announced that ODA has risen by 6.9% over 2014 levels to 132 billion dollars, a record amount. Importantly, ODA increased even after stripping out funds spent on refugees.

The United Nations has established targets for ODA—like the famous 0.7 percent of national income—which have taken on legendary status as benchmarks of national generosity. Only six out of 28 DAC countries met this target last year: Denmark, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

Some institutions and lobby groups remain fixated on ODA, but many development actors now reject it as flawed. A major theme of the Spring Meetings is how to move beyond ODA and expand other forms of financing for development. ODA is, among other things, symptomatic of a charity perspective, rather than investment; inappropriate for South-South cooperation; and unable to capture the big new landscape of public-private links. What’s more, it is riddled with self-serving quirks like scoring numerous flows—the cost of university places in donor countries, and administrative costs of aid agencies—that never reach developing countries.

Perhaps the most telling weakness of ODA is that emerging powers like China and India see little merit (and arguably, some residual stigma) in this concept and, therefore, will not report on that basis to a club to which they do not belong. As their share of the world economy and their interactions with other “developing” countries continue to grow, this means ODA will inevitably start to represent an ever smaller share of official financing for development.

TOSSD stands for Total Official Support for Sustainable Development. The idea, still being fleshed out, is to have a universally accepted measure of the full array of public financial support for sustainable development. TOSSD should differ from ODA in at least three ways:

• First, it should take a developing country perspective rather than a donor country perspective. So it should cover the value of all funding for development that is officially supported, from pure grants to near-market loans and equity investments, as well as guarantees and insurance.
• Second, it should measure cross-border flows from all countries, not just the rich members of the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee.
• Third, it should include contributions to global public goods needed to support development, like U.N. peacekeeping and pandemic surveillance.

There are many complications behind any international attempt to define and track such a huge range of activities. Some are technical, but can probably be resolved with enough goodwill and professionalism. So, for example, we can debate how to establish whether and how official support to private investors changes their behaviour, delivering “additional” development results compared to a situation without that support. In the end, sensible solutions and workarounds will be found.

More difficult are a couple of politically sensitive challenges, which at the same time underlie the value of reaching consensus on a new measure. How far, for example, should the new measure recognise indirect spending on global public goods? Take for example public research on an AIDS vaccine that could lead to prevention of millions of deaths in developing countries. Right now, this would not count as ODA because the promotion of the economic development and welfare of developing countries is not its main objective.

We tend to think that consideration of globe-spanning benefits like these, which do not fit the simple mould of money crossing borders, is an essential feature of a new measure of development finance. However, it will need to be bounded sensibly, not least because of underlying suspicions that the countries that are today most likely to deploy such tools, and claim them as a large part of their distinctive contribution, are among the “old rich”—though that could change quickly. We suggest that spending on a defined list of global public goods should be included, perhaps those that support Agenda 2030, such as U.N. peacekeeping or a global research consortium like GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance.

A second potentially divisive issue, already alluded to, is how to value non-monetary flows, like technical assistance, and in a fair way across countries. We think it would be a powerful positive signal for international cooperation if even modest contributions by low- and middle-income countries are recognised, celebrated, and valued according to the contribution being made, not the cost of providing the assistance. The assistance provided by professionals from developing countries (think Cuban doctors) should be measured at the same prices as assistance provided by professionals from rich countries. Some form of purchasing power parity equivalence would need to be defined and used.

This is a hugely contentious question. Neither of the most obvious answers, the well-organised but globally unloved OECD and the legitimate but under-resourced U.N. secretariat, are likely to be acceptable without some changes. A preferred candidate has to have a sufficiently broad group of countries prepared to self-report on even a loose set of definitions in order to get momentum. At a minimum all the major economies of the world, for example members of the G-20, should be willing to participate. It should also have the technical capacity to help countries provide information in a consistent way.

The International Monetary Fund or World Bank could be candidates—most countries already report to them on a range of data, including financial flows. The Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation, with its membership of many development actors and technical support, could be another. Or a new group could be created in much the same way as the International Aid Transparency Initiative. This could even be a revamped Development Assistance Committee that operates with broader support in much the same way as the OECD’s tax work has many non-OECD members participating. What is important is that the guiding principle be to measure official cross-border financial resources that support the new universally-agreed Sustainable Development Goals, and to start now and learn by doing.  Such initiatives are too easily killed by subjecting them to endless external criticism that a perfect solution has not been found.

