Today, British Prime Minister David Cameron will meet fellow world leaders at the G7 conference in Germany. There, he will have an opportunity to quadruple the reach of British and global aid without spending an extra penny. To do so, he must convince the G7 — representing the biggest global donors — to get serious about focusing on the smartest ways to spend aid money.
In short, he needs to persuade them that the United Nations’ unwieldy list of 169 proposed ‘Sustainable Development Goals’ needs to be slashed to just 19 effective development investments, covering three broad areas: People, planet and prosperity. Well-intentioned though all 169 targets are, there are too many of them. They range from the grandiose (“eradicate extreme poverty” and “end hunger”) to the peripheral (“promote sustainable tourism”) to the flat-out impossible (“full and productive employment and decent work for all”). By trying to do these at once, we risk doing very little at all.
At my invitation, a panel of top economists — including two Nobel laureates — has analysed the UN plans, to see which aim is most cost-effective. Chief among their recommendations is that donors focus on achieving universal access to contraception and family planning. At an annual cost of £2.3 billion (Dh12.88 billion), allowing women control over pregnancy would mean 150,000 fewer maternal deaths and 600,000 fewer children orphaned.
The reduction in the number of children would mean relatively more people would be of working age, leading to slightly increased economic growth. Adding up these different benefits means that each pound spent in aid would achieve £120 of social good. The panel also found that fighting malaria and tuberculosis requires prioritising. The costs are small because solutions are simple, cheap and well-documented. Compared with Ebola, we hear little about these diseases today, yet both remain much bigger threats, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. In the next 15 years, we can realistically halve malaria deaths (generating benefits 36 times the costs) and reduce tuberculosis deaths by 90 per cent (with benefits 43 times the costs).
Tackling indoor air pollution comes third in this list of top investments. Nearly three billion people cook and warm themselves by burning plant matter and animal dung: This is the world’s biggest environmental challenge, and one of the leading causes of death. We often hear that the air in Beijing, New Delhi or Karachi is much more polluted than in London or Berlin. But the typical indoor air in a dwelling with an open fire is many times more polluted again.
More bang for the buck
Providing 780 million people with improved stoves would save 360,000 lives, avoid two billion days of illness annually, and lead to household savings on fuel. In total, the health and non-health benefits would be 15 times higher than the cost.
There are other realistic aims that are extremely cost effective: Lowering chronic child malnutrition by 40 per cent; increasing immunisation to reduce child deaths by a quarter; phasing out fossil-fuel subsidies; increasing girls’ education by two years; and aiming to achieve universal primary education in sub-Saharan Africa.
Together, the 19 investments recommended by the panel would expect to achieve benefits worth around £32 for every pound spent. If we stick with the status quo and spread money across all 169 of the planned United Nations targets that figure would be just £7.
Over the next 15 years, the Sustainable Development Goals will influence the flow of more than £1.6 trillion in aid — so it is vital that we get this right and focus on a few phenomenally powerful, cost-effective targets.
Time is running out: By September, the final list of goals and targets will be set at a United Nations General Assembly. NGOs, politicians and bureaucrats are now engaged in fierce advocacy to make sure everyone’s favourites will be included. Rather than trying to please everyone, we need to concentrate on the targets that we know will do most good. It is not just the recipients of this aid — the world’s most disadvantaged — who will benefit from such a policy. It is also the best outcome for donors.
Internationally, Britain has considerable moral authority on development issues because of its decision to ring-fence its aid budget. But domestically, the very same decision has attracted considerable and understandable scrutiny — and no little criticism.
In an era of austerity, this will only increase. Cameron has the opportunity next week to convince his fellow leaders to do the most good with every pound spent.
If he manages to do so, it should be easier to convince British taxpayers that they are getting the best possible value for their money.
— The Telegraph Group Limited, London, 2015
Bjorn Lomborg is the director of the Copenhagen Consensus Centre.
