Source: Carnegie
ISSUE BRIEF
Trade, Equity,
and Development Project
August 23, 2002
Bush Faces a Credibility Challenge at the
Johannesburg Development Summit
By John
Audley, Senior Associate
On the eve of the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa, Bush administration officials are trying desperately to present a coherent development policy agenda, and save themselves from the international embarrassment Bush Sr. suffered at the Rio Earth Summit a decade ago.
For them, the most important goal for the WSSD is to shift primary responsibility for sustainable development with the world's poor countries. Their plan has three elements. First, governments must promote good policies, which means creating effective democratic institutions, where the rule of law ensures equal treatment under the law and the protection of property. Second, development must begin with expanding production, a job for the private sector. "The most important engine of growth is the private sector - not governments," says Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs Paul Dobriansky. Working in partnership with the private sector, governments and civil society groups will mobilize development resources to unleash human productivity, reduce poverty, promote healthy environments, and foster sustainable growth. Finally, the administration will narrow its focus to seven areas: health, energy, water, sustainable agriculture and rural development, education, oceans and coastal management, and forests.
Narrowing the range of subjects on which global leaders will focus makes sense, and the administration has correctly emphasized a combination of human health and environmental areas of greater importance to developing countries. National ownership of development plans is also a good idea. However, two points in favor of the administration's plan for WSSD does not give them what they need to make this happen-credibility. The administration seems to know this, but their efforts to cobble together the pieces of a disparate, inconsistent, and sometimes incoherent foreign development policy into a program of immediate, concrete actions that will alleviate suffering among the world's poorest countries has been challenging at best.
First, while it talks a good game, the administration's actual behavior regarding development assistance is based upon development programs consistent with our own world view - not necessarily the development path selected by poor countries. This lies in stark contrast to the rhetoric outlined by Secretary Paul O'Neill during his trip through Africa where he said that demand would be the driving factor for development assistance.
For example, President Bush's proposed Millennium Challenge Account would go only to countries "that qualify for it." But when you ask development agency officials what that means, you learn only what it does not mean. It does not mean providing resources to assistance providers selected by what developing country officials on the ground feel they require. Instead, U.S. AID officers pride themselves in knowing whom the "good" providers from the "bad" providers in a developing country - a typically arrogant position that translates into donor assistance provided through U.S.-approved agents only. The poor track record of this top-down approach is painfully obvious, as it is the track record Secretary O'Neill was decrying when he himself was in Africa.
Second, Bush's newfound foreign aid generosity is a puzzle in itself. The administration's support for the trade technical assistance ($555MM), the proposed Millennium Challenge Account ($5BB increase over three years), Mother-Childs HIV/AIDS prevention ($500MM), and $700 MM increase in money for climate change research adds up to a big chunk of taxpayer money. And while more development assistance from wealthier countries is important, proposals offered this quickly take on the appearance of poor fiscal management. Assuming Congress authorizes all this support (an unlikely assumption given our current state of economic affairs), the administration needs to articulate an actual plan for coordinating how these resources will be spent.
Then there's the recurring inconsistency between rhetoric and reality regarding U.S. trade policy. Trading with developing countries empowers people and their governments to earn respect through hard work and selling quality products. Unfortunately recent decisions regarding U.S. agriculture subsidies and steel tariffs show that both Congress and the administration are better at talking trade than promoting trade that genuinely helps poor people grow out of poverty. Indeed, we couldn't even overcome domestic political tensions to enable Pakistani garment companies to export more suits into the U.S., thus helping one of our key allies in the war against terror.
Finally, there is a failure to recognize the problems associated with the unsustainability of our current behavior. In a recently published essay in Foreign Policy, former United Nations Environment Program head Gustave Speth catalogues the threats to global environmental health - all predicted with uncanny accuracy ten years ago during the first sustainable development summit. Rich countries pollute the environment too much, and they cannot promote the same patterns of consumption worldwide. According to Thabod Mbeki, President of the Republic of South African and the host for the Summit, China will need 80 million barrels of oil a day to meet the current consumption patterns we enjoy in the U.S. - more than the entire world produces in a single day.
Coherent development policy that is truly sensitive to decisions taken by the world's poorer countries is the key to making the Administration's role in the upcoming WSSD relevant, and the path away from the poor performance suffered by his father ten years ago. Unfortunately, taking this path seems a bit distant from the road administration officials have taken to Johannesburg.