TOSSD may be one of the least attractive acronyms on offer today. Without disrespect to its OECD authors, it will anyway have to change to something that works for all the major stakeholders, and is not visibly invented in Paris and that also encourages players who are not strictly speaking “official,” like foundations, to sign up. We tend to favor a plainer, simpler wrapper like International Development Contributions (IDC), or Defined Development Contributions (DDC). 

Almost two years ago, I alerted readers to a contest, sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation through the Global Development Network, to develop new ideas to improve the impact of development cooperation. The Next Horizons Essay contest 2014 received 1,470 submissions from 142 countries, from which 13 winners were selected.

Four of the winners took part in a roundtable at the Brookings Institution yesterday. Here’s a quick synopsis of the main takeaways.

There is a lot of experimentation happening in the delivery of aid, and most aid agencies are thinking hard about how to position themselves to contribute more to the sustainable development goals. In part, this is because these agencies are mission-driven to improve impact. The current system of aid replenishments of multilateral institutions forces them to compete with each other by persuading donors that they are best deserving of the scarce aid budgets being allocated. Even bilateral aid agencies find themselves under budgetary stress, asked to justify the impact of their lending compared to a counterfactual of channeling the money through a multilateral agency or of contributing to an appeal from the United Nations for humanitarian assistance or climate financing.

Stephen Mwangi Macharia talked about using development assistance to promote social impact investing. He noted the problems of sustainability, dependence, and ownership that can arise in traditional aid relationships and argued that social entrepreneurs can avoid such pitfalls. The question then becomes how donors can best help build the market infrastructure to support such efforts. Stephen’s idea: develop a social impact network initiative to build entrepreneurs’ capacity to develop “bankable” projects and to have a database to help match entrepreneurs and funders. 

There is certainly a lot of interest in social impact investing. According to the Global Impact Investing Network, around $60 billion are already under management (although mostly in developed countries) and the market is growing rapidly. Some questioned the role of aid donors however, noting that they could reduce incentives for others (universities, non-profits, etc.) who charge a fee for business development, awareness raising, and other market services. Others questioned the risk tolerance of donors for impact investing and a culture in many countries where business is viewed suspiciously when it tries to intentionally generate positive social and environmental impacts. As an aside, Judith Rodin, president of the Rockefeller Foundation, has noted that the development of impact investing was one of the accomplishments that she was most proud of.

Ray Kennedy suggested that vertical funds, because of better governance and a sharper focus, should be a preferred channel for development assistance. Interestingly, his argument was not based on advocacy for a particular sector, but on the improved adaptability of these institutions. His evidence provided several examples of how vertical funds changed in response to changing global conditions, and, he argued, such change is a highly desirable virtue in our rapidly changing times.

Of course, the recommendation to favor vertical funds did not go unchallenged. There was a lively discussion about the comparative advantage of different institutions and the dangers of mission creep by more effective institutions into space left open by less effective institutions. Yet, most agreed that new platforms were being fluidly created to solve new problems, and that a “mixed coalition,” to borrow a phrase from one of the participants, was part of the preferred solution.

Yuen Yuen Ang took on the problem of local ownership directly. It is easy to talk about local ownership, she said, but few agencies do anything about it in their actual operations. Instead, they promote best practice ideas, some of which may fail even the basic test of “do no harm.” Basing her arguments on the complexity of how organizations change, she advocates specific internal reforms: diversify staff experiences and backgrounds beyond economics and finance; carve out time for staff to pursue “non-standard” approaches; and build a bank of examples about “best-fit” approaches that have been shown to work in weak institutional settings.

A lively discussion followed on best-fit versus best-practice approaches and, indeed, on whether there is a trade-off between the two or whether the issue is how to balance both at the same time. There was agreement that best-practice applies to some issues, especially where global standards have developed (debt management or anti-money laundering, perhaps). Best-fit is more useful when judgement and a deep understanding of local conditions are required. Some questioned the role of external donor agencies in such contexts, however.

Dan Honig argued for greater autonomy of field-based staff. Based on an extensive and unique data set, he was able to test the impact of the degree of autonomy on project success. The econometrics show significant impact of autonomy on certain activities and in certain situations. When the context is fluid and unpredictable, as in fragile states for example, or when judgement is required, as in institutional development, then autonomy can help. But when desired outcomes are easily measurable, such as school or road construction, then autonomy makes little difference.

