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Background on Water for the World Act
The Senator Paul Simon Water for the World Act of 2009, was introduced in March by Senate Assistant Majority Leader Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Senator Bob Corker (R-TN).
The bipartisan legislation would make water and sanitation important pillars of America’s development policy, with the target of providing 100 million people with first-time access to safe and sustainable drinking water and sanitation by 2015.
The Water for the World Act targets underdeveloped countries with focused initiatives to improve access to clean water and sanitation, fosters global cooperation on research and development, provides technical assistance and capacity-building, and provides seed money for the deployment of clean water and sanitation technologies. The bill would elevate water as a U.S. foreign policy priority by creating an Office of Water within the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and a Special Coordinator for International Water within the Department of State.
This act builds upon earlier landmark legislation, theSenator Paul Simon Water for the Poor Act of 2005, which represented the first time a Millennium Development Goal (to halve the percentage of people without access to safe water or sanitation by 2015), was written into American law.
The Water for the World Act was referred to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on March 17th. With only five cosponsors, the bill isn’t receiving the attention needed for further congressional action. Ask your senators to cosponsor S. 624 now
-Rena Pacheco-Theard
European Commission Update
On Wednesday April 9th, the European Commission launched its yearly update on how EU donor countries are helping to meet the MDGs. This year President Barroso and Commissioner for Development Louis Michel used the opportunity to make some key announcements on advancing crucial development assistance for African countries. It’s fantastic that the leadership of the Commission is putting development matters so high on his political agenda. Less than a week after the London Summit, the Commission outlined three main ways it would act to help developing countries combat the effects of this economic crash:
- Pushing EU governments to meet their aid promises and ensuring the highest degree of aid effectiveness possible. Development Commissioner Louis Michel’s message was: “We know what we must do: meet our aid targets, advance our money to have an impact when it is most needed, refocus our existing programmes to tackle the crisis and then make every Euro count”.
- The EU is proposing spending more cash for the poorest countries to help fill some of the financing gaps created by the economic downturn. The €1billion Food Facility was intended to be spent over 3 years- now the Commission have promised to spend €800m of it by the end of the year to inject much-needed cash into the agricultural sectors of countries most in need of support for farmers. A whopping €3billion will be brought forward for African, Caribbean and Pacific country governments and another €500m for spending on health, education and other vital social spending.
- Thirdly aid effectiveness is the Commission’s priority. When Louis Michel spoke of ‘making every euro count’ he was alluding to some research he had commissioned which showed that just by working together more effectively, the European Commission and the 27 governments could save a huge €7billion a year which could be freed up to save lives in this downturn. The Commission wants more coordination between donors- it’s common sense that not every donor should work on every sector in one country, and we should be seeing more of donor countries playing to their strengths and taking the lead amongst donors in their specialist areas.
All in all the announcement yesterday was a very positive step- it shows the EU has not just read the G20 communique and agreed- it is doing that rare thing of acting quickly upon agreements. We hope it will convince other G20 countries to do the same, and fast- we’re particularly looking toward the Spring Meetings of the World Bank and IMF to raise more funding for Africa in grant form. Any loans that are given we will argue should be extremely concessional so they don’t spark another debt crisis. There are of course some concerns about the announcements yesterday– Will governments replenish those funds when there’s not enough in the pot next year? Ironically, if the EU alone kept to its 2010 promises, that would mean another €20 billion on overall assistance over the next two years. So the message is simple- we welcome these announcements, on the condition that EU governments stick to their ODA promises.
-Eloise Todd
The Financial Crisis and the Poor
A World Bank report released on 8 March projects that global GDP will decline this year for the first time since World War II. The new report revised earlier estimates that emerging markets would sustain and grow the world economy even as the economies of developed countries contracted. The report was released ahead of the G20 finance ministers’ meeting to be held in London later this week. The report predicts that developing countries face a financial gap of $270-$700 billion caused by the global recession, and warns that even at the lower end of this range, international financial institutions such as the World Bank and IMF cannot by themselves currently cover the shortfall that includes mounting public and private debt and trade deficits.
