| February 4, 2004—Meeting the Millennium Development Goals will require not just more aid, but aid that is used much more effectively than it has been in the past. Today, when development assistance is at one of its lowest levels—0.22 percent of GDP vs. 0.5 percent 30 years ago—and far short from what is needed to meet the goals, the issue of effectiveness has increased in urgency. A meeting in March 2002 of international leaders resulted in the Monterrey Consensus , which "codified" the call for effectiveness. In July of the same year donors to the Bank's International Development Association (IDA)—the world's primary source of concessional funding (i.e., substantially below market rate)—made the 13th IDA replenishment contingent on the establishment of a results-based measurement system for IDA programs. Such events have changed the way money goes into development and how development practitioners get business done. Millennium Development Goals |
- Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
- Achieve universal
primary education
- Promote gender equality and empower women
- Reduce child mortality
- Improve maternal health
- Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases
- Ensure environmental sustainability
- Foster a global partnership for development
|
In response to the Monterrey Consensus, the multilateral development banks decided to collectively push through the results agenda. "With the pressure on resources, and more particularly, the pressure of poverty and inequity that there is in the world, it's crucial that we take the next step in coming together as a community to not only measure but also affect the way in which we manage and work with each other in terms of bringing about results," said World Bank President James Wolfensohn at the First Roundtable on Better Measuring, Monitoring, and Managing for Development Results held at World Bank headquarters in June 2002. This meeting, he said, "will force us to look not just at the mathematics and the quantitative issues, but will force us to re-evaluate methodologies on how we work." As a result of the meeting, heads of development agencies committed, among other things, to support systemic change through, for example, projects with demonstrable impact aligned with country priorities and policy-based lending. They also emphasized that country results would be best achieved through: - development institutions partnering to reconcile requirements and resources
- country assuming ownership of their own poverty reduction strategies
- statistical, monitoring and evaluation capacity building in developing countries
For its part, the World Bank is focusing on three core components to the results-oriented effort: - strengthening country capacity
- streamlining and refining internal processes
- participating in the global effort to harmonize around results
"I don't think any of us is thinking anymore about running development programs from Washington or other capitals," said Wolfensohn addressing the Harmonization Conference in Rome last year. "It's very clear that local ownership and participation are central." -- Aid in Action -- | | | • | Over the past 40 years, life expectancy at birth in developing countries has increased by 20 years-about as much as was achieved in all of human history prior to the middle of the 20th century. | | | • | Over the past 30 years, adult illiteracy in the developing world has been cut nearly in half, from 47 percent to 25 percent. | | | • | Over the past 20 years, the number of people living on less than $1 a day has fallen by 200 million, even as the world's population grew by 1.6 billion. | | | • | Growth rates in the developing world have accelerated more than doubling the income of the average person living in developing countries over the past 35 years. | | | • | In China, the number of rural poor people fell from 250 million to 34 million in two decades of reform. | | | • | In India, the literacy rate for women rose from 39 percent to 54 percent in just the past decade. | | | • | In Uganda, the number of children in primary school has doubled. | | | • | In Brazil, the number of AIDS-related deaths has been cut by more than a third. | | | • | In Ethiopia, 6 million Ethiopians are now benefiting from better education and health services. | | Based on
"The Role and Effectiveness of Development Assistance: Lessons from World Bank Experience." | | | |
The Bank has put significant muscle behind the work being done to simplify and streamline processes in time to meet the goals-be it reforming loan administration and its reporting requirements or simplifying the audit policy. But it is also driving an effort to change the way the Bank helps countries develop sustainable strategies with measurable results. "This means," said Wolfensohn in his Dubai address, "moving away from single projects-we call them ‘feel good’ projects-and going for results on scale-in 50 or 500 villages, or 5000. …We are taking a hard look at how we can do better-how successful programs can be scaled up." There is reason to be positive. "The donor community is treating the commitments made in the Declaration [Harmonization Conference, Rome] seriously and taking measures to meet them," Wolfensohn has said. "Close to 20 developing countries-a mix of low and middle income countries-have initiated donor harmonization and alignment processes." Moving Forward The Second Roundtable on Better Measuring, Monitoring, and Managing for Development Results is taking place this week in Marrakech, Morocco, and will look even more closely at results management at the operational level. Additionally, the Bank, through the Development Gateway, is facilitating use of a common database on harmonization and sharing knowledge and experience among development practitioners, and its joined other donors in participating in the Development Assistance Committee’s (DAC) new Working Party on Aid Effectiveness. And a yearlong distance learning/research initiative for members of the development community culminates this May in Shanghai as the Bank and the Chinese government co-host a conference on n Scaling-Up Poverty Reduction. The meeting will look at, says Wolfensohn, "how to take successful programs and scale them up; how to enable poor people to be the central force for change and not an object of charity; how to manage programs over time for results that truly make a difference."
Related Stories:
New Statistical Initiative to Measure Results
Making Results Matter
Facts & Figures
Partnerships in Development
Development Links:
How the Bank Assesses its Impact
The Role and Effectiveness of Development Assistance: Lessons from World Bank Experience
Managing for Development Results
Harmonization
Development Gateway |
RSS