Foreign Policy and Development: Drip by Drip Erosion of USAID

A recent Devex article summarizes some points of a policy paper published Sept. 28, by Gerald Hyman of CSIS. The paper outlines how USAID’s independence has evolved, and eroded, in the last three administrations, as well as in the current one.

"The rise of development in the ranks of U.S. national priorities is a double-edged sword. It is a major gain for the development community but it could also mean the weakening of the U.S. Agency for International Development as an independent agency, some experts note.

The development community, including USAID, would almost inevitably become more engaged in foreign policy and security issues as development becomes central to the U.S.’s national security framework, explains Gerald Hyman, senior adviser and president of the Hills Program on Governance at the Center for Strategic and International Studies."

See the short Devex summary here.

The full CSIS paper is available here.

STAR-TIDES* Field Demonstration: 5 - 8 Oct

The National Defense University is delighted to announce the 4th annual STAR-TIDES* Field Demonstration held at Fort Lesley J. McNair, Washington D.C. from Tuesday, October 5 to Friday, October 8.

During this four day event, a wide range of capabilities that could be useful in post-war, post-disaster, or impoverished situations will be demonstrated in an open field environment along with examples from recent support to real-world contingencies. The event will take place

during regular business hours, so please join us at your convenience for an hour or two, or even all day.

Attendance is free and open to the general public. For more information, and to register for the event, please visit this link.

The focus is on active demonstrations of integrated infrastructures. All activities will be independent of the power grid, and communications will be live. We will feature four sections that each include a mix of shelter, water, power, integrated cooking, heating/cooling, lighting,
sanitation, and information and communications technologies, provided by a mix of USG, NGOs, and companies:

1) Stabilization and Reconstruction in Afghanistan
2) Disaster Relief in the US
3) Building Partnership Capacity in Refugee Camp Environment
4) Disaster Relief in Tropical Regions (Central America and Western Pacific).

*STAR-TIDES = Sharing To Accelerate Research - Transformative Innovation for Development and Emergency Support The TIDES project conducts research, provides analysis, and is dedicated to open-source knowledge
sharing to promote sustainable support to stressed populations under severe stress. 

The global STAR-TIDES network promotes distributed collaboration among public-private, whole of government and trans-national participants.

  Complete information at: www.star-tides.net

President Obama's Global Development Policy

White House Video: President Obama at Millennium Development Goals Conference

Making Development Aid More Effective - Brookings Institute Report

Excerpt from Brookings website

The upcoming United Nations High-Level Plenary Meeting on the Millennium Development Goals will spotlight global efforts to reduce poverty, celebrating innovative progress in some areas while illuminating systemic weaknesses in international efforts to support development. In November of this year, the Group of Twenty will convene in Seoul, and development will once again be on the agenda. 

One year later, South Korea will also host the High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness. Each of these summits could benefit from an examination of how bilateral and multilateral programs can better anticipate and reflect the realities of global development in the 21st century.

2010 Brookings Blum Roundtable Report

From high-profile stabilization contexts like Afghanistan to global public health campaigns, and from a renewed focus on sustainable food security to the looming implications of climate change, development effectiveness is a central and hotly debated issue. 

As traditional donors make progress in the dialogue on international aid effectiveness, they must increasingly take into account the broader landscape of influential actors, including emerging donors, multinational corporations, megaphilanthropists, high-profile advocates and a vocal and energized global public.

Given the need to reform development assistance efforts within the current window of political opportunity, in these policy briefs Brookings experts and colleagues with other organizations offer a range of recommendations for influential global development actors that look beyond questions of increased resources for antipoverty services to the effectiveness of different approaches and to the systemic issues associated with the delivery of development outcomes.

The briefs include:
Can Aid Catalyze Development? » (PDF)
Homi Kharas offers recommendations on how to link aid effectiveness more firmly to development strategies through a new multilateralism, a more transparent aid system, differentiated strategies for recipient countries and a longer-term focus for aid.

U.S. Government Support for Development Outcomes: Toward Systemic Reform » (PDF)
Noam Unger highlights the current pivotal moment for revamping U.S. global development efforts and outlines potential improvements to aid operations and fundamental reforms related to overarching strategy, organizational structures and underlying statutes.

The Private Sector and Aid Effectiveness: Toward New Models of Engagement » (PDF)
With an emphasis on business, Jane Nelson discusses the role of the private sector in development and proposes various ways to scale up the collaboration between these actors and official donors.

International NGOs and Foundations: Essential Partners in Creating an Effective Architecture for Aid » (PDF)
With a focus on international nonprofit organizations, Samuel A. Worthington (InterAction) and Tony Pipa (independent consultant) analyze the relationship between official aid and private development assistance, suggesting that the role of civil society must evolve as part of the international dialogue on aid effectiveness.

Responding to a Changing Climate: Challenges in Financing Climate-Resilient Development Assistance » (PDF)
Kemal Derviş and Sarah Puritz Milsom (Brookings Global) underline key finance-related challenges in achieving climate-resilient growth in developing countries and propose steps to ensure progress in responding to the climate change challenge.

Civilian–Military Cooperation in Achieving Aid Effectiveness: Lessons from Recent Stabilization Contexts » (PDF)
Margaret L. Taylor (Council on Foreign Relations) explores civilian and military roles and the right balance between them for delivering effective international assistance, offering lessons that are critical for further analysis of foreign militaries as aid providers. 

Rethinking the Roles of Multilaterals in the Global Aid Architecture » (PDF)
Homi Kharas probes key issues, including the appropriate multilateral share of total aid, the proliferation of multilateral agencies, knowledge exchange among development professionals and the financial leveraging of loans to capital.

These policy briefs were commissioned for the 2010 Brookings Blum Roundtable, which annually invites government officials, academics, development practitioners and leaders from businesses, foundations and international organizations to together consider new ways to alleviate global poverty through cross-sector collaboration.

UNDP Focus on Development Results

This ‘Handbook on Planning, Monitoring and Evaluating for Development Results’ is a 2009 updated edition of the 2002 edition of ‘Handbook on Monitoring and Evaluation for Results’. 

It seeks to address new directions in planning, monitoring and evaluation in the context of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) corporate strategic plan, the requirements of the UNDP evaluation policy approved by the Executive Board in 2006 and the United Nations Evaluation Group (UNEG) ‘Standards for Evaluation in the UN System. The updated Handbook also incorporates information recommended by key users of the Handbook during various workshops held by UNDP units.

Global Launch of Handbook on Planning, Monitoring and Evaluating for Development Results from UNDP on Vimeo.

The guiding framework of UNDP for planning, monitoring and evaluation is provided in the ‘Programme and Operations Policy and Procedure’ (POPP) , the evaluation policy , and the UNEG ‘Standards for Evaluation in the UN System’. The POPP and evaluation policy aim to provide guidance to UNDP management and staff on key functions and mechanisms through which the results and principles enshrined in the overarching programmatic documents of UNDP, including the strategic plan, are to be achieved. They reflect the intentions of the Executive Board and also inform UNDP stakeholders of how UNDP conducts its work.

These documents provide the prescriptive content on what needs to be done, by whom and by when. This Handbook complements this content by providing UNDP programme units with guidance on ‘how to’ and practical tools to strengthen results-oriented planning, monitoring and evaluation in UNDP.

The Happy Planet Index

Statistician Nic Marks asks why we measure a nation's success by its productivity -- instead of by the happiness and well-being of its people. He introduces the Happy Planet Index, which tracks national well-being against resource use (because a happy life doesn't have to cost the earth). Which countries rank highest in the HPI? You might be surprised.