Global effort needed to avert financial crisis

Richard Samans and Ann Florini, The Straits Times, Asia News Network, Singapore

Despite the usual calls for greater political will, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank meetings late last month did not produce markedly greater aid and more open markets from rich countries, nor better governance and more transparent financial systems in poor nations.

The problem with such meetings is that they lend the impression that the responsibility for global development lies only with international institutions and governments, not with the rest of us.

Four years ago, a virtually unanimous collection of world leaders agreed to the Millennium Declaration, which pledged 'We the people' to a common agenda to confront poverty, environmental degradation, armed conflict and other challenges, many with a specific deadline of 2015.

Since then, these leaders have mostly just been talking the talk at the meetings of the World Bank and IMF, the G8 and other international summits.

In fact, according to a report just released by the World Economic Forum, the collective efforts of even the most prominent non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and corporations -- in addition to governments and international organizations -- hardly add up to a third of what is needed to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.

The findings of the Global Governance Initiative should be deeply discomforting to all of us, because when confronted with our likely failure to meet any of the targets, we can blame no one but ourselves.

Governments have neither the resources nor expertise to solve the world's problems themselves, thus the examples from the Initiative's report demonstrate that where governments are making progress, they are usually not alone.

Consider Brazil, where the Fome Zero (or Zero Hunger) plan brings together the efforts of federal, state and municipal authorities, and local civic efforts, in a massive cash transfer scheme which creates incentives for parents to invest in their children's health care and schooling.

Because there is no shortage of food production, curbing hunger in Brazil is a management problem, but can't be managed without broader participation.

Climate change presents a similar picture. If the United States and Russia continue to reject the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gas emissions, we can only hope that more energy giants will follow BP and Shell's lead in reducing their emissions, or that more automobile companies will invest in hybrid vehicles as Toyota has. The transformation of how we produce and consume energy is more likely to come from the bottom-up than top-down.

IMPROVING the state of global health also hinges on better matching the efforts of government, business and civil society in ways suited to each region, country and local context.

Between the World Health Organization, Global Fund to Fight HIV/Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, billions of additional dollars have been committed to combat a looming Aids crisis, but the gaps in education, medical training and delivery remain enormous, particularly in Africa. If more support, both political and financial, is not given to NGOs and corporate entities willing to deliver these services, who will do it?

The way out of the current situation -- where political will is lacking at the top, and resources lacking at the bottom -- begins with letting go of the idea that just because we seek global cooperation, we must wait for one-size-fits-all global solutions.

That's just not how reality works -- and we're that much better off for it. Progress requires the combined, concerted effort of official actors, the private sector, and civil society. Though there are many debates over either the appropriate level of corporate responsibility, and about NGO accountability, it is plain to see that the new multilateralism the world needs cuts not only across countries but across stakeholders. None of this is to let the Bretton Woods institutions off the hook. The World Bank and IMF have yet to fully reconcile the Poverty Reduction Strategy process at the country-level with Millennium Development Goals, not a promising sign of policy coherence.

But despite the heated rhetoric of our times, fixing the world's problems depends on far more than the outcome of the debates within these inter-governmental institutions. Instead, the practical solutions we see surfacing today involve varying arrangements of stakeholders emphasizing shared responsibility, with different actors each contributing what they do best.

The next time heads of state, finance ministers and other officials gather to discuss global development, they would be wise to consider not only the goals they are working towards, but also whether they are harnessing the full potential of the international system to achieve them.