During the discussion, there was agreement that too much of a focus on metrics could be distortionary and, in fluid situations, could be damaging. The theme of donor risk aversion came up again, but this time coupled with the idea that metrics, however false and misleading they might be, provide comfort and cover for bureaucrats. A sympathetic hearing was given to former United States Agency for International Development Administrator Andrew Natsios’ concept of “obsessive measurement disorder.” But, participants also warned of the need to show that the costs of autonomy, in the form of larger field presence and a limited ability to scale up, outweighed the benefits.

It was refreshing to see new evidence and multidisciplinary approaches being brought to bear on development effectiveness. The four themes highlighted in these essays—making markets work for the poor, improving agency governance, local ownership and contextualization, and decentralization and autonomy—resonated with those participants who are, or had been, active in aid agencies. I thank the Global Development Network and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for this initiative, as well as to the winning scholars for injecting new ideas into the discourse.

Mayor Coleman says Ohio''s metropolitan areas are the incubators of success and the anchors of prosperity for entire state.

Event Information

Global warming is changing environmental conditions in the Arctic and opening new opportunities for resource extraction. Greenland, long thought to have excellent potential for iron ore, copper, zinc, lead, gold, rubies, rare earth elements and oil, has looked to strengthen its economy through the development of these resources. For many in Greenland, including the current government, resource extraction is seen as a necessary step toward the ultimate goal of independence from Denmark.

On September 24, the Energy Security Initiative (ESI) and the John L. Thornton China Center at Brookings hosted Premier Aleqa Hammond of Greenland for an Alan and Jane Batkin International Leaders Forum address on the future of natural resource extraction in Greenland. Following her address, a panel discussion highlighted the findings of a new Brookings report, “The Greenland Gold Rush: Promise and Pitfalls of Greenland’s Energy and Mineral Resources.” Report co-author Kevin Foley, a doctoral candidate at Cornell University, was joined on the panel by ESI Director Charles Ebinger and University of Copenhagen Professor Minik Rosing, who served as a discussant. The panel was moderated by Jonathan Pollack, a senior fellow with the China Center and Center for East Asia Policy Studies at Brookings.

This event was part of the Alan and Jane Batkin International Leaders Forum Series, a new event series hosted by Foreign Policy at Brookings which brings global political, diplomatic and thought leaders to Washington, D.C. for major policy addresses.

 Join the conversation on Twitter using #Greenland

Audio

• Natural Resource Development in Greenland: An Alan and Jane Batkin International Leaders Forum with Greenland's Premier Aleqa Hammond

Transcript

• Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

• 20140924_greenland_transcript

Dear President Obama,

Your decision to give the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) wilderness status and to ban future oil and gas drilling on the Arctic Coastal plain represents the death knell of a coherent national petroleum policy, especially when combined with limitations on new leases in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the Arctic Coastal plain alone contains an estimated 10.4 billion barrels of oil. These actions, combined with your hesitation to approve the Keystone XL pipeline (despite five environmental assessments which conclude that the pipeline can be built and operated safely) make your so-called “all of the above energy policy” a mockery of policy incoherence.

The lack of coherent policy and contradiction continues in other areas as well. While your supporters will argue that the simultaneous opening up of areas from the Chesapeake to North Florida and parts of the western Gulf Coast shows that you are willing to allow exploration in areas deemed less environmentally sensitive, one has to query both your seeming lack of concern for East Coast bird and marine sanctuaries, not to mention possible despoliation resulting from the potential for oil spills along the East Coast. Is protection of the endangered loggerhead sea turtle and the ACE Basin along the East Coast really of lesser concern than protection of the walrus and polar bear in the Arctic? Furthermore, nearly one-third of all seafood production in the continental United States is harvested in the Gulf. The argument that Alaska is to be protected because of its “special” environmental concerns seems hypocritical given the vital importance of the petroleum industry to the Alaskan economy. Meanwhile the East Coast does not need the petroleum industry to survive or as a means of large scale employment like Alaska does.

Before President Clinton placed the Arctic Coastal plain off limits for drilling, the Department of the Interior conducted a study on the impact oil and gas drilling might have on the polar bear habitat in the region, an area equal in size to Rhode Island. The study found that there were less than four established polar bear dens in the whole region, suggesting the possibility, however remote, in the minds of Clinton administration officials, that Arctic wildlife and marine life can co-exist with development, as they have done at Prudhoe Bay since oil production commenced in 1978. Likewise, it is useful to remember that when the Trans-Alaska Pipeline system (TAPS) was built, many in the environmental community predicted a disaster for the migration of caribou herds across northern Alaska. Today, the caribou population is in fact larger than at the time the pipeline was built.

