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The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set out an agenda for international
development that is at once highly ambitious, and yet has been criticised
for its modesty. The first target for goal one is to halve world
poverty by 2015. Even if the target is met, there is a real danger
that many, if not most of the chronically poor could miss out. This
will mean that in a generation's time, poverty will still blight
the lives of at least 900 million people.
A rigid interpretation of the MDGs could encourage a focus on those
“easy to reach”, and away from chronic poverty. But
do the MDG and chronic poverty agendas overlap anywhere? Can policies
aimed at the MDGs be made consistent with action to tackle chronic
poverty?
At this ODI and Chronic Poverty Research Centre (CPRC) event, a
panel of speakers bridging the worlds of research and policy discussed
their perspectives on how the MDG agenda relates to chronic poverty
in areas such as economic growth, health and social protection.
To find out more about the work of the Chronic Poverty
Research Centre, please see:
CPRC Policy Briefs: http://www.chronicpoverty.org/resources/policy_briefs.html
Chronic Poverty Report 2004/05: http://www.chronicpoverty.org/resources/cprc_report_2004-2005.html
CPRC Working Papers: http://www.chronicpoverty.org/resources/working_papers.html
Meeting Report
1. Kate Bird, in the chair, introduced
the meeting. She spoke about current debates around the MDGs at
their midpoint, stating that in the development sector there tend
to be:
• those who believe the MDGs are too ambitious and therefore
cannot be met; and
• those who believe the necessary backing for the MDGs is
absent and they therefore will not be met, opting instead to work
solely towards goal one, i.e. halving the proportion of people living
in extreme poverty.
2. Within the context of such debates, the speakers at this meeting
will focus on analysing the relationship between the MDGs and people
who live in chronic poverty, asking, ‘do people in chronic
poverty gain anything from the MDGs?’
Tony German
3. Tony German stated that the MDGs provide a
shared set of goals and a common platform which enables public and
political attention to focus on poverty in a sustained way. Meeting
the MDGs will only halve the proportion of people living in extreme
poverty by 2015 however, thus leaving approximately 1 billion people
remaining in both chronic and extreme poverty.
4. He stated that understanding the causes and the nature of poverty
is crucial in the fight to eradicate it. He explained that chronic
poverty is multi-dimensional and often intergenerational. Some of
its causal or contributory factors can be:
• Difficult subsistence farming in remote rural areas;
• Membership of a group that is marginalised by society on
the basis of ethnicity and/or religion;
• Being discriminated against or excluded from society because
of gender, age and/or disability.
5. It is wrong to assume however that chronic poverty only affects
particular excluded groups. It can also affect those who are included
in society but on very adverse terms, which can lead to minimal
wages and exploitation.
6. To progress from the 2015 target of halving extreme poverty
to complete poverty eradication will take more than simply a doubling
of current efforts. Such a strategy will need to address the political,
social and economic factors that contribute to the persistence of
poverty, including:
• Tackling not just social exclusion but also “adverse
inclusion” in society, as explained above;
• Extending the concept of basic services to include social
protection as a way to address vulnerability amongst the chronic
poor;
• Increasing the right to information, participation and political
representation of the chronically poor;
• A more direct and proactive strategy for investment in the
poorest through asset transfer programmes based on the principles
of equity and redistribution.
7. He concluded by highlighting the need for:
• global partnerships - he asserted that OECD countries could
afford to do more;
• the development community to visualise a world without poverty
in order to full understand what they are aiming for.
Armando Barrientos
8 . Armando Barrientos stated that the MDGs have been partly responsible
for the expansion of social protection in the developing world,
especially social assistance schemes. He presented some figures
illustrating this:
• The Minimum Living Standards Scheme in China now reaches
26 million people;
• Brazil’s Bolsa Familia reaches 11 million people;
• India’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme
will soon reach 24-26 million people.
9 . Social protection can also aid in the achievement of the MDGs,
and the World Bank and ILO have mapped social protection to various
Goals. There are however two main concerns:
• Social protection cannot end poverty on its own - it works
best when integrated with other public services and with a social
policy aimed at empowering of the poorest;
• The MDG timeframe is too short for social protection schemes.
10. Barrientos concluded by highlighting the importance of the
bottom-up drive for social protection. Social protection has made
the most progress in Latin America, perhaps because – according
to Latinobarometer - public perceptions there tend to assume that
poverty is caused by unjust social structures, rather than by individual
laziness. This is similar to Europe but in contrast to the USA.