The report also highlighted earlier analysis that poverty (people living below $1.25 per day) will increase by around 46 million people in 2009 (and by 53 million for those living below $2 per day), caused by adverse effects on employment and wages as well as slowing remittance flows. The crisis will be a major setback to the progress towards the Millennium Development Goals, as the long run consequences of the crisis may be more severe than those observed in the short run. For example, when poor households withdraw their children from school, there is a significant risk that they will not return once the crisis is over, or that they will not be able to recover the learning gaps resulting from the missed months or years of school attendance. The World Bank also warns that infant deaths in developing countries may be 200,000-400,000 per year higher on average between 2009 and the MDG target year of 2015 than they would have been in the absence of the crisis, according to its preliminary analysis.
The report concludes that stabilization, protecting longer-term growth and development, and protecting the vulnerable will be the main challenges for developing and emerging market countries, but pursuing these objectives requires significant resources which low income countries lack. As a response to the crisis, the World Bank is calling on developed nations to dedicate 0.7% of the money they spend on stimulus programmes (the G20’s announced fiscal stimulus collectively amounts to almost $1 trillion for 2008 and 2009 as of end of January, with a further $650 billion in 2010) toward a Vulnerability Fund to help developing countries absorb the shock of the financial crisis. Some G20 countries such as the UK have expressed interest in this idea, but to date, none of the countries has committed to it. The upcoming G20 finance ministers’ meeting will be an important moment to discuss this proposal.
-Mikiko Imai
MCC Looks Toward the Future
Director Douglas Busby and Damascus Films recently put together a video with the cooperation of The Millennium Challenge Corporation explaining the MCC’s work, the progress they’ve made, and their hopes for the next administration.
Founded in 2004, the MCC is “based on the principle that aid is most effective when it reinforces good governance, economic freedom and investments in people.”
Be sure to take a few minutes and check it out:
-Chris Scott
It’s Time to Stand Up for People that Can’t Sit Down
Last week, we wrote about World Toilet Day. John Sauer from Water Advocates passed along this great post about raising awareness for better sanitation practices, and what we can do to help:
Public indifference to the HIVAIDS epidemic was chronicled in 1987 in And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic. As the author Randy Shilts lamented, “Everyone responded with an ordinary pace to an extraordinary situation.” Thankfully now there is attention to this deadly disease, but it wasn’t always the case.
Another pandemic—namely more than two dozen diseases associated with poor sanitation—now faces the same kind of unresponsiveness. Every 20 seconds a child dies of sanitation-related diseases, which kill five times as many children as HIVAIDS. As an article in the New England Journal of Medicine documents, pathogens that cause diarrheal diseases, tracoma, and guinea-worm are among the culprits. You didn’t think you can die of diarrhea did you? Well you probably can’t but those living where open defecation is the norm can. Human excrement: it is the last taboo.
Pushback on this topic is very real. A TIME Magazine review of Rose George’s new book on sanitation suggested that “a series of articles was plenty on this topic.” One US government official refused to release a statement on World Toilet Day because of objection to the word “toilet.” Progress towards the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target of halving the proportion of people without basic sanitation by 2015 will not be met, at current rates, until 2115. In fact, the original version of the MDGs didn’t have a sanitation target.
World Evangelical Church leaders lend their voice to the MDGs
Hi there, my name is Adam Phillips. I recently joined the team at ONE as Faith Relations Manager. From time to time I’ll let you know what’s going on with our faith partners in The ONE Campaign. Before I joined the team in DC I have posted here in the past as a local pastor in Chicago and as co-chair of ONE’s partner, Micah Challenge USA .
I wanted to let you know about some significant commitments that were made on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) at the recent World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) general assembly in Pattaya, Thailand. 500 evangelical church leaders, representing some 128 national evangelical alliance groups from the US and around the world, passed major resolutions, on such issues as HIV/AIDS, poverty, the environment, and the global financial crisis.
