Better Spending for Localizing Global Sustainable Development Goals

Examples from the Field

Fayyaz Baqir, Nipa Banerjee, Sanni Yaya, Fayyaz Baqir, Nipa Banerjee, Sanni Yaya

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781032087610
• eBook ISBN: 9781000721805
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

This book centers around an intense debate among donors, policymakers, development practitioners, and academics on the efficacy of aid in eradicating poverty while promoting human development.

It seeks to fill the gap in present literature by presenting stories of better spending through implementing Sustainable Development Goals and addressing Agenda 2030 via indigenization of global development goals with initiatives at local and national levels. The book adopts an innovative approach to dealing with aid effectiveness by highlighting the relevance of better spending, rather than excessive spending. It does so with real-life examples of interventions made in the Global South to realize the vision of "thinking globally and acting locally". These case studies speak to the significance of communities' role in shouldering responsibility for planning, financing, operating, and maintaining local developmental initiatives. The examples also demonstrate how aid serves its purpose when used as an investment in communities and enterprising individuals, in order to realize the strategic impact of giving and build a local "receiving mechanism" for indigenizing and achieving global development goals.

The book references cases of better spending by governments, philanthropists, and civil society organizations (CSOs) from across Asia, Africa, and Latin America on a range of issues and will, thus, be of interest to development practitioners, policymakers, donors, philanthropists, civil society organizations, and academics and students of international development studies.

Part I
Citizens, state, and markets

1
Introduction and background

Global goals, local action

Fayyaz Baqir

This chapter will provide an overview of the global norm setting for supporting local action for community development, poverty alleviation, and sustainable development. Beginning with the process of local agenda-setting under Local Agenda 21 during the Earth Summit in 1992, the chapter will briefly describe the context of government-, market-, and civil society–based approaches for devolving power to local government authorities and civil society institutions to replace exclusionist administrative and fiscal practices, and overview inclusive development efforts made by civil society organizations (CSOs) and philanthropists. It will shed light on the strategies for supporting Local Agency 21 through multilateral and bilateral small grants programmes and international NGOs (INGOs) located in the formal sector. A comparative view of the formal sector initiatives and informal sector approach of community-centred initiatives will also be presented. The chapter also dwells upon the negotiating strategies, accessing mechanisms, and spending practices of the community-based programmes; especially the strategies for accessing public resources in the context of local government budgetary processes and indigenous philanthropy. The chapter will close by presenting the better spending strategies of some innovative local initiatives based on realist costing and designing for improving Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and Human Development Indicators (HDIs) at the local level.

Keywords

Participatory development, inclusive governance, poverty alleviation, MDGs, SDGs, right-based development

Setting the development agenda: the role of market, state, and civil society

The post–World War II period was charged with the quest for equality, justice, and freedom. In former colonies this quest for freedom was perceived as fashioning former colonies in the image of their masters. During the first three decades after WWII most of the former colonies and newly developing economies followed the policy of import substitution and export-led development to achieve a high level of growth. This increased the level of national income of developing economies but did not effectively address the problem of income equality and poverty alleviation. State policies and market mechanisms both underperformed in promoting human development.

One proposed solution was to develop global goals for poverty alleviation and human development. The problem with global goals was an uneven level of development across Third World economies. Agents who were supposed to lead the process of development were not endowed with identical capacities for transforming their communities. However, there was recognition of the role of local action in achieving global goals. Recognition of local action as an important link in achievement of global goals found expression in Local Agenda 21, discussed in the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.

Earth Summit 1992 at Rio rightly articulated the connection between globalization, human development, and poverty alleviation by coining the phrase “Think globally and act locally.” Subsequently global thinking was spelled out in the form of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Vehicles for acting locally were identified to be civil society organizations (CSOs) and local government authorities. Transfer of administrative and fiscal power to local government through devolution of power and generous grant funding to professionally managed CSOs, international NGOs (INGOs), NGOs (non-governmental organizations), and community-based organizations (CBOs) was supposed to create institutional space for anchoring global thinking in local reality. Principal authors of MDGs and SDGs had assumed that these local institutions would carry out the process of indigenization of global goals, which would culminate in human development and poverty alleviation at the local level. A quarter century down the road, the progress made in “acting locally” seems to have bogged down due to numerous barriers perhaps not anticipated by the visionaries of Local Agenda 21.