Mr. President, your actions would be hard enough to understand if they only centered on diverse points of view about the nature of fossil fuel usage and how fast we can transition to a non-fossil fuel era—not only in the United States but also around the globe. While your administration may see the closing of Alaska and the opening of the East Coast to oil and gas drilling as giving each side a bit of what they want, you fail to see that these are not juggling the interests of two constituencies. Rather, these are localized issues with high stakes, especially for the people of Alaska who often do not have the diverse employment opportunities found along the East Coast. In Alaska, the economic vitality of the state is deeply tied to resource extraction. The royalties and taxes from those industries fund the state’s public education and health care systems, while also providing Alaskans with jobs as ship captains, oil field workers, fishery workers, etc.

Further, your actions on ANWAR and the Coastal Plain are seen as likely to end any hope of revitalizing the TAPS flow rate and the resulting enhanced revenues generated through new sources of production. Mr. President, for thousands of years native Inuit populations have inhabited regions bordering the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas, living on local fish and wildlife and native flora and fauna. With the discovery of oil and the inflow of oil-related money, the Inuit people have seen vast improvements in their health, life expectancy, education and financial security. Now with Prudhoe Bay production in serious decline and TAPS running at less than 600,000 mbd (down from 2 mmbd), the benefits that have accrued to them—as well as all Alaskan citizens through the royalty and taxes placed in Alaska’s Permanent Fund—are in danger of being lost, casting Alaska once again into the status of a subjugated territory of the lower 48 states.

Mr. President, in May, the United States will take over chairmanship of the Arctic Council, a pan-Arctic organization designed to address Arctic issues in a multilateral context. Alaska is our only state in the Arctic, and because of Alaska we are an Arctic nation. It also is the only place where we share a border with Russia providing an opportunity for collaboration rather than the confrontation we see today. It seems strange that, at a time when we will be in a position to lead the Arctic nations on mitigating the threats posed to the region by climate change and in insuring that the opportunities for resource development are done using environmentally-sound practices through effective regulation and oversight that we choose now to close off this great resource rather than allowing their benefits to flow to the local Alaskan population while providing resources for the nation as well as the rest of the world.

In a few short weeks, the National Petroleum Council, after months of painstaking work, will submit a report on the future direction of the nation’s Arctic policy and on offshore oil and gas development in Alaska. This report was done at the request of Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz. As a member of the deliberative study group that consulted on the report, I hope you will examine its findings closely and hopefully will reconsider the opportunities afforded by prudent development of this vast resource in a way that recognizes the interests of Alaskans as well as the broader interests of our nation.

Can the United States and Russia actually cooperate in the Arctic? It might seem like wishful thinking, given that Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev asserted that there is in fact a “New Cold War” between the two countries in a speech at the Munich Security Conference. Many people—at that conference and elsewhere—see the idea as far-fetched. Sure, Russia is launching air strikes in what has become an all-out proxy war in Syria, continues to be aggressive against Ukraine, and has increased its military build-up in the High North. To many observers, the notion of cooperating with Russia in the Arctic was a non-starter as recently as the mid-2015. There have been, however, significant changes in Russia’s behavior in the last several months—so, maybe it is possible to bracket the Arctic out of the evolving confrontation.

These and other matters were the subject of discussion at a recent conference at the Harriman Institute of Columbia University in New York, in which we had the pleasure to partake last week.

Moscow learns its limitations

Russia steadily increased its military activities and deployments in the High North until autumn 2015, including by creating a new Arctic Joint Strategic Command. There have been, however, indirect but accumulating signs of a possible break from this trend. Instead of moving forward with building the Arctic brigades, Russian top brass now aim at reconstituting three divisions and a tank army headquarters at the “Western front” in Russia. News from the newly-reactivated airbases in Novaya Zemlya and other remote locations are primarily about workers’ protests due to non-payments and non-delivery of supplies. Snap exercises that used to be so worrisome for Finland and Norway are now conducted in the Southern military district, which faces acute security challenges. Russia’s new National Security Strategy approved by President Vladimir Putin on the last day of 2015 elaborates at length on the threat from NATO and the chaos of “color revolutions,” but says next to nothing about the Arctic.

