Showing posts from category Guest Contributor.
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Who Does Development? Civil-Military Relations (Part I)
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USAID convened a study group to determine the future civil-military relationship between USAID and the Department of Defense. Two members of the study group, Dr. Frederick Burkle and Dr. Gene Bonventre, offer their thoughts.In the first decade of the new millennium, the relationship between the Department of Defense and civilian governmental agencies and NGOs has been a rollercoaster ride. At the high point of civil-military cooperation—the response to the Kurdish refugee crisis after the first Iraq war—the U.S. military provided security, access, and logistics, while USAID and NGOs provided direct assistance and expert advice to the 800-pound uniformed gorilla.
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Who Does Development? Civil-Military Relations (Part II)
›USAID convened a study group to determine the future civil-military relationship between USAID and the Department of Defense. Two members of the study group, Dr. Frederick Burkle, Jr., and Dr. Eugene Bonventre, offer their thoughts.
The success of all interventions and relief efforts in conflict and post-conflict situations is dependent on politics and political action. For the United States, political action translates into military action. During my career, I’ve been involved in five conflict situations with the U.S. military, and each one made a different claim and set different restrictions for intervening with “aid.”
In the 1990s, after several frustrating years of failures, many in government believed that humanitarian assistance without political solutions achieved nothing. In good Wilsonian fashion, they saw political action—and the military interventions that followed—as a means to project, influence, and spread U.S. values. As such, the military became the security and protection tool of political humanitarianism, especially among those who considered that the convergence of humanitarian actors with the military ensured that the duty to provide assistance and the right to receive it was guaranteed.
The Kurdish crisis after the Persian Gulf War was instrumental for many reasons. One, it was the first time the Security Council did not veto a resolution to protect vulnerable populations within a sovereign state. Two, it was considered in most circles to be a success, because the coalition led by the U.S. military was considered by the humanitarian community to have been an ally in the struggle to provide security and assistance. The military presence allowed the humanitarians to work in an austere environment and to save lives.
What happened afterwards is a different story. Influenced by the post-9/11 global war on terrorism, increasingly insecure conflict environments, and the unilateral approach to conflict management, the military began to provide direct assistance to the population themselves. Liberties were taken: NGOs were recruited as “force multipliers,” “a second front,” or “part of our combat team.” The traditional leaders of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, the Red Cross and the UN’s Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, were ignored. A “partnership” of the U.S. military-political command, the World Bank, corporate contractors, and like-minded NGOs dominated the scene.
In the last four months I’ve been confronted by two retired generals. One strongly insisted that the military must “stay within their lane” or risk destroying the military and supporting the perception of a U.S. politico-military “empire.” The other strongly insisted that the only entity in the world that could do humanitarian assistance and disaster relief is the U.S. military
So who should be leading these efforts for the United States? USAID, which was decimated in the 1980s, has never come back. The more than 12,000 USAID professionals during the 1960s-70s now number only 2,000. Reestablishing USAID’s place in development and relief will take much money, time, and expertise.
In the meantime, the only show in town, DoD, grows even larger and stronger. Gates’ statement that more civilians are needed in Afghanistan and Pakistan was actually a request for more “civilians” to be coordinated by the military.
It is not unusual to find those who think that the politico-military “relief and reconstruction complex” is impossible to change, especially when they are favored by Congress over USAID and State to solve these problems. But if “outcome indicators” rather that the current DoD-dominated “achievement indicators” were used to measure success, they would tell a totally different story.
In the last few years, the argument that such efforts are essential to “winning the hearts and minds” of a population has come out of nowhere. This claim is not grounded in accepted measures that monitor and evaluate such success. Yet the defense budgets that are heavily supported by Congress are based on achievement indicators alone.
President Obama does not come to the table with a strong and substantive knowledge or experience with the nuances of foreign assistance and the critical importance of the traditional humanitarian community. He is currently hearing only voices from the military and industry on this issue. We owe it to both the humanitarian community and the military to ensure that evaluation of their effectiveness is transparent, accountable, and evidence-based.
Current USAID leadership, short of a named Administrator, must speak up. The opportunity to reestablish USAID’s role in development and humanitarian assistance may never come this way again.