Recognizing that the MDGs “echoed the mind” of teaching in their own tradition, the WEA called on government leaders in both the Global North and Global South to “significantly scale up their efforts to achieve the MDGs” – seeing the on-going crisis of global poverty as a critical threat to peace and security. Beyond calling their elected national leaders to act, though, the church leaders called on their own faith groups, congregations, pastors and laity to join and collaborate with The Micah Challenge. This was a major conclusion of the assembly as they saw it as a response “ to Love and Justice” in a time where economic challenges abound.
This moment in Thailand by a diverse group of global church leaders is just one of many that show how, working together as ONE, we all have a role to play in making poverty history.
-Adam Phillips
“This is not the time to abandon helping the poorest countries”
In his annual foreign policy speech to the Lord Mayor’s Banquet in London, Prime Minister Gordon Brown set out the five great challenges the world faces today. One of these challenges is meeting the Millennium Development Goals.
In the speech he said:
For now more than ever it is both our duty and in our interest to help meet the Millennium Development Goals. For we cannot solve climate change without Africa; nor can we solve the food crisis without Africa. We need a fully financed ‘energy for the poor’ initiative; where commercial sources of capital dry up support from the international institutions; and we need to support agricultural development in Africa, in the past feed the world meant that we helped to feed Africa. In future, if we do things right, we will do best by enabling Africa to feed the world.
He goes on to make some interesting statements in relation to sustainability and bringing the environment and development together:
This is why as we prepare for an ambitious post 2012 climate change agreement at Copenhagen, for which I pledge our Government’s unbending commitment, the European Union must, and I believe will, agree in December its ‘2020′ programme for energy and climate and show European leadership at its best. And I want the World Bank to become a bank for environment as well as on development, helping developing countries move towards sustainable energy paths of their own.
It’s great news that the British Prime Minister has explicitly made the Millennium Development Goals one of his top foreign policy priorities. Let’s keep him to his word.
-Jessica Gomez-Duran
Kofi Annan chimes in on the G20 Summit
Former secretary general of the UN, Kofi Annan, yesterday published an op-ed in the International Herald Tribune with some reflections about this past weekend’s G20 Summit and how to best move forward. He notes how the financial issues discussed at the summit are particularly relevant to Africa.
Excerpts below, full piece here
Events of the past few months have again underscored that no single country or small subset of countries, even the most powerful or wealthy, can manage the forces unleashed in our globalized world. The Washington meeting potentially represents the beginning of an era of unprecedented cooperation for concerted action on other equally pressing issues, such as climate change, food security and poverty reduction.
The current crisis comes as Africa struggles to maintain this positive momentum after a year of rising food prices and unprecedented volatility in fuel costs. Food and fertilizer are punishingly unaffordable for consumers and farmers. Recession and slowdown in high-income countries, as well as China, India and the Middle East, are resulting in plummeting commodity prices and exports, reduced remittance flows and decreases in foreign direct investment.
African leaders face an almost impossible challenge: how to protect their fragile economies and vulnerable people from global recession at a time when their revenues are decreasing. Maintaining levels of public investment is the basis for political stability and achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. Inability to do so could have profound consequences - in terms of unemployment, poverty and social and political tensions.
-Chris Scott
African Finance Officials Call G20 to Action
This past Tuesday, a group of African finance officials met in Tunis to discuss the impacts of the global financial crisis on the continent and strategize about how to address the likely consequences. The meeting was a call to action from the African financial community to the leaders attending the G20 summit to put the concerns of the developing world on the agenda for the meeting, which begins tomorrow in Washington, D.C., and to consider Africa’s dire situation when addressing the financial crisis. As we’ve outlined in previous posts, for many African countries the financial crisis could mean an increase in poverty and inflation, a decrease in economic growth, and a deepening of the food and fuel crises already gripping the continent.