Soon after the Rio conference numerous interconnected interventions were made to realize the vision of “thinking globally and acting locally” across the countries of the Global South. Many multilateral and bilateral small grants programmes for local development were set up by Northern NGOs, bilateral and multilateral donors, and the United Nations; programmes for devolution of power to local government were introduced in many countries; and many national and international NGOs pioneered service delivery, right based, and social entrepreneurship–based programmes for human development and poverty alleviation. Success of some of the local development programmes influenced public policy and resulted in expansion of their models through government ownership. However, slow progress in improving the Human Development Indicators across the Global South points to the need for in-depth analysis of the perils and promises of the process of local institution building for human development. In operational terms, this means identifying the indicators of institutional maturity and barriers in the way of ascendance of local institutions to play their due role – specifically, accessing public resources for human development and poverty alleviation – and finding effective remedies for crossing the barriers based on the case studies of selected interventions. This study aims at undertaking the analysis of the dynamic link between local institution building and achieving globally inspired targets through the presentation of selected case studies and frameworks tested in the field.

Financial underperformance at the local level

A close review of Southern economies shows that weak human development goes hand-in-hand with underutilized financial resources in the public sector. The resources allocated and ground conceded by the centralized governance structure to local government authorities and civil society institutions have not led to improvement of human development indicators, especially in the case of low-income communities. Extreme poverty and low levels of human development indicators cannot be explained by the low level of budgetary allocations. What needs to be explained is how existing levels of domestic and external resources do not produce the desired result. Some donors have tried to camouflage the issue of underperformance by using the amount of funds spent as a proxy for “result-based management for measuring their success”; others have presented their failed projects as “best practices” in international fora.

Defining the failure in terms of underperformance rather than underfunding or insufficient legislation provides a very powerful perspective for dealing with the issues of poverty alleviation and human development at the local level. Experience of many low-performing economies clearly shows that failure in achieving human and social development goals is caused by continuing tension between representation-based “global” policy instruments – inspired by global norms – and participation-based local institutional practices – required for local development. The cases presented in this book will review human development practices in relation to the dynamic conflict between the representative and participatory approaches of citizen engagement for optimal realization of human development potential. Specifically, we will explore why the resources allocated for poverty alleviation and human development do not convert into desired outcomes at the local level.

Cases presented here will examine the link between the “global” goals and ‘local” action in view of slow human development in the context of asymmetry of powers, capacities, and structures. The postcolonial societies have not been able to achieve the level of human development commensurate with the level of resources made available for this purpose. It is important to note here that it is not only the official development assistance, but also private investments, philanthropic donations, remittances sent home by immigrant workers, and assets created by the competitive and resilient informal sector that have created the pool of resources for low-income communities in developing countries. Despite the availability of resources from all these sources provision of basic services is not sustainable and service delivery systems are not fully functional. This calls for an in-depth analysis of the delivery capacity of the local government authorities and CSOs; identification of the gaps created by institutions representing but not engaging the poor in local development; and the enabling environment needed to change this practice. This book will build on the case studies of practices, processes, and strategies used for facilitating community access to public resources for human development.

Civil society and local development

Professionally led CSOs entered human and social development sector in the Global South in the 1980s as service providers; they soon realized that without engaging and activating the government they could not achieve a significant scale, and at the beginning of new millennium they made a transition to a right based approach. Right based work has not had much success. Realizing the limitations of a right based approach, some CSOs tested social business approaches based on the concept of “affordable user fee, cross-subsidies, and targeted marketing.” This approach has led to local success stories which need to be documented, analyzed, and presented as business models for replication through self-selection. Such models show the way for aid effectiveness, better spending, and sustainable human and social development. These models exist in health, education, income generation, and human development sectors. The present research will present some of these models.

It is also important in this context to review inclusive governance, MDGs, and other indicators of poverty alleviation and social change as a relationship between the states and citizens. This calls for understanding the nature of existing relationships and the means being employed to change these relationships to achieve the global goals. In the first place, it is important to note that the process of drafting most of the global conventions, treaties, goals, and frameworks has been carried out in an institutional arrangement where no validation and feedback system exists to check for social relevance and effectiveness. Second, articulation of these agreements assumes that the agreements are converted into national legislation by signatory states and assumes the existence of an institutional mechanism to seek compliance with these commitments and legal instruments.

Third, a very big assumption is being made that parties to these agreements understand the reality of the poor at least as much or better than the poor understand it themselves. Fourth, it is also assumed that in the absence of any accountability clauses, the states responsible for abiding by these laws and development goals would comply with the obligations they have agreed to endorse. Finally, no validation and indigenization actions have been required from the signatory parties to align the provisions of these rights and goals with the social conditions of the poor people based on the feedback received from them.