Dr. Frederick M. Burkle, Jr., is a professor and senior fellow with the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, Harvard University; a senior public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center; and a retired Navy Reserve Captain and combat decorated for service with the U.S. Marines. -
Post-Conflict Recovery in Biodiversity Hotspots
›The prevalence of armed conflict in areas of high biodiversity is alarming, though not entirely surprising. According to “Warfare in Biodiversity Hotspots” (abstract online), which was published earlier this year in Conservation Biology, 80 percent of the major armed conflicts between 1950 and 2000 took place in biodiversity hotspots. While natural resources are rarely the principal causes of conflict, their allocation and ownership are frequently among its drivers. -
The Scoop on Development Reform
›The development reform picture became more complicated after a recent speech by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Senator John Kerry (D-MA) and congressional testimony by Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources Jack Lew.
Revamping State and USAID
At a Brookings Institution speech (transcript) on May 21 entitled “Diplomacy and Development in the 21st Century,” Kerry laid out the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s plan for strengthening the civilian agencies that deal with these issues.
In the short term, Kerry favors the recruitment of more diplomatic and development professionals and a stronger emphasis on their training and education. He also expressed his desire to “untie the hands of our aid workers” by streamlining outdated regulations and rebalancing the relationship between Washington and the field.
“Over the long term, we need to take a close, hard look at exactly what we want our diplomatic and development institutions to achieve,” said Kerry. “We need to make sure that we give those people the resources they need to get where we have decided they must go.”
To meet these goals, he and Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN) will introduce two pieces of legislation: a Foreign Affairs Authorization Act and a foreign aid reform bill, which will serve as precursors to a more comprehensive overhaul of the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act next year, said Kerry.
A Power Grab by State?
On May 13, Lew testified on the FY2010 international affairs budget request (webcast; testimony), outlining five “smart power” funding objectives:
1. Build civilian capacities in State and USAID;
2. Promote long-term development and human security;
3. Enhance strategic multilateral and bilateral partnerships (e.g., with Israel, Egypt, Pakistan, and Afghanistan);
4. Strengthen global security capabilities (e.g., nuclear non-proliferation); and
5. Maintain the resources to respond to urgent humanitarian needs.According to Lew, State’s approach to development will be both “top-down”—strengthening “the ability of governments to support just and capable institutions that meet the basic needs of their populations”—and “bottom-up”—partnering with civic groups to build human capacity to innovate, cooperate, and solve problems.
Lew indicated that State should coordinate multiple agencies’ efforts to address challenging, cross-sectoral problems. He said, “We must be able to look at a country, a function or an objective and be able to identify everything that the U.S. government is doing in that area—not just State.” For instance, he wants the State Department to lead “a whole-of-government process to design and implement a new food strategy.”
Lew’s testimony seems to indicate that State wants to oversee all of development policy, with no apparent role for the National Security Council (NSC). But it is not at all clear that State has the human and financial resources to coordinate all the other agencies involved in development. If State were granted this authority, the organizational implications would be immense.
At the NSC, development issues fall under the purview of Deputy National Security Adviser for International Economic Affairs Michael Froman, but he has many other issues on his agenda, including the G20 and the G8. I would be surprised if the NSC does not see this kind of overall coordination as part of its mandate. But there have been no public reactions to State’s grab for power.
At the same time, both Kerry and Congressman Howard Berman (D-CA), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, see development reform as a major part of their portfolios. The State Department has strongly opposed Berman’s bill mandating that the administration produce a government-wide “National Development Strategy,” on the grounds that the responsibility for drafting such a document should be given to the State Department, and not (as it is now written) to the President. The future of Berman’s legislation is not clear, but Kerry also has indicated his desire for an overall strategy paper.
USAID Still Seeking Chief
Finally, USAID still lacks a director. The latest rumors in the blogosphere revolve around Dr. Paul Farmer, the renowned physician who founded Partners in Health, a major NGO focusing on global health. Farmer would be the first USAID administrator in recent years with extensive on-the-ground development experience, but I understand he has no experience with Washington bureaucracy (outside, perhaps, of the health arena). Furthermore, he is known more as a charismatic leader than as a manager.