ONE’s Edith Jibunoh in Nigeria has sent along a few highlights from the communiqué issued at the meeting which detail important points for this weekend’s G20 summit and the upcoming Financing for Development conference in Doha.
- Ministers said that the financial crisis is undermining Africa’s progress made in the last ten years and, along with the impact of climate change, will hamper countries’ abilities to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. They also expressed concern for the impact the crisis would have on trade and investment.
- On trade, the ministers urged a successful conclusion of the Doha Round of global trade negotiations, especially considering the spillover of the financial crisis to trade. They promised do their part by taking steps to improve the supply capacity in African countries through enhancing competitiveness, building infrastructure, and promoting greater economic integration within Africa. Ministers also promised to deepen their economic reforms and strengthen structures of governance and accountability.
- The Ministers also emphasized the importance of the international community keeping their commitments to Africa to improve aid quality, consistent with the Paris Declaration and Accra Call to Action. They asked that the F4D conference in Doha endorse these issues and reiterate their commitments.
- Finally, the participants asked South Africa to convey their views at the upcoming G20 meeting, although they stressed that one country representing the continent was not a substitute for inclusive African participation. They called for “new multilateralism” that fully reflects current realities and ensures the proper representation of all countries.
ONE will be bringing you information about the outcome of the G20 summit next week, so be sure to check back here.
-Beth Adler
UN Summit Recap
I thought I should share some inside skinny on the week we spent in New York September 22-26 at the UN’s special summit on the Millennium Development Goals. We went there to try to attract some attention to - indeed celebrate - the efforts against extreme poverty in recent years, and to call for an acceleration of that progress.
Bono was frantically blogging for the Financial Times in every spare second throughout the week on his way to and from meetings with various leaders. The meetings were many: with Spanish President Zapatero to plan for their E.U. presidency in 2010; with President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf of Liberia to discuss their remaining private commercial debt (think that’s sorted now); with UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown to push on the overall Millennium Goals project; and with President Sarkozy of France and President Barroso of the EU to push Europe on delivering an extra billion euros from the EU budget to fight hunger and invest in agricultural productivity in Africa. Bob Geldof arrived a few days into the melee and participated on the opening panel of the Clinton Global Initiative, popped up on CNN, and met with Mayor Bloomberg, Bill Gates and others along the way.
One highlight was unveiling our “Celebrate Accelerate” video to a crowd of activists and leaders (including Bill Gates, Bob Geldof, Jeff Sachs) honoring the “quietest storm in town”: the UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon. Another, was dropping in on the “In My Name” launch where we regrouped with will.i.am and other activist allies.
An important part of the week was passing over ONE members’ hunger petition, with 50,000 signers, to Bob Orr, the Assistant Secretary General. The petition targets Ban Ki-moon, and all the G8 leaders, asking them to finance the current $1 billion gap in worldwide agricultural financing.
In addition to all of this, Kim Smith and a team of staff and volunteers brought the ONE Bus to town and, thanks to Mayor Bloomberg, parked it in some highly visible locations in the city.
By September 26th, it was clear it had been a decent week. In total there were $16 billion worth of commitments, some old, and some new, focused largely on building upon success to get more kids in school; eliminating malaria deaths by 2015 (yes, that’s got chutzpah – but by acting together it can be done); and renewing efforts against maternal mortality and hunger.
By investing in the fight against extreme poverty we can create new and stable markets where currently there are none; build strong global growth engines that can keep the global economy going when some of us falter; ensure strong health systems; and ensure that other’s instability doesn’t become ours. Above all - because it’s morally the right thing to do.
So now this piece of the campaign goes on to upcoming votes in Brussels on agriculture funding, and a key meeting about financing for development that is happening in Doha, Qatar, in the Middle East, at the end of November. We’ll keep you updated on both.
-Jamie Drummond
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TAGS: Millennium Development Goals, Policy News, Water and Sanitation, Water for the World Act of 2009