The World

By Alan Beattie, world trade editor

Nothing to gladden the heart of a reporter* more than a good row about development aid. It’s got everything: political posturing about rich versus poor; blindingly complex arguments about “additionality”; dire warnings that everything will fall apart without it; George Soros punting some version of his Special Drawing Rights plan for the twentieth time. And so it came to pass with the Copenhagen summit.

At least one thing is different this time: the NGOs are being a lot less credulous about the “$xxxbn to be spent on YYYY” spin. Even the One campaign, who in their previous incarnation of Data generally used to cheerlead whatever aid announcement the rich countries spun at them, have warned that this money has to be additional. All grist to the mill of fine campaigns like this one and this one.

But here’s the thing. No matter how much monitoring of the donors you do, it’s really hard to keep track of what is being spent where anyway. And any such earmarking is open to abuse.

An example: a developing country builds a solar-powered pump to irrigate farms growing vegetables, some of which are exported. Is that climate change aid? Or the agricultural aid we were told at the recent Rome summit had to be increased? Or is it aid for trade? And even if you could in principle classify it, what about all the developing countries whose public finance systems aren’t sophisticated enough to record it properly?

This ritual of announcing near-meaningless sums of money at each summit should be dropped. It’s patronising, misleading and silly. Developing countries use it as an excuse not to do anything; rich countries use it to pander to their domestic NGO constituencies. A market-based mechanism would be a much better way to proceed. I’m not holding my breath.

*Irony