Farmer would be an unconventional choice for running USAID, though there are conflicting opinions on whether he even wants the job. But if he does want it, he should ensure he had a deputy secretary rank, as well as authority over the Millennium Challenge Corporation, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, and other independent development programs. He also would need the funds and staff to completely revamp USAID to meet the challenges of the 21st century.
John W. Sewell is a senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center and the former president of the Overseas Development Council. ECSP published Sewell’s review of Trade, Aid and Security: An Agenda for Peace and Development in ECSP Report 13. -
Pakistan’s Daunting—and Deteriorating—Demographic Challenge
›Every day it seems the headlines bring new worries about the future of Pakistan. But among the many challenges confronting the nation—including a growing Taliban insurgency—one significant problem remains largely undiscussed: its rapidly expanding population.
Consider this: Pakistan’s population nearly quadrupled from 50 million in 1960 to 180 million today. It’s expected to add another 66 million people—nearly the entire population of Iran—in the next 15 years. UN projections predict that by the late 2030s, Pakistan will become the fourth most populous country in the world, behind India, China, and the United States.
And believe it or not, the demographic outlook for Pakistan got bleaker in recent weeks. The new medium-range UN projections for Pakistan’s total population have been raised to 335 million for 2050—45 million higher than the UN projection just two years ago. Why the change? Because birth rates aren’t falling as had been predicted—women in Pakistan have an average of four children—and unmet need for family planning remains high.
The case of education provides a snapshot of how these demographics affect Pakistan, from basic quality-of-life issues to the country’s overall stability. Even though the official literacy rate in Pakistan has increased from about 18 percent to 50 percent since 1970, the number of illiterate people has simultaneously jumped from 28 million to 48 million. The literacy rate for women stands at a shockingly low 35 percent.
As public schools have become increasingly overcrowded, more parents have turned to madrasas in an attempt to educate their children—or at least their sons. It’s no secret that some of Pakistan’s madrasas have ties to radical religious and terrorist-affiliated organizations.
So what does this portend for the future?
Even assuming large infusions of assistance from the United States, Pakistan’s public school system will become even more overwhelmed in the years ahead. Building enough schools and hiring enough teachers would be daunting in any country, let alone one facing as many challenges as Pakistan. It seems likely that enrollments in madrasas will swell, and more children will face a future with no schooling whatsoever. Clearly, this is not a recipe for a more stable and peaceful Pakistan.
Pakistan’s rapid population growth is not inevitable, however. A key driver is lack of access to family planning, which is symptomatic of the overall poor status of women and girls. More than 25 percent of Pakistani women have an unmet need for family planning—meaning the demand is clearly there—and nothing in the Koran prohibits its usage. In other majority-Muslim nations, such as Algeria, Bangladesh, and Iran, family planning has been prioritized and is widely used.
Unfortunately, family planning programs in Pakistan and many developing countries have suffered from both inattention and funding cuts in recent years. Traditionally, the United States has been a major source of funding and technical assistance, but since 1995, U.S. international family planning assistance has fallen 35 percent (adjusted for inflation), even as demand has increased.
Today, more than 200 million women—many of them in the most impoverished parts of the world—have an unmet need for family planning. In countries like Pakistan, the resulting rapid population growth makes it increasingly difficult to provide sufficient education, health care, housing, and employment—and depletes land, water, fisheries, and other vital natural resources.
The Obama administration recently proposed a new U.S. assistance strategy for Pakistan—and a key component is a significant increase in development and economic assistance. Let’s hope it will include an increase for family planning. It would be a wise investment in a brighter, more stable future—for Pakistan and for the world.
Tod Preston is vice president for U.S. government relations at Population Action International.
Photo: Children in Jinnah Colony, Karachi, Pakistan. Courtesy of Flickr user NB77. -
Climate Change and “Developed-Country Complacency Syndrome”
›While it is now widely acknowledged that environmental change, including climate change, could severely undermine security in the developing world, the implications for the developed world are just starting to be discussed. A sort of “developed-country complacency syndrome” has led many to assume that the main security problems for a country like the United States, such as waves of refugees or the need to intervene when other nations face disasters or conflicts, would be imported from abroad. Unfortunately, the United States is likely to face some fairly severe “Made in the USA” problems, as well.