The primary difference between the global goals inspired by Western development norms and local reality has been summed up by 1992 Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchú as the difference between “the organizing principle of the market” and “organizing principle of the community” (Groucher, 2004, 24). In Menchú’s words, “We see the community, not the market as the building block of the modern self-reliant development based on cooperative village life” (ibid.). Due to the process of rapid globalization, urbanization, and capitalist development, the nature of the community economy has changed, but the principle of the community economy still governs the lives of 80% of the world population. Third World poor, who constitute these 80%, live under what is now called an informal economy (De Soto, 2000; Hasan, 2007). However, development of local models has been heavily influenced by the outlook of formal sector professionals. During the post-WWII period poverty has been investigated from the point of view of the professionals. Measures of poverty designed by these professionals have included indicators based on income, purchasing power parity, calorie consumption, and access to services and opportunities. These measures have one thing in common: they have been designed by the professionals not by the poor themselves. If we take into consideration the question, “Whose reality counts?” (Chambers, 1997), we need to find out how the poor look at the poverty themselves. Would consulting the poor make any difference in terms of finding the solutions? If so, how do we diagnose and alleviate poverty in consultation with the poor themselves. In this connection some pioneering work done by community practitioners has brought to light some very critical findings.

Three chapters in this volume deal with the effectiveness of professionally developed frameworks in the context of citizen-state relationships. First, there’s Anthony Cholst’s narrative of An anatomy of a loan. Then there are two stories on the use of well-developed frameworks for facilitating better spending. One experiment was conducted in Afghanistan on use of Multidimensional poverty measurement and aid efficiency. Written by Abdullah Al Mamun and Sanni Yaya, the case presents the use of a multidimensional poverty assessment (MPA) approach to increase the aid efficiency of poverty reduction programmes in Afghanistan. The Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) has been adopted by several countries to develop better anti-poverty policies and to increase the efficiency of financial expenditure. This approach is in the experimental phase and would be applicable at the institutional level as an effective and efficient tool to evaluate the impact of aid in poverty reduction programmes in meeting Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The second case is narrated by Hasanuzzaman Zaman and Syed Sajjadur Rahman, who, in their chapter on Improving SDG spending through South-South SDG tracking, describe how South-South Cooperation focused on knowledge sharing for tracking SDG implementation can help improve SDG spending. The case provides insights about how the use of the SDG tracker by the Finance Division and Planning Commission of Bangladesh for budgetary decisions set the scope for analyzing a policy transfer between Least Developed Countries (LDC) (Bangladesh) and a middle-income country (Peru). It illuminates new ways for improving SDG spending through existing administrative arrangements.

Dimensions of the social space for achieving development goals

Since the state plays an important role as promoter of global goals and provider of financial resources for local development, it is important to review the space defining state-civil society interaction. As described by Professor Adil Najam, CSOs have four distinct options in their interaction with the state; One, they may have similar goals and similar means, which would lead to a cooperative relationship. Two, CSOs may have similar goals and dissimilar means resulting in complementarities. Complementarity would mean that citizens and the state could have a very fruitful collaboration. For example, both the CSOs and the state agree on poverty eradication as their goal. The state has the budgetary resources, legislative powers, and administrative authority at its disposal and citizens might have community outreach, organized interest groups, and technical and social knowledge, which, combined with the resources of the state, could produce extremely positive outcome. Three, the state and CSOs might have dissimilar goals but similar means, in which case engagement is possible only through co-optation. This will lead to a situation where compromise is only possible by surrendering the claims of the communities. This situation would call for a long and drawn out advocacy campaign based on evidence, dialogue, and public pressure. Four, in a situation where CSOs and the state have dissimilar goals and dissimilar means, claiming the rights would lead to confrontation.

CSOs would have to clearly distinguish between all four options and devise strategies accordingly (Najam, 2000). This means that just situating local action in civil society would not provide sufficient conditions for dealing with the market and policy failure. It is also important to mention here that the lower tier of civil society consisting of community-based organizations cannot perform effectively without a higher tier functioning as a support organization. Some of the chapters presented in this book will highlight the role of the support organization resulting in effective performance of CSOs. One example is the role of the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme (AKRSP). AKRSP’s guidance and support led to doubling the income of rural families in its programme area in ten years. Subsequently AKRSP’s general manager introduced this approached to the government and NGOs in India, lifting millions of low-income households through the formation and support of women’s self-help programmes.

Social capital and global goals

Civil society intervention is seen as a panacea for addressing shortcomings in human development, dispensing economic justice, alleviating poverty, mitigating climate change, and ensuring sustainable development in view o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Foreword
• List of contributors
• PART I Citizens, state, and markets
• PART II Frameworks for better spending
• PART III South Asian landscape: moving from patronage to participation
• PART IV Resilient communities in fragile states: Central South Asia
• PART V Non-zero options for local development
• PART VI Global South in the Global North
• PART VII Social capital: the highest form of capital
• Appendices
• Index