Development

A new report by spending watchdog the National Audit Office has generated concern about UK foreign aid by revealing that allegations of fraud have risen more than four-fold in five years.

Aid always has an element of risk, which agencies such as the Department for International Development (DfID) strive to keep to acceptable levels. But there is a broader problem globally with the way that development funds are allocated.

In every country, considerable resources are spent by the government and businesses, various national agencies, and often local and foreign NGOs, to improve the standard of living.

Haiti is no exception. The national budget is 203 billion Gourdes (USD$3 billion) annually, and another 67 billion Gourdes (USD$1 billion) is received in aid each year. On top of this, there are earthquake recovery resources and the money that is spent by private industry, donors, or sent home by the Haitian Diaspora.

Over the next 15 years, the Sustainable Development Goals will influence more than USD 2.5 trillion of money in development aid and trillions more meant to help reduce poverty, hunger and disease, and improve education and the environment. Bangladesh, along with all other nations, now has to decide where to spend scarce resources to do the most good. And clearly not all of the many, many UN targets are equally good, smart or effective.

La vision des inégalités diffusée par Oxfam est caricaturale. En fait, les inégalités diminuent. par Bjorn Lomborg, Copenhaguen Consensus Center

Aujourd'hui, on observe une impression générale - et fausse - que l'inégalité gagne inexorablement du terrain dans le monde. Oxfam a récemment contribué à jeter la confusion dans l'esprit déclarant que la richesse des huit personnes les plus fortunées du monde équivaut à celle de la moitié de la population mondiale.

Everyone – from elected officials and bureaucrats to voters and taxpayers – can learn from the world’s largest charitable foundation about effective development spending. And these lessons are particularly relevant at a time when 56% of Europeans believe their governments should focus solely on domestic issues and let recipient countries deal with problems as best they can (opposition to aid is even higher in France, Poland, Italy, Hungary, and Greece).

NYKYISIN on vallalla virheellinen käsitys, jonka mukaan eriarvoisuus lisääntyy vääjäämättä. Kansalaisjärjestö Oxfam ruokki tätä väärinkäsitystä tammikuussa julkistetussa raportissaan väittämällä, että kahdeksalla maailman varakkaimmalla ihmisellä on yhtä paljon omaisuutta kuin puolella koko maailman väestöstä.

Oxfam mittaa nettovarallisuutta, ei tuloja. Järjestön laskelmiin sisältyy niin sanottu negatiivinen omaisuus, kuten opintolaina ja asunto-omaisuuteen sidottu pääoma.

Det är en i dag vanligt förekommande - och felaktig – uppfattning att ojämlikheten ökar obevekligt. Oxfam har nyligen bidragit till detta missförstånd genom att hävda att världens åtta rikaste personer äger lika mycket som hälften av jordens befolkning.

Excitement crackled through the environmental movement when China’s National Energy Administration announced last month that the country will spend at least $360 billion on green energy through 2020. Green elites are now toasting the communist country: While President Trump threatens to end costly climate policies, Chinese President Xi Jinping promises his nation will continue to fight climate change.

With a stroke of the pen, President Trump has eliminated one of the most significant poverty-reduction measures that would have been enacted this decade. 

Negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership took half a decade and covered 40 percent of the world’s economy. While the agreement was already on death row thanks to a lack of support from Congress, President Trump’s executive order withdrawing US involvement sends a clarion signal about his administration’s outlook on trade.

Danielle Smith of News Talk 770 (CHQR) interviews Bjorn Lomborg.

"Imagine an environmentalist who believes that global warming is a real, pressing problem that is mostly man-made. Now imagine that same environmentalist saying that the Paris Accord will do next to nothing to halt global warming and it should be tossed out. That’s the view of Bjorn Lomborg, president and founder of the Copenhagen Consensus Centre."