For instance, as the economic stimulus package is rolled out, the United States is entering a historic period of new infrastructure construction. From a security perspective, this could help maintain stability, or it could be a disaster. What might make the difference is assessing how potential sites could be affected by environmental change. Transportation systems, defensive capabilities, agriculture, power generation, water supply, and more are all designed for the specific parameters of their physical environments—or, more often, the physical environments of the Victorian, Depression-era, or post-WWII periods in which they were originally built. That is why unplanned environmental change almost always has negative impacts.
In the case of a change in precipitation patterns, for example, drainage systems, reservoirs, and hydrological installations can all fail not because they were poorly engineered, but because they were engineered for different conditions. We are literally not designed for environmental change.
Current environmental impact assessments look almost exclusively at a structure’s impact on the environment. These assessments must now be expanded to include the other half of the equation: the impact of a changing environment on the structure. These sorts of “dual” assessments are essential. To put it bluntly, there is no point in building a zero-emissions house in a current or soon-to-be flood zone. However, this is exactly the sort of thing that is being proposed in areas of the U.S. Gulf Coast. We can avoid this by requiring these “dual” assessments when applying for insurance, planning permission, and/or government support.
Just as physical infrastructure is poorly prepared to deal with environmental change, so, too, is legal infrastructure. Very few regulations, international laws, and subsidies incorporate the effects of environmental change. At best, this renders them inadequate; at worst, it can create new vulnerabilities.
For instance, the U.S. government’s National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) can inadvertently contribute to putting people and infrastructure in harm’s way. When private insurers deem areas too risky to be eligible for coverage, the NFIP can step in and insure them, making it possible to build in areas that are current flood zones, as well as areas that may become ones as climate change causes sea levels to rise and storm surges to increase. Already in some areas the same homes have had to be rebuilt multiple times, in part with cash infusions from the NFIP.
There are other examples of developed-world agreements that may cause more damage than they prevent:- Water-sharing agreements, especially those based on a set amount of water, rather than percentage of actual flow, will become problematic as water levels alter dramatically.
- Fisheries-sharing agreements will be thrown into chaos as fish shift to other regions due to climate change and overfishing.
- Hydropower-sharing agreements will be a major problem, both for precipitation-fed systems and glacier regions, where there will be above-average flows as the glaciers melt, followed by droughts once the glaciers disappear.
Two of the things the developed world prides itself on—its physical and legal infrastructures—are both highly vulnerable to environmental change. However, the stimulus packages and the reassessment of global, regional, and national agreements caused by the financial crisis offer a valuable opportunity to ensure that the structures and mechanisms we are counting on to maintain our security do not end up undermining it.
Photo: Members of the Coast Guard Sector Ohio Valley Disaster Response Team and the Miami-Dade Urban Search and Rescue Team mark a house to show it has been searched for survivors of Hurricane Katrina. Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the U.S. Gulf Coast in 2005, revealed the vulnerability of U.S. infrastructure to natural disasters. Climate change could make hurricanes and other natural disasters more frequent and severe. Photo courtesy of Flickr user Tidewater Muse and Petty Officer Robert M. Reed.
Cleo Paskal is an associate fellow in Chatham House’s Energy, Environment, and Development Programme. She is the author of UK National Security and Environmental Change. -
Water’s Role in International Development
› A mark of a good event is that it generates further debate, questions, and ideas. “Water and International Development: A Dialogue,” a recent discussion at The Johns Hopkins University School for Advanced International Studies, was such an event. Geoff Dabelko, director of the Environment Change and Security Program at the Wilson Center, and Aaron Salzberg, special coordinator for water resources at the U.S. Department of State, went head-to-head to discuss water’s role in international development.
The discussion between Dabelko and Salzberg touched upon many issues I ran into while trying to program Water for the Poor Act funding while working as a natural resources adviser for the Economic Growth Office at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) mission in Ghana. Once we received the funding, there was an intra-office debate among:- People who wanted to make drip-irrigation work we were already funding fit the Water for the Poor Act definition;
- People who thought the funds should be spent on a narrow set of water and sanitation interventions, such as borehole/latrine construction and water purification tablets; and
- People who thought the funds should be spent on the larger-scale water and sanitation infrastructure that Ghana so desperately needs.
USAID mission offices have specific strategic priorities and associated operational plans, which dictate the makeup of the staff employed at any given time. In this case, there was no one water specialist who could take on this important task. I had an M.S. in water management, so I was passed the baton. If the Water for the Poor Act is going to have a significant impact, USAID missions must have the technical capacity to assimilate the funds.
Dabelko and Salzburg’s discussion brought up even more questions for me: How can the United States reconcile its bilateral earmark funding for water with the growing trend toward donor coordination—for instance, under the 2005 Paris Declaration, or, in the case of Ghana, the Multi-Donor Budget Support fund, which encourages donors to contribute direct financial support to the Ghanaian government to implement its Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategy? Is there a need to have water specialists assigned to USAID missions, rather than relying on specialists in Washington, D.C.? How can we make municipal financing mechanisms for infrastructure more attractive to Western funders and host-country governments? Although Dabelko and Salzburg might not have had all the answers to these questions, I’m heartened that they and other water experts are tackling the tough issues.
David Bonnardeaux is a freelance consultant on rural development and natural resource management for the World Bank, USAID, and CARE, among others. He is also an amateur photographer (www.davidbonnardeaux.smugmug.com). His next port of call is Vietnam.
Photos: Top: Boy pumping water, Volta Region, Ghana. Bottom: Girl collecting water from lake, Volta Region, Ghana. Courtesy of David Bonnardeaux. -
At the Fifth World Water Forum, Africa Steps Up
›A record-breaking 28,000 people, including five heads of state, participated in the Fifth World Water Forum in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. I was there, too, excited to be discussing this year’s theme, “Bridging Divides for Water.” Much of the conversation centered on how to bridge the remaining divides in meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)—especially MDG 7, which aims to halve the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation by 2015.
While notable progress has been made in many regions of the world, such as China and India, other areas, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, lag woefully behind. According to the most recent numbers (2006) by UNICEF and the World Health Organization, only 31 percent of the population in sub-Saharan Africa has access to sanitation, and there are 38 sub-Saharan African countries where sanitation coverage is less than 50 percent. Access to improved drinking water sources has increased to 64 percent across the region; however, increases in coverage are not keeping pace with population growth, and the current rate of provision is not adequate to meet the MDG drinking-water target.
The Fifth World Water Forum, however, marked a hopeful new development. For the first time, the region of the world with the most serious water challenges, Africa, used the Forum to announce an internally driven water and sanitation agenda with a united voice. With support from the African Development Bank, the African Union and the African Ministerial Conference on Water (AMCOW) unveiled a plan to implement existing political commitments to water and sanitation. An “Africa Regional Paper” informed by the First African Water Week, held in Tunis in March 2008, presents African perspectives on each of the themes of the Forum (global change and risk management; advancing human development and the MDGs; managing and protecting water resources; governance and management; finance; education, knowledge, and capacity development), with a key message of delivering on existing commitments. In response to this agenda, the G8 countries announced increased aid to Africa’s water sector.
The desire to solve the world’s water crisis has generated many reports and frameworks over the years, including the Brundtland Commission’s report “Our Common Future” and the World Water Forum process itself. But perhaps nothing is as effective as a proactive, united stance from sub-Saharan Africans themselves, which could go a long way toward ensuring aid is used appropriately and efficiently. The fact that South Africa will host the Sixth World Water Forum in March 2012 should provide another impetus for meeting water and sanitation targets on the continent.
Hope Herron is an environmental scientist with Tetra Tech, Inc. She is currently researching water security issues in the context of the new U.S. Africa Command and U.S. defense, diplomacy, and development frameworks.
Photo: A Sudanese girl fills a water jug at a pump. Courtesy of Flickr user Water for Sudan.
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USAID convened 
The prevalence of armed conflict in areas of high biodiversity is alarming, though not entirely surprising. According to “
Every day it seems the headlines bring new worries about the future of Pakistan. But among the many challenges confronting the nation—including a 
While it is now 
A record-breaking 28,000 people, including five heads of state, participated in the 
