The Promise of Busan
The Promise of Busan
31st May 2011 - Brian Atwood, OECD DAC Chair, highlights six key ingredients for global success at Busan.Its formal name is deceptive: the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Busan, Korea, as the Forum is about much more than ‘aid’. It follows meetings in Rome, Paris and Accra that were of vital importance in transforming aid relationships between donors and partners into true vehicles for development cooperation.
These Fora, and the principles that resulted from them, reflected 50 years of field experience and research. They encourage local ownership, alignment of development programs around a country’s development strategy, harmonisation of practices to reduce transaction costs, the avoidance of fragmented efforts and the creation of results frameworks. These principles placed donors and partners on a path toward mutual accountability.
The commitments were measurable. A survey is now underway to determine the extent to which they have changed the reality of development cooperation on the ground to one based on trust and shared responsibility.
The trends seem positive. The aid effectiveness agenda has produced important behavioural changes on the part of both donors and partners.
Yet the question that now faces the global community is whether this progress is enough to overcome even greater global challenges. In the face of the recent financial, security, food, health, climate and energy crises, I have to conclude that the development paradigm has not shifted enough. To solve these crises and meet the Millennium Development Goals we must all do more.
This is why Busan should be seen as a great deal more than the fourth in a series. If Busan is successful, it will signal a renewed global commitment to tackle poverty as a central source of the world’s problems. Development doesn’t occur in a day. It takes years of monitoring the implementation of agreements and commitments before victory can be declared. Yet Busan will be a success if it achieves the following:
Meeting these aims requires overcoming deep seated prejudices and misperceptions. It requires mutual respect, including respect for non-traditional approaches. We must all share a willingness to build bridges between diverse partners and consign labels that divide the world to history. Distinctions such as “donors’ and “recipients” should give way to the idea of mutual accountability.
Our highest aspirations for Busan will be only achieved if all come to the table with a sense of urgency and an understanding that a lack of development undermines the quality of life everywhere. Busan represents an opportunity to produce a broader and deeper partnership. It represents perhaps the best and last chance to create the political will to tackle the scourge of poverty, a root cause of some the world’s greatest challenges