The shift of attention away from the Arctic coincided with the launch of Russia’s military intervention in Syria, and was strengthened by the sharp conflict with Turkey. Deputy Prime Minister Dmitri Rogozin—who used to preside over the military build-up in the High North—is these days travelling to Baghdad, instead. Sustaining the Syrian intervention is a serious logistical challenge on its own—add low oil prices into the mix, which threw the Russian state budget and funding for major rearmament programs into disarray, and it’s clear that Russia is in trouble. 

The shift of attention away from the Arctic coincided with the launch of Russia’s military intervention in Syria, and was strengthened by the sharp conflict with Turkey.

The government is struggling with allocating painful cuts in cash flow, and many ambitious projects in the High North are apparently being curtailed. In the squabbles for dwindling resources, some in the Russian bureaucracy point to the high geopolitical stakes in the Arctic—but that argument has lost convincing power. The threats to Russian Arctic interests are in fact quite low, and its claim to expanding its control over the continental shelf (presented at the U.N. earlier this month) depends upon consent from its Arctic neighbors.

Let’s work together

Chances for cooperation in the Arctic are numerous, as we and our colleagues have described in previous studies. The current economic climate (i.e. falling oil prices, which makes additional energy resource extraction in most of the Arctic a distant-future scenario), geopolitical climate (sanctions on Russia targeting, amongst others, Arctic energy extraction), and budget constraints on both ends (Russia for obvious reasons, the United States because it chooses not to prioritize Arctic matters) urge us to prioritize realistically.

• Improving vessel emergency response mechanisms. Though many analysts like to focus on upcoming resource struggles in the Arctic, the chief concern of naval and coast guard forces there is actually increased tourism. Conditions are very harsh most of the year and can change dramatically and unexpectedly. Given the limited capacity of all Arctic states to navigate Arctic waters, a tourist vessel in distress is probably the main nightmare scenario for the short term. Increased cooperation to optimize search and rescue capabilities is one way to prepare as much as possible for such an undesirable event. 
• Additional research on climate change and methane leakage. Many questions remain regarding the changing climate, its effects on local flora and fauna, and long-term consequences for indigenous communities. Increasingly appreciated in the scientific community, an elephant in the room is trapped methane in permafrost layers. As the Arctic ice thaws, significant amounts of methane may be released into the atmosphere, further exacerbating global warming.
• Expanding oil emergency response preparedness. The current oil price slump likely put the brakes on most Arctic exploration in the short term. We also believe that, unless all long-term demand forecasts are false, an additional 15 million barrels of oil per day will be needed by 2035 or so—the Arctic is still viewed as one of the last frontiers where this precious resource may be found. At the moment, Arctic states are ill-prepared to deal with a future oil spill, and more has to be learned about, for instance, oil recovery on ice and in snow. The Agreement on Cooperation on Marine Oil Pollution Preparedness and Response in the Arctic was an important first step.
• Preparing Bering Strait for increased sea traffic. As the Arctic warms, increased sea traffic is only a matter of time. The Bering Strait, which is only 50 miles wide at its narrowest point, lacks basic communication infrastructure, sea lane designation, and other critical features. This marks another important and urgent area of cooperation between the United States and Russia, even if dialogue at the highest political level is constrained. 

Can the Arctic be siloed?

There is no doubt that the current cooled climate between Russia and the other Arctic states, in particular the United States, complicates an ongoing dialogue. It is even true that it may prohibit a meaningful conversation about certain issues that have already been discussed. 

Skeptics will argue that it is unrealistic to isolate the Arctic from the wider realm of international relations. Though we agree, we don’t think leaders should shy away from political dialogue altogether. To the contrary, in complicated political times, the stakes are even higher: Leaders should continue existing dialogues where possible and go the extra mile to preserve what can be preserved. Russia’s desire for expanding its control over the Arctic shelf is entirely legitimate—and opens promising opportunities for conversations on issues of concern for many states, including China, for that matter.

Realists in the United States prefer to focus on expanding American military capabilities, their prime argument being that Russia has significantly more capacity in the Arctic. While we would surely agree that America’s current Arctic capabilities are woefully poor, as our colleagues have described, an exclusive focus on that shortcoming may send the wrong signal. 

We would therefore argue in favor of a combined strategy: making additional investments in U.S. Arctic capabilities while doubling down on diplomatic efforts to preserve the U.S.-Russian dialogue in the Arctic. That may not be easy, but given the tremendous success of a constructive approach in the Arctic in recent years, this is something worth fighting for. Figuratively speaking, that is.