Margaret Kakande
11. Margaret Kakande stated that while the general focus of the
MDGs was good, there were some questions regarding chronic poverty,
particularly in relation to the targets and indicators. For example,
Uganda’s target on poverty was to reduce the poverty rate
to 28%; but chronically poor people consist of the bottom 20%. The
MDG target is therefore not ambitious enough. Governments are understandably
tempted to help those living closest to or on the poverty line as
this makes their achievements seem better.
12. She also outlined a number of other problems with the current
MDG agenda:
• Regarding education, focusing on enrolment alone was a mistake.
In Uganda, about 90% of the population enrol for primary education,
but only 20% complete it. Completion would be a better indicator.
• There is a contradiction in that the MDGs call for investment
in the social sectors which poor countries cannot afford themselves.
There is a danger that their interventions will be unsustainable,
and fail.
• Defining poverty in terms of consumption expenditure misses
the point. Assets are the key factor. Somebody receiving health
and education services but with no economic assets is still likely
to find it hard to escape poverty.
13. She concluded by highlighting how the MDGs have so far been
useful for raising public awareness, but have lacked focus, particularly
with regard to the chronic poor.
Martin Prowse
14. Martin Prowse spoke about the second Chronic Poverty Report
(CPR II), due in April 2008. He noted that it was a successor to
the first Chronic Poverty Report of 2004-5 which he described as
dealing with the ‘what’, ‘who’ and ‘where’
of chronic poverty. The first Report also focused on policy, with
4 key messages:
• Prioritise livelihood security;
• Ensure opportunities are accessible;
• Take empowerment seriously;
• Provide adequate resources.
15. The second Report will also focus on policy and aims to influence
the 2010 World Development Report, demonstrating that poverty eradication
by 2025 is feasible. Two themes will be outlined in part 1:
• Country context;
• The real politics of pro-poor reform.
16. These are then integrated into parts 2 and 3, which will cover
various different policy areas, and a review of Poverty Reduction
Strategies (PRS), respectively.
17. Prowse noted four key things about the Report which will make
it stand out:
• A focus on the politics of pro-poor reform;
• An examination of long-term societal change;
• Analysis grounded in work on differing country contexts
and development trajectories over a 20-30 year period; and
• The treatment of inequality – i.e. defining equality
as ‘equality of opportunities’ and examining outcomes
as well as opportunities.
Discussion
18. Issues and questions raised during the discussion included:
• What is the definition of chronic poverty?
Barrientos replied that chronic poverty is a situation in which
people are poor throughout their lives. There are issues about measurement
with regard to the quantification of chronic poverty, but there
is already a vast amount of knowledge about the causes of chronic
poverty, including lack of education, malnutrition and discrimination.
He also pointed out that whilst the MDGs refer to ‘extreme
poverty’ rather than ‘chronic poverty’, there
are reasons to believe that the two are very similar.
• Will questions about elite capture and power be dealt with
in CPR II?
German replied that these political challenges were something the
Report wanted to explore, as well as what makes extreme poverty
eradication strategies different from a mere extension of efforts
around MDG 1. He highlighted the achievements of various 'right
to information' campaigns for helping to make elites accountable,
and suggested that this right should include a requirement for aid
donors to publish details of their transactions and provide information
about how their budgets are actually spent. Barrientos noted that
many developing countries have adopted forms of social assistance
that are focused on the poorest. This is very different –
and arguably less elite captured - from the way European countries,
for example, developed their social protection programmes. Kakande
added that, although elite capture is a reality, countries like
Uganda are focusing on public information, taxation and redistribution
as a way to counter the problem.
• The argument for decreasing the use of indicators and targets
rather than increasing them – especially because many developing
countries’ statistical systems are not able to measure them.
German observed that the adoption of different methodologies may
act to confuse the public. He recognised that statistical measurements
can be onerous, but observed that there is a need to increase statistical
capacity in order to better understand chronic poverty. He sympathised
that the number of targets and indicators might make the MDGs seem
unreachable, but did not agree that the MDGs should be scaled down
because meeting the goals is a matter of political will and choice,
rather than one related to lack of funds and/or capacity.
• Do biofuels present an opportunity for small farmers to
escape poverty?
Prowse observed that biofuels can help reduce poverty as agricultural
goods for biofuel production can be grown on small plots of land.
However, like most non-staple crops, the processing of biofuels
tends to be done on a large-scale in huge plants. The chronically
poor tend to be concentrated in remote rural areas however, which
are not usually conducive to the installation of large processing
plants. This may limit the potential of biofuels to reduce chronic
poverty.
• The importance of governance and domestic accountability
in addressing chronic poverty.
German confirmed the importance of governance and domestic accountability
in chronic poverty reduction. He praised accountability mechanisms
implemented in Africa during the last 5 years, such as the Africa
Peer Review Mechanism (APRM), as well as local and intergovernmental
